AMD Athlon 64 3200 Vs Intel Pentium 4 3.2 1

[JPdev]

Hi,

I'm thinking of buying a new PC and I was wondering how these two chipsets compare against each other. I've read that AMD's are faster than their pentium counterparts but are prone to overheating? I've always gone with Intel before but now i'm thinking of swithching. Could anyone give me any tips on which one gives better performance?

Thanks!

 

[paparazi]

JPdev
I believe the new Athlon 64 3200 is slightly faster in some benchmarks but both are very good CPU's (not chipsets BTW)
Overheating! well the boot is on the other foot now! the AMD 64 is actually a cooler chip than the Intel Prescott with users of the Intel chip complaining of heat related issues, infact many are recommending sticking with the older 800fsb Northwood core CPU as there appears to be little differance in performance.
Go for an Nvidia Nforce3 250 based motherboard with the A64
Intel 875P with the P4 but things are about to change quite dramaticly when PCI express becomes mainstream in the next 6/8 months.

Martin


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[JPdev]

Thanks Martin

 

[paparazi]

JPdev
AMD does look to have taken the initiative back from Intel at the moment and are on a high but the lead, if there is one is small as usually.
What they do have though, is a product that is definately right up there with Intel and as usual is cheaper to boot!
I personally have built several PC's now with both platforms, I am ipressed with both but have to give the nod to AMD because of price.
Martin

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[Crowley16]

the 64 3200's aren't really any cheaper than thier Intel counterparts...

 

[paparazi]

Crowley16
About 20% cheaper here in the UK, and roughly 25/30% cheaper on the motherboard (Nforce3 250 versa's 875PE) not a massive amount but then AMD don't need to make compensations for their A64 products being inferior unlike with Athlon XP Barton Versa's P4 800fsb, where clearly the Intel chip was/is better at any given CPU rating.
Martin

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[ceh4702]

The Athlon 64 or fx53 should run cooler than a P4. Dont kid yourself. The Pentium 4's do create a lot of Heat. The new Prescott P4E's with 90 nm Die process run even hotter. I think often that this information is spread by salesmen. Salesmen should never be trusted to tell you the truth about anything. Salesmen often work on commission and the more expensive the computer the more money they make so it is better for them when you pay more money. Nothing wrong with a higher priced comptuer if you are actually getting a higher value for more money. However, don't get ripped off.

As far as speed and performance goes the Northwood P4C's with 130 nm die process that run at 800 Mhz have an edge on the Athlon XP processors. I think both of these have a tendency to run quite warm. However, I built a computer with the AMD Athlon XP2800+ processor using the Retail Heat Sink and Fan and I dont think I have ever even checked the Temperature it runs at. It has been running great for about 6 months. Don't beleive this running hot garbage.

The P4EE (Extended Edition) is a fast running processor, but I dont know if the $1,000 price tag is worth paying. Toms Hardware did an article a while back where they pointed out that a Dual Xeon Motheroboard system is cheaper than a P4EE (Extended Edition).

If you have to have a petium 4 processor the P4C processors that run at an FSB 0f 800Mhz are the best deal out there. However, the Athlon 64 bit processors are very fast and can create more throughput with the existing memory simply because they are 64 bit.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[cdogg]

I think both of these have a tendency to run quite warm...Don't beleive this running hot garbage.

Well, I've got to throw a comment in! You know me!

The allegation that Athlon XP CPU's run hotter than P4's used to be true. Earlier models like the Palomino and the first Thoroughbreds indeed ran slightly hotter than P4's at the time (by a few degrees). As the Northwood P4 moved into higher speeds (2.6GHz and higher), they started catching up. Around the same time, AMD released the Thoroughbred 'B' which ran much cooler. Both the Northwood and newer Athlon XP's are about equal.

Since then, the P4 EE (Prestonia and Prescott) run really hot compared to Athlon 64's. On average they leak as much as 5 Watts more than the 64's.

This chart should show that:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040419/images/cpu_history_big.gif

Just look at the Power Dissipation column to see what I'm talking about...


~cdogg
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