Buying new PC. Advice needed =)

[AKDejaVu]

AMD is evil. They will deceive you in order to steal your soul. Don't buy their products... EVER!

AKDejaVu
Can anyone guess where I work?

[Karnak]

Tac,
A 1.33 Athlon is just as fast, or faster, as a P4 1.7, unless you REALLY like Quake 3 in 640x480 or are going to do a lot of mpeg encoding.

Furthermore the P4 cuts its clock cycles in half if it gets too warm.

For a better appraisal, read these:

Tom's Hardware P4 1.7
Tom's Hardware Athlon 1.33
AnandTech P4 1.7
AnandTech Athlon 1.33
FiringSquad P4 1.7
FiringSquad Athlon 1.33

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We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother

Bring the Spitfire F.MkXIVc to Aces High!!!

Sisu
-Karnak

[Karnak]

DejaVu,

Hmmm, Portland, Oregon.  Could it be.......INTEL!!!?

Nah, not a chance.

FWIW, I want both Intel and AMD in the market place.  Competition is good.  Right now AMD happens to be the better solution, but as P4 matures and stuff is compiled for it, we'll see where it goes.

I have been struggling with myself and my finaces over whether or not I should upgrade from an Athlon Classic 700 Mhz to an Athlon Thuderbird 1.33 Ghz.

------------------
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother

Bring the Spitfire F.MkXIVc to Aces High!!!

Sisu
-Karnak

[Thorns]

Heck of a lot of money in my book for a computer system........

Can you hold a screwdriver??  Is your hand/eye coordination good enough to put the round peg in the round hole?

Build your own!!  With the money you will save, you can buy a 19" or 21" trinitron monitor, plus this includes a higher end video card........
1.7GHz cpu??  I don't see where all this costly components(Intel)are needed to play 3D flightsims.........go check it out at http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/01q2/010423/index.html   Tells a lot of what's going on
Get the biggest monitor you can afford!  The 1.3GHz Thunderbird puts out better framerates than the 1.7GHz Pentium 4......

Just my 2 cents,
Thorns

[This message has been edited by Thorns (edited 04-25-2001).]

[bloom25]

I thought I would add that if you use any kind of "real work" software regularly, such as 3D Studio Max, Mathematica, Matlab, CAD software, etc, the Athlon is over 30% faster for those.  In 3d studio max the diffence is HUGE.  (Over 50%.)

If you guys want the technical reasons, read this:
 http://www.emulators.com/pentium4.htm#02282001

Admittedly he is angry at Intel, but with good reason.  As such he is somewhat biased, BUT he is right on all the design flaws in the P4.  The P4 is probably the finest design that a company ever ruined because it would cost to much to make.  There are some benchmarks at the bottom of the page here.

You might also check out this:
 http://www.emulators.com/benchmrk.htm

Scroll down until you see the benchmarks running his emulation software.  Guess which CPU loses...

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bloom25
-MAW-
(Formerly of the)
THUNDERBIRDS

[Tac]

Deja, im seriously thinking on spending at least 2500 bucks, and im really in need of advice here   Im an intel fan already, give me an inside scoop  

You folks bring up many good points. I quoted the Gforce 32mb because it was the cheapest card I could get with the package deal, I do plane to get myself a Gforce 3 soon anyway.

Thanks a lot for the links, Ive read them all, and learned a lot of new spacey and technical terms... I just wish I knew what they were talking about  

One of the reviews did speak in layman's terms and 2 phrases cought my attention:

"Basically, Pentium 4 is a new design, which has some problems with today's software. Particularly office applications like Word or Excel, but also current 3D-games perform quite a bit worse on Pentium 4 than on Athlon, although the AMD-processor runs at lower clock speeds. Once software has been compiled for Pentium 4 however, the trace cache architecture is able to show its advantages. The same is valid for Pentium 4's floating-point performance. While Pentium 4's normal FPU lags significantly behind Athlon's FPU, the Intel processor comes with the new SSE2-extensions, which offer very high FPU-performance for applications that are able to benefit from streaming floating point operations and that are actually programmed or at least compiled for the usage of the SSE2-extensions. In summary you could say that Pentium 4's architecture doesn't make it exactly a top-notch performer right now, but it could perform a lot better in the future, once applications have been optimized for this processor. High clock speeds are the best way to cover up Pentium 4's performance problems with current software, which is why Intel was eager to release Pentium 4 1.7 GHz as soon as possible."

