AMD 64 3200 or XP3200???

[ictrouble]

I am thinking of upgrading from my xp2100. My first choice is xp2700 or xp3000. BUT, the male in me wants to go even more. What is the minimum cpu, and how much difference would going with AMD 64 3000, 3200 or the xp3200 really be. Do you really need that much cpu?

[Flukesy]

the athlon64 is a fantastic chip but there aint a lot of 64 bit progs about yet so i would hang on other athlon such as 3000+ are good chip especially with a good motherboard and cooling you can overclock to amazing speeds
take my setup
AMD Athlon "BARTON" 2500+ 1.83Ghz overclocked to 2.2Ghz (and i could get to 2.5Ghz)
Abit NF7
Twinmos 2x 256Mb DDR
Coolermaster Aero 7+

this all came to around £219 all in and ive got a very versatile machine have a look int overclocking and get your pcrunning at its optimum

[Roderz]

From the reviews I've read in reputable mags most say to steer clear of the XP3200 chip for stability issues.

[gf]

Hi ictrouble,
If you have the money to upgrade I would recommend the Athlon64 over the Athlon XP. Don't get me wrong, the XP is a great cpu, but for the same rated speed 64 chip, encoding times are much better. And we all know how long it takes to encode in MPEG2 format. Also when Microsoft finally comes out with the 64 bit opsys, you will only have to install it and your running 64 bit. One thing, I would wait untill the 939 pin socket comes out, there is rumor that amd may stop the 754 pin chips, and the 940 is a little to much money.

Steve

[MpegEncoder]

From the reviews I've read in reputable mags most say to steer clear of the XP3200 chip for stability issues.

Perhaps you'd like to post some links. There are no stability problems with the chip. I have one and it's rock solid.

[Wetmonkey]

Do you really need all the pooosaaay? Hell Yes!! same goes from horsepower.. yeah never can have toooo much. but.....
I pesonally would hold off for the time being on making a jump to 64 bit, i wouldnt pay the cash for the 3200xp roughly $220 for the retail box when the Athlon64 3200 is around $285. ID shoot for the barton 2800xp for around $125 use the extra $100 for another 512megs + of ram. Then next year or so pick up a 64 when there are aps readily available.

[Shudder]

wetmonkey's got the right idea. CPUs are rarely worth the highest price for the highest speed, especially when you BARELY move down in speed for a huge price difference.

[lenti_75]

i would love an amd64, BUT...right now the soft is not for it, and the price is too high.

me too, i would buy a cheaper one, and keep that 64 amd for later, especially now that they keep on changing the socket style. it looks like they don't know for sure what "number" should be on that socket...

the speed.... is not much higher that an Xp2800, overclocked...because the apps does not support 64bit...

[ictrouble]

Thanks for the help. Still don't know what I want to do but I knew I could count on you goes for rock solid advise.

I know the xp2700 has more cpu power than the xp2800, does it matter when converting from analog to digital about how much cache 256 vs 512.

[tim6661234]

Why not go dual processor!
You can use your current CPU, buy another identical one. After a quick chip mod you've got 2 x MP2100. A new Motherboard is required but you can use everthing else in your existing system.

[gf]

Hi ictrouble,
From what I find, it seems clock speed is more important than cache size. So I would go for the higher clocked cpu core.

Check out AV Encoding: Mainconcept MPEG Encoder 1.3.1

http://www20.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030513/athlon_xp-16.html

Steve

[gf]

Oh 1 more thing, Athlon 64 is backwards compatable with 32 & 16 bit code, its runs this software as good as a P4 and better than a Athlon XP. And when a 64 bit operating system is released from Microshit, the only thing you will have to do is change the operating system. Otherwise you will have to upgrade the whole system over and the investment in the cpu is lost. Either way the choise is yours to make.

[richdvd]

If you can afford it, definately go with the 64bit 3200.

From the reviews I've read in reputable mags most say to steer clear of the XP3200 chip for stability issues.

This is a load of shit!
It's a great processor with very few problems.

[MachineMan]

If your on a budget get the Barton 2500 (1.8Ghz) and mildly overclock it to a 3200 (2.2 Ghz) level with DDR400 RAM. Chip and board <$150, 1 gig Ram <$150

Comparison

My old 1.0Ghz P3 PC133 1gig
- Typically 2hr time for Deep analysis and encoding with DVD shrink

Now with overclocked Barton 2500 (2.2Ghz) DDR400 1gig
- Typically 45min time for Deep analysis and encoding with DVD shrink

Note: if you overclock don't get cheapy RAM, I found out the hard way. Also don't buy the chip with the stock AMD heat sink and fan, you will need a better one (<$30) anyway.

