I am building a computer to take to college (go Jackets!) and I have
been trying to research this topic, but cannot make up my mind. It is
better to take the leap and go with the as of yet largely unsupport AMD
64, or try the new 800/1000 FSB Prescotts that Intel has coming out.
I'm not trying to start a flame war, just honest answers to a curious
question. Thanks for your help.
Going AMD 64 is no leap. It's well established as a high performance,
cool running, high value - if still high end, 32-bit cpu. And come
september and WindowsXP64, it will be an even higher performing 64-bit
cpu.
(I took this opportunity to post my 64-bit FAQ, in this newsgroup.
Check it out, for more 64-bit background.)
For anything else than video editing and media encoding, it's also the
most powerful '86 cpu.
Don't be fooled by benchmarks like Sysmark and PCmark. These are
custom tailored around the P4, HT ('04 versions) and clockrate, and
don't correlate well to real world allround performance. Winstone are
the only relevant, application based 'general' benchmarks, IMO.
Intel are uninteresting right now. They're in a bit of trouble. PC
manufacturers are reshuffling their lineups for more AMD chips (except
Dell, of course, who entered an exclusive marketing agreement with
Intel, in order to hit AMD in the low budget segment.). Intel's cpus
are more expensive, as well as slower and hotter.
AMD passed Intel in desktop sales in April (yeah, I'm pinching myself
too).
Intel has been caught out by their own P4/Prescott/Tejas
'GHz'-marketing strategy. This has failed for perfectly predictable
reasons. Heat increases roughly 7 times faster than clockrate (I
think, - at least I've seen this figure somewhere). At the same time,
the technology for running a high clock, will sharply reduce
performance per (clock*transistors), resulting in a large, low
performing, hot and expensive die.
Intel has in fact entirely abandoned pursuing this technology now. But
their new, slower clocked, desktop iAMD64-cpu, "Conroe", (Pentium5 ?),
will not be ready until late05/early06. So until then, they will have
to survive on their brand name, tweaks to the Prescott, and plain
consumer ignorance.
...And 'cooperative' sites like tomshardware, whos "selection" of
benchmarks is very careful. If you would like to see the benchmarks
tomshardware won't show you, visit anandtech, aceshardware,
firingsquad, etc.
The P4's "Hyper Threading" feature is a really nice feature, if you're
into abusive multitasking. This, together with excellent media
encoding performance, are the primary benefits of Intel's P4s vs. AMD
chips.
But you get that in the P4C as well. The P4C is still somewhat
expensive as a 32-bit cpu. But considering the cost of a purchase of
an entire system, value can still be very good with a 2.8GHz P4C and
mature dual channel DDR400 components. Particularly if your main
interest/use is media. If Intel keep the P4C, and lower prices, it
might continue to be the most interesting Intel desktop cpu.
It's still a bit early to say what P4E, Prescott, will eventually
amount to. But frankly stated, it looks like crap sofar! And socket
775, BTX, Grantsdale, DDR2 and 1066FSB are not going to significantly
change anything about that, IME. Those buzzwords an' things, allowing
a ramped up clock and heat production, might make Intel's lackluster
cpu possible to sell at all, for another year. But it's going to be
expensive and hot, - for a soon-to-be-obsolete 32-bit mediachip. Media
apps, as long as 64-bit apps haven't taken over, are the only
demanding apps, the P4E will clearly be a good choice for.
Otherwise, my recommendation is to not invest too much money in 32-bit
PCs. If you go 32-bit, don't buy expensive.
(But whatever you do, don't buy a Celeron for a desktop!)
I'm like very sure, that Athlon64 will be a better choice for most
performance uses. For gaming, flight simulators, software development,
cinematics, science, math/numerics, technical/engineering. And the
primary reason for that, is not just the better performance, but the
space of the 64-bit memory model.
Final words: What do you really need for college? And what is
reasonable for you to afford? AMD socket A is only 32-bit, but they
perform quite well, even outstanding on older software, and sure are
dirt cheap, and so are some decent mobos.
What exactly do you get by going from $500 to $2000? 50% better
performance? 60% even, perhaps? - How many months longer, before it's
obsolete, does that last you?
ancra
