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Anonymous   09-15-2001 at 10:40:14 PM

ok i heard alot about amd athlon being alot better than pentium 4 because of price reasons and software compatiblity problems on the p4, but now thats starting to change because intel has just done massive price cuts, and the northwood core will be comming (or has it already come out? ive been out of it for a few weeks ive been real busy) and with compatiblity, nvidia has come out with p4 optomized drivers, and hundreds of companies have done the same. my question is, should i still stay with amd athlon? or would it be a good idea to get a pentium 4? i just checked prices at compuplus.com and pentium 4 1.5ghz was only about $20 more than amd athlon! so which should i get?


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Anonymous   09-15-2001 at 10:46:54 PM
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i thought i might mention, im getting a alienware system its gonna have a 1.4ghz amd athlon with a 266mhz FSB :D and 256mb DDR ram the only benchmarks ive seen on toms hardware (correct me if im wrong) are one's with 133mhz FSB...

never fear, the bdtman is here!

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Red_Zealot   09-15-2001 at 10:52:57 PM
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Athlon 1.4 beats a 1.5 GHz P4. It beats a 1.6 GHz P4. Don't f you team a 1.5 GHz P4 with SDRAM, it will be beaten by a 1GHz Athlon.

"If you teach a child to read, then he or her will be able to pass a literacy test" - George W.

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Crashman   09-15-2001 at 10:55:55 PM
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The Athlon give you more performance for the dollar, but the P4 in socket 478 will offer upgrades to at least 4GHz. You must also remember that there are no good DDR chipset for the P4 so your stuck with Rambus right now. Overall, the P4 looks like a bad deal, unless you have unlimited resources, in which case the Socket 478 will give you good upgradability.

Back to you Tom...

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Boondock_Saint   09-16-2001 at 12:27:10 AM
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Athlon 1.4GHz faster than: Pentium IV 1.4GHz
Pentium IV 1.5GHz
Pentium IV 1.6GHz
Pentium IV 1.7GHz

Athlon ties, mostly beats :Pentium IV 1.8GHz

Considering you will spend a whole hell of a lot less total on an Athlon system leaving that extra cash to up the memory, buy a new graphics card, so on, Athlon is the only way to go.

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Flamethrower205   09-16-2001 at 02:35:06 AM
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It really depends upon what you want to do with your computer. For graphics that require a high FPU, Athlon is the best. However, if you want to do image editing in photoshop with huge files, P4 would be better b/c RDRAM. What applications will u be using? I would imagine that NVidia's drivers are more optimized towards the Athlon, seing as how NVidia is going to go w/ AMD. And yes, an Athlon 1.2 Ghz will beat a 2.0 Ghz P4 in 3dsmax- according to my calculations, it'd take a 3.2 Ghz P4 to tie a 1.2 Ghz Athlon in 3DSMAX!!

When I rule the world, Apple will only mean the fruit.

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Anonymous   09-16-2001 at 03:00:22 AM
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Wow. I really thought fugger would have descended on this thread by now. Hope I don't jinx it.

Go Tribe.

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Boondock_Saint   09-16-2001 at 03:06:26 AM
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Rofl good point.....

*posts sign on thread* "Keep Trolls Out"

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Crashman   09-16-2001 at 08:01:21 AM
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Well, it depends on your budget really. If you have enough money to buy all the fastest parts for your PC (including SCSI RAID, etc.) and still money to spare, the 2.0GHz P4 is the fasting thing on the market right now. Even using the crappy old Willy core it wins benchmarks. I consider it a bad value, but using the S478 board allows later upgrades to a Northwood. Something to consider for anyone looking to spend 4x as much money for 5% better performance!

Back to you Tom...

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Anonymous   09-16-2001 at 09:11:40 AM
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Too predictable

<font color=purple>Three ways to do things, your way, my way and the right way!</font color=purple>

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Anonymous   09-16-2001 at 03:58:55 PM
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amd i'm sure of that but i would wait until amd launches his palonimo wich is a verry strong cpu and is even more competive with the P4. see on hardcop an palonimo 1,4GHz is ty with an P4 at 2G but amd will launch an palonimo at 1,53G wich will have the same performance as a P4 2,2G and further.

computer

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dakmason   09-16-2001 at 04:00:04 PM
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IN RESPONSE TO:
****i thought i might mention, im getting a alienware system its gonna have a 1.4ghz amd athlon with a 266mhz FSB :D and 256mb DDR ram the only benchmarks ive seen on toms hardware (correct me if im wrong) are one's with 133mhz FSB..****

Athlons are 133 MHz with 2 pipelines - thats why they call it 266 MHz. The P4 is the same way - 100 MHz with 4 pipelines - 400 MHz (this means nothing anyway cause the P4 needs this large of bandwith to fill its long pipleline).

Definitely go with the Athlon. Personally I'm waiting for the next Athlon with the Palomino core - it adds SSE, data prefetch, and increased clock speeds.

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Abitols   09-16-2001 at 04:12:18 PM
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Wait for a Palomino + VIA KT266A. Unless you wany to spend twice the price on P4 2Ghz for the same performance.

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Anonymous   09-16-2001 at 04:57:05 PM
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whens it comming out?

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zengeos   09-16-2001 at 06:09:05 PM
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Palomino should be available within the next couple weeks. KT266A is in production now and for the most part is a drop in replacement of KT266, so should ramp up in availability fast....hopefully by early/mid October.

So, the 3 things to look for in October are:

Palomino CPU at speeds up to around 1.53ghz
nForce based motherboards from major MB manufacturers
KT266A based boards offering significant performance improvements over current chipsets available

As a note, the jury is out as to whether nForce will be much faster than KT266A and there have been some rumors (RUMORS mind you) that nForce has stability problems. We'll not know until boards ship and reviewers can test for said issues.

Mark-

When all else fails, throw your computer out the window!!!

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Flamethrower205   09-16-2001 at 06:11:16 PM
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It's coming out in a few weeks (like 2 or 3). The thing is that once you get your T-bird, and overclock it to 1.6, the P4 @ 2.0GHz doesn't stand a chance. And once again there are apps such as 3DSMAX in which the 2GHz P4 won't stand a chnace even when teh sped of teh T-bird is 1.2ghz.

When I rule the world, Apple will only mean the fruit.

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