Athlon XP Vs. P4

[thayne]

I just built a new Athlon XP machine and ran a head to head encoding test against my P4 and was totally shocked by what I found!... All I can say is I won't be buying any Intel CPU's any time soon!

P4 Machine:
Intel P4 2.0GHz 400MHz FSB (2.0GHz)
Shuttle AS45GT/R Main board
2 X 256MB PC 2700 DDR Ram
7200 RPM SATA 160GB HD

Althon Machine:
AMD Athlon XP 2500 333MHz FSB (1.8GHz)
Shuttle MN31N Main Board
1 X 256MB PC 2700 DDR Ram
7200 RPM 40GB ATA/133 HD

I encoded the same DVD 110Min Video to Divx 5.1 using the exact same settings, 2-pass VBR video encoding with 6 ch AC3 audio

The Athlon XP machine finished 55 minutes faster than the P4!

[Craig Tucker]

It would be expected that the Athlon would be faster than the P4. An XP2500 is marketed as such as it is supposed to be comparable to a P4 2.5Ghz, and you are comparing it to a P4 2.0Ghz. You cannot compare clock speeds of a P4 and an Athlon XP. The Athlon will always come out on top. This is why AMD no longer quote the clock speed of their processors in the name of the chip anymore, they give it a name which should be comparable to the appropriate P4 chip.

[Craig Tucker]

It would be expected that the Athlon would be faster than the P4. An XP2500 is marketed as such as it is supposed to be comparable to a P4 2.5Ghz, and you are comparing it to a P4 2.0Ghz. You cannot compare clock speeds of a P4 and an Athlon XP. The Athlon will always come out on top. This is why AMD no longer quote the clock speed of their processors in the name of the chip anymore, they give it a name which should be comparable to the appropriate P4 chip.

Oops, double post, don't know what happened there.

[Champion_R]

The P4 there is a 400fsb one. They suck comapred to the 533fsb generation, nevermind the 800fsb versions with hyperthreading out now. Also comparing an XP2500 against a P4 2000 isn't exactly fair.

[vitualis]

The Athlon XP are probably still cost effective compared to a P4 but if you are looking at a P4 with HT enabled on a 800 MHz FSB system, they can be (and are) much faster than the comparable Athlon XP system (ESPECIALLY with a program like TMPGEnc).

Regards.

[mujahid7ia]

Yay! I just got a 2500+ - now I can beat my bro's CPU...!!

[thayne]

I have a 2.4GHz P4 at work with 800MHz FSB and HT, I'm going to have to do a head to head with it, I think it will be close, but when you compare the difference in prices, there is no reason to go intel....

[Piccoro]

Yeah, that is not exactly an equal test but then again I am suprised that the 2500 did that well since it is almost the lowest clocked Athlon XP (1.8ghz...a 2400 is 2ghz) and clock speed usually matters with video encoding (although you can only compare within the same cpu series).
But the 800fsb HT P4s are great for exactly what you are doing. It is sad it took Intel that long from the start of the P4 to get here though. Any other P4 I would not exactly want.

[mar-mar]

didn't there used to be a site that always compared processors and told advantages and disadvantages with each?

[Craig Tucker]

Toms Hardware ?

[Cobra]

Remember that the priceerformance ratio of AMD chips is better. If you're tight on cash, AMDs make the better CPUs. If you've got money to burn, get the Intel (or give me the difference! )

In the UK I can pay £82.24 for a retail box Athlon 2600+ Barton or to get the equivelant Intel chip, the P4 2.5GHz 533FSB I pay £130.10. Even then, the FSB is 133MHz (mobo side) on the Intel and 166.5MHz on the AMD.

Remember, Intel FSBs are quad-pumped and AMDs are double-pumped. So, a 400FSB AMD is exactly the same as an 800FSB Intel. Both are 200MHz on the motherboard.

The joys of marketing. They couldn't just say "200MHz FSB motherboard-side". That's just too easy!

CobraDMX