WOW - AMD XP really kicks

[randallc]

TigerWolf,

I agree that the new Intel and AMD processors are very similar in performance. And its too bad that AMD has to name their new cpu's funny. But the fact is that per mhz the AMD's do a lot more work than the Intel's so they have to try and market that some way...

There are two reasons I went with AMD. #1 is that they smoke Intel for price. I bought my XP1600+ for $112, the equivalent P4-1600 is over $150 (and many would argue that the 1600+ is faster than a P4-1600, which would make the equivalent Intel even more expensive.) Why pay the extra $40 to the man??? #2 It's in my nature to root for the underdog, and that is AMD against the industry gorilla of Intel.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: randallc on 2001-11-30 10:34:18 ]</font>

[tinycorkscrew]

Tigerwolf -

I've been using a Tyan Thunder K7 dual-Athlon motherboard for several months now. Tyan also makes the Tiger K7 motherboard that supports dual Athlon processors. So yes, dual-Athlon motherboards do exist.

[Shabubu]

There's only one dual Athlon board that I know of, it's by Tyan and it's pricey.

And again, I just got annoyed with the whole "athlon rules, itnel suxxors" mentality. They both have plus and minus points. And I know someones going to shout athlon wins at me, so go ahead.

[Sefy]

TigerWolf, it's not just the CPU that makes it expensive, it's more like a combination of the most have components that cause it: Motherboard+CPU+RAM

In AMD's case, all these components are cheap, EVEN if you take the DDR ram and not SDR (which is even cheaper now days!), with Intel, each and every component is so much more expensive that it just doesn't make it worth it.

Not to mention AMD promised support all the way through 2003 in the same Socket A technology, while as we know Intel, they have already changed the desigen of the P4! who said they won't do it again just to sell new mainboards ??? and not to mention how expensive is RDRAM!!

[tigerwolf]

well there are p4 systems that take sdram and ddr-ram. RDRAM has also come down considerably in price, comparable to DDR-RAM in price. I think rambus memory operates more efficiently, but that is my personal viewpoint. There are many that would argue that DDR is comparable or even better. I must agree that the mainboards and the cpu are more expensive with intel. I haven't decided yet if you are
truely just paying for the name or if it truely is a case of
you get what you pay for.

Changing the interface for the cpu doesn't bother me, if the new interface actually gives some benefit, but to change it to to promote sales of your mainboards I disagree with. Though, Making a promise to keep the socket A until 2003 has its upsides and downsides. While upgrading is easier you also limit the possibility of releasing a better interface. In the computing industry a new way to do things can appear overnight and by promising not to change your interface you could lock yourself in and put yourself in a catch 22.

[Sefy]

I haven't seen any P4 with SDRAM or DDR out yet, althought I could be wrong, i'm not that interested in P4 and any other product from Intel, so i'll presume there are, even so, as far as I remember, if you have a P3 and want a P4, you must also change your whole CASE, cause it uses a diffrent standard, if i'm wrong on this, please correct me.

As for prices of RAM, i'm sure if you will check recently, you'll see RDRAM is nearly twice the cost of any comparable SDR or DDR.

Lastly, I believe you are paying for the name, cause performance is something Intel is very lacking off recently, it doesn't give you the bang for the buck that comparing CPU or other products give.

[randallc]

If I'm not mistaken, the SiS645 chipset mates the P4 to DDR.

[tigerwolf]

P4 motherboards follow the same ATX standards as the p3 so you don't have to change your case. Okay you are correct RDRAM is still about twice as much as DDR-RAM. Memory prices are weird, I just bought 64MB of rdram pc800 for $30 like a month ago, now I see its like $57 from the same place I bought it. The Intel 845 chipset allows for sdram usage. And yes the SiS645 chipset lets you use the P4 with DDR-RAM, it also supports DDR-333.

I haven't played around with the new AMD XP processors yet so I don't know how well they perform against the p4. I know the T-bird is a pretty sweet chip.

[taco]

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On 2001-12-03 11:54:40, Sefy wrote:
I haven't seen any P4 with SDRAM or DDR out yet, althought I could be wrong, i'm not that interested in P4 and any other product from Intel, so i'll presume there are, even so, as far as I remember, if you have a P3 and want a P4, you must also change your whole CASE, cause it uses a diffrent standard, if i'm wrong on this, please correct me.

As for prices of RAM, i'm sure if you will check recently, you'll see RDRAM is nearly twice the cost of any comparable SDR or DDR.

