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Intel P4 vs AMD
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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30. October 2005 @ 03:22 |
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Amen to that. Although it needn't be ASUS, there's definitely no problem going that route. My school uses ASUS microATX PCs, about 120 of them, and in three years they've only ever had two failed ones.
So far my MSI has been OK too.
Touching wood repeatedly, but after a devastating power surge, it still survived!!
How is anyone's guess. The only complaint I have about it is a loose PS/2 connector at the back, meaning the keyboard plug occasionally falls out. But hey, nothing's perfect!
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AfterDawn Addict
1 product review
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30. October 2005 @ 07:52 |
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theonejrs
I'm holding out for the Toledo Core (X2 4400+)because it has 2X 1 megs of L2 Cache and a multiplier of 11X. The biggest problem that people have over clocking the AMD Venice 3000 and the X2 3800 is largely a result of the low clock multiplier. To get a CPU with a multiplier of 9X to 2.6 is not an easy task, and with a command rate of 1T virtually impossible. That's why the best choices for serious over clockers were the 3500+ Venice core or the 3700+ San Diego core, they were willing to pay a little more to get the higher clock multiplier.
The same thought holds true for the X2 4400+, it is the best deal out of all of the X2 series. It's now down to $497.00 and I expect it to bottom out at around $400 but I'm going to pick it up soon. The 3800+ is a good chip but to over clock it and maintain a command rate of 1T most speeds are limited to no more than 2.2 GHZ. The 4400+ however easily hits 2.6 GHZ with a command rate of 1T and many are getting it to 2.7-2.8 GHZ with a few using water cooling actually hitting 3.2 GHZ.
" Please Read!!! Post your questions only in This Thread or they will go unanswered:
Help with development of BD RB: Donations at: http://www.jdobbs.com/. This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 30. October 2005 @ 07:52
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AfterDawn Addict
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30. October 2005 @ 08:29 |
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To Sammorris,
I didn't mean to slight other MB manufacturers. MSI Makes a good product. I just got done building an MSI/Athlon XP 2500+ a few weeks ago. We have been hearing a lot about Shuttle MBs in this area and I built one of them as well. These seem to have decent quality and features for the price. Some MB companies that used to build junk now make decent MBs. PC Chips for one. Years ago you avoided them like the plague. Back then chipsets were the main factor. Opti was the chipset to have. SIS was to be avoided yet today they make a decent chipset. Everybody wet their pants when the HX and HT chipsets came out as they were light years ahead of every other chipset at the time. Asus seems to have been the most consistant quality wise. Back in the late 80s, early 90s Asus was the king of linux and it was very important what cards you put in the machine as Linux was very fussy as to componants. Some of their BBSs even posted recomended lists of what cards to use (pre-internet @ 300 baud)and what cards to avoid. Systems were very expensive to build. Memory cost around $100 for a 4 meg stick of EDO Ram. Especially after the Japanese burned down the factory complex for the major worldwide producer of resin used in the chips. Funny how this just "happened" right after they lost in the US courts for dumping cheap memory on the market to kill the competition. Also interesting was the date of the fire, the 4th of July. Guess they were declaring their independence as memory prices jumped to around $80 per meg!
Years ago I upgraded my mechanic's computer with a new MB. The original hard drive was still in it. When I removed the drive there was a price sticker on it from Fry's. $1340.99 for 40 megs! It was twice as thick as todays drives, slow (3600 rpm) and noisey! The original 386 from Compaq which beat IBM to the market by about 6 months, cost 3 grand with a monochrome monitor and 1 meg of static ram. A 20 meg drive was standard but you could have a 40 for another grand. With the 40 I believe the price was about $3753. Considering inflation, we are getting very cheap computers today indeed. Back in those days all you could change to overclock was the base speed and multiplier and you had to do that by jumpers on the MB. How we all afforded it on the salaries we made back then is still a mystery to me. One year I built 27 complete systems for customers between Thanksgiving and Christmas at an average price of $1800. It was also a lot more work. Drivers had to be installed in the config.sys and called in the autoexec.bat, all done manually. Nothing was built in. If you wanted an IDE drive then you had to buy a controller card (ISA) and set up it's drivers manually. Getting a Sound Blaster to work properly was a major operation. Windows 3.1 was a nightmare compared to today. Plug and Play didn't come along until Win 95 and it didn't work half the time! I remember I had the last beta version of Win 95 before the final product came out. I loved it and ran to get 95 the first day it was released. Biggest disappointment of my life as the final product was nothing like the last beta and much slower. I love it when M$ claims that XP is the fastest starting windows yet. I guess they forgot about 3.1 as it booted in about 5 seconds. If you tried to multi-task in 95, it usually blew up the system.
