PIII vs. P4, worth it?

Yes. But consider AMD, same amount of performance with half the frigin cost.

-MP Jesse

"Signatures Still Suck"

If you are on a budget, you should consider AMD Duron 900 (~$70 on Pricewatch). You can reuse your PC133 SDRAM and get near Athlon performance.

If you have some money to spend, you should consider Athlon T-bird 1.33, which is cheaper than 1.4 P4, but with better overall performance. PC2100 DDR (as low as $70 for 256 MB on Pricewatch ) is better and cheaper than RDRAM in general. You can easily get 512 MB to improve system performance.

Unless you want to do a lot of video encoding etc, you are better off not to buy P4/RDRAM at this point. Not only CPU, MB and memory are all more expensive, the current P4 MB will not be compatible with future P4 (socket 478). So you will have no upgrade path.

**Spin all you want, but we the paying consumers will have the final word**

i don't have that much time to look at all the reveiws which is why i made my post. are you serious about intel changing its platform? if they do, all of the current p4's will be obsolete?

repeat after me, we are all individuals!

I'll agree with them on every statement except for the DDR being better than RDRAM, its different.
RDRAM is a good idea, just needs work. DDR was done better, but doesn't perform that much better than PC133.
Intel is changing sockets and chipsets to go with a new, non=neutered version of the P4.
currently, the Athlon has a better lifespan for upgrading, but nVidia is suppose to be designing new chipsets for the Athlon, I'd wait a bit.

----------------------
why, oh WHY, is the world run by morons?

Check out this article by our host, Dr. Pabst:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/01q1/010208/roadmap-04...

I shouldn't say no upgrade path. It's just that you would need a new MB as well. So there will be extra cost.

**Spin all you want, but we the paying consumers will have the final word**

You can overclock to 900@150 with this motherboard, this should perform about 15% better than stock, and should not have too negative an affect on your PCI devices. Right now your running a great system. Upgrading the whole thing at this time is pointless, you will not see a huge difference in performance from the P4 or the T-bird. Save your money until something really good comes along.

Cast not thine pearls before the swine

"i currently have an asus CUSL2 815 chipset with a PIII 800eb 133fsb and 128 mb crucial PC133 memory. will i see anotable difference if i upgrade to a P4 1.3 or 1.4 with the asus P4T mb with some of that RDR(or is it DDR?) memory?"

You will see a great difference if you upgrade to a 1.7GHz Pentium 4. I do not recommend the slower versions. You can get a retail Pentium 4 1.7GHz for $360 (all prices from www.pricewatch.com.) This price includes the heatsink, fan, and 3 year Intel warranty. You can get 64MB PC800 RDRAM modules for $39 and 128MB PC800 RDRAM modules for $75. You install them in pairs so that comes to $78 for 128MB of total memory or $156 for 256MB. An Asus P4T motherboard is $179. Lesser motherboards are cheaper, but the P4T is the best.

The socket for the Pentium 4 is changing at the end of the year, so upgrades past 2GHz will require a new motherboard. If you plan on keeping the processor for quite a while, you'd likely need a new motherboard the next time you upgrade anyway.

-Raystonn

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

upgrading from p3 800 to p4 1300 would be a waste. The performance difference would be something like 10% (not counting Q3 and flask). Wait for the Pally or the Northwood and see wich delivers the best price, performance and stability.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by jenspetersen on 05/19/01 02:49 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

800mhz will run any program just fine. Wait for Northwood for a real update. Current p4 is a joke.

!!! Leader of the Anti Nvidia Army !!!

not right now, you dont have the apps, and Athlon 1.33 offers better performance at much lower cost.

if you insist on a P4, wait for 6 months, you will have Northwood P4, and by that time many apps might have been ported to P4. and you will get yej newer socket478 chip, no need to get stuck with socket423 P4 upto 1.7~2 GHz.

girish

right now, just wait...

girish

<font color=blue>die-hard fans don't have heat-sinks!</font color=blue>

If you want to stay with Intel, you can either go P4 now or wait for Northwood. I would say waiting for Northwood will be a better choice since PIII 800EB and 128MB PC133 are very reasonable for almost all real-world applications. In the past, the top of the line Intel CPU could be very expensive. But, thanks to competition, this is no longer true. My guess is in six to nine months Northwood should be available with GOOD prices. Waiting will also give you more memory choices if you are not keen on RDRAM.

IF you want to try something different, Athlon or Duron (depending on your budget) is the way to go. For the cost of 1.7 GHz P4/MB/256MB RDRAM, you can get 1.33 GHz Athlon with 512 MB CAS 2.5 PC2100 DDR (or 256MB CAS2 PC2400 DDR) for $250 to $300 cheaper. You can use the saving to get a better graphic card or a faster hard drive, which often makes more of a difference than CPU upgrade.

**Spin all you want, but we the paying consumers will have the final word**

You now have a great mobo (I have one also) and a pretty darn good CPU. I say add another 128MB of PC133 (doubling your present mem) - a real inexpensive way to achieve noticeable performance improvement (add even more if you are using Win2K)!

By the end of the year, Northwood and quite a few SSE2 apps should be available. So while I typically respect Raystonn's views, I have to disagree with his 1.7GHz P4 advice.

I gotta agree with you pv. At this point in time, another 128MB should be a big plus for reptile. Northwood also 'wet's my whistle', so until then, I say place everything on hold!

You haven't actually stated what you use the machine for!

If you are desperate for DV editing then getting a P4 now is not completely unreasonable (though not recommended). AMD is currently a more prudent purchase.

If it's gaming that suffers then a new graphics card will be your best bet.

Otherwise just get another 128Mb for general performance until the real technology jump happens with P4(Northwood).


<font color=blue> The Revolution starts here... as soon as I finish my coffee </font color=blue>  

Phelk is right, unless you are absolutely power hungry, stick with the PIII. I reccomend a Geforce and another 128 megs of RAM, you'll notice a big performance gain. If you get a Geforce 3, it should serve you well for gaming for another year or so.

Aklein

Life is hard...Live with it.

A GeForce will serve reptile well IF he is into 3D/games. IMHO, it is definitely NOT the video card to get if 2D apps dominate his time!