Tom's Hardware > Forum > CPU & Components > CPUs > AMD 64 switch
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I am about to make my first gaming rig and I am going to go with AMD over P4 because I have read so many posts about the AMD 64 performance and such. I really do not understand the 3200+ and so on. I would like to know what cpu would play almost all or all the 2006 games. My question is that 3200+ has 2.0 GHZ and P4 is 3.2 GHZ but, the P4 Cpu is more expensive. So i am left confused about which CPU outperforms which. Thanks.

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the 3200+ is better for gaming. try searching and find some benchmarks and comparisons.
Anyway for the 2006 games uptodate you will need a better CPU, but for the future games I think that you will need dualcore CPU. The available and appropriate CPUs for gaming uptodate are Athlon64-X2/Opteron 16x/17x and Core Duo. There would be better CPUs from the Intel Core family in near future, the Conroe

Reply to gOJDO

the frequency at which the processor runs at does not determine if it is faster (when your comparing a P4 vs. A64) although Intel would want you to think that, AMD is more efficient with their processors so even though the A64 runs at 2.0GHz and the P4 3.2 GHz does not mean the P4 is better..., when comparing AMD to AMD though the higher the frequency the better...for this certain case i'm not familiar with the exact performance comparison for those processors but i think the 3200+ is not as fast as the P4 at 3.2, other guys wil give you your answer as to which is faster

Reply to IcY18

Generally, the AMD number (3200) is widely considered to be equivalent to P4 rating in MHZ. Therefore, an AMD 3200 would equal a P4 3.2 GHz (3,200 MHz) whereas an AMD 3800 would be considered equivalent to a 3.8 GHz P4 (3,800 MHz) and so on. Another way to think of it is to multiply the AMD speed by about 1.6 to get a Pentium speed (2000 MHzx1.6=3200MHz). Don't worry too much about rated clock speeds when comparing them. Of course, both chips have certain strengths. For gaming, it is generally accepted that AMD 64's are the best choice for now.

Reply to sdrawkcaBgoD

sorry but i dont know where its widely considered that a amd 3800+ is better than a pentium 3.8GHz or a 3.73 GHz P4 EE, i know your making generalizations but just want to clear that up a little

Reply to IcY18

Im not sure now but the original performance rating system AMD used with the athlon XP had nothing to do with the P4. If you had read around you would have found out that it was to do with the Athlon Thunderbird. The Athlon XP's rating corrosponded to the 'MHZ' an Athlon Thunderbird would have run at. Not sure how it works now. And dont know where you go multiply it by 1.6 from. Do you get 2.8 (D920) when you multiply 2.0ghz by 1.6 aswell? And which P4 3.2ghz are your referring to. The 3.2 Northwood? Prescott E? 5xx? 6xx?

Reply to mad_fitzy

1. I said for gaming.
2. I also said that each chip had their strengths.
3. I made no mention of the ratios involved with dual core chips. The original post made no mention of dual cores.
4. I said I was speaking generally.
5. "Widely considered" in no way means "Universally considered".

Please see this link if you have not already:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/1 [...] arts_2005/

Note that in all the REAL-WORLD (not synthectic) GAMING benchmarks that the Athlon 64 is the decisive winner.
In the OpenGL test, the highest ranking Pentium tested was the Pentium 4 670 Prescott at 3800MHz. The closest A64 to this chip was the 3700 Clawhammer at 2200MHz. 2200x1.6=3520. So I was wrong in this one. The actual ratio would be 3800/2200=1.727 to 1
In the DirectX8 test the highest scoring Pentium was once again the Pentium 4 670 Prescott at 3800MHz. The closest A64 to this score was the 3200+ Clawhammer at 2000MHz. Ratio= 1.9 to 1
In the DirectX9 the highest scoring Pentium was once again the Pentium 4 670 at 3800 MHz. It's closest A64 was also once again the 3200+ Clawhammer at 2000MHz. Ratio=1.9 to 1

According to these numbers, it seems I may have been being generous in my 1.6 :wink:

Even factoring in Extreme Editions, it still does not invalidate the GENERAL point of my thread. I know that this article is dated and other chips have since come out. I also know that someone out there is going to try to post other scores from these benchies which, when compared, will end up with different ratios, many of which will be better from the Intel side of things. I also admit that I don't have enough time to figure out the ratios for all the chips in all the tests. I don't want to start a flame war or another AMD vs. Intel fiasco and I don't want to upset anyone, so I'll just leave it at that.
Thanks for your time.

Reply to sdrawkcaBgoD

I already posted this on this thread, but it was in a reply to other people. I just wanted to address it to you personally since this is your thread. Check out this link for a great comparison between many of the top AMD and Intel chips:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/1 [...] arts_2005/

Hope this helps.

Reply to sdrawkcaBgoD

What he said was

Quote :

AMD number (3200) is widely considered to be equivalent to P4 rating in MHZ. Therefore, an AMD 3200 would equal a P4 3.2 GHz (3,200 MHz) whereas an AMD 3800 would be considered equivalent to a 3.8 GHz P4 (3,800 MHz) and so on

not

Quote :

its widely considered that a amd 3800+ is better than a pentium 3.8GHz or a 3.73 GHz P4 EE


What he said was true. What you did, was the lie.
In gaming, which interests the original poster, the A64s generally outperform thier Intel counterpart, by a wide margin.
That's the way it is.

Reply to endyen

When are you planning to buy?

Reply to xombie2000

Thank you for your support. :D

Reply to sdrawkcaBgoD

Agreed. sdrawkcaBgoD said "equivalent", not "better". Even so, a strong argument could be made for "better"

Reply to Primitivus

Hey thanks guys for all your help. I think ill wait until Intel releases their new chip then I might decide better.

Reply to slovak

Hey there the intel 3.2GHz seems nice and juicy but the amd platforms are much bettter for gamming and general number hungry the clock dosen't really matter in this case amd dual core is xpensive but worth the price i must say muck better than intel same grade processors .Get a good graphics card anything above nvidia 6600 should do get dual channel ram and amd wolud rock intel out .Rest of the guys here are very corect about AMD . i just forgot get the ADM 939 socket's they are nice
bye

Reply to rahul_cracker

these 3800+ 4000+ is not compared to P4 cpus...
its based on a comparizon of what a AMD TROUGHTBREED core needed in frecuency to match the rest

Example:
a AMD Athlon 64+
means it needs an AMD athlon XP troughtrbreed running at 3 GHZ to
have the same performance as the AMD athlon 64.

Reply to tamalsmith

Just look at the CPU Interactive Charts on Tom`s site: http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html and then choose.
Usualy the new CPU came with higher prices - so the new Conroe family won`t affect your buying decision (if you realy have money to spend for gaming i think that AMD ATHLON 64 FX-57 is what you need - and of course much good memory and 2 Nvidia Geforce 7900 cards).
Don`t let be fooled by synthetic benchmarks (made with software optimized for intel cpu) unless you look at benchmarks made with 64bit version of software optimized for AMD too.

Reply to _Cosmin_
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