Newcastle vs ClawHammer vs Prescott

[Ralidan]

I'm going to be building a new gaming box at the middle to the end of october and i'm looking for some suggestions.

First off, I know the Athlon 64 out performes any p4 in gaming but is that still true when you factor in dual-channel DDRII and PCI-Express on the p4. I don't have the money for the Athlon FX series or the p4 Extreme Editions so i'm basically looking at the following options

Athlon 64 Newcastle or ClawHammer
or
P4 Prescott 550 w/ DDRII and PCI- Express

the CPUs are comparable in price, but the fact that i need DDRII and PCI-Express jacks the price of the p4 route up.

Which are the most overclockable and which show the best performace?
any advice would help a ton!

Thanks,
Ralidan

 

[ZobarStyl]

DDR-II and PCI-E are much more expensive for negligible (and occasionally detrimental, see the DDR-II based P4EE doing worse than its twin brother on DDR400) changes in performance. Let the technophiles with the huge wallets take the initiative and get DDR-II and PCI-E started so that the rest of us can enjoy the benefits when they actually show gains. And yes, an Athlon 64 will still be a better gaming machine than a DDR-II/PCI-E Prescott. Save your wallet the trouble and get an A64 with some relatively (compared to DDR-II) cheap DDR400...since Athlons aren't the memory-hungry beasts that Pentiums are, you don't have to get the highest end low latency RAM to really see them shine. Also, for that matter, you don't even need dual channel that badly on A64 either. As for NC or CH, it depends on what stepping you find and what overclocking you intend to do with the chip. More info as you what you expect to do with the speed is needed. In general, if you are leaving it at stock, they are pretty much going to be the same. That's part of the magic of the A64...if you cut half the cache out it still runs almost exactly the same...whereas if you do that with a Pentium 4, you have to call it a Celeron or you'd get sued for fraud. =)

 

[LTC8K6]

There was a post around here about some really crankin' DDR2. 372/744, I believe.

 

[LTC8K6]

That's part of the magic of the A64...if you cut half the cache out it still runs almost exactly the same...whereas if you do that with a Pentium 4, you have to call it a Celeron or you'd get sued for fraud.

So, AMD is making you pay for extra cache and a higher rating that does next to nothing? Maybe we should sue for fraud.

 

[ZobarStyl]

Hahaha LTC...no, most of the time they call it "FX" instead Of course you are right, some people are somewhat irked at the fact that they are upping cache on the highend and giving the same-clocked cores higher PR ratings when we know only a few programs really benefit from that added cache. Mostly of course all of it is due to the memory controller that makes the RAM act like a huge L3 cache. But you have to admit, if you got something with less cache and it ran the same like an A64, you wouldn't mind; but if you got a Celeron (D variant or not) you'd likely not be near as happy as you would with a P4. :beer:

Either way, it pays to do your research.