best bang for the buck

[Bitsbucket]

What is the best MOBO and CPU bang for the buck right now? I really don't
care if it is AMD or Intel, any suggestions?
TIA
Bitsbucket

 

[Dave C.]

What is the best MOBO and CPU bang for the buck right now? I really don't
care if it is AMD or Intel, any suggestions?
TIA
Bitsbucket


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According to www.pricewatch.com, same price range at the moment would be:

P4 3.2 Prescott vs. Athlon64 3200+ or

P4 3.4 Prescott vs. Athlon64 3400+

Beyond that range, you can pay up to several hundred dollars for either an
Intel or AMD chip, but hardly anybody gives a damn about those chips, as
hardly anybody spends as much on a processor as they do on the entire rest
of their system combined.

So the P4 3.2/3.4 and Athlon64 3200/3400 would be the best indicators of who
has the best bang for buck, at the moment.

Gaming: OpenGL: The Intel chips are much faster
Gaming: DX8: The AMD chips are faster, no doubt about it
Gaming: DX9: It's virtually a tie, as the AMD chips are two to three
TENTHS of a percentage point faster than Intel.
So on the gaming benchmarks, that's one win for Intel, one win for AMD and
one tie.
GAMING OVERALL: TIED

Business Applications: Office Applications: Intel blows AMD away
Business Applications: Internet Content Creation: Intel blows AMD away
Business Applications: Overall: Intel blows AMD away

Video Encoding: This one is so lopsided, AMD should have thrown in the
towel before entering the ring. Intel wins by a landslide.

Audio Encoding: Again, Intel wins by a landslide

Synthetic Benchmarks: (PC Mark 2004): Here, Intel blows AMD away on both
*CPU* and memory benchmarks

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040322/index.html

Even at the same price for CPU, an Intel system can be cheaper to
build, as the P4 boards are more mature at this point, and thus there are
better bargains to be found. Considering that an Intel system will likely
be cheaper to build and WILL perform better on all benchmarks except DX8,
it's kind of a no-brainer as to which chip to build with, at the moment.

The following is an article on the Athlon 64 2800+. But more interesting
is,
the benchmarks included in the article are a GREAT comparison of the 3.2GHz
P4
processors with the Athlon64 3200+. In this article, these two processors
are
pretty evenly matched, with Intel being faster on some benchmarks, and AMD
being faster on others.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2038&p=1

Now lets look at what Sharky Extreme has to report in their article about
the
3.4GHz Prescott processor. This one has benchmarks that are a great
comparison
of the 3.4GHz Intel chips with the Athlon64 3400+. Here, you have to be
careful,
as Sharky doesn't organize their charts in order of fastest to slowest. And
on
some charts, LOWER scores are better. But if you read all the benchmarks,
you
will again notice that the two chips are pretty evenly matched, with AMD
faster
on some and Intel faster on others.

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/cpu/article.php/3261_3329681__1

Intel is better than AMD, at the moment. The only way AMD could change that
would be to drop their prices by 30% or better. -Dave, updated 10/19/04

 

[Spajky]

What is the best MOBO and CPU bang for the buck right now? I really don't
care if it is AMD or Intel, any suggestions?

DFI LANParty nF3 250Gb + sempron3100+ w/good ram & OC a bit !

 

[JK]

What software do you run? For business software, an Athlon XP2600+
and an nForce2 motherboard would be good and cheap. For games,
mutimedia, Photoshop, etc., an Athlon 64 3000+ would be great.

 

[Cuzman]

" What is the best MOBO and CPU bang for the buck right now? "


Depends what RAM you have, and how you are with overclocking. For sktA, an
NF7-S v2.0 and an Athlon XP Mobile or Athlon XP 2500+ has been the
bang-for-buck choice for some time.

However, you may wish to include some further upgrade potential in your
choice. The skt754 Sempron 3100+ overclocks well, and most won't need the
64-bit capabilities just yet. Add that to a good overclocking board and
you're set.

As for skt939, the 3000+ is less than $150, but motherboards are still more
expensive than their skt754 counterparts.