XP 2000+ Price vs. Performance ?

[FOH]

On NewEgg, the AMD XP 2000+ Retail version(1.67 GHz.) is $266.
The XP 1800+ Retail version (1.53 GHz.) is $159.
That is a %67 increase in price for .14 GHz.

I am going to purchase one soon and I'm looking for opinions, is the XP 2000 worth the higher price, or would I even be able to tell the difference in performance? It dosen't seem to me to be worth it. Are there other differences in the chips that I am not taking into consideration?

 

[Budman]

save a few $$$ & have a cold beer with the money you saved.

 

[mithrandir2001]

Uh, hello, McFly? 67% more money for a 9% increase in clock speed (which means a 5% overall system boost)?

Stick with the XP 1800+ without question.

 

[Bovinicus]

Save the money. You will never be able to tell the difference unless you encode VCDs.

 

[FOH]

That is also what I thought, I was just making sure I wasn't overlooking some big difference between the chips other than the obvious clock speed.

Also, would there be a noticable, (in everyday use), difference in speed btween the WD 120 GB hard drive with the 8MB buffer and a "normal" (and much cheaper) HD with a 2MB buffer?

 

[John]

The XP1800+ should o/c to XP2000+ no problem.

The SE (8MB cache) HDD's are not a "night and day" difference between one of the other top 2MB cache drives on the market (120GXP, D740X).

 

[LXi]

<<The SE (8MB cache) HDD's are not a "night and day" difference between one of the other top 2MB cache drives on the market (120GXP, D740X).>>

Well said. It's amazing the kind of placibo effect 8MB creates, some people think these cache can do miracles, SCSI on IDE, dream on.

 

[Kingofcomputer]

That's how manufauturers make more money. There are such market.

 

[XBoxLPU]

Get the 1800 and buy the best HSF fan you can..

Unlock and you have a 2000

 

[KenAF]

Definitely get the 1800+, or perhaps even better, the 1700+; if you get a decent core, but should overclock to 2000+ speeds with the right motherboard.

<< The SE (8MB cache) HDD's are not a "night and day" difference between one of the other top 2MB cache drives on the market (120GXP, D740X). >>

Certainly, the improvement over the 120GXP is small.

That said, there is a definite improvement over the D740X. I suppose it depends on your definition of "night and day" difference. Storagereview consistently found that the SE drives loaded games and game levels 35-45% faster than the D740X. If one hard drive consistently loads a game level in 8.6 seconds, while another drive loads the same level 12 seconds, is that a "night and day" difference to you?

If one hard drive boots Windows in 35 seconds, and another drive loads an identical setup of Windows (restored to a different drive using an image program) in 22 seconds, is that a "night and day" difference? That's the type of result that Storagereview found. I personally found a ~50% improvement in Windows bootup speed by going from the 740X to the 1000JB with 8Mb cache. I think it highly likely that would would see a measurable improvement with the 120GXP as well.