Anyway, enough nostalgia! Those days are gone (Thank God!)
You have a good day and sorry for the MB slight,
Russ
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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30. October 2005 @ 08:45 |
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I didn't mean to suggest you were slighting other motherboard manufacturers, so sorry for the confusion, the nostalgia was interesting - I have only really been in touch with the computer world for a few years, so the days when 40MB hard disks of housebrick thickness cost the average monthly salary were days before I was using computers, possibly before I knew what a computer was, possibly even before I left the womb!
The first 'PC' I ever used was one of those Acorn educational ones, don't know if you know about those.
After that it was straight to Windows 95 Pentium 133mhz units with something like 1GB of hard disk space. I've only really been interested in hardware since I upgraded my old PC with a GeForce 4 Graphics card, so to many i'm still a newcomer.
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matt5112
Junior Member
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30. October 2005 @ 09:00 |
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it seems that AMD is better for gaming.. im very mad at myself for buying a A64 3000 instead of a 3500 because thats the only thing thats holding my system back. with a 6800 GT and a gig of 400 mhz ram in dual channel i can run every game i know of highest settings with no lagg excpet for doom 3... but who plays doom 3. my first machine was a P1 66 mhz i dont remember much else about it expect that a month later i got a P3 667mhz 128 megs of ram with a ATI Xpert 2000... i thought that was the best machine ever... but the industy will never stop...
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DemonDog
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30. October 2005 @ 16:45 |
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Quote:
The 3800+ is a good chip but to over clock it and maintain a command rate of 1T most speeds are limited to no more than 2.2 GHZ. The 4400+ however easily hits 2.6 GHZ with a command rate of 1T and many are getting it to 2.7-2.8 GHZ with a few using water cooling actually hitting 3.2 GHZ.
No, right out of the box with the stock heat sink I was able to crank the 3800+ X2 to 2.4 GHz with 1t timings. Temps only went up a few degrees C under load. Of course the DFI is one of the easiest boards to overclock. Here's link to anandtech.com's take on the DFI nF4 overclock ability.
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2465&p=12
Since AMD Cpu's overclock by the memory then if you get DDR600 instead of DDR400 it makes overclocking easy. In theory, DDR600 memory allows me to run the bus at 300MHz with 1t timings, equaling 3GHz at stock 10 multiplier for the cpu. I'm now tearing down the first build and installing the new heat sink and have bought some shorter SATA cables to install on the hard drives to help cut clutter. I'd like to get a minimum 2.4GHz system with cpu voltage at or close to stock and heavy load temps under 50C, from everything I've read I should be able to do this and maybe more.
http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/index.php?
Most folks are getting 2.5 to 2.7 GHz overclocks on air on the 3800+, but I'm not going to push it since I want cpu temps to stay in their low 40's C range. Check out dfi-street.com for lots of info on X2 overclocking. Also I had thought to get a X2 4400+ because of the larger cache, but performance tests (you can find links on DFI-street.com) show that the larger cache is only a minor player in the performance, whereas the higher GHz is the biggest. And there are some reported heat issues with the 1GB cache chips due to the higher transitor count because of the larger cache. Although this might be limited to some of the early batches, as I've seen lots of reported high OC's on the chip lately. But then some of these guys are running their chips close to the maximum temperature, not something I'm looking to do.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=58
Xtremesytems.org has lots of X2 overclock threads on it as well.