And after seeing the benchmarks on office/Quake/Unreal Tournament bar graphs (hey, at least I THINK I understand bar graphs lol) and reading the above, the P4 1.7 is a little bit behind, but its new and as the above quote says, stuff isnt being coded to take advantage of the p4's stuff yet.

Argh.. decisions are hard.

Thorns.. I am plotting on ditching the Dell monitor (17") and getting the 19" monitor I saw on another site (incredibly the 19" was almost cheaper than the 17" lol). Thanks for the advice  

[bloom25]

HAHAHA!    You guys have to read that firing squad review of the 1.7 P4.  Only when they overclocked it to 1.9 Ghz did it barely pass the 1.33 Athlon.  Now if you consider that the 1.33s are easily overclocking to 1.466 Ghz you can see just what CPU is better.



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bloom25
-MAW-
(Formerly of the)
THUNDERBIRDS

[Tac]

Bloom, there was one thing you may have missed in those benchmarks:

"Pentium 4 - a Gateway 1500xl 1.5 GHz Pentium 4, 512M of PC800 RDRAM memory, Windows Millennium"

was the system they were using.

Now, I DO know Gateway. As an Ex-GW tech I can tell you they use the crappiest components possible. While it may not affect intel mbd/chip/ram, im sure GW's "special" added stuff porked those stats.

Or maybe im paranoid. Do not trust GW. They will take your money and pimp your soul. Any company selling stuff that, if you ever have a problem with their components, can only be fixed via format, is gathering some serious bad karma. If you own or just bought a GW, ask GW techs/salesman if your PC has a RED OWL modem. If the answer is YES, return system ASAP. You got crap and paid gold for it.

*slides under a rock* brrrr!!!

[bloom25]

Tac, the argument that a CPU will be faster in the future is so flawed it's not even funny.  Think about it, when you buy a new computer do you want it to be faster a. NOW or b. 3 years from now.  I'd say a.

As for SSE2, I think Intel REALLY DOES HAVE SOMETHING GREAT HERE.  Honestly, these new instructions do have the potential to really speed up programs.  Unfortunately it will take a minimum of 1 year for compilers to catch up, and by then that P4 you bought will be totally obsolete.  AMD will also be supporting SSE2 on their next processor.  You can imagine just how bad the P4 will look then.

For Intel the truth hurts, the P4 is not the best CPU available today.  In fact it takes a P4 at 1.904 Ghz to even TIE the Athlon at 1.33 Ghz in most of todays applications.  In the DX based games, the Athlon still manages a narrow win.  AH will have an even greater margin of victory for the Athlon.

I do honestly feel sorry for the average consumer who blindly assumes the P4 is better than the Athlon just because of it's higher clock speed.  Clock speed can only be compared to processors of the same type.  Comparing different types of CPUs based on clock speed is like trying to compare a Chevy 454 at 3000 rpm to a Honda Civic 2.0L at 3000 rpm.

I personally use my computer for more than just playing games like AH.  I use it for engineering software packages.  (I'm a senior in Electrical Engineering at Oregon State University mainly focusing on digital logic design.)  The Athlon performs much better than the P4 for any application making use of floating point math.  I have personally looked quite a bit at the P4s design.  IMO it is impressive, but contains some huge flaws.  I could probably put all of you to sleep detailing the main ones I noticed, so I won't.    The p4s design is really about 2 years ahead of software design when it comes down to it.  By then Intel's competitors will have extended their performance lead even farther...



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bloom25
-MAW-
(Formerly of the)
THUNDERBIRDS

[Tac]

Im in your experten hands bloom.  

Take into account I will probably be using this new system for the next 4 years too. P4 may become better and beat the AMD, though AMD beats P4 now... ach, too much worries around  



[This message has been edited by Tac (edited 04-25-2001).]

[bloom25]

This dead horse demands another beating!  
 http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/athlon1.3/

Tac, if you buy a P4 system after reading all this I'll be forced to laugh at you everytime your P38 ends up in my gunsight.  

