Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: hblair on November 28, 2001, 04:01:00 PM
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I was sure I wanted an AMD til I talked to my hardware buddy. He said they bult 15 or so for the local Mercedes plant. Says they've had troubles from the get-go. He says AMD has too many bad apples per batch of machines they build. But I've heard AMD's were better for games. I'm running a PIII800 right now and I plan to go at least 1.6 gig.
Somebody point me in the right direction.
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if you got the money, go fer Pentium 2ghz. and of course the Rambus RAM to go with it.
but for the value, AMD is best bang for buck.
i can go either way, this time i chose AMD because i've never built one before. I've never had a problem with pentiums and have always been happy with them. Just the price is a killer when you go intel.
I'm not completely satisfied with my AMD yet, I'm haven't done a clean format and install of WinXP yet, after that, i'll get back to you as far as what i think of AMD.
just my $.02
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On my 4th Athlon Machine, and have never had any problems. Don't let the Intel hype scare ya, nothing wrong with AMD. The new Athlons outperform PIVs of the same clock speed. Athlons are more upgrade friendly too, unlike Intel, which changes its socket design every 6 months.
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AMD here Heath , it's working great . Good damn price also .
I got a VIA chipset on the mobo , when we put in the Via 4 in 1 drivers , it really took off .
gl on the upgrade
spro
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Hblair,
Get the AMD. If there were serious problems with the chips you would have seen indications of that on the BBS here. I have an AMD and no problems with it at all. Just make DAMN sure you have adequate cooling for the CPU. Hot chip will lock ad eventually fail no matter what brand.
(http://www.13thtas.com/mav13sig.jpg)
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AMD all the way. P4 2ghz...outperformed by the new AMD 1.5's bwahahaha.
Make sure your mobo supports the palomino chips... then you can upgrade just the chip. DDR memory is a must. I use the A7M266 from Asus and having no problems. Just dont get an SB LIVE with it.. its got some problems with the VIA/GEforce stuff. But hey, the A7M266 has built in soundcard :)
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Or you can get an Asus A7A266 with an ALi chipset and not have to worry about any incompatiblity problems :)
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I'll take an Athlon XP over a P4 anyday. The performance and cost is better on the AMD side of the fence. I will say that an AMD based system(well not much AMD, but a VIA chipset powered motherboard) can be a little harder to setup properly than an Intel chipset MB and Intel CPU.
Hblair, did your buddy have any experience with AMD, and specifically VIA motherboards in the past. You need to make sure you've loaded the 4 in 1s properly. If you don't do that you are going to have problems. I hear this same story quite a bit and more often that not it's because they were bidding for a contract and picked the absolute cheapest MB, heatsinks, power supply, and ram to go in the system. Then they complain the systems aren't 100% stable. :rolleyes: I'll bet since these 15 machines were for a contract that's exactly what happened... If you do it yourself and don't cut corners to make the system as cheap as possible it will be stable.
AMD has a problem that they are seen as the "budget box" solution to Intel, but in reality Athlons require the use of higher quality powersupplies and ram than a cheap Intel system might. (It's kind of funny that Intel would have had the same power supply problems with the P4, but they forced a change in the ATX specifications and added an extra power connector to power supplies to ensure adequate power gets to the motherboard. Do you think AMD would have gotten away with that? ;) )
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Also HB, don't think for a minute that a P4 at 1.6 Ghz is even in the same league as an Athlon XP 1900+ (1600 Mhz clock speed). Even the Athlon XP 1600+ is even with the P4 2 GHz in most benchmarks. The 1900+ will win nearly all of them.
To top it off to get any level of performance out of a P4 you MUST use Rambus PC800 RDRAM. If you "go cheap" and get an i845 based board that uses old SDRAM performance will go through the basement. (Your old P3 800 would probably perform close to the level of a P4 1300 or 1400 in that setup.)
I'd probably suggest looking at www.anandtech.com (http://www.anandtech.com) and www.tomshardware.com (http://www.tomshardware.com) for comparisons between Athlon XP and P4 and price guides and other good information.