DFI LanParty nF4 SLI mobo
eVGA 256mb GeForce 7800GT
OCZ PowerStream SLI 520Watts
AMD Athlon 64X2 3800+ 2500MHz (250x10)
1GB Patriot DDR600 (PC4800) mem
Boot Disk WD 74GB Raptor SATA
2 x Hitachi 250mb Deskstars SATA II, Raid 0
NEC ND 3540, BenQ DW1640, LiteOn 16P9S
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AfterDawn Addict
1 product review
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30. October 2005 @ 17:24 |
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Perhaps but few are getting beyond 2.4, I hear lots of talk but little proof. I don't believe that many are hitting 2.5 let alone 2.7 (which I'd doubt the veracity of). I also never said that it wasn't being done, that it was a reason that many don't make it. Go to any site such as Anandtech and they'll tell you that the best is those that I previously mentioned. Your score is closer to the top. BTW, none of your links showed an X2 3800 over clocked.
Just for fun why don't you post some screen captures of Sisoft benchmarks and some CPU-Z shots as well.
Demondog
I think I'm familiar with the overclocking capabilites of the N4 chipset, my board also has it and if you look at my specs you'll see that I'm also using a Venice Core.
" Please Read!!! Post your questions only in This Thread or they will go unanswered:
Help with development of BD RB: Donations at: http://www.jdobbs.com/. This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 30. October 2005 @ 17:51
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64026402
Senior Member
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30. October 2005 @ 17:59 |
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I can verify that a 3800 X2 will run stable at 2.5 ghz using 1T.
Mine runs happy at 2650 but the timing is 2t.
2650 mhz is the sweet spot. 2700 is stable but only with a substantially raised cpu voltage of 1.56 and loaded temps in the high 50s with the stock heat sink.
I did drop 10 degrees with a coolermaster heatpipe HSF.
I can post CPU-Z but it doesn't prove stability. Only your own experience can do that.
Donald
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AfterDawn Addict
1 product review
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31. October 2005 @ 12:03 |
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64026402
I would like to see the CPU-Z shot anyway. 2650 GHZ with a 9X multiplier would require a front side bus of 295 MHZ. I haven't tried to see how how I can get to because anything over2.64 GHZ 1T would require a setting of 2T to run stable. That's why I stated earlier that most (not all) serious over clockers will go for the 11X multiplier. It places less stress on the memory to reach higher speeds which allows for more aggressive memory settings. Anything higher than a single core of 3500+ or dual core 4400+ is a waste of money but anything and you might get less.
" Please Read!!! Post your questions only in This Thread or they will go unanswered:
Help with development of BD RB: Donations at: http://www.jdobbs.com/. |
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matt5112
Junior Member
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31. October 2005 @ 12:05 |
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Sophocles why did you buy a SLI board when you have an ATI card? it just doesnt make sense
Giga-byte K8NXP-SLI
A64 3000 OC 1.8 to 1.98 ghz
2x512meg Dual Channel
MSI 6800 GT OC to 420 mhz, 1.10 ghz
Creative X-FI Extreme Music
Creative Inspire T7700 7.1
PSP 2.0 (For GTA:LCS)
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AfterDawn Addict
1 product review
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31. October 2005 @ 12:39 |
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I'm waiting for the nvidia prices to come down, they always do. It's kind of like an anti obsolescence insurance, in a year from now I'll still be able to get high frames on the latest multi threaded games. My ATI card is slated to go into another machine but for now it serves its purpose. Want to hear something that really might not make sense? I'm also upgrading my Venice core to an X2 4400, and why you ask, because I can. LOL
" Please Read!!! Post your questions only in This Thread or they will go unanswered:
Help with development of BD RB: Donations at: http://www.jdobbs.com/. This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 31. October 2005 @ 12:40
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64026402
Senior Member
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31. October 2005 @ 16:17 |
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The 3800 dual core has a 10X multi.
I agree that a higher multiplier comes in handy. That why people pay the extra money for the FX. The unlocked multiplier can go as high as you want.
Donald
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64026402
Senior Member
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31. October 2005 @ 17:05 |
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Donald
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AfterDawn Addict
1 product review
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31. October 2005 @ 17:17 |
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Thanks, now how about a CPU and memory bench? I'm curious.
" Please Read!!! Post your questions only in This Thread or they will go unanswered:
Help with development of BD RB: Donations at: http://www.jdobbs.com/. |
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64026402
Senior Member
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31. October 2005 @ 17:27 |
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Donald
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AfterDawn Addict
1 product review
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31. October 2005 @ 17:40 |
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I was thinking more along the lines of the CPU arithmatic benchmark and the memory bandwidth benchmark.
