I had a choice between a P4 3.0 GHz and an Athlon 64 3000+, and it now seems
like I'll buy the Athlon 64, since it seems the better choice for games.
However, I'd like to know if those of you who have bought the retail version
have had any heating problems with the provided fan and heatsink? I
remember not being able to play a game back when I had my K6-2 550 MHz
because the temperature outside was around 40 degrees celsius, but I know
AMD processors are heating a lot less now than they used to. By the way, I
do not intend to overclock my Athlon, but I still intend to use it for games
so...it won't stay idle
So should I buy another fan/heatsink or the ones
provided will do the job without any problems? Thanks for your input!
Yeah real cool. I have the 3000. In fact Ive found the last two AMDs
Ive had the 2500 barton OCed to 3200 with stock fan and the 939 3000
with stock run incredibly cool. The earlier ones were the ones that
ran hot the Tbird 1.4 etc. The Tbird 1.4 was super hot. The 1600 and
1700 I bought after that were moderately hot. Not super hot but not
super cool either. The ones after that Ive bought the 2000 and barton
2500 was weirdly cool. Ive seen a few people post they had heating
problems but Im not sure what thats about. My Barton 2500 seemed to
stay the same really low 104-109 whether I ran it at 2500 or 3200. I
thought something was wrong with the sensors. It would go around 114F
if I really used it.
The 939 with stock fan is kind of the same way weirdly low. In fact my
chipset sensor is higher than the CPU which is weirdly low again. I
thought this was a chaintech defect but Ive since read others who get
the same readings and there was some grousing about how there wasnt
active cooling for the chipset on the MBs that could explain why the
chipset temps are higher. The main whine was about OCing the board
which some said was limited by not having active cooling. I have no
idea if thats true. The newer board Ive heard come with active cooling
now. The funny thing is it runs fine - mine w/o active cooling and a
while ago the trend was towards passive cooling for MBs cause the
little fan would burn out after a year causing big problems - hanging
because the active cooler came with dinky heatsinks. And the whole
whine about noise from fans.
Anyway everyones talked about the hot Pents in the prescotts , big
problems with heat while the AMDs were far cooler.
A post at one site claims the newest gen of Pent 4s runs cooler about
as hot as the 754 socket AMD 64s which are hotter than the 939s but I
dont know if that claim is true.
Heres Toms Hardware in a recent article:
The Athlon 64 FX Overclocked to 3 GHz
AMD In Striking Distance Of 3 GHz
It's nothing new that the Athlon 64 offers at least the same
performance as the Pentium 4 while running at a far slower speed. That
said, in the last two years power loss values have risen to such
levels with Intel devices that the manufacturer is now vulnerable on
two fronts.
With the introduction and progressive optimization of 90 nm
manufacturing technology, AMD will now also be able to push the
envelope beyond the psychologically important 3 GHz real clock speed
mark. That is a mark that Intel can only just beat with its latest
dual-core Pentium D.
