Which is faster: Pentium 4 3.4GHz Northwoord or Athlon 64 3700+?

Both are slow as crap.

Athlon 63 3700+ normally, but if your using muti-threaded applications, the P4 may come ahead due to its hyperthreading.

This will be a spare computer for just World of Warcraft and movies. Which would be better?

You are rude for a youngster to Toms
If you have nothing to contribute then dont bother.
We dont need trolls in here

I stop the misinformation that's rampant in these forums like F@H.

If the regulars and addicts weren't ignorant then this wouldn't be a problem.

I would lean towards the P4 3.4 HT
I maintain them for a private school in the city
and they perform ok for their age
also helps if it has sata and pci-express
I didnt look into those boards
but that would be my deciding factor.
If one is ide and agp and another is Sata and PCI-E
than I would pick the Sata/PCI-E obviously
since a computer is the sum of its parts
a cpu is only as good as the components around it

The OP is just building a spare computer for light duty
OBVIOUSLY they wouldnt spend alot of money on it
when it could be better spent on new system

and BTW F@H is folding at home which helps science so WHAT
are you talking about?!

Serious attitude problem  

Both are AGP and both have SATA. The AsRock K8Upgrade-NFS has an expansion slot for a 939 daughter board or AM2 daughter board so this seems like the best board since it can house AMD X2 CPUs BUT I can't find one of these daughter boards online so it is probably a moot point.

Looking at some old benchmarks the 3700+ has the edge.
Passmark rates it higher than the P4 3.4.
The 3700 will perform more instructions for a given clock cycle.
Though the Pentium 4 has a higher bandwith.
The P4s HT would be nicer with multithreaded apps and with some multitasking.
In a single thread program the 3700+ would win but with a few programs open the P4 HT might feel snappier.
Tough choice.

And if overclocking either one is an option that would make it more interesting.
Both those will oc nice on air.

For gaming the Athlon 64 3700+ kicks ass out of the lackluster 3.4 Ghz P4 with HT

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,1606181,00.a...

I've had a 3.2 Ghz P4 system with HT and a Socket 939 Athlon 64 3400+ system myself and the P4 system was terrible in comparison to the Athlon 64 system in gaming.Those old above benchmarks might even be skewed in Intel's favor (Intel did lots of anti-competitive funny things back then so I wouldn't doubt it).

^ very true but I wonder with more multi threaded software nowadays would the hyperthreading give the P4 more of an
edge than when they originally came out?
In a single threaded game/app the 3700+ will destroy the P4 3.4 Northwood
but when you have multiple apps open the HT is going to help.
Still the OP is probably better off with the 3700+ with all other things being equal
if they have the same amount of RAM for each board for example
If he only has 512mb for the 3700+ board and has 2gb for the P4 board that could make a difference also
I am not sure if they both use the same RAM?

i would go for the 3700+ cos the netburst were quite hot and VERY good at cooking eggs
anyway why dont you just buy a second hand core 2 or a64 x2 off a auction site for like 80

Wow really? You stopped the "misinformation"?  

I think it's more of the case of we're starting to ignore you for being rude to others. And if you really want to give a care about F@H "misinformation, why dont you take it right to the F@H official forum? Im sure they'll love ya there.  



As for the cpus, we all know both are "slow as crap" in today times against modern cpu's. Although that wasn't the question of the OP. His question was "Which is faster: Pentium 4 3.4GHz Northwoord or Athlon 64 3700+?" Not "are these cpu's crap or not".

If you really want to help out, just do what the OP ask unless he/she trying to buy a full new computer with one of these old cpu's. It would really make you stop looking like a jerk and someone that we would want to be around by.


For the OP. In general, the Athlon is faster in most cases.

As for that ASrock AM2 card, the only place your going to find those is on ebay >.<

http://cgi.ebay.com/ASRock-AM2-CPU-Board-/160539573960?...

and even then there hard to find.

It really depends what the secondary rig is going to do. If it's mainly for internet surfing, buy all means use the p4. It's HT will help tremendously with flash based content, and the flash software decoding that adobe uses has always favored Intel CPUs (probably built using Intel compiler software), making the AMD CPUs comparatively weak in comparison. For example: AMD Athlon II 240 is barely able to play Hulu video on a 1920x1080 21" monitor without dropping frames, pegging at 80% cpu usage, using software rendering, While an Intel Pentium Dual Core 5200 lopes along at 50 to 60% usage and looks smooth as silk on the same video and resolution. My Sempron Le1100 AM2 rig cannot play hulu at 1920x1080 smootly, even when overclocked to 2.62GHz, which should put it very close to the performance of that Athlon 3700 socket 754 you've got. Only after using a graphics card with hardware flash acceleration (8400GS) does HD flash and full screen high bitrate x264 flash play smooth.
The only thing going for the 3700 is lower idle power consumption and better gaming frame rates. Since the P4 is a northwood, it should run relatively cool (compared to the later 90nm Prescott, which gave P4 it's notorious reputation for being toasty warm). Unfortunately, the Northwood is close to max clocks at 3.4 GHz as it can't scale much more on the 130nm process. On the other hand, a 3700 A64 is no overclocking champ either, and likely has only 200 to 300 Mhz left in it.

I guessed that since the OP has a screen name of GameGuru40 that he (or she possibly) was a gamer.
However each of these systems would be ideal for older games of that era (still good and fun).
I remember my P4 was impossible to run the FSX (Microsoft Flight Simulator X) demo (ran like a slideshow) but that my Athlon 64 3400+ ran FSX O.K. though with lowered resolution and detail (not bad at all though).

I didnt catch the screen name LOL
Best is 3700+
I havent had many AMDs so I cant make an opinion on real life
usage which is like a "Reality Benchmark"
much better than magazine benches
I did have a 1250mhz Athlon XP I think Barton(?) that got
nearly a %100 OC on air
Destroyed the Pentium 4 1.8-2.4s willamettes (?)
Still got a soft spot for that tower LOL
Been awhile
hard to remember all the names nowadays
 

The Ath 3700+ would be a better all-around performer than the 3.4 northwood imo.