p4 or athlon 64?

[Bella]

i join the ranks here at TWC in asking which is better and the basis for your opinions? i have enough extra cash coming up to finally build a new gaming rig to get some load off my work system. is the athlon64 worth the extra $$$ or are there better/cheaper ways to produce the same results?

[squeaky]

Since you want a gaming computer, use an A64

A64s excel at games while Intel tends to excell at applications

[Portuguese Rebel]

is the athlon64 worth the extra $$$

What extra $$$? At least where i come from the prices are mainly leveled but the AMD64 are ususally cheaper than the P4 counterpart.

[Pent uP Rage]

Don't ask me...my sig speaks for my opinion :grin

[OTZ]

keeping in mind there are exceptions to every rule, an A64 is the way to go.

[Ardeur]

What extra $$$? At least where i come from the prices are mainly leveled but the AMD64 are ususally cheaper than the P4 counterpart.

I was going to say the same thing. I also agree with squeaky that the main difference between the chips is what they are aimed at doing. Intel goes for the business market, Athlon for the gamers.

However, that being said, I run a P4 on my gaming system and it works just fine, although it runs a bit hot, this is easily alleviated with a beefy cooler.

Happy gaming.

[Hvatum]

Originally posted by Brodiseus@Apr 25 2005, 02:14 PM

I was going to say the same thing. I also agree with squeaky that the main difference between the chips is what they are aimed at doing. Intel goes for the business market, Athlon for the gamers.

However, that being said, I run a P4 on my gaming system and it works just fine, although it runs a bit hot, this is easily alleviated with a beefy cooler.

Happy gaming.

Yeah with the speed of CPUs today you can't really go wrong. Both Pentium and Athlon are blazing fast - Athlon's are just a bit Blazing-er at gaming.

[squeaky]

wouldn't call it blazing-er, exactly.
A64 runs processes much more efficiently, though at a lower frequency. Intel's processes are less efficient, but they can cram a ton of them in very quickly (relies more on ghz). In most business environments, they want more stuff done, so Intel generally performs better

[Bella]

so a p4 would be wise to use for, say, an image editing workstation?

[OTZ]

yes.

[powerbits]

Originally posted by Bella@Apr 28 2005, 08:23 AM
so a p4 would be wise to use for, say, an image editing workstation?

Forget that

I have constructed over 100 PC's with different configs and CPU's.

Athlon 64's beat p4 in every single applications.

Offcourse make sure you RAM is fast too

[Portuguese Rebel]

Originally posted by Bella@Apr 28 2005, 01:23 PM
so a p4 would be wise to use for, say, an image editing workstation?

What kind of image editing? If its simple pictures then you don't even need a very powerful computer.

[squeaky]

the benefits of either show more during higher taxing processes, like video editing and encoding, and even then only with large files.
The differences aren't very noticeable to most users and mostly apply only to encoding gurus and such who could actually save a ton of time when encoding or something.
neither will do you wrong, but if you want an extra edge in whatever you're doing, each processor has its own little advantages.

[powerbits]

Originally posted by Portuguese Rebel@Apr 28 2005, 12:48 PM
What kind of image editing? If its simple pictures then you don't even need a very powerful computer.

also true :grin

[Hvatum]

Originally posted by squeaky@Apr 27 2005, 06:08 PM
wouldn't call it blazing-er, exactly.
A64 runs processes much more efficiently, though at a lower frequency. Intel's processes are less efficient, but they can cram a ton of them in very quickly (relies more on ghz). In most business environments, they want more stuff done, so Intel generally performs better

Not for long though.

Intel is scraping the thoroughbred core for the Pentium 5 and switching over to the Pentium-M core. They couldn't keep increasing the busspeed forever. It's funny actually, the pride and joy of Intel's chip development is being replaced by something originally developed in Israel. Both companies have now acknowledged that efficiency is more important than clockspeed.

As to their performance, I'd call both top models "blazers" simply because they're so much faster than the chips we had a few years ago or honestly need for office work. Back in the days of Windows 95 a faster CPU honestly made a huge difference. It could reduce the amount of crashing or make the UI useably fast - a fast CPU back then made things possible that weren't before. Now we just get upgrades so things are 20-30 percent faster, that's a different ballgame IHMO.

Now that I think about it actually I'd recommend AMD for anyone who even occasionally plays stressing games. The performance boost from an Intel CPU for the average desktop user just isn't important or really noticable. Who cares if your dvd encodes 20% faster when the result is the same?
On the other hand a similiarly priced AMD CPU gives a boost to the framerate. That's something even a casual player will notice.

[squeaky]

since you brought up Pentium M, that should get some notice too.

the Pentium M is oodles more efficient than the normal Pentium 4 and Pentium D lines. The architecture is vastly different and you see their clockspeeds in AMD range (1.6-2.13 ghz). Benchmakrs show that the Pentium Ms are very comparable to their AMD counterparts at their various clockspeeds but still present the same disadvantages as the AMD in pure-clockspeed reliant applications.

Plus, the Pentium M won't burn like a prescott