Lastly, I believe you are paying for the name, cause performance is something Intel is very lacking off recently, it doesn't give you the bang for the buck that comparing CPU or other products give.

</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>
All of the new socket 478 and most of the older socket 432 P4 motherboards don't need special cases, only the first few socket 423 boards did. You will need a new power supply but you will also need one if you upgrade from a P3 to a Athlon processor.

You can build a P4 system for about the same($50 difference max)as a comparable speed XP know a days. I grabbed these prices from Pricewatch this morning:

Athlon XP 1800XP+ - $181
ESC K7S5A - $52
256MB of Corsair DDR - $42
Total - $275 US

Pentium 4 1.8GHz - $205
ECS P4VXAD - $75
256MB of Corsair DDR - $42
Total - $322 US

There a $47 difference in price between the two and if you were to get a motherboard with more features(like onboard RAID, 6 channel sound or overlocking abilities)from Asus, Abit or MSI the price difference would only be around $10-$20 which ain't much. Both of those systems would encode a VCD or divx in real time(I have a 1.8GHz P4 and it can encode a VCD or divx in real time), run all your games at full speed(with the right video card)and handle office apps with ease. Yes the 1800XP+ would benchmark faster then the 1.8GHz but would you notice that in everyday use, I doubt it unless all you do is run benchmarks all the time.

[Sefy]

It is a well known fact that a P4 combines with SDR or DDR does not perform as well as a P4 with RDR, which means the only speed advantage it had using RDR compared to XP, is completly gone, but I do agree you propably won't notice it on daily uses

You don't need to replace nither your case or your power supply going from P3 to Athlon, I know, Cause I switched alot of people from the two, and all I did was change the board/cpu.

tigerwolf, memory prices have gone way weird the last 2 weeks actually, I was gonna buy 1.5gb DDR cause 512mb costed 50$, and in 2 weeks, bang, it went up to 100$, even SDR prices are climbing up, I should have bought when I had the chance

SiS645 may mate the P4 with DDR, but how many of those have you seen yet ? and how is the compatibility ? SiS aren't very good when it comes to that, they are even worse then VIA.

[taco]

A P4 using a DDR based motherboard is as fast or faster then a P4 on a RDRAM based motherboard, check out these rewviews, http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=1541&p=9 , http://www.lostcircuits.com/motherboard/sis_645/8.shtml . I have a a MSI 645Ultra(which uses the SiS645 chipset)and I haven't had one compatibility, driver or motherboard problem since I got the board, its very, very stable and terrible free.

[Derrick]

Well, I have a P4 running on a Asus P4B (SDRAM). I bought this cmobination over Athlon XP cos it was cheaper for me to upgrade from my P3-800. Just bought a new chip and board, as well as the case. Everyone thought I was crazy buying a P4 on the SDRAM platform, as it was just released. I must say though, my machine really impresses me. I use it mostly to encode movies and MP3 and it does the job well. It costed me virtually nothing to go from P3-800 to P4-1500, but my VCD encoding went from 7-8 hours to 3 hours for a 100 min movie. I dont care how fast anybody elses machine is, I know I got a major improvement for the little money I spent.

I dont play games too often, but my machine sports an old Geforce II MX. Hey, what more do I need. I am able to play ALL the new games at 1024X768 with a silky smooth resolution! Why would I want 250fps in Sin, if I only need 100? Is it just for bragging rights? I sure think so.

All in all, my theory is, buy what you need. I spent practially nothing on my P4 1.5 and it serves its purpose. Its super-fast, runs ANYTHING I WANT TO, and it never crashes, running Win2k for weeks at a time.

Also, I dont have 6 fans making more noise than my grandpa does farting after a heavy night of drinking. hehehe

Its all about the Pentiums, baby!

[EricB]

I have never built up a computer from scratch, and would like to make one around the AMD-XP chip. Could anyone recommend a site / hardware list I could use to make sure I select compatible components? Thanks.

[Sefy]

Derrick, I like your attitude, and I respect your thinking, and I also think you got a great theory, which means ,everyone should get what they need, not to brag and say mine is better then yours by exactly 0.0000102293 frames or MHz.

However, you must also remember that not everyone are as lucky as you, and they can't get an upgrade for nothing or for as that little as you may have paid.

I've been using AMD since the good old days of K6-2 which everyone called crap, I called it my PC, and it worked great for what I needed it, and I still got 3 of those in the house being used.

[Derrick]

Sefy,

Thanks for the positive post. great to see you see things my way.

About my upgrade. I live in South Africa and EVERYTHING is expensive here, and not all the good components I read about in these forums are avalable to us.