[TBoneit]

Hi ictrouble,
From what I find, it seems clock speed is more important than cache size. So I would go for the higher clocked cpu core.

Check out AV Encoding: Mainconcept MPEG Encoder 1.3.1

http://www20.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030513/athlon_xp-16.html

Steve

And looking at the Toms HW link it still seems that P4's are faster, quieter, and cooler running. Most that Push AMD CPUs also seem to push overclocking. At work I've lost count of the time I've heard form customers that their current Computer is a AMD based, but because of the noise and heat, their next one will be Intel based. I switched over myself because of the noise and heat issue. It wasn't worth it to save a few dollars.

If cost is the only issue, then go AMD, otherwise look into Intel. I run a P4 3.0, 800 FSB, Dual channel DDR 400, ASUS MB, Hyperthreading under XP. The hyperthreading and Dual channel make a big difference. I did some informal benchmarks against my old 2.66 533 FSB DDR 333 and saw big jump in performance, Much less time to encode the same clip to the same resolution using the same S/W & S/W Vers. than would be explained only by the clock speed change. I use Tmpgenc which takes advantage of HT tech.

Intel, less fans and fan noise, less heat, (I'm guessing here) also less power used since I never amped the draw of comparable systems. Also what I see at work is that the Intel systems seem to be more reliable than AMD systems... Not sure why. But we replace many more Athlon MBs than Intel even tho Intel outells AMD percentagewise.

God Luck with either choice.

BTW if you can afford it go for ASUS MBs over ABit And go for the deluxe version, they generally add things like a raid controller, and firewire.

My ASUS Deluxe MB can support ten drives + 2 floppies. 4 on the reg IDE, 4 on the Raid, and two on the SATA. Then I use the built in Firewire for the Canopus. And 10/100/1000 ethernet.

Cheers

[gf]

Intel runs cool???
Check this out!

Our 3.4GHz Pentium 4 processor came with the official Intel reference heatsink, which is rather large, and also rather noisy at high speeds. It managed to keep our 3.4GHz Pentium 4 processor below 60 degrees celcius in our testbed though, without running at full speed all the time. Unfortunately our testbed is far from how a processor would normally be used, as it is always operated with the cover off, with plenty of case ventilation. Thus we decided to try this new processor in a typical work environment, a mid-tower case with all the lids in place and fastened securely. It then quickly became apparent that the Prescott was already idling at over 50 degrees Celsius, which meant the fan was spinning at full speed most of the time. But that wasn’t all; by stressing the processor to 90…100% usage the temperature continued to rise above 60 degrees Celsius and finally settled at 69 degrees Celsius.

Sizzling hot is how we’d described that, as normally a processor temperature of over 60 degrees Celsius isn’t something we’d recommend. We then proceeded to see how the Prescott fared with a little overclocking and we quickly found out that at a mere 5% overclock the temperature would soon be touching upon 70 degrees Celsius, too hot to our liking. Fitting a different cooler, in this case an Akasa King Copper, which basically is a massive, fine finned, copper heatsink, didn’t really improve things much. The resulting temperatures, with the selectable fan speed at maximum, were about 5 degrees lower. Nevertheless we managed to clock it to a maximum of 3.75GHz at default core voltage and temperatures approaching 70 degrees Celsius. It could go a little further, with a bump in core voltage by 0.1-volts we managed to touch 3.8GHz, but quickly shut the system down as the temperature was at 171 degrees Fahrenheit, or 77 degrees Celsius in a matter of minutes. That, by our judgment, is nearing supernova temperatures and doesn’t show much headroom for current Prescott processors.

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1693/


Idle
Burn

Pentium 4 (Prescott) 3.2GHz
45oC
61oC

Pentium 4 (Northwood) 3.2GHz
30oC
48oC

Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.2GHz
32oC
51oC


I don’t think I need to comment on these numbers. Prescott processors warm up much more during active work than their predecessors. Note that we measured the CPU performance during the tests carried out in an open testbed. I am scared to imagine what happens to Prescott when we close the system case…

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/prescott_12.html

[MpegEncoder]

And looking at the Toms HW link it still seems that P4's are faster, quieter, and cooler running. Most that Push AMD CPUs also seem to push overclocking. At work I've lost count of the time I've heard form customers that their current Computer is a AMD based, but because of the noise and heat, their next one will be Intel based. I switched over myself because of the noise and heat issue. It wasn't worth it to save a few dollars.