The p4 would really only be a good deal ... wait a minute, it will never be a good deal with it's current implementation.

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bloom25
-MAW-
(Formerly of the)
THUNDERBIRDS

[Tac]

This look good bloom?

Pre-configured AMD Thunderbird/Duron Computer System with DDR Memory
 ATX Mid Tower Case with 250 Watt Power Supply
 Iwill KA266 Motherboard - 266/200 MHz FSB - DDR Memory
 1 4X AGP - 5 PCI Slots - Ultra33/66/100
 Heavy Duty Heat Sink and Fan Assembly
 1.44 MB Floppy Drive
 104 Keyboard, Mouse
 Millennium Gold Service Plan on any system we assemble!
Processor Thunderbird 1.3 GHz CPU (266 MHz FSB)
Upgrade Case Full Tower ATX case
Upgrade Power Supply to AMD approved 300 Watt ATX PS
Upgrade Motherboard Asus A7A266-WA - built in Audio - Ultra/100 - 266/200 MHz FSB
Memory 512MB PC2100 DDR Memory (Two 128 MB)
Hard Drive 7200 RPM 60 GB Ultra/100
DVD Drive 16X Pioneer IDE DVD
Video Card Matrox G450 DualHead Display - 32MB DDR - 4X AGP
Upgrade Sound Sound Blaster Live! 5.1(OEM)
Network Cards 3COM 3C905CX-TXM 10/100
Monitor AOC 9GLRS - 19 Inch - 0.25mm 1600 x 1200
Operating System Windows Millennium installed and on CD

Pass the vid card though, GEforce 3 (or any better anyone care recomend) will be on that system soon.

[Tac]

"I'll be forced to laugh at you everytime your P38 ends up in my gunsight"

And what exactly is the difference with my life in the MA as it is now?  

[bloom25]

Tac, I'd submit that all "name-brand" computers cut corners.  Even Dell.  The truth is if you want top of the line performance without any compromises, you will have to build it yourself.

As for the Gateway system used in the benchmarks, look at how much ram that thing has.  Yep, 1/2 a gig of RAM!  The p4 still lost, even though it's only real major advantage is memory bandwidth and FSB speed.  This just highlights other flaws in the design and the very high latency associated with the rambus design.

You guys should also realize that I also own several Intel based systems.  They do make good processors.  The p4 is not one of them.  I don't sell computers, and I don't make a single penny by convincing people to build AMD systems over Intel.  I just don't like seeing people get ripped off by clever marketing.  Unfortuately all my pro-AMD posting may make me seem to be biased against Intel.  This couldn't be farther from the truth.  If you guys look back to when I started posting you will see that I recommended Intel CPUs over AMD's K6 series processors.  Read the HTC faq file, most of that is copied directly from a post I made a long time ago.  In one part I say the the K6 series of processors will never be good for AH because of their weak FPU.  The situation is now totally reversed.  The Athlon has a FAR superior FPU to the p4.  Look at the firing squad review of the 1.3 athlon I posted above.  Specifically look at the floating point CPU benchmarks.  When you consider that AH makes heavy use of the FPU you can quite easily realize that the p4 can never be competitive with the Athlons for AH.

At this point it is your decision which system to buy Tac.  I strongly recommend you look for non biased reviews of both systems and make your decision.  I believe that if you do this you will find that the Athlon CPUS are superior to the P4 in most tests.  When you consider the lack of an upgrade path for the p4, along with the higher cost of the system for me the right choice is clear...



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bloom25
-MAW-
(Formerly of the)
THUNDERBIRDS

[Tac]

Please bloom, continue, I do need help here  

I have read a lot of stuff here that has made me doubt about a p4. Heck, I even went and quoted an AMD system (the one I posted last) and it was a toejamload cheaper and it was much better in almost all the tests I saw in 6+ benchmark tech websites I visited.

I now ask you, if you go to http://www.micropro.com/

and build an AMD system, which one would you build?

Or if you know a better and trustworthy place to buy online (who doesnt like saving $$?   ) let me know too.

You dont sound "anti-intel" btw, you giving lotsa facts backing you up, im glad you did. Im not gonna send 2500 bucks down the toilet only to have my 38 be laughed at dammit. Gotta draw the line somewhere