Author Topic: OK Intel gurus give me the run down here. (Read 1874 times)

Reschke · « **on:** January 04, 2003, 09:08:13 PM »

I am starting to look around at replacing the CPU, motherboard and RAM and power supply. The power supply is a no-brainer for me.

Current setup that is absolutely trouble free after power supply issues.

AMD Athlon T-Bird 1.4GHz (266)
512MB PC2100 DDR
ASUS A7V266
Abit Siluro GF4 Ti4400
Diamond MX300
3Com 905B TX 10/100
TEAC 24x10x40 CDRW
OS = WinXP Home
DX 9

Here is what I am looking at from Intel. I have found a really good deal on this through Pricewatch from a company I have bought alot from in the past.

Intel I am looking at as a possible upgrade.

ASUS P4PE
512MB Samsung PC2700 DDR 333
P4 2.26 (533FSB) retail version

I will have an AMD kit I am thinking of going with but right now I just want some Intel wonderkid input. I have not personally used an Intel based rig in a few years and the last ones I built were when the P2 was on the market and P3's were starting to show up in tiny trickles.

bockko · « **Reply #1 on:** January 04, 2003, 10:27:14 PM »

i must admit up front to be intel biased

now, dollar wise you get more 'performance' with the amd rigs. stability wise, intel is the way to go. in the game your performance with the intel rig will be excellent, depending on your video card strength. I am running a p4 1.8 and it runs very good...that is, after i got rid of the gforce 2 mx card.

later, bockk

Reschke · « **Reply #2 on:** January 04, 2003, 10:58:19 PM »

OK here is my AMD comparison from the same group I get a good bit of hardware from online.

A7N8X
256MB DDR 333
Athlon XP 2600 (2.133GHz 333FSB)
Volcano 8 HSF

Here is my cost after shipping on this setup: $520...OUCH!!!!

On the Intel my cost after shipping is $435! I will end up with 512MB of memory and a faster CPU with a retail setup to boot if I go that route. Plus my alleged buddy is looking like he is wanting to screw me on the AMD setup unless there is something I need to know about the N-Force2 chipset?

eagl · « **Reply #3 on:** January 05, 2003, 12:27:22 AM »

Why exactly are you upgrading? I certainly hope it's not for AH... An athlon 1.4 is quite sufficient for AH.

When you go beyond your current system, you may need to specify what programs you run that are causing you to upgrade. Then check hardware sites and look at their benchmarks, because at speeds above a generic athlon 1.4, you're going to see application-specific reasons to go for either Intel or AMD.

I have an Athlon 1.4 and wouldn't dream of spending a cent to upgrade it now, because I mostly game with AH and it's far more powerful than AH requires. As I type this, AH H2H host is running minimized, outlook express is running, I have slashdot in another web browser window, I run motherboard monitor, and the distributed.net client is also running. And nobody in my arena complains about warping and I can even fly with all that crap running with framerates between 50 and 100 (although I usually don't unless testing things.)

Again, if an athlon 1.4 isn't sufficient, then the application you use probably runs measurably better on either an Intel or AMD cpu, and you should find out FIRST before buying anything. Check for benchmarks that use that application or type of application before you buy, or you might get disappointed.

Reschke · « **Reply #4 on:** January 05, 2003, 12:55:09 AM »

Well one reason is because I have a guy that wants to buy my current CPU, motherboard and RAM. I don't ask questions because he does it every 1 to 1.5 years. Last fall he bought my Athlon 700 and 512MB SDRAM and an ASUS A7V motherboard. He has been really happy with that and wants this if I decide to sell it. This started when I was working in the computer shop here in town and he bought from me then. Now he calls to see what I have and what I am willing to sell. Secondly I just trying to get some information from people who currently run Intel setups. This way I will at least have an idea of what they see. Also I don't just play AH. I play IL-2, IGI 2, NASCAR Racing 2002 Season and several other games that I am beta testing.