I was lucky enough to get my components a bit above cost price and after selling the left-over components of my P3-800, the rest I had to cough up was'nt much at all. So I guess you right, not everyone would be as lucky as I was.

Nevertheless, it costed me a whole lot less than buying an XP system (which would have been nice) or a P4 running RAMBUS (which would have been better!) heheh.

And you're right about one thing....a lot of people buy hardware to have bragging rights, more so than they will make good use of it, and the system just loses value. Guess who loses out in the end?

I'm outta here..

BTW: This BB rocks!

[Kdiddy]

"I got the ECS K7S5A, only $55 and its awesome. Its not an overclockers motherboard but everything else is spot on. At half the price of competing models I had to go for it. "

Just did the same thing with an athlon 1600 w/ 256 DDR, and WOW is right...cut my encode time in half over my tbird 800 256 SDR..and getting the board & chip for $175 w/ delivery was a much cheaper alternative than equally performing P4 1.8 Ghz w/ board.

[sommersby]

Your comparing an AMD 1800+xp to a p4 1.8?
You must not read any mags, they don't even try to compare those together, try AMD 1800+ to p4 2.0, they test out in almost a dead heat, p4 has the edge in gaming, AMD in office production, and now we are talking alot more than $50
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On 2001-12-03 16:56:14, taco wrote:
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On 2001-12-03 11:54:40, Sefy wrote:
I haven't seen any P4 with SDRAM or DDR out yet, althought I could be wrong, i'm not that interested in P4 and any other product from Intel, so i'll presume there are, even so, as far as I remember, if you have a P3 and want a P4, you must also change your whole CASE, cause it uses a diffrent standard, if i'm wrong on this, please correct me.

As for prices of RAM, i'm sure if you will check recently, you'll see RDRAM is nearly twice the cost of any comparable SDR or DDR.

Lastly, I believe you are paying for the name, cause performance is something Intel is very lacking off recently, it doesn't give you the bang for the buck that comparing CPU or other products give.

</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>
All of the new socket 478 and most of the older socket 432 P4 motherboards don't need special cases, only the first few socket 423 boards did. You will need a new power supply but you will also need one if you upgrade from a P3 to a Athlon processor.

You can build a P4 system for about the same($50 difference max)as a comparable speed XP know a days. I grabbed these prices from Pricewatch this morning:

Athlon XP 1800XP+ - $181
ESC K7S5A - $52
256MB of Corsair DDR - $42
Total - $275 US

Pentium 4 1.8GHz - $205
ECS P4VXAD - $75
256MB of Corsair DDR - $42
Total - $322 US

There a $47 difference in price between the two and if you were to get a motherboard with more features(like onboard RAID, 6 channel sound or overlocking abilities)from Asus, Abit or MSI the price difference would only be around $10-$20 which ain't much. Both of those systems would encode a VCD or divx in real time(I have a 1.8GHz P4 and it can encode a VCD or divx in real time), run all your games at full speed(with the right video card)and handle office apps with ease. Yes the 1800XP+ would benchmark faster then the 1.8GHz but would you notice that in everyday use, I doubt it unless all you do is run benchmarks all the time.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

[randallc]

Sommersby,

I haven't looked at magazine reviews of the AMD XP 1600+ compared to an Intel P4 1800mhz. But I happen to have the 1600+ with DDR, and my buddy has a P4 1800mhz with RDRAM and mine beats his on all but FPU according to SiSoft.

So in my humble opinion, they are very close. Nothing like a real word example.

Randy

[JayMan]

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On 2001-11-29 04:47:21, Sefy wrote:
I'm surprised we aren't hearing any P4 lovers trying to bash the XP, i'm planning on getting the 1600XP as well, for 106$ it's one heck a CPU upgrade
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Sefy, please tell me where I can find the AMD XP 1600+ for $106. I've been searching the net and I can't find one anyway close to that price.

Thanx in advance.
JayMan

[tinycorkscrew]

taco says that one can build a Pentium 4 system of comparable performance to AMD system for about $50 more. I guess that depends on how you define comparable performance. sommersby is right in pointing out that a P4 1.8ghz doesn't really compare to an XP1800.

See this review:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1554&p=1

The XP 1500 beats the 1.8ghz P4 in 10 out of 14 benchmarks. Based on those results, I'd say that if we're going to compare the Athlons to the P4's at all, we should be comparing the XP 1500 to the 1.8 P4.

