XP64: Is it now better all round to buy AMD?

[Iain]

Hi, I found this site while looking for info on 64 bit computing and you lot seem to know what you're on about so I have a question.

I'm looking to buy a new barebones PC, I'm an avid gamer but really I need to be looking for the best performance for programs like Photoshop since I'm gonna be a photography student for the next 3 years using digital a lot. I looked on the CPU chart on Toms Hardware I'm sure you know about and it tells me that Pentiums equivalents outperform AMD's on these types of programs and also in multitasking I hear.

But I need the system to last a good few years at least so i wonder, if I got the AMD 64 3000 and installed XP64 (either when i get the new PC or when its more supported) will this actually become more powerful than a P4 3.0 and generally last longer?

Here's are my choices by the way http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/barebones.htmlhttp://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/barebones.html If anyone would care to look I'd appreciate it. I used to know a fair bit about PC's but I havn't been able to buy new stuff for a while so I dont know so much anymore. It will be one of the £200-£300 systems I'll get I think. The £203.05 AMD 64 was looking good but then I started to think about the pentium next to it.

I cant really afford one of the new motherboards with a PCI Express slot, I think i'd rather use a cheap nvidia 5200 card i picked up and get one of the top AGP end cards that are around now in a year or so when theyre cheaper. One a sidenote I have my eye on this monitor http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/.... as it seemed very good value for an 8ms LCD (think it might actually be 12 ms though)

Thanks a lot for any guidance. I know AMDvsP4 stuff is really old hat but while I've been searching I havnt seen anything about this issue, sorry if its come up before.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Well, XP64 edition isn't very useful now, since there aren't any 64 bit programs to utilize its potential. However, I would still go with an Athlon 64 setup, because they pretty much just own Pentium 4's unless you're HEAVILY multitasking, as in running tons of programs at once, which shouldn't be a problem for you, since it looks like you're only going to be using Photoshop. In fact, I just read this great analogy posted in another thread here at AT:

Originally posted by: Noob

AMD: 9 Cylinders, Shorter Pipeline, 12 Stages
Intel: 6 Cylinders, Longer Pipline, 31 Stages

The only advantage had Intel had was it's higher clockspeed. Here is a simple explanation: Picture this as a racetrack. AMD has 9 hourses lined up on a smaller track and Intel has 6 horses lined up on a much bigger track. AMD will be able to achieve more distances and laps on the much shorter race track (IPC's). While Intel tries to compensate for this by making it's horses run faster (higher clock speeds). But as benchmarks show AMD is still on top.

So before you judge which CPU will be faster, look into these specs first.

 

[FoxyProxy]

Wasn't it VW that had the slogan "Drivers Needed" ?

That is the biggest hurdle with Win64 now and will be for some time.

When Intel has a *real* 64 bit solution for the desktop perhaps we'll see this but not this year.

 

[Iain]

OK thanks t3h l337 n3wb. So are the results on the Toms Hardware CPU charts misleading? I compared the AMD 64 and P4 3.0 and it seemed the P4 outperformed it on most tests apart from games and a few other odd ones. I know its not yet the best time to get XP64 FoxyProxy but i just wondered if the AMD would give me that extra bit of futureproofing for when I did.

 

[JackMDS]

The solution is very simple.

You buy (or build) what ever you like in a x64 capable system.

You invest less than $15 in a Mobile Rack with extra tray.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi...d&description=mobile+rack&InnerCata=43

You get an additional modest hard drive for $30.

You get WinXP pro and install it on one drive.

You get the trial of Win XP x64 and the trial edition of WinXP x64 and install it on the second drive.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/evaluation/trial.mspx

You start to enjoy your WinXP Pro only compatible games, and explore the future with WinXP x64.

Eventually you would make up your mind and if necessary you can upgrade from WinXP Pro to non-trial WinXP x64.

In other words for less the $50 people can do a Pro work instead of being befuddled.

:sun:

 

[Iain]

Errr whats that got to do with the price of cheese? I might well do that if i get an AMD system but I dont know wether thats the best choice yet. What I'm asking is, if i get an AMD 64 3000 will it susperseed a P4 3.0 (which i understand to be superior for most stuff) once I've installed XP64 on the system.

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Originally posted by: t3h l337 n3wb
Well, XP64 edition isn't very useful now, since there aren't any 64 bit programs to utilize its potential.

Define "useful"...

I haven't been playing with 64-bit Windows for long (a week or two), so I haven't had much chance to familiarise myself with it.

But I can tell you this: Under 32-bit Windows, Photoshop's memory slider (under Edit | Preferences) can "only" be turned up to 1.7GB. When run from 64-bit Windows however, I could crank it all the way up to 2.7GB.

The difference? Well, when I publish pictures on the web, I first convert from raw file format to TIFF, then I run a set of PS actions on those TIFF files (ending up with a bunch of jpegs). Under 32-bit Windows Photoshop starts writing to its scratch disk and seemed to peak at a 700MB big scratch file. No such scratch file was created under 64-bit Windows.

That to me is useful.

It would of course be even more useful having a 64-bit Photoshop to play with, but bumping up the address space of 32-bit apps to 4GB from 2GB is useful. (The /3GB boot.ini switch for 32-bit Windows is not useful btw)

There's also some other nice tidbits. E.g. under 32-bit Windows the default Desktop Heap Size is 3MB. A meaningful way of demonstrating this limit is launching about 30-35 instances of Internet Explorer (use e.g. anandtech.com as IE's homepage). I usually have to stop at 32 instances. Bumping up the heap size can be done, but doing so reduces the number of available desktops (they share a 48MB memory space).

The default Desktop Heap Size under 64-bit Windows is 20MB. A tad more than 3MB...

User handles quota per process is still 10,000, but can now be bumped up to _a lot_ (I stopped testing at 100,000). The absolute max used to be 18,000 since the system max under 32-bit Windows is 65536 handles due to backward compatibility (otherwise 16-bit Windows app would be terribly confused). System max under Win64 is 2^32 handles (but you can no longer run Win16 apps). This is actually useful to me, but I realise most users will never touch these limitations.

 

[imported_michaelpatrick33]

Originally posted by: Iain
Errr whats that got to do with the price of cheese? I might well do that if i get an AMD system but I dont know wether thats the best choice yet. What I'm asking is, if i get an AMD 64 3000 will it susperseed a P4 3.0 (which i understand to be superior for most stuff) once I've installed XP64 on the system.

The P4 3.0 is not superior for most stuff. That is the problem. It is superior in certain encoding/hyperthreaded aware applications and/or heavy, heavy, multitasking.

Both chips will, in the end, balance out to roughly equal performance. The 3000+ has the advantage of a better overclock than the P4 3.0E (most of the time of course). If you get the 939 3000+ you will have the advantage of upgrading to dualcore. If you are going toward Intel I would try and get the 945/955 for dualcore upgradeability.

 

[Iain]

You know what, maybe I will go for a 939. Problem is I would have to get a new graphics card and there dont seem to be many budget PCI-E ones from what I've seen so it would bump the price up for me. I think im definetly gonna go for an AMD now anyway