Yet another "what to buy" thread.

MutoidMan

Member
Aug 20, 2001
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I'm finally going to buy a new PC.

The last new PC I bought was back in 1998 with a 500 MHz PIII and a TNT2 Ultra. Back around 2001 (I think) I swapped out the CPU for a 1 GHz PIII, and later I replaced the graphics card with a 64 MB GF3, but aside from installing more SDRAM and an ATA-100 controller card, that's all the upgrading my old ASUS P3B-F could handle.

It's actually been fine for playing games up until the latest games like DOOM 3 and Half-Life 2. I can still play those new games, but with the screen at 640x480 or 800x600 and all of the visual extras disabled. Even then, when the screen gets a bit too crowded or there are a lot of explosions my framerate drops like a rock and I have to wait a few minutes for it come back up again. Thus, the need for a new PC.

I haven't really been following the hardware scene lately, but I recently checked out a few hardware sites and talked to some people I play online with and everybody seems to prefer AMD over Intel. A bit difficult to accept for a die-hard Intel customer, but I guess it is what it is.

The top two AMD chips appear to be the FX-55 and the dual-core Athlon X2 4800+. I'm leaning towards the X2 because I like the idea of being able to play games while ripping CD's in the background with no noticeable slowdown of the games. The FX-55 seem to hold an edge in games, but not by a whole lot.

My question is should I go single or dual-core?

My concern is compatibility. I seem to remember AMD having compatibility problems with their K7 processors and some software written for Intel chips which required patches. Are the new AMD chips compatible with everything that runs with no problems on an Intel chip? I want to make sure I can still do stuff like enabling special effects in Descent 3 that only work on a CPU with SSE.

If there are problems, I can always get a 3.8 GHz P4 670. I won't bother with the dual-core Pentium because it's single-threaded performance just isn't fast enough; though if it were running at 3.8 GHz I'd consider it. The P4 670 doesn't seem to run as hot as the older P4's, it's fast enough, and I know there won't be any compatibility issues.

So what say you?
 

ryanv12

Senior member
May 4, 2005
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hahaha HDTV man nice.

Yeah, Pentium 4's right now are a joke compared to AMDs, and especially in games. I'd go with the dual core 4800+, because looking at your previous record, you keep your processors for a long time :p. The 4800+ is going to have the software adapted to it, so you should see more and more apps, even games, make some attempt to be multithreaded.

There's no compatibility issues, each processor can execute the same tasks, and AMD has grown quite a bit since those days.

4800+...and no I'm not biased like a lot of people here, I've owned plenty of Intel already! Just lookin at what gives you the best at the moment, and Intel just can't beat AMD.
 

MobiusPizza

Platinum Member
Apr 23, 2004
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Originally posted by: MutoidMan
My concern is compatibility. I seem to remember AMD having compatibility problems with their K7 processors and some software written for Intel chips which required patches. Are the new AMD chips compatible with everything that runs with no problems on an Intel chip? I want to make sure I can still do stuff like enabling special effects in Descent 3 that only work on a CPU with SSE.

The new AMD X2 chips have no difference with Intel in terms of features. SSE3 is supported for AMD so no problem there.

Architecture-wise compatibility issues are non existent.
If you can afford, you should enjoy dual cores more.