Keep in mind that a stock Barton XP3200 isn't that much cheaper than an
A64 3000, and that the A64 was *only* running at stock speed. If someone
has the inclination to overclock anyway....
Yeah I did more research - might as well cause I was clueless on the
64s and Ill probably upgrade at the end of the year.
I thought it was a mess with the 939s , btx and PCI express all talked
about so I thought it would be better to wait it out.
Its still a bit like that but in many ways Im surprised how low some
of the parts have gotten.
One thing he is talking about OCing a 2500 barton 2500 to 3200.
I defintely dont think its worth paying $170 for a 3200 barton.
You can get a low end 64 CPU close to $200 and a socket 754
motherboard even an Abit I saw at Newegg for $110 or so. I noticed the
MAX3 version was $150 though the two MBs seemed to have an identical
description. Not sure what advantage the MAX3 version has though Ive
seen a post saying it was good.
But considering it IS better for gaming though as Toms Hardware points
out the really blow out numbers were caused by the fact he says he
tested the games like Quake at low res which he said puts more of the
work on the CPU while higher res etc put more work on the rest of the
system. Ill take his word for it.
I dont know - like I said if the memory problems have been sorted out
by now - seems like all the recent boards have big ones when they
first come out - but Ive seen posts of people running the Abit board +
64 Amd and Kingston VALUE mem !!! He says with no problems. So that
changes things.
You could get a $100 or so board (abit or asus though they have many
boards in the $150-200 range so if you go that route its way more
expensive) , low end 64 bit CPU (not the FX) - the new low end 2800
or 3000 is listed as $180-210 and cheaper mem and still hit $500.
That makes the 64 bit a lot more attractive. If you already have mem
that you can carry over than a $100 board + $200 CPU isnt THAT bad
even now for people thinking about it.
However , theres still the confusion over the 939 AMD 64 bit intro ,
which will make the 754 and 940 more dead endish though they still say
theres still life in them and the cost makes it viable now - the 754 .
One guy at a website predicts $200 939 chips by nov.
And then theres the new nforce3 250 chipset which many think is the
best , I think it just came out but I think the prices are high around
$200 or so. The nforce3 150s - many are really cheap $100 or even
less.
So there might be deadendish issues with the current 64 bit boards -
sure you can upgrade a few CPUs steps but theres a lot of changes in
the works .
Looks like I was wrong and its actually getting worth it to upgrade
for some who dont mind spending a few hundred to $400-500 for a low
end 64 bit if you dont mind possibly being frozen out of the PCI
express , 939 and who knows about BTX and getting a less that state
of the art chipset - nforce3 150 or something. You never know about
these things cause many changes seem sort of slow in recent years. I
was reading some articles from Dec last year that predicted 04 first
half there would be NO Pent boards with AGP anymore and possibly BTX .
BTX seems like itll take a while.
For the people who want to upgrade at really minimal cost or want to
upgrade for cheap and wait until theXmas season when the 939, better
chips sets, PCI express and who knows even BTX - all come together ,
or at least a few of them at a price point of say $400-500 total ---
the barton 2500 OC with a cheap nforce2 board is still a viable
option.
The big difference in cost though is if you can use cheaper mem on the
64 bit you put together.
Heres the best I could scrape up concerning PCI express :
GRAPHICS FIRM Nvidia has already introduced its PCI Express but you
can still not do anything with those cards since you can not plug it
anywhere. Nvidia is using its famous HIS chip, for building bridges to
Babylon.
In the second quarter, Nvidia plans to invade the market with its PCI
Express PCX series which are used with the NV19 to NV39 old chips. But
you actually won’t see any PCI Express platforms until very late Q2
with serious availability until Q3.
Nvidia has four cards that will be native PCI Express starting with
NV45 PCI Express version of NV40. There is an interesting thought
about this chip anyway. Someone suggested that NV40 might be a native
PCI Express chip with inside bridge to make it AGP capable. We don’t
have any proof for this but it sounds very interesting.
And the 939 :
Launch date leaks for 939-pin Athlon
Matt Loney
ZDNet UK
March 25, 2004, 17:45 BST
Tell us your opinion
The launch of the 939-pin Athlon, which will help lower the price of
64-bit PCs, is approaching
AMD is likely to launch an important update to its Athlon-64 processor
at the end of May, say sources close to the company. While some Web
sites have pinned the date down to 25 May, AMD has a habit of shifting
launches at the last minute to accommodate the whims of major
customers, or to time the launches with trade shows and other events.
But, according to one well-placed source, 25 May is not a bad guess.
"Socket 939 is still on schedule," he said. Publicly, AMD has
consistently maintained that it would launch the 939-pin version of
its Athlon processor in the second quarter of 2004. Working versions
of the 939-pin Athlon were on show at CeBIT last week, indicating that
samples are already shipping.
The 939-pin version of the Athlon processor will eventually supplant
the mainstream desktop 754-pin Athlon 64. The extra pins in the
939-pin version enable AMD to switch on a second memory controller,
which should boost speeds, but should also help cut 64-system costs
because of the lower bill of materials that they enable. AMD's
high-end Athlon FX chips, with their 940 pins, already have dual
memory controllers, but the 939-pin version of the Athlon will have
one advantage over these too, says AMD: they will enable significantly
cheaper motherboards.
Savings will come, says AMD, from the fact that the 939-pin version of
the chip will enable manufacturers to produce four-layer motherboards,
which are significantly easier to design and build -- and therefore
cheaper -- than the six-layer motherboards required by the 940-pin
version.
The 939-pin chips will also address one of the early criticisms of the
current FX chips: namely the performance penalty that arises through
the use of ECC memory normally reserved for the server market. The new
packaging eliminates this, and AMD appears confident of the
performance improvements, recently relabelling its 2.2GHz Athlon 64
3400+ as 3500+, despite halving the L2 cache to 512KB with the updated
'Newcastle' mainstream desktop core.
