Athlon XP still legit?

[crisium]

You'll be able to play any game before 2006 with an Athlon XP still. That's when Oblivion came out, and that's a good time frame for the era of multi-core to begin. You can surely play several games from 2006-2007 with only 1 core, but it's just a general time frame.

The finest AGP card is the Radeon 3850. If you have no illusions of playing games from the past several years, you'd want to pair that in there.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102730

Though being AGP that's way overpriced. A PCI-e 4850 is about that same price.

It's a better choice to invest your money into a new mobo, cpu, and ram. Socket AM3 with an Athlon II (a CPU that's anywhere from 2 to 4 cores with most variants under $99) is your best bet.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...i&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=True&Order=PRICE

 

[OS]

lol athlon XP not fast enough for fastest agp card tho

my athlon xp 3200 actually can play crysis med/low maybe 20 fps

the funny thing is i have a 2600xt which is molasses slow and no matter how high the resolution, fps the same...even at 1680...

 

[Pederv]

I put a couple 3850's into a couple XP systems (2500 Barton and 2700 XP) last year (Christmas 2008) for a couple of nephews. I ran some benchmarks on them, if you do a search you should find the posts.

 

[CraigRT]

Just upgraded from my Opteron 170 which I upgraded from a rig just like yours, because it could not handle modern games well enough anymore.

The responses in here already have you covered but just wanted to add more real world experience. My new i7 is running everything nicely

Poor Opty... was such a great CPU in the day.

 

[Steelski]

Best I could do at Newegg was this.
case + PSU $30
Geforce 7600 GS $30
Memory2gig/Mptherboard./CPU combo (semptron x2 2GHZ) $93
CPU cooler and some thermal grease. $10
HDD $39
thats $200 for a decent old gaming rig.
You will probably need at least one optical drive to install stuff on each computer.
the CPU/Motherboard and memory combo is a great one.

 

[aggr1103]

Judging from his list of games, I'd say the OP is trying to build several systems for a retro gaming lan (if he verified this, I might've skipped it).

That said, I've bought several athlon xp/mobo's for $10-$15 shipped off fs/t forums over the last year to build basic web surfing computers for family. I packed them into rosewill cases with crappy psu's and anywhere from 512 - 1gb of ddr. I don't think I ever spent more than $75 on a single build.

One build had an xp 1700+ matched with a $5 radeon 8500. Played WC 3 and UT 2k3 fine - granted, ut 2k3 was at a ridiculously low res with not a whole lot of eye candy, but it was playable just to see if it would play.

If the OP wants to build them, it can be done on his budget, but it will take some beating of the bushes. Ebay and fs/t forums at reputable sites like this will make for good starts.

 

[peonyu]

For the games your trying to play, a athlon XP 2500+ could handle them fine. I would aim for a Geforce 3 at the minimum and 2 gb or Ram. That should handle all of the games you listed at 1280 resolution easily [with no AA on].

A P4 2.8ghz is roughly equivalent to a 2500+ so if you can find that cpu+motherboard combo for less theres no reason not to grab it.

Also dont forget about the single Athlon 64 cpus...the cpu in my sig I sold for a meer 10$ on Ebay when I upgraded to a Core 2 duo system around a year ago. They sell for cheap since they are single core A64. The board sold for about the same and it was Agp and used DDR1 ram aswell...So definately get a A64 single core cpu over any Athlon XP or P4 cpu if its going for the same price [A64 ran rings around P4s and Athlon XPs].

 

[jiffylube1024]

A PentiumD, depending on the model would do a decent job.

The q8300 will definitely handle the games out there.

Jason

No the Pentium D is rubbish -- check out the original Core 2 reviews -- a 1.83 GHz Core 2 was trouncing 3+ GHz Pentium D's. It's easy to forget just how bad the Pentium D's really are. Plus they're power hungry monsters (even the 65nm chips).

http://anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2795&p=14

And that was in oooold-school games that were not heavily multithreaded.

The Athlon XP is not a gaming chip in today's industry and even the Pentium D was seriously outclassed by sub 2 GHz Core 2 Duo's and 2 GHz Athlon64 X2's.
------

There's no point in wasting any money switching from an Athlon XP to a Pentium D. An AMD Athlon X3 Rana core 2.9 GHz will run you a mere $74.99 and absolutely obliterate those old chips, as will a $67.99 Intel pentium E5300 2.6 GHz. Grab a cheap mobo and some DDR2 off the forums and you're cooking!

 

[peonyu]

No the Pentium D is rubbish -- check out the original Core 2 reviews -- a 1.83 GHz Core 2 was trouncing 3+ GHz Pentium D's. It's easy to forget just how bad the Pentium D's really are. Plus they're power hungry monsters (even the 65nm chips).

http://anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2795&p=14

And that was in oooold-school games that were not heavily multithreaded.

The Athlon XP is not a gaming chip in today's industry and even the Pentium D was seriously outclassed by sub 2 GHz Core 2 Duo's and 2 GHz Athlon64 X2's.
------

There's no point in wasting any money switching from an Athlon XP to a Pentium D. An AMD Athlon X3 Rana core 2.9 GHz will run you a mere $74.99 and absolutely obliterate those old chips, as will a $67.99 Intel pentium E5300 2.6 GHz. Grab a cheap mobo and some DDR2 off the forums and you're cooking!

Your missing the point though, the OP wants to LAN a few computers to play 2-4 year old games when he has people over. And he stated a ridiculously low budget of $100 total for mobo+cpu+ram. That cuts out alot of the newer CPUs, unless he can luck out on the f/s/t.

