Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Grits on January 08, 2004, 04:01:04 PM
-
While I'm upgrading should I get an 800mhz MB to go with the P4 or is it worth the difference in AH? Its only another $75.
-
A P4 without the 800Mhz fsb is a joke, if cost is a problem you should think about the AMD route.
-
Nope, cost is not a problem. I'd pay more than $75 I just wanted to make sure it was worthwhile and I was not spending money where it was not going to help.
-
I have 2 P4 systems.
Both 2.4 CPUs
One overclocked to 3.6 at 1200FSB
The other overclocked to 3.0 at 1000 FSB.
I enjoy them both and have had no issues with either.
I think you can get the P4 2.4 at http://www.newegg.com
For about 160.00
And a nice Asus p4p800 MoBo for about 100.00
Thats the setup i have in my air cooled machine.
And It works flawless !
-
Yep, thats exactly the setup I was looking at, good to hear you are having good results with it.
-
P4 2.8 800MHz FSB or AMD 64 3000+ - best bang for buck
-
Tom's Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040106/index.html) has an in depth comparison of processors this month. If you're going Intel you simply must have the 800MHz FSB. The P4 2.8 on the 800MHz bus is faster than the P4 3.06 on the 533MHz bus in almost every benchmark.
The P4c 3.0 system below scores 20421 on 3Dmark2001 and 6456 on 3Dmark2003. The overclocked Athlon 64 3400+ in the Tom's review scored 19,768 and 6202 respectively. I just installed the Corsair Hyrdocool last night so the scores are on air cooling. I'm shooting for 3.75GHz on a 1000MHz FSB which I couldn't get on air. The 2.8 and slower processors are better candidates for overclocking because of their lower multipliers (a 2.8 on a 1000MHz FSB runs @ 3.5GHz(250x14)) which can easily be handled by a good cpu heat sink/fan.
None of the overclocking I've done makes any difference in AH. The fps = monitor refresh rate 100% of the time whether overclocked or not. Might make a difference in AH2.
If I were building a dream machine today I'd change one component in the list below, the motherboard. The ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe would be my choice.
-
What review did you read ChasR?
Edit: You were benchmarking your system. The problem is that you are using a Radeon card and Tom's used a GeForce FX 5900. Directly comparing those results are like apples to oranges. You definately have a very fast system though. :) Hardocp tested with a Radeon 9800 XT: http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTc1LDQ= if you wanted to get some idea of the Athlon 64 paired with Radeon 9800 Xt.
In that Tom's Hardware article the Athlon 64 3400+ scored 18582 in 3dMark2001SE (overclocked 19768), the Pentium 4 3.2 GHz scored 17115, the 3.0C scored 16837. (http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040106/athlon64_3400-10.html)
In 3dMark 2003 the Athlon 64 3400+ scored 6087 and the P4 3.2C scored 6312. (http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040106/athlon64_3400-15.html) (Which other than Aquamark and Quake 3 was the only test in which the P4 beat the Athlon 64 in gaming.)
Also, Tom's Hardware is still testing with a GeForce FX 5900 Ultra and using older drivers, unlike everywhere else using a Radeon 9800 XT. The tests with the Radeon 9800 XT show a greater lead for the Athlon 64. Look at Anandtech for example: http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1941
This isn't saying the P4 is a poor performer compared to the Athlon 64, on the contrary it does very well in media encoding tasks. However, if there was one main strength of the Athlon 64 though, it would be gaming.
-
HardOCP has a decent article comparing athlonXP, Athlon64, and P4 all at or above 3 GHz (or in AMD's case 3000+ and above).
Worth a read.
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTc1
BB
-
Bloom,
I wouldn't disagree with you. The Athlon 64 bit processors are the top gaming CPUs. But, if you like to tinker around with your computer, you can get Athlon 64 class performance with a relatively inexpensive P4. Of course your computer may sound like a vacuum cleaner, as mine did, until I installed the Hydrocool unit last night.
I didn't think my comparison was completely unfair or apples and oranges because for whatever reason the nVidia cards seem to do quite a bit better on synthetic benchmarks than game benchmarks. There is not much difference for instance in the 9800 pro (44138) and the 5900 Ultra (43082) on the Aquamark 3 triscore even though the 9800pro blows the 5900 U out of the water on the gaming benchmarks. As I recall from the futuremark archives, the same holds true on 3Dmark2003.
Disclousure;
25% of my IRA is invested in Intel stock. But I built a couple of AMD Athlon XP 2500+ boxes for use at my office.
-
I build a lot of both Intel and AMD systems. I definately have to say that a 2.4 C P4 on an Asus P4P800-Deluxe is a very nice and very overclockable setup.
As for nVidia, they have been caught cheating on 3dMark 2001 and 2003 in the past. ATI cards also lost a bit of performance beyond what would be expected in the last 3dMark 2003 patch. So, I don't really hold much faith in synthetic benchmarks as a fair graphics card comparison anymore.
