I'm getting the AMD XP 3200 CPU, Is this a good Choice ?

[Scottie]

I'm getting the AMD XP 3200 CPU, Is this a good Choice ?

[thayne]

Hell yeah it is!

[redwudz]

Yes, it's a good choice. Do you have or are you getting a motherboard that can get the most out of the CPU?

[mujahid7ia]

Yes, it's a good choice. Do you have or are you getting a motherboard that can get the most out of the CPU?

Yeah can mobo handle FSB400, and do you have PC3200 (DDR400) RAM?

[rallynavvie]

I don't see why it wouldn't be a good choice if you already have a mobo/memory/PSU that can handle it.

[sacajaweeda]

I think it's the cat's meow.

[pyscrow]

Do you mean a 3200+ or is it an actual 3200? Coz I did not think AMD had anything that fast yet.

[vitualis]

Not to be a shower on your parade, but the Athlon XP CPUs at that range are end of the line technology and don't compare well with comparable alternative processors performance wise.

I would suggest that the lower end Athlon 64 CPUs are a better investment and don't cost all that much more.

Or if you want to go the Intel line, the P4 Northwood-c processors (800Mhz) have better performance too (though they cost somewhat more than the Athlon XPs).

Regards.

[rallynavvie]

Skip the A64s, those were blind-fired by AMD. The only good 64-bit single proc on the market is their FX chips.

[sacajaweeda]

Mine is running stable OC'd at 230mhz but I had memory timing probs (bios bug) with this board at first and had to switch my RAM out 3 or 4 times before I got a pair of DIMMs that this board tolerates. My other encoding machine is an Epox 8RDA+ with the XP2400+ chip (333 fsb) and that thing is a slug compared to this XP3200+ I put together a few months ago. It took a little fiddling with to get it stable at first, but it's been great since the kinks & bugs were worked out. Dreamy in fact. Highly recomended

[Scottie]

Yeah I'm getting a new MB to to handle the new CPU amd 512 MB of fast ram.

This should hold me over for a couple of years, then I will get her computer updated to something faster then the XP 3200

Thanks for your reply's

[vitualis]

Skip the A64s, those were blind-fired by AMD. The only good 64-bit single proc on the market is their FX chips.

What do you mean exactly?

The Athlon 64 chips have superb performance, certainly much better than the Athlon XPs. Pricewise, they are between the P4-c/P4 Prescott and Athlon XPs but for many tasks they outperform the equivalent P4-c (on the PR performance rating anyway).

The Athlon 64 chips also don't have the overheating problems suffered by the higher end P4 Prescott chips.

If we are looking at the Athlon XP 3200+, we are really looking at the lower end/cheaper end of the market so you can't really compare it to the FX chips or Opteron chips (just like you wouldn't really compare the Xeon chips to P4 Northwood). All these CPUs at this end of the market are heading towards the end of their upgrade path in terms of chipset and mobo so you probably shouldn't consider these systems to be particularly upgradable in the future.

At least with the Athlon 64, you can still take benefit of the upcoming release of the 64bit edition of Windows XP and the NX extension in SP2.

Regards.

[rallynavvie]

The A64s use only 64-bit MCTs (unless you're getting the 939 pin or FX cores) which result in processor bandwidths similar to those on 875 chipset Pentium platforms. The FX surpasses this by quite a bit, almost twice the processor bandwidth. The A64 was aimed at the consumer market, the same as the XPs were. I wouldn't worry too much about 64-bit procs just yet, I don't see wide-ranging native 64-bit support to be common for another couple years. I'll be moving the current workstation to EM64T this fall, but I'm not worried about falling behind because I'm not 64-bit yet.

The Xeons are pretty much P4s. The difference is pretty much the same as the difference between the XPs and MPs: build quality and instructions for SMP. The Preshotts don't exist as far as I'm concerned. Those were Intels bad move to the 90nm process. The A64 is still a 130nm chip anyway.

Now Opterons... those look like they'll be fun once they get a better video workstation platform for them.

[vitualis]

The A64s use only 64-bit MCTs (unless you're getting the 939 pin or FX cores) which result in processor bandwidths similar to those on 875 chipset Pentium platforms. The FX surpasses this by quite a bit, almost twice the processor bandwidth. The A64 was aimed at the consumer market, the same as the XPs were. I wouldn't worry too much about 64-bit procs just yet, I don't see wide-ranging native 64-bit support to be common for another couple years. I'll be moving the current workstation to EM64T this fall, but I'm not worried about falling behind because I'm not 64-bit yet.

Agreed.

However, despite the technical limitations of the Athlon 64s compared to the P4-c/P4-Prescott on paper, the A64s still offer superb performance on current 32-bit software and platforms.

They give much better performance than Athlon XPs are as I said, are often comparable to the somewhat higher priced P4-c/Prescotts, but without the mobo/chipset/heat problems associated with the newest P4s.

The fact that there is little native 64-bit software isn't a relative disadvantage for the Athlon 64 as it still performs well in 32-bit mode. The fact that 64-bit software is coming is icing on the cake...

If you were to get a new system now, my feeling is that an Athlon 64 system would go less quickly into obsolesence compared to an Athlon XP based one... and for not much of a price premium.

Best regards.