 

[ghost recon88]

I've managed to snag quite a few Athlon XPs so far for $5 shipped or less, so it looks like this is going to work after all

 

[taltamir]

athlonXP? haha!
throw that dinosaur in the trash.

 

[Arkaign]

For the games your trying to play, a athlon XP 2500+ could handle them fine. I would aim for a Geforce 3 at the minimum and 2 gb or Ram. That should handle all of the games you listed at 1280 resolution easily [with no AA on].

A P4 2.8ghz is roughly equivalent to a 2500+ so if you can find that cpu+motherboard combo for less theres no reason not to grab it.

Also dont forget about the single Athlon 64 cpus...the cpu in my sig I sold for a meer 10$ on Ebay when I upgraded to a Core 2 duo system around a year ago. They sell for cheap since they are single core A64. The board sold for about the same and it was Agp and used DDR1 ram aswell...So definately get a A64 single core cpu over any Athlon XP or P4 cpu if its going for the same price [A64 ran rings around P4s and Athlon XPs].

That just isn't true. The A64 is definitely superior to the P4, but even that was fairly competitive at similar ratings; eg Athlon64 3000+ was about equal at gaming to a P4 3ghz, etc.

People forget that with AthlonXP, it was really only the better value over the P4, but performance it was equal for the most part, with P4C running away at 2.8ghz+. The 3.2Ghz P4C was notably faster than an AthlonXP 3200+.

I think it's the rosy color of the past, I had a 2500+ overclocked to 3200+ levels on an Abit NF2 board, and it worked fantastic at a fraction of the price of an equal P4 rig, but in no way was it 'better' in any way other than the value for $.

Athlon64 was an awesome architecture, but again, the real improvement was IPC. An Athlon64 3000+ was about the same speed as the AthlonXP 3000/3200+, but did so with a lower clock speed (and of course could be overclocked on air far beyond the normal range for AXP chips). Stock v stock, there's no real reason to prefer one over the other outside of overclocking and the generally far superior s754/s939 upgradability and chipset quality.

Anyhow, a P4C 2.8Ghz is definitely faster than an AXP 2500+ at stock speeds. Also the AXP's are gimped in performance unless you have a good NF2 or Via KT400 board. The KT266/333 boards were mostly terrible.

 

[aggr1103]

I've managed to snag quite a few Athlon XPs so far for $5 shipped or less, so it looks like this is going to work after all

Not to be nosy, but what's your plan with these systems?

 

[Oxaqata]

Edit

 

[toyota]

I'd hardly call it a trouncing...and if you go look at encoding/rendering (Netburst specialty) you'll see the results are even closer & worse for the C2D in a number of tests.

you would hardly call that trouncing? the 1.86 E6300 beats the 3.6 and usually 3.73 Pentium D in basically every case. thats TWICE as fast clock for clock as the previous architecture. gaming even at 1600x1200 showed the 1.86 Core 2 to be on average over twice as fast as the Pentium D clock for clock. please tell me what the heck would it take to be a trounce???

even the article said: In one day, Intel has made its entire Pentium D lineup of processors obsolete. Intel's Core 2 processors offer the sort of next-generation micro-architecture performance leap that we honestly haven't seen from Intel since the introduction of the P6.

 

[Oxaqata]

Edit

 

[Rakurai]

I have an XP 3200+ and I can play Farmtown like nobody's business.

 

[toyota]

It has little to do with clock for clock. Netburst sacrificed architectural efficiency for massive clockspeeds, C2D obviously took the other approach.

The higher end Pentium D's beat the E6300 in 3/4 encoding tasks and 3/3 rendering tasks. The E6300 definitely is the winner in gaming. Of course I am ignoring the fact that Pentium 4/D is a fat heat monster!

Anandtech bench shows high end AMD's match or beat i7's in gaming performance, but are a little slower in rendering/encoding. Many more people buy i7's. See anything here?

you are also ignoring the fact that the slowest Core 2 was faster than the fastest and much costlier 3.73 Pentium D EE in 99% of cases. thats where the clock for clock advantage comes in because even that lowest end Core 2 could be overclocked to 3.0+ which means it would literally be twice as fast as the fastest Pentium D which really couldnt be oced much more if at all. not to mention the 3.73 Pentium D EE was a pretty rare and limited cpu.

 

[Oxaqata]

Edit

 

[grimpr]

Many more people buy i7's. See anything here?

I wouldn't bet on that.

Socket 775 holds 77 percent share.
Socket 1366 only one percent.

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/17560/35/

 

[aggr1103]

I have an XP 3200+ and I can play Farmtown like nobody's business.

Dont' you mean farmville?

 

[Arkaign]

Dont' you mean farmville?

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=56748925791

??

Lol, I think everyone on facebook older than 35 plays that game. I get heaps of spam from them, 'adopt this lost pink cow' or wtf ever.

 

[aggr1103]

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=56748925791

??

Lol, I think everyone on facebook older than 35 plays that game. I get heaps of spam from them, 'adopt this lost pink cow' or wtf ever.

You're right - mybad. I get the same spam - I've tried to block as much of it as i can.

 

[CraigRT]

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=56748925791

??

Lol, I think everyone on facebook older than 35 plays that game. I get heaps of spam from them, 'adopt this lost pink cow' or wtf ever.

I can't stand Facebook spam. Is there a code of ethics on how to tell people you don't want to receive anything other than wall posts/messages/normal things without being an ass?

 

[aggr1103]

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=56748925791

??

Lol, I think everyone on facebook older than 35 plays that game. I get heaps of spam from them, 'adopt this lost pink cow' or wtf ever.

Correction - we're both right -

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=102452128776&ref=search&sid=1531416168.2672672765..1

There are two farm games.