Ok, I know that Intel Pentium costs much more than Athlon, but is it really worth our money in buying one?
I am still debating myself whether I should build an Athlon or Pentium computer.
If anyone has any good suggestions about this it would be good.
Cheers,
Geekoid
umm. i dont know but on newegg.com the most expensive processor is an Athlon 2.2ghz $442.
it must be better than intel 3.0ghz for $398
i heard Athlons are better for gaming. Intel is better for everyday tasks.
lol and that athlon is oem. when intel is retail.
it must be better than intel 3.0ghz for $398 It is. The speed of the processor has less to do with it's performance these days. That XP 3200 Barton will run circles around an Intel @ 3.0G. BTW, the retail is only $5 more.
You might want to check some benchmark tests and use those for comparison. If you compare only clock speed you're short changing yourself.
Actually from what I've seen P4's have the upper hand on Athlons in recent releases, ever since the 3GHz mark was reached and hyper-threading became available. And now that Intel has made more changes to P4s, including an 800Mhz FSB, the speed difference is ever-more obvious.
Still, Athlons are a hell of a lot cheaper everywhere I see them and it's not like they're lacking in the power department anyway. Also I prefer getting my CPUs OEM, it means I can choose my own cooling instead of feeling obligated to use the inevitably ear-splittingly loud fan supplied with a retail purchase.
Note: By "from what I've seen" I mean benchmarks that I've seen in various magazines and websites. I've done no personal tests on any of the latest CPUs. So if I'm wrong don't blame me ;) .
What are you doing with the chip? What's it for? Gaming? Dev? Music/Video editing?
If it's AV editing (music/video), go for the Pentium - it's got a HUGE front side bus (twice as much as the Athlon) which will give you a crucial performance boost.
For example, I can work with 64 audio tracks simultaniously (in real time) using Logic on a P4 3.0Ghz whereas I have an Athlon XP 2.2 that can only handle 22 tracks before I start to get problems with synch. Both machines have idential RAM and HDD's (512Mb DDR | IBM DeskStar 80/60Gb) but the motherboard on the Athlon is an ASUS 333 (VERY GOOD!)
It's the same story with Premiere, except rendering full-screen uncompressed video is only marginally faster on the P4 than it is on the Athlon.
Gaming-wize, I don't really notice any difference on either of my machines - both run ATI Radeon 9700 pro's, and I know the graphics card accounts for a lot of the performance.
If you've got cash and you do AV editing, go for P4. If it's for games, then no question about it, do the Athlon!
nao
Intel and AMD step on each other's tails all the time. Yes, amd had an edge over intel with thier pricing as well as tricky model numbering, which intel tried to crash number of times. But, as some others said, based on performance intel bypassed amd with their p4 C models. Yes it's so mostly due to hyperthreading and increased bus speed (C), not clock speed alone.
AMD is also not winning support of community with their latest boo-poo 3200+. IMO, p4 is ahead at this point and 2.4C-2.8C on 875P/865PE mobos will give you what you want from cpu. Pricetag is always a factor, so if you're on tight budged I'd recommend picking (dual?) amd 2600+ for home machine thou.
/me thinks the AMD64 will run circles around Intel when it comes out. An increase in 32bit application performance coupled with the ability to run 64bit applications will be something of a good breakthrough in the industry. Wonder why Intel isn't creating there 64bit chips to do the same...
Originally posted by jpenn
/me thinks the AMD64 will run circles around Intel when it comes out. An increase in 32bit application performance coupled with the ability to run 64bit applications will be something of a good breakthrough in the industry.
Why is that words 'G5' and 'opteron' pop up in my head....
Sir,
the ability to run 64bit applications will be something of a good breakthrough in the industry. Wonder why Intel isn't creating there 64bit chips to do the same...
Itanium's been out for a while now, it hasn't really caught on the way Intel thought it would - it turns out that for most server apps., dual 32bit CPU setup is faster. BUT - I point you in the direction of Itanium 2, which may be a better match for AMD's Opteron - http://www.itweek.co.uk/News/1140350
AMD have done so much for the CPU markets... I remember forking out £500 for a Pentium Pro 200. Now I wear it around my neck - I can walk down Old Bond Street with my head raised high and say, "HA! My necklace can do 13.2 MIPS... how about yours?"
hehehe...
nao
now that the athlon 64FX is available, athlon is on top.
Whether for video/audio/gaming/servers/whatever really, nothing can beat the 64 and 32 bit processor. athlons 2.4 gig processor has a faster more powerfull processing capability now than even pentiums 3.4 gig processor, cant forget to say that the 2.2 and 2.4 gig processors that athlon
had ran windows xp much better than any of the pentiums
anyways(pointless fact but most use xp.) i dont post on this site ever, ive never heard of it, i was just looking up some facts when i stumbled across this forum and just had to post something when i saw ppl comparing pentium to athlon. oh yea, and pentium was ahead of the game for a while with the p4 and the beating the 3.0 gig limit, but ahem, athlon came out with the athlon 64FX 64bit processor, and pentium isnt expecting the release of their 64 bit pentium V for a while yet, and by the time they do, if they have the capabilities of keeping the core speed above 3 gig with 64 bit, athlon would have pushed beyond that point too, not that they need to.
athlon has always made their cpu's to process differently than a pentium. so when you look up the fasted core speed your basically cheating yourself.
An athlon processor is much better for gaming, serving, and audio/video tasks- kind of like a mac computer
pentium has really only been a ok gaming computer providing ok support for everyday tasks
pentium and athlon both run extremley fast and extremley expensive cpu's but there are already terrabit cpu's thought of, designed, made, and running in todays US government.
cpu speed is just for looks these days
the best system for anything is:
athlon k8 socket 939
athlon 64FX51 3800+
1gig of ddr 400mhz ram
any 128bit 64mb video card with svideo out
the fastest newest soundblaster you can find
this setup will run anything you want as fast as you would
ever NEED it to.
btw you can overclock the new athlon processors, and with the new heat clips they make along with the noiseless expensive fans you can buy for them, you can make your 2.4 gig 64 bit processor get pretty close to 3 gigs without worrying about the lifetime of the chip
ok ill stop rambling, thanks for reading this anyhow pce
Well I don't want to keep an old post revived any longer than necessary, but...
pentium and athlon both run extremley fast and extremley expensive cpu's but there are already terrabit cpu's thought of, designed, made, and running in todays US government.
- Where'd you get that information? AFAIK there's no CPU even close to the THz mark, and there won't be until there are some major advances in semi-conductors. Don't be confused by multi-processor clusters that have combined processing power of several teraflops with a single CPU running at several THz.
the best system for anything is:
athlon k8 socket 939
athlon 64FX51 3800+
1gig of ddr 400mhz ram
any 128bit 64mb video card with svideo out
the fastest newest soundblaster you can find
this setup will run anything you want as fast as you would
ever NEED it to.
- As always there's no 'best system for anything'. If I were going to be doing intensive graphics/video editing or rendering I'd want more than 1GB of RAM. And a 64MB video card is pretty lacking by today's standards, something like Doom 3 will barely run with that.
This is a very old thread, and a never ending argument. If you have a specific question, post it separately. Thread closed