Opinions Sought: P4 vs AMD 64?

[TheWombat]

Possibly--possibly, not certainly--in the market for a new machine. Right now I'm running an Athlon 2800+ Barton. The system is generally fine but I wasn't terribly satisfied with the cooling even after I added a new heatsink and fan to the CPU and an additional case fan. I have a gig of RAM and a 9800 Pro (128mb version), so the machine does fine for most games right now, but it doesn't seem to be effective to add a next generation video card to this configuration, and I can't upgrade the CPU much further (Abit 8NX Deluxe nForce 2 mobo) I don't think.

So, I'm considering the possibility of getting a new machine (and giving this one to a relative, most of whom could really use it). What is the consensus on the relative attractiveness of Pentium 4 based boxes vs. Athlon 64 based systems? And what speed would be a good spot for an upgrade--something that would be significantly faster, and thrive for another 18-24 months with a new ATI or NVIDIA GPU, yet not be overkill?

FWIW if I do go for a new box I won't build it I'll probably scour the net for something from one of the vendors like Vicious, Voodoo, Cyberpower, etc.

Opinions welcome. I'm in no hurry. I'll find out this week whether Doom 3 brings my system to its knees :) but that's not a big deal. I'm pretty content to wait too, if there will be lots of good things later this year or early next.

[Ben Sones]

I'm happy with my Athlon 64, but I can't offer you much by way of comparison, since I don't have a P4 system. I will say that cooling hasn't been a problem with this system, or with my Athlon 2600 system--I used one of Thermalright's big copper heat sinks on that system, and had extremely stable temps that stayed around 35-38 degrees C. I'm using a Thermaltake heat sink on my Athlon 64 system--a Venus 12 with a custom fan. The fan that comes with it was so loud that it sounded like a helicopter was trapped in my case, but I liked the heat sink (it has more fins that Thermaltake's other Athlon 64 heat sink), so I just took off the noisy fan and replaced it with a silent fan.

I think the Athlon 64 3200 is a really good deal right now at ~$230; the 3400s are about $310, which isn't a lot more, but I'm not sure you'd see enough difference in performance over the 3200 to warrant the extra cost. My A64 3200 is noticeably speedier than my Athlon XP 2600. Cinema 4D renders measurably faster, especially in scenes that use CPU-intensive rendering tricks such as displacement mapping. Now if Maxon would just make C4D v9 a 64-bit application (I think chances are good that they will). Most games ran fine on my 2600, but I did notice an improvement in Thief 3's performance on the A64 system.

[TheWombat]

Thanks Ben. I'm using a Thermalright 800A on my 2800+ Barton (and on our other machine, a 2700+ XP) and it helps, though our temps are a bit warmer than you're getting, possibly due to case layout/design.

I'm wondering is an FX-53 Athlon that much better than the other Athlons, to justify the steep premium? Is it equivalent to the P4 "Extreme Edition" CPUs? If I go the extra step to get a new box I want to get something that will be a distinct improvement over what I have, in terms of down the road longevity (most everything I run already runs fast and good looking enough for me).

I may just do nothing for the moment anyhow.

[tronnc]

I would just wait till at least Dec/Jan. The system you have is good enough right now and getting a new high end system would not be significantly faster. The only thing you could do right now to get a decent performance boost would be to drop $400+ on a new video card. Buying a new processor/mobo/ram is not going to be all that much faster than what you have now.

[TheWombat]

I would just wait till at least Dec/Jan. The system you have is good enough right now and getting a new high end system would not be significantly faster. The only thing you could do right now to get a decent performance boost would be to drop $400+ on a new video card. Buying a new processor/mobo/ram is not going to be all that much faster than what you have now.

That's pretty much the sort of input I'm looking for. Would one of the new video cards make much of a difference in my system, or would it be CPU limited?

[Midnight Son]

Amd 64 is the way to go, man. Keep in mind that you could wait forever for the next new thing to come out and present hardware to go down in price. Sometimes, you just gotta pull the trigger, know whut I mean?

[TheWombat]

Heh, well, the telling point will be whether Doom 3 and HL 2 run acceptably. I suspect they will, as my expectations are not sky-high.

[Jamie Madigan]

So can someone explain to this non-techie how the AMD 64 differs from the Pentium 4? I see specs like "AMD Athlon(TM) 64 3400+ operating at 2.2GHz" and "Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 3.00E GHz" and I assume the Pentium chip is faster. Because 3.0 Ghz > 2.2 GHz.

All else being equal, that's a valid assumption, right?

[Mehrunes]

The whole purpose of AMD's naming scheme was to show what speed the Intel equivalent would run at because everything else isn't equal. It's a pretty accurate system at the moment, so a 3400+ is roughly as fast as a P4 3.4ghz.

[Brad Grenz]

So can someone explain to this non-techie how the AMD 64 differs from the Pentium 4? I see specs like "AMD Athlon(TM) 64 3400+ operating at 2.2GHz" and "Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 3.00E GHz" and I assume the Pentium chip is faster. Because 3.0 Ghz > 2.2 GHz.

All else being equal, that's a valid assumption, right?

P4s were engineered to clock as high as possible, even if that meant a sacrifice in performance. In order to get such high clockspeeds they actually do less work per clock and have to cycle faster to make up for the lost efficiency. Athlons can't get such high clock speeds, but they do the work so much more efficiently that they can pretty easily make up for a gigahertz clockspeed deficit.

Bottom line is it depends what you're going to do with your system. If you're mostly interested in games, the A64s walk all over the P4 in everything but Quake 3 (but who cares whether you get 500 or 400 fps these days?). P4s have an advantage in media encoding, so if you spend all day compressing DVD rips that might be a factor. Hyperthreading also gives the Pentium an advantage in multitasking scenarios. For business applications, 3D rendering and other things they generally trade blows. But the A64 is the game processor.

[Lunch of Kong]

P4s have an advantage in media encoding, so if you spend all day compressing DVD rips that might be a factor.

My experience doesn't support this. My Athlon64 3200+ is more than twice as fast as my P4 2.4ghz at converting DVD video to Xvid .avi files. On a clock-by-clock basis, I would say my A64 3200+ is at least equivalent to a P4 4.8ghz when it comes to video compression.

[Brad Grenz]

Really? I haven't seen benchmarks with Xvid. Everybody tends to use Divx, MPEG-2 and WMV 9.

[Jamie Madigan]

Bottom line is it depends what you're going to do with your system.

Gaming. That's the only thing I'd need power for since I don't run any other apps more demanding than Photoshop.

So it sounds like the clock speeds on the P4s and AMD 64s are not equivalent. That's good, since the AMDs seem to be cheaper. Thanks for the info!

Anyone have handy benchmarks links or sites for this sort of thing? I'm in the market for a new machine and want to get the most bang for my buck.

[TheWombat]

Maybe Case or Cross can give you some benchmark stuff. I've found a lot of the websites doing that sort of thing to be confusing and often bogus. Too much political crap of the "Intel vs. AMD" school to find out much honest data sometimes.

[Duality]

Are AMD processors still the home radiators that the Thunderbird Athlons were?

[Midnight Son]

No, that title belongs to P4's now.

[TheWombat]

BTW, on a 2800+, 1GB RAM, 9800Pro, Doom 3 runs well at 1024x768, Medium detail, Vsync on, 2x AA.

[Jakub]

No, that title belongs to P4's now.

That's an understatement. Prescott's HOT. Like Laetitia Casta.