What to buy??? P4 2.6/800 andASUS P4P800 Deluxe or Barton 2600+ and ASUS A7N8X-E-Deluxe??

[Bentrold]

I am planning to upgrade my Wooden box; and I have an ANTEC Truepower 430 and a Sapphire 9600 Pro Ultimate.
My opptions are the following:

ASUS P4P800 deluxe
P4 2.6 GHz 800 fsb
512 MB Kingston PC3200
120 GB Seagate 7200.7 SATA 150

or
ASUS A7N8X-E-Deluxe
Athlon XP (Barton) 2600+ 333 fsb
1024 MB Kingston PC3200
120 GB Seagate 7200.7 SATA 150

I am mostly using my PC for office tasks and a little bit of photoshop and gaming, I am running Win XP pro.
What would be the best parts to buy, realising that both socket A and 478 soon will be non-existing?

Cool Breezes

Bentrold (who hopes to get a silent PC!! )

 

[myocardia]

An Athlon64 or a P4C will destroy an Athlon XP, doing Photoshop. The Athlon64 is also quite a bit better than a P4C, assuming you aren't going to overclock, which isn't very possible, if you're expecting silence.

 

[Bentrold]

I know that the P4c is better for photshop, but will it make any difference whether I have a P4c 2.8 with 512 mb RAM or an Athlon XP 2600+ with 1024 MB Ram?? (I usually work with 3 MB tiff-files or 1 MB jpg-files)

I think that an Athlon64 3000+ will cost me almost twice as much as an XP 2600+ and the P4c costs the same as the XP 2600+ and 512 MB PC3200!!

Bentrold

 

[adams828]

well between those two choices, i'd say the p4 would probably last you a little longer, but also cost more. as you say, since both are soon to be replaced, does that mean you're going to upgrade then as well? i'd say go with the amd setup if you just want an upgrade to hold you over until pci express, etc all that comes out.

 

[tallman45]

Photoshop will utilize the p4's HT (one of the few apps that will) but with run tenfold better with a second hdd as a scratch disk especially with you having 512mb ram.

Go with the P4 and get a second drive, even a $60, 80gb or 120gb IDE drive

 

[Bentrold]

Adams828: I probably will be upgrading, but not before the Athlon64 and 64bit Windows have matured quite a bit (around 4000+ maybe) and AGP is totally dead.

Tallman45: does the use of hyperthreading include older versions of Adobe Photoshop??

What difference will it make to ad 512MB PC3200 RAM to those platforms and how much will the use of "dual-channel" give compared to just 2x512MB in an office/photoshop setting??

Bentrold

 

[KristopherKubicki]

I like the ASUS A7N8X-E-Deluxe, but I think the DFI Infinity II is a better board for cheaper.

Kristopher

 

[Bentrold]

Thanks kristopher!

But DFI boards are very hard to find in my part of the world(Denmark) the only ones available are the NFII Lanparty models, which are more expensive than the ASUS boards.

Anyone:
What difference will it make to ad 512MB PC3200 RAM to those platforms and how much will the use of "dual-channel" give compared to just 2x512MB in an office/photoshop setting??


Bentrold

 

[adams828]

well i think 64-bit windows will still be quite a while, so in that case i'd say go with the p4 setup.

dual channel: very good for p4 systems, not very useful for barton systems. so adjust accordingly. also remember even if you get 512mb for the p4 now, you can easily add more down the road. i personally don't do much in photoshop, but i've heard that in terms of ram for that, more is always better