In need of some PC hardware advice, I come to the forums of my favorite hardware news site.
I have always been a fan of AMD due to its price/performance ratio compared to Intel. However, in current times the price of AMD CPU's are more expensive due to the limited availability. (Referring to the 333mhz FSB CPU's)
So now to my dilema. I want to get a medium range system on a platform that has room to grow. I am planning on spending about $200 for a CPU. This leads me in the XP 2400+ or P4 2.4b range. Regarding the motherboard I was thinking nforce2, 845PE or Granite Bay. The idea is that I'll buy a medium range CPU and a nice motherboard so when new CPU's are released I can utilize them. Those are the thoughts I have, now to my questions.
I am lead to beleive that the nforce2 can handle the barton core, is this true? Also, the P4 2.4b has a 533 FSB, does DDR333 really give it the bandwidth it needs? As I understand it, it doesn't. Then DDR400 would be a better solution, but do the 845PE and GBay chipsets support that (I've read not officially but how about unofficially)? Obviously RDRAM would be the best solution but that leads to a smaller upgrade path or so I've read. And me being an AMD fan in the past, I am not real up to snuff on HyperThreading. I know the 845PE and GBay support it but what CPU's support it? Is it really all that? What will give me better performance the Xp 2400 or the P4 2.4b? ( I havent noticed much comparison reading material on those)
Thanks for any help you guys can give.
I have always been a fan of AMD due to its price/performance ratio compared to Intel. However, in current times the price of AMD CPU's are more expensive due to the limited availability. (Referring to the 333mhz FSB CPU's)
So now to my dilema. I want to get a medium range system on a platform that has room to grow. I am planning on spending about $200 for a CPU. This leads me in the XP 2400+ or P4 2.4b range. Regarding the motherboard I was thinking nforce2, 845PE or Granite Bay. The idea is that I'll buy a medium range CPU and a nice motherboard so when new CPU's are released I can utilize them. Those are the thoughts I have, now to my questions.
I am lead to beleive that the nforce2 can handle the barton core, is this true? Also, the P4 2.4b has a 533 FSB, does DDR333 really give it the bandwidth it needs? As I understand it, it doesn't. Then DDR400 would be a better solution, but do the 845PE and GBay chipsets support that (I've read not officially but how about unofficially)? Obviously RDRAM would be the best solution but that leads to a smaller upgrade path or so I've read. And me being an AMD fan in the past, I am not real up to snuff on HyperThreading. I know the 845PE and GBay support it but what CPU's support it? Is it really all that? What will give me better performance the Xp 2400 or the P4 2.4b? ( I havent noticed much comparison reading material on those)
Thanks for any help you guys can give.