In actual games, the ATI Radeons tend to beat the GeForce FX series cards in Direct X 9 games by a decisive amount. In Direct X 8 games the Radeon is still a bit faster than the FX (except for AH 2 beta, which seems to have a problem with newer Radeons). In OpenGL games, the GeForce FX cards are faster.
-
I kinda like the looks of that AMD 3400.
Looks like it might just be my next system build.
Bloom what would be the best MOBO for it?
Money not an issue.
-
Tom's hadrware liked the K8T Neo from MSI.Tom's - Motherboards (http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20031201/socket_754-38.html)
-
Just a quick question - why do Tom's Hardware Benchmark and Testing always favor Intel processors and why it is so different at other sites. I never know who to trust anymore when looking at benchmarks. WHen I buy now, I normally set my budget then close my eyes and press the purchase button :-)
-
Based on reading the reviews refrenced in this thread, my guess would be that Tom's use of the nVidia 5900 U keeps the Intel processors in the hunt at the high end. Bloom referenced this earlier in the thread. When using the ATI 9800 XT the Athlon 64s have a substantial advantage over the P4. The video card must be the limiting factor in Tom's benchmarks. Choice of motherboard could have a slight influence on the results.
-
Personally, if I were going Athlon 64 right now I'd wait for availability of the just launched nForce 3 250 chipset based boards. This will probably be around early March.
(The nForce 3 150 is available now, but isn't the best performer and lacks nice things like native Serial ATA support.)
The nForce 3 250 has 4 Serial ATA 150 ports built in with support for Raid 0, 1, and 0+1. It also has the full speed 16bit 800 MHz Hypertransport (1600 MHz effective) link both up to and down from the CPU. (The 150 chipset is 8 bit 600 MHz up, which hurts it's performance in some areas, compared to something like the VIA K8T800 chipset.) On top of all that, it has an onboard gigabit ethernet controller (with some hardware acceleration for less CPU load when running 1000base).
From an overclocking perspective, the nForce 3 250 chipset is supposed to have an AGP/PCI lock. The nForce 3 150 chipset is only locked up to about a 230 MHz Hypertransport frequency. The Via K8T800 has no provision for an AGP/PCI lock.
I personally also don't have 100% faith restored in the quality of VIA chipsets, though the K8T800 seems to be better than some of their past chipsets.
-
The Radeon definately helps unlock the potential of the Athlon 64. Sites that test with a GeForce FX 5900 or 5950 Ultra show very little difference in gaming apps between the Athlon 64s and P4s, leading me to believe the video card is a bottleneck.
Tom's Hardware also seems to be doing something funny with aggressive memory timings on the P4 systems and slow memory timings on the Athlon 64 systems. Look at their test setup for the 3400+ review:
P4s -
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe Rev.: 1.02
Bios: 1011 BETA 006
4 x 256 MB CL 2.0-2-2-5 (200 MHz)
4 x 256 MB CL 2.0-2-2-5 (133 MHz)
Athlon XPs-
NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra
(Socket 462) Asus A7N8X Rev.: 2.00
Bios: 1006
2 x 512 MB CL 2.0-3-3-6 (200 MHz)
2 x 512 MB CL 2.0-2-2-5 (166 MHz)
2 x 512 MB CL 2.0-2-2-5 (133 MHz)
Athlon 64s-
VIA K8T800
(Socket 754) MSI 8KT Neo (MS-6702)
Bios: 1.0 Rev.: 1.0
2 x 512 MB CL2.0-4-4-8 (200 MHz)
The Athlon 64 is stuck with the relatively mediocre MSI K8T Neo, and the memory timings are 2-4-4-8 versus 2-2-2-5 for the P4s. This certainly doesn't help the Athlon 64. (It's also possible that the MSI board gains performance with newer bios releases than 1.0, which is the first final release, even though 1.1 is available.) The P4 has the very nice (but expensive) 875 based Asus P4C800-E Deluxe, which is an extrememly nice $200+ dollar board. The K8T Neo is a $120 board.
There's also one more thing which will really hurt the Athlon system - Tom's used a PCI slot Serial ATA controller card on the Athlon 64 in Raid 0 mode, rather than the very fast VIA integrated Serial ATA controller. This means the Serial ATA controller is bottlenecked to 133 MB/sec by the PCI bus itself, rather than the 533 MB/sec offered by the Vlink for the Serial ATA ports in the VIA southbridge itself. In a Raid 0 configuration, this is a serious bottleneck, as the 133 MB/sec is shared by ALL PCI devices, not only just the Raid controller. A good Raid 0 array can easily transer 100 MB/sec +. The Intel board used the Intel Serial ATA ports onboard in Raid 0 mode, meaning the Raid 0 array was not bottlenecked by the PCI bus:
Hard Drive (AMD System) FastTrak S150 TX2plus (Bios: 1.00.0.30)
2 x SATA Maxtor 6Y080M0 (Raid 0)
80 GB / 8 MB Cache / 7200 rpm
Hard Drive (Intel System) Intel FW82801ER ICH5R
2 x SATA Maxtor 6Y080M0 (Raid 0)
80 GB / 8 MB Cache / 7200 rpm