" Please Read!!! Post your questions only in This Thread or they will go unanswered:
Help with development of BD RB: Donations at: http://www.jdobbs.com/. |
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64026402
Senior Member
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31. October 2005 @ 17:45 |
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Donald
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AfterDawn Addict
1 product review
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31. October 2005 @ 18:00 |
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Thanks that's what I was looking for, I'm on the edge of buying a dual core. Could you run the memory one when you get a chance.
" Please Read!!! Post your questions only in This Thread or they will go unanswered:
Help with development of BD RB: Donations at: http://www.jdobbs.com/. |
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64026402
Senior Member
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31. October 2005 @ 18:23 |
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I'm running single channel on my x2. Still waiting on a bios update.
The 3800 x2 has spotty support from the motherboard manufacturers.
I haven't heard of any problems from 4200 on up.
Donald
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64026402
Senior Member
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31. October 2005 @ 18:28 |
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Donald
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AfterDawn Addict
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31. October 2005 @ 19:22 |
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To All,
You guys are determined to make me spend money. Here I was nice and semi-retired. Now I'll have to get a full time job just to pay for everything I want! Thanks a lot! (heh, heh, heh)
Lets see, AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ w/Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe MB. Nvidia GeForce 7800 PCI Express 16x which I saw at Fry's today for $349 ($50 mail in rebate) Might as well get a Sata 10,000 RPM drive while I'm at it! What memory would you recomend and how much??? You realize of course that if this was Intel, I'de need a bank loan. Yep, I've definately got the bug! He, He!
Russ
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matt5112
Junior Member
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1. November 2005 @ 16:53 |
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Any memory with 2-2-2-5 timeings or 2-3-2-5 are good for overclocking if you have to overclock the mem to OC the CPU for some strange reason. my plan is 3500 or X2 3800 and another 6800 Gt about this time next year and in spring a samsung 19" LCD 4 ms and gigaworks 7.1 700 watts. because my cpu is limiting my computer wat too much and by your posts i think im going to be leaning towards a X2 3800 but by next year that will most likly be something more along the lines of a X2 4400. i was mislead to believe that the A64 3000+ could be overclocked to 2.5+ with stock cooling 100% stability but for somestrange reason whenever i set the FSB higher than 225( im not overclocking the mem by going into the advanced overclocking settings) it will complete bios but wont get to the OS selection screen it just sits there with nothing excpet for a blinking underscore at the top right. my bios revision is R7 if that helps im going to try updating the bios to the latest revision and post my results.
Giga-byte K8NXP-SLI
A64 3000 OC 1.8 to 1.98 ghz
2x512meg Dual Channel
MSI 6800 GT OC to 420 mhz, 1.10 ghz
Creative X-FI Extreme Music
Creative Inspire T7700 7.1
PSP 2.0 (For GTA:LCS)
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brobear
Suspended permanently
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1. November 2005 @ 17:12 |
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theonejrs
To do it up right, you need 2 GPUs and some additional components for cooling, depending on how far you want to go in OCing. I don't trust stock cooling for anything other than a stock PC. Then of course, you want to get all out of those GPUs that is possible, so you may want to upgrade your choice of boards. LOL Sell the farm, mortgage the grandkids and go for it. LOL
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AfterDawn Addict
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1. November 2005 @ 21:38 |
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Brobear,
It's not that I am interested so much in over-clocking. I've always wanted to build a state of the art computer system. Back in the day it was prohibitably expensive to do. Today you get so much more bang for the buck. I'm happy with what I have as far as how it works. I only OC 5% which runs the memory at 420MHz and the FSB at 840. It seems to run best at these settings. Like Sophocles said, I want to build a new state of the art computer because I can. I'm going back to work full time on the 21st so I might as well spoil myself. I don't know that much about modern motherboards so I chose Asus because of my good past experience with them. Are there better boards out there? If so could you recomend something? I chose Nvidia for the graphics card, again because of past experience with them. I've never had any luck with ATi! I want a 20 inch wide-screen LCD monitor to go with it. I really prefer a flat-screen CRT for picture quality and far less eyestrain but I don't know of any 20 inch wide screen CRTs being made. I prefer Maxtor drives but whether they will make a 10,000 rpm sata drive by the time I'm ready will determine if I go with them or WD. Everyone keeps telling me that I should scrap my Optorite DVD Burner for a Plextor but I keep remembering that I had so much trouble in the past with Plextor drives and the Optorite performs flawlessly. Don't even get me started on Sony. I wouldn't have a Sony if they were giving them away for free, with a rebate! I don't care how good their products are supposed to be, I don't like the company! I don't like the way they do business and I don't like the way they treat end users. I especially don't like the way they dictate how you use their drives by dictating what media they will "allow" you to use without the penalty of slowing your 8Xs to 4X because Sony doesn't approve of the media and Doesn't like the competition. Not only that, Sony refuses to replace my DVD burner because it's a refurbished drive. They sent it to me as a replacement for a brand new drive that failed and even though the original is still within the warranty period they insist that a refurb only has a 90 day warranty! The only reason I have a Sony Digital Audio Control Center for my surround sound is because my Landlady's nephew borrowed money from me and never paid it back. He snuck back to Canada and told me to go pound salt so I went through the stuff he left here, and took it! If he ever pays me the $150 he owes me, he can have it back!