An XP 1500 costs $158 on pricewatch, a P4 1.8 goes for $212.

sommersby -

Your post always seem rational and level-headed, so I don't mean to nitpick or flame, but the P4 2.0 doesn't have an edge in gaming over the XP 1800. See the same article I linked to earlier in this post:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1554&p=1

The AMD 1900 beats the 2.0 ghz P4 in all four games tested, including Quake 3, a game that the P4 has dominated for a long time. However, the P4 is close to the 1900 in Quake 3, and it is faster than the 1800.

For the other 3 (newer) games, the AMD processors blow away the Pentiums. In Wolfenstein, the old 1.4ghz Thunderbird performed at the same level as the 2.0ghz Pentium! As for Max Payne and Serious Sam, the 1.4ghz Thunderbird beats the 2.0ghz Pentium, and the XP 1900 absoutely smokes the Pentium.

Like I said, I don't mean to flame, I don't work for AMD, and I'm not sure that AMD will always hold the performance crown, but if you'll read the Anandtech article you'll see that the fastest P4 on the market right now doesn't come close to the Athlon XP for gaming, and in games other than Quake 3 it can barely keep up with the old Tbird.

[artbatista]

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On 2001-12-03 16:29:16, tigerwolf wrote:
P4 motherboards follow the same ATX standards as the p3 so you don't have to change your case. Okay you are correct RDRAM is still about twice as much as DDR-RAM. Memory prices are weird, I just bought 64MB of rdram pc800 for $30 like a month ago, now I see its like $57 from the same place I bought it. The Intel 845 chipset allows for sdram usage. And yes the SiS645 chipset lets you use the P4 with DDR-RAM, it also supports DDR-333.

I haven't played around with the new AMD XP processors yet so I don't know how well they perform against the p4. I know the T-bird is a pretty sweet chip.

</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Actually, the P4 mobo's power sypply IS DIFFERENT. There's an extra plug for P4 only, so a new power supply is needed when you go for a P4 mobo.


Art

[shorsfall]

Let me offer some free advice. Iam a computer Tech.

To upgrade from a PIII to a PIV you do need to change the Motherboard, memory and power supply. The reason I say you need to change memory is that it doesnt make much sense running a PIV at 2Ghz with a 400Mhz FSB and running PC133Mhz SDRAM. The Rambus will be far more efficient.

To upgrade from an Athlon Thunderbird (266Mhz FSB) to a Athlon XP, you only need to change the processor (check to see whether your motherboard will support the XP, normally only a bios update is required).

As you can see the AMD alternative is a much cheaper upgrade solution.

To give you some prospective on price between a AMD system and a Intel system I have put to systems together (note these prices are in Australia)

Intel Pentium IV 1.9GHZ Processor $750
Intel D845WN Motherboard with Onboard Audio (Socket 47$310
PC-800 RDRAM Samsung Chipset Intel Certified $275

Total $1335

AMD Athlon XP 1900+ (1.6GHZ)$721
MSI K7T266PRO2 Motherboard with Onboard Sound & USB LAN $310
256MB PC-2100 DDR DIMM RAM $148

Total $1179

As you can see the AMD system is $156 cheaper than the Intel. These prices will vary depending on what motherboard you use and where you live. Also the AMD system way outperforms the Intel system.

If you want myu advice, buy the AMD. It offers better value for money and greater performance on a 1 to 1 basis.

[randallc]

Tinycorkscrew, you say "An XP 1500 costs $158 on pricewatch, a P4 1.8 goes for $212. "

but I see AMD XP 1500's for $107 and 1600+'s for $119.

I bought my 1600+ for $112 about two weeks ago.

randy

[shorsfall]

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: shorsfall on 2001-12-13 23:02:14 ]</font>

[shorsfall]

Taco you do not need to change the supply to go from PIII to Athlon. However you do if you go from PIII to PIV

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: shorsfall on 2001-12-13 23:01:34 ]</font>

[tinycorkscrew]

randy -

You're right - I was looking at the price of an MP1500, not an XP1500. The lowest price on pricewatch for an XP1500 is indeed $107, so it's more than $100 cheaper than a P4 1.8ghz. Thanks for correcting me - I thought $158 seemed a bit high.

[Sefy]

JayMan, all the prices I mention are from PriceWatch, however, prices lately are shifting upwards (anyone noticed how RAM jumped WAY up lately??!!).

shorsfall, you forgot to mention that if he is upgrading from a P3 or AMD system, he would also require a new Power Supply, and that is a bit more money

artbatista, thank you for proving me right! I just tend to say Case, cause in Israel when you buy a Case or a Power Supply, it is just about the same price