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Same opinion here hblair---I built my AMD Thunderbird with an Asus board almost a year ago. I refused to pay Intel's outrageous prices then and I would still refuse today. My system still screams and with the money I saved I was able to get 2 drives (RAID) and a geforce 2 ultra. I'm still amazed that Intel refuses to lower their prices to compete with a chip that has been blowing them out of the water.
(http://www.applink.net/thunder/sig/DHBG.jpg)
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last upgrade, over the summer, was a PIII 800 to an AMD 1.33 T-Bird on a KK266 IWILL mobo.
I got a noticeable boost in speed. AMD gets my vote.
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AMD here. 900mhz on a Asus A7V board. She was unstable with generic memory in her, but once I put two sticks of Crucial brand in her, she's rock solid. Only Explorer crashes the system, but whaddya expect from Microsoft??? ;)
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AMD all the way.
Intel has as many bad apples % wise as AMD. And, Intel charges you more $ for less performance.
The problem with "Building" for industry is that most industrial environments are dirty. Having worked in the auto industry, I can honestly say that the air in an auto plant has a bit more dirt and chemicals in it than your home.
Off the shelf Mobo's, cases and fans don't come equipped to withstand that type of envrionment. OEM's on the other hand (Dell, Gateway, HP, etc.) build PC's expecting this to happen.
Example: I have been plastering and sanding in my house. The dust has already killed the fan on my Video card and Mobo BGA Chip Cooler. So, I buy new ones for $20. Still have saved $300 over the P4.
So, if your friend is comparing these 2 types, he is bound to see a difference.
Viper
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Hb,
whaddya get man?!!
the suspense, the suspense!!!
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Heyas HB!
I have a tenant in one of our shopping centers...he has sharp techs...their advice?
Buy the AMD processor 1800xp...Asus a7v266E mb...buy good ram, no oem.
I'm an intel guy, however, intel will stop production on its p4 and replace it within the next year. The asus mb will allow you to take up to a 2.0 chip in the future.
Fps increases by only upgrading the MB and processor will not be substantative...the vid card is your key to serioussly improving your framerate.
If ya have time, d/l 3d Benchmark 2001 and run it on your system...then compare what card and processor additions wilol give the the best for the buck.
Have fun!
(http://www.13thtas.com/rudesig.jpg)
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I also vote for AMD
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Ordered the XP1800, a power supply, 256 meg ram, and a microstar mobo. Microstars okay? never heard of em. I think this is the one:
http://www.msi.com.tw/products/mainboard/mainboard.php?model=MS-6380 (http://www.msi.com.tw/products/mainboard/mainboard.php?model=MS-6380)
Thanks for all the input fellas.
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Originally posted by hblair:
Ordered the XP1800, a power supply, 256 meg ram, and a microstar mobo. Microstars okay? never heard of em. I think this is the one:
http://www.msi.com.tw/products/mainboard/mainboard.php?model=MS-6380 (http://www.msi.com.tw/products/mainboard/mainboard.php?model=MS-6380)
Thanks for all the input fellas.
would have rather seen you buy a MB with the via kt266a chipset, but that one is most likely a good one.
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HB I told ya..Get the via266a chipset for the XP...
sigh.
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HB,
Might still be time to swap for: http://www.msi.com.tw/support/techexpress/tech_column/ms6380v2/page1.htm (http://www.msi.com.tw/support/techexpress/tech_column/ms6380v2/page1.htm)
Thorns
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What's the big difference?
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The 266a bios handles memory way better, the improvement in speed is about the same as going from a 1600 to a 1900 athelon. But its free.
A 1600 xp is 1400 mhz clock speed
A 1900 xp is 1600 mhz clock speed.
thats a 14% diff or so.
The 266a chipset boosts performance by 15-20% or so depending on which chipset it is compared too.
I dont know if those numbers hold up under scietific scrutiny HB but that is the reason why people are so insistant about using the new bios.
[ 12-03-2001: Message edited by: Pongo ]
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well said pongo. puts an easy perspective on things.