To P4 or not to P4... that is the question.

[DukeChestnut]

my gaming rig is in my sig. i'm thinking about upgrading to the P4 2.4GHz Northwood chip. My question is should I?

 

[Nate420]

Well, from looking at that rig, I say go for it Money is obviously not to tight, so why not grab the big 2.4, could probably o/c it to 3Ghz.

 

[DukeChestnut]

nate are u happy with ur P4? do u find it more appealing that intel takes care of its chip by using the heat spreader?

 

[MilkPowderR]

DukeChestnut, before I say anything, what RAM timing are you @ & what FSB u running @?

 

[DukeChestnut]

no overclocking at all so 266fsb

 

[Demonicon]

Your rig looks good to me, why go P4 now? If you have unlimited cash I guess, but there is no game out now that will even stress the rig you have now. So why? No point IMO.

If 3dMarks have you by the short hairs, uninstall it. It's useless.

 

[Skawttey]

I am thinking about getting a 1.6a and overclocking it instead of waiting for the t bred to come out. I just can not wait much longer.

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

I ran an XP1800+ @145fsb for a couple of months. I've got some screen shots of sandra and my 3dmk2k1se scores. I was going to make a thread later with links to all of them and the different speeds. A P41.6@133 (2.133) and an XP1800@133fsb were really close to the same. Same scores in Sandra and 3dmark. I'll post a thread later once I can get this 1.6a stable at 2.4ghz.

 

[MilkPowderR]

<< no overclocking at all so 266fsb >>



So you won't be overclocking the P4 if you get it, right? If that's the case, you don't need to get the P4 2.4Ghz system. Stay with your current one. You will not see much of performance difference between the two.

 

[christoph83]

You got a real nice rig. Unless your doing large amounts of decoding and cpu intensive tasks , you wont see much of a difference from the XP and Northwood. Your rig is already plenty fast. Not worth spending the money IMO.

 

[DukeChestnut]

u know... down deep... somewhere in the dark crevices of reason that was, as to this point, hidden from my cognizant reality... i know what u guys are saying is true. the only thing i'd gain from getting a P4 now is having to format a hard drive and install, install, install. i guess i just wanted to see the words in text... "U DON'T NEED TO UPGRADE!" so that it would sink in my thick skull. so anyway, thanx to everybody that offerred words of reason to this post.

p.s. i think i'm just pissed that the t-bred is delayed and thats y i'm thinkin bout jumpin to the other side (intel)

 

[MilkPowderR]

ok

 

[Nate420]

Duke..

Yes, I'm very happy with my P4 Again a yes, I'd much rather have the heat spreader than a tiny, bare core any day.

IMO, I think you'd be able to tell the difference between a XP1800 and a P4 2.4. Games today are happy with a XP1800, so probably not a huge difference in that area, but encoding, decoding, ect.. would increase noticeably, 10-20% maybe.

 

[benjamat]

A couple of things to say on this.

1- You can get a significant increase in performance by buying a very cheap 1.6A northwood and being almost gauranteed to run at 133fsb as long as you have a mobo that will allow you to set fsb ratio. In addition many people are getting this chip to run at 2.4 ghz and above with standard cooling.

2- My experience of using both Intel and AmD chips is that if you want stability and easy configuration the intel wins by a mile. I have recently used several Athlon XP and P4 systems and the athlons have always given stability problems especially with the Via chipsets, no problems at all with P4.

 

[DukeChestnut]

well then my question is this:

the P4 Northwood "B" is coming out in May? should i wait for it? i mean i think if i get the 2.4GHz now i'll be kicking myself laterz. and wuts the highest RDRAM that will be available this summer? RDRAM 1066?

 

[Nate420]

May is only 9 days away Yeah..I'd wait for the 133fsb. I think you are correct on the ram, 1066.

 

[bambam]

Minimal heat/stability probelms with Intel ( vs AMD).