Primarily the reason behind this thread is the guy that wants to buy my setup. If he does then I need a few days to get everything on order in and going before he picks up this stuff and I don't want to sit around waiting on hardware to show up without something to have in the box here.

Don't get me wrong my 1.4GHz Athlon runs nicely in everything I do and want to keep doing. I just think that my next CPU will be Intel based on the price I have right now. I need to do some talking with my buddy to see why he is so high on his AMD CPU setup.

bloom25 · « **Reply #5 on:** January 05, 2003, 01:55:11 AM »

Your AMD setup is quite a bit faster than the Intel one you posted. The nForce 2 boards are the fastest boards for AMD processors at the moment and are IMO the best chipset currently available for AMD processors, and the A7N8X is the fastest board of the bunch. (One note, you will want 2 256 MB sticks to take advantage of the dual channel DDR setup offered by the nForce 2 chipset, that gives a decent performance boost.) The 2600+ is also a lot more powerful than a 2.26B P4, I'd say it's equal to a 2.53B P4.

That said, the Asus board you picked for the Intel route is excellent. It uses the 845PE chipset, which will support HT enabled P4s and is a bit faster than the older i845e and g chipsets. Until the Granite Bay chipset is available the i845PE is probably the best option for the P4 as far as Intel chipsets go. I feel you should consider using a 2.4B P4 though, there should be very little cost difference. I'd say the best "bang for the buck" at the moment for Intel CPUs is between the 2.4B and 2.53B.

What video card are you going to be using for you new system? (You aren't going to get a bit of a performance boost if you are stuck with something like a GeForce 2 MX varient.

)

Either of your two options (Intel or AMD), would be excellent choices. The AMD setup would be a bit faster if you stuck with a 2.26B P4 though. Which ever setup you choose, IMO you've picked the best 2 motherboards available.

mrsid2 · « **Reply #6 on:** January 05, 2003, 02:49:42 AM »

Yeah but now we see again the MHZ illusion in effect..

More Mhz is not always faster..

minus · « **Reply #7 on:** January 05, 2003, 08:20:10 AM »

reshke, forger the XP 2600 and get the 2400 or cheaper , and L 1 bridge is not cut off , so you can just change multiplicator in bios and get to 2600 , and is it 13 micron ,even with standart heatsinek it heat less like your curent AMD
about ram , 256 is not inaf that sure

Reschke · « **Reply #8 on:** January 05, 2003, 11:32:24 AM »

I am sticking with the items I listed above aside from the CPU, motherboard and RAM in my first post. So I will have a GeForce4 Ti4400 running as my video card.

Reschke · « **Reply #9 on:** January 05, 2003, 01:55:46 PM »

Well after all the recommendations through here and through email I have tried and tried to locate a better deal on the AMD setup with either a 2400 or 2600 CPU and I can not find one.

I still end up around $125-$200 more trying that route versus the Intel route even going with Blooms recommendation of going higher with the Intel CPU between 2.4 and 2.53GHz. I have found one though using an ASUS A7S333 based board.

Reschke · « **Reply #10 on:** January 05, 2003, 05:17:31 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by bloom25
Your AMD setup is quite a bit faster than the Intel one you posted. The nForce 2 boards are the fastest boards for AMD processors at the moment and are IMO the best chipset currently available for AMD processors, and the A7N8X is the fastest board of the bunch. (One note, you will want 2 256 MB sticks to take advantage of the dual channel DDR setup offered by the nForce 2 chipset, that gives a decent performance boost.) The 2600+ is also a lot more powerful than a 2.26B P4, I'd say it's equal to a 2.53B P4.

Alright Bloom you said something here that has piqued my interest a bit. You mention that I would want to use 2 sticks of 256MB memory for the 'dual channel DDR' that the nForce2 chipset has. Why is that? I was under the impression that the DDR memory itself would handle something like that and that was one reason for not having more than one stick of memory. So if you can break it down for me in a quick synopsis that would be great.