If cost is the only issue, then go AMD, otherwise look into Intel. I run a P4 3.0, 800 FSB, Dual channel DDR 400, ASUS MB, Hyperthreading under XP. The hyperthreading and Dual channel make a big difference. I did some informal benchmarks against my old 2.66 533 FSB DDR 333 and saw big jump in performance, Much less time to encode the same clip to the same resolution using the same S/W & S/W Vers. than would be explained only by the clock speed change. I use Tmpgenc which takes advantage of HT tech.

Intel, less fans and fan noise, less heat, (I'm guessing here) also less power used since I never amped the draw of comparable systems. Also what I see at work is that the Intel systems seem to be more reliable than AMD systems... Not sure why. But we replace many more Athlon MBs than Intel even tho Intel outells AMD percentagewise.

God Luck with either choice.

BTW if you can afford it go for ASUS MBs over ABit And go for the deluxe version, they generally add things like a raid controller, and firewire.

My ASUS Deluxe MB can support ten drives + 2 floppies. 4 on the reg IDE, 4 on the Raid, and two on the SATA. Then I use the built in Firewire for the Canopus. And 10/100/1000 ethernet.

Cheers

Did you actually follow the link? Intel P4 cooler?

Ya, right! Look at the power consumption:
AMD Athlon XP 3200+=76.8W
Intel P4 3.0G=81.8W

Guess which one will run hotter.

Also, BTW, the Athlon also supports dual channel DDR if you buy the right motherboard and memory.

I also like how you say the Intel processor is "quieter". Just how much noise do you think them there processors make?

My Athlon 3200+ is nice and quiet and the highest temp I've ever seen during a long encode it 46 degrees C.

[TBoneit]

I say quieter because of fan noise, I run 3.0 800FSB with one case fan in front blowing over the drives to cool the drives. Dual Fan power supply for noise reduction too. Not quite as quiet as some Dell 3.0 I have heard. I haven't tried the 3.4 GHz yet, nobody has bought them. I'd have expected the 3.2 extreme to run hotter from all the added transistors in the cache, but that's life. I believe hotter from my handling the heatsinks to see whats happening temperaturewise that the AMD heatsinks always feel hotter to the touch.

I do expect the new 64 bit processors will run cooler though.

The other thing was that in the Toms link above the P4 was faster in the encoding tests with Pinnacle Studio 8.5 and Mainconcept MPEG Encoder 1.3.1.

I believe that heat is the enemy... That's why I'm now running the cyberhome DVD recorder with the cover off, much cooler running that way & the disks come much cooler too, and same reason I'm running the original Dishnetwork Dishplayer PVR with the cover off and a removable HDD case w/fan as it runs much coller that way too. MY Drives feel cool to the touch with the fan blowing over them, hopefully that'll extend the life.

I don't want to knock AMDs I know that some love em, having myself worked long term with both intel just seems more solid and long lived to me. Yes it is an opinion. On the other hand at work We, Me,myself & I as well as the owner prefer ASUS over Abit, Western Digital over Maxtor, And Intel over AMD. I always seem to see more fans in systems that others have built themselves when equipped with AMD than when equipped with intel. Anecdotal it is true.

I'm not a zealot for intel, We sell both, tock parts for both...

[thor300]

Some tests i came across at anandtech.com a while ago clearly indicated that an athlon xp with 512 cache can encode divX video faster than a higher clocked xp with 256 cache. Cache helps more for most other things also, so i never considered the 256kb models when i bought my xp2500+.

[lordsmurf]

Historically, INTEL is cooler and lasts longer. Not sure what the case is within last 6 months, but I would not think it to be much different.

TOMSHARDWARE tests are the most flawed results I've ever seen on anything they've ever done. Want better tests? Watch TechTV. Even better ones? Test yourself.

[THE RIPPER]

I would get this http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-130-436&depa=0 and 1 cpu to start, then when you can afford it ,get the 2nd one.

[kazz0817]

i'd say the amd athlon 64 3200, dont bother with the athlon 64 3400, no point, not much differance, i just built a pc with amd athlon 64 3200 proc and wuldnt go back now

[thor300]

Lordsmurf, agree with that about tomshardware. I have traditionally used anandtech.com for reliable performance tests, and has never needed to find something better. About long life, i never had an AMD die on me or any of my friends, but lifeless Intels i encounter twice, both were socket 7 so its not exactly headline news anymore, but still they died. Seemed like Intel quality was down for a while when they moved some of the production from Philipines to Malaysia, most likely that has changed now, maybe just break-in problems in the malaysia plant.