A64 wasted by P4EE, what's next?

[Guest]

>A64 is great on Unreal, Q3 (now), and others, but when I
>play, I don't move at 441FPS nor do I even see any
>differences at that speed.

So true. But that doesnt mean there arent other games out there that DO require a state of the art cpu just to run properly. I play quite a few RTS games, and my poor Barton just isnt up to the task when hundreds or even thousands units need to move over my screen. I doubt a FX would suddenly give me 100 FPS, but any increase is welcome.

Also, consider HL2, Doom3, Far Cry, etc are just around the corner. If you need to buy a new machine anyway, it makes sense to overspec it a little to be ready for those games. 60 FPS *average* with HL2 on a 2.8C+radeon 9800 PRO is not exactly having tons of reserve. thats just barely enough.. not to say insufficient.

Anyway, thats why I am a bit annoyed with anyone looking at Q3A benches, and taking them into consideration when deciding on a new machine. Look at the really hard stuff, like those new DX9 benches; they are so much more represantive/important (at least for a gamer) than 400+ FPS on quake3.

On a side note, you mentioned DivX encoding as a reason to purchase a P4 over a A64, and probably rightfully so. Nevertheless, have a look here:
<A HREF="http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000256" target="_new">http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000256</A>
THe AMD chips seem to get a nice though not spectacular boost in 64 bit mode for this particular application. If you use Linux, there is no need to wait for WinXP 64 either, just download Suse/redhat/whatever.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[NMDante]

While the A64 solution is a good choice for gaming, I don't see the price/performance of either A64 worth it.

If I were to go with the A64 path, I would personally wait until the 939 Socket is available, and maybe even WinXP 64.

As for gaming, I played Tron 2.0 without a hitch, using a 2.4C and a Ti4400 GF4 vid. card. It would probably play nicer with a Radeon or GFX, but the resulting FPS wouldn't be worth it, yet.

For HL2 and Doom3, I think getting a nice Radeon 9700Pro or even 9800Pro would be great, but my CPU wouldn't have to be replaced to play it, or any other game coming in the future. My last CPU was a 1.6a and it lasted me 2 years, without problem. Only reason I upgraded was the deal I got for the 2.4C and mobo combo.

As for choppy FPS in CS, I found it more to be the problem of laggy servers than my CPU.



How many watts does it take to get the center of CPU core?

 

[NMDante]

I'm sure that A64 will be AMD's flagship for the future, but right now, if anyone was smart, they would wait until the Socket 939 arrives, if only to: 1) not have to upgrade from the 754 Socket, and/or 2) not pay over $1200USD for the A64-FX.

I like Linux, but am not a huge user of it. I don't really like to switch O/S to do a task that the other O/S can't do. Whether or not Linux can now handle more Windows apps is something I'm not sure of, but again, my CPU usage is not in the stratasphere of over 4billion bits, that I know of, to warrent a need for 64-bit computing.

My encoding/decoding and vid editing is more time consuming during the editing phase than the actual encoding phase, which doesn't take me more than 45 minutes to an hour and half, depending on lenght.

I think AMD has a good product, just a messy socket idea, and registered RAM issue.



How many watts does it take to get the center of CPU core?