Thanks.

bloom25 · « **Reply #11 on:** January 06, 2003, 01:43:06 AM »

The nForce 1 and nForce 2 boards are capable of running in what is called dual channel mode. This doubles memory bandwidth. (The DDR in DDR SDRAM means Double Data Rate - this is something different. DDR SDRAM transfers data twice per clock cycle, thus has 2x the bandwidth of regular SDRAM running at the same frequency.) Using 2 sticks of memory on an nForce series board enables this feature.

The extra bandwidth improves performance by around 5 - 10% on nForce 2 boards. It really depends on the application what kind of an increase in performance you get.

I don't have the time to type a long post; unfortunately I've got tons of work to get done tonight. Anandtech has lots of good information in and linked to from this article: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1759

If you go AMD, do not use a A7S series board, the A7N8X is much faster and FAR more stable.

Wilbus · « **Reply #12 on:** January 06, 2003, 06:05:27 AM »

Reschke, I just chnaged from an old (very troublesome AMD, think the mainboard was screwed up) to Intel.

Now, the thing with AMD vs Intel is that in the past, the AMD Athlon compared to P3 was up to 30% faster when running at the same Mhz (say 1.5ghz AMD equeled 1.7 or 1.8 ghz P3). This advantage was lowered when the P4 arived but it was still there. Then Intel released their new P4's, basicly they're still called p4 and nothing else. The advantage of speed that AMD had disapired and AFAIK and have understood by reading different reviews from both magazines and toms hardware (and reading lots of benchmark tests, compared prices etc) the Intel P4 (new version) are quite a bit faster then the AMD. There is also no better "bang for buck" anymore as the prices for Intel has been greatly lowered as long as you don't go for the very newest of them (meaning 3 ghz or so).

Another thing, to be able to use the maximum performance of the P4 you must use RDRAM (which is expensive as hell). Chose a P4 with DDR RAM and the CPU won't be used to its full potential.

Intel is quieter and takes less power aswell.

I used to be PRO AMD but am changing over to Intel with the release of their new P4 and the Northwood core together with their greatly reduced prices. The "rule" with less Mhz AMD cpu being equal to higher Mhz Intel CPU doens't apply anymore, it was in the past but is gone now.

I'd go with an Intel if I were you, I just got my self a new computer from Dell (first time in long I haven't built my self).
Looking at the FSB on the Intel components you're thinking about ut uses RDRAM (533 Mhz 1066 RDRAM is expensive, very expensive compared to other RAM but worth it if you're getting a P4)

My System now is:

Intel 845 E chipset
P4 2.4 Ghz.
512 Mb of 533 Mhz RDRAM
ATI Radeon 9700 graphics card with 128mb memory.
60 Gb HD @ 7200 rpm.

Very happy about it, it runs silent, flawless and very fast. I score 13,300 points in 3D Mark (1024x768x32bit color).

Reschke · « **Reply #13 on:** January 06, 2003, 07:19:31 AM »

Thanks bloom25 and Wilbus. All this is good information and is helping the decision making process. Still not sure which way I am going since the guy who is wanting to buy my current mobo and CPU still have not made up his mind.

mrsid2 · « **Reply #14 on:** January 06, 2003, 08:08:19 AM »

I guess you haven't been looking at the benchmarks lately wilbus..

The latest AMD architecture beats 2.4Ghz P4 while running only at 1Ghz.. lol.

Even the current athlon XP beats P4 Mhz per Mhz clearly, that's why they now have the + ratings which indicate the performance level compared to Intel.

Athlon XP 2600+ (2133 MHz) outperformed Intel P4 2554Mhz.
Intel had to go all the way to 2.8Ghz to match XP2600+@2.13Ghz.
http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20020826/index.html

I'm not going to buy anything Intel because they're implementing Palladium to the hardware.