Buying new system - Athlon 3500 or Intel 550?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
A

astonbilla

Distinguished
Dec 1, 2004
5
0
18,510
Guys i'm new here so be gentle.
My current system died a sad death through excessive overclocking/lack of cooling/stupid user

Now i have money to buy a new system (don't want to build cos i'm lazy and like getting shiny new things on my doorstep)

My problem is this, i am torn between 2 systems both the same price. I'll give you a brief overview of each. I want a system that will give me happy gaming for a couple of years and won't go out of date too soon!

The first is an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ on a standard 939 board, no PCI express is available yet and i am sick of waiting. I has 1GB Ram, a 6800 GT graphics card, 250GB HDD, 19" viewsonic vx tft and all the usual drives.

The second system is an intel 550 with basically all the same features except it has an x800 xt video card and its PCI express. It also has a different tft though this is not an issue.

Basically, having seen benchmