New system, Intel/AMD

[clarkey01]

I was going to upgrade this summer, but as it stands I?m saving up for a holiday (vacation to the the yanks) so I decided I will build a new system around Christmas time, what?s going to be on offer and what would you recommend ?

I don?t fancy getting a Prescott 4ghz, my house is warm enough as it is, I am a tiny bit biased towards AMD, but what can say? Helps keeps Intel on its toes and keeps prices low.

I roughly have about £1200 to spend, I wouldn?t mind getting a cheap graphics card or using my current geforce 5600 for a few months before I buy a new card.

I use my pc for manly gaming, downloading and working (spreadsheets, VB, C++)

All responses welcome. Including suggestions from Intel fans (my last Intel cpu was a p1 233, been AMD from after that)

 

[myocardia]

A vacation to WHERE? Anyway, socket 939 will have (should have) matured enough by then to be able to to upgrade to a socket 939 Athlon64. That's pretty much what you should get, if you use your system primarily for gaming, anyway.

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: myocardia
A vacation to WHERE? Anyway, socket 939 will have (should have) matured enough by then to be able to to upgrade to a socket 939 Athlon64. That's pretty much what you should get, if you use your system primarily for gaming, anyway.

Agreed.

By the time you buy your stuff the Amd 939 boards and chips will have come down in price and MAYBE even WinXP-64bit will be out with plenty of driver support.

 

[nick1985]

gaming = A64

 

[clarkey01]

AMD should have a 4000+ part out by then right ? I think that will be 2.8Ghz, if the 0.9 micron shift goes well, which it seems to be with the help of IBM or so the rumours are.

All A64?s will be dual channel by then right?

Doesn?t seem to be much fuss on the Intel side, 4ghz seems attractive but with the Mhz devalued by the longer pipelines on the Prescott I really don?t know.

Do think the 2.8Ghz A64 will be competitive with a 4ghz Prescott?

Any suggestions on RAM, mobo ? no point in talking about GPU?s, a new line will be out by the time I decided to build (December)

cheers

 

[Acanthus]

With that budget, Socket 939 A-64 with a next gen videocard will be INSANE

 

[Acanthus]

Just a quick comment about prescott, it actually GAINS IPC as clockspeeds increase, my guess its combination of improved HT and clockspeed, and taking better advantage of the 1MB cache.

In other words it scales very very well above 3.6ghz.

And accoding to some older intel roadmaps, the 1200fsb on P4s should be coming sometime this year.

 

[andreasl]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
Just a quick comment about prescott, it actually GAINS IPC as clockspeeds increase, my guess its combination of improved HT and clockspeed, and taking better advantage of the 1MB cache.

In other words it scales very very well above 3.6ghz.

And accoding to some older intel roadmaps, the 1200fsb on P4s should be coming sometime this year.

This is simply not true. It just loses less IPC, compared to Northwood, as clockspeed goes up because it has 1MB L2 cache vs only 512KB on the Northwood.

 

[clarkey01]

Everywhere I read says that Prescott does less IPC then a Northwood, plus the heat problem hasn?t gone away and it looks like Intel are struggling to scale higher in frequency (enter numbering system). I like to run a cool system and I?ve heard mutters of Prescott?s dying quickly, also my pc tends to be on for long periods of time and I do a lot of online gaming.

If I had a bit more money I think id buy the fx-55 (2.6Ghz) due out in later Q3, but looks like I?m heading for a 4000+, I just hope the model number stands up to the performance claims, although I?m a slight fan of AMD, the Barton 3000+ and 3200+ didn?t stand up to there name.

I?ll have to look at benchmarks around the time but I still figure AMD will have the performance crown (for gaming at least)