Another word about DVDs. I have read in other forum about poor quality media. I have to disagree with most of what I've read. I use Sony because they burn at 12X automaticly on my drive even though they are marked 8X. It wouldn't even do that with the Sony drive! I also use Memorex, Maxell, TDK, GQ and just about every other off-name brand. The only brands I do stay away from are house brands and that's only because of the way they package it, shrink wrapped and no cake box. I haven't had one coaster in over 6 months. Truthfully, the only coasters I ever had were when I was learning to burn video and made mistakes that caused the failures. I get the distinct impression that a lot of the whining I hear about poor quality media comes from people that made the same mistakes I did but blame the media instead of themselves for their failures. When you first start playing with this stuff, most people know little or nothing about it. They tend to play with the settings of burning programs until it's Damn the Torpedos, full speed ahead. I should know, I did it too!
My next door neighbor keeps making coasters no matter what media he uses. He also doesn't take very good care of his media. He leaves the cake boxes open and gets a lot of dust on them. He gets fingerprints all over them and scratches. I know it's not the computer or his drives. I sold him my old (???) Dell 3000 so I know that there isn't any problem with it! Of course, he's the same idiot that insists on using Internet Explorer and then runs screaming to me that I sold him a piece of crap everytime he gets a virus!
Anyway, I guess I'll get off my soap box!
Everyone have a good evening!!
Russ
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brobear
Suspended permanently
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1. November 2005 @ 22:20 |
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Sounds like the neighbor has a user interface problem and he's the user. I use different browsers. FireFox and IE are the 2 I currently have loaded. IE is wrapped up like Fort Knox, so I rarely even see a virus. (Firefox enjoys the same protection.) The AV ware goes off like gangbusters at the scent of a virus. So IE is usable. I'm more partial to IE because of long experience with it. FireFox I've found to be less prone to attack, seems the hackers and attackers prefer getting more bang for their time by attacking the most common browser app, IE. I know what you mean about user problems though, some people could mess up an anvil with a sponge.
As for media, you may find out down the road that compatibility doesn't always equate with quality. You can track down some of my posts. I've already posted enough for a textbook. Some of the brands you mentioned at one time or another have sold some of the best manufactured media available. I'm not familiar with GQ. Unfortunately, some haven't been consistent with using good manufacturers. Sony, one of the brands you mentioned, has some good media. You have the Sony from Taiwan and the Japanese Mitsubishi. I've found both to be good. Brands like Memorex have used a variety of manufacturers. The association with manufacturers like CMC Magnetics has left them with a bad rep. In the past Memorex has used manufacturers such as Ricoh and Ritek, both respected names in media manufacturing (though Ritek has come under question the past year when some of the dyes were changed). Nuff said, there's just too much info and things to know to go there, that's for the media section, not hardware.
I was looking at an especially interesting MoBo just the other day. It had some interesting options and didn't require OCing for some excellent processing features. I'll have to look up the link and I'll post it. If I forget, just remind me. Too many fires and the memory starts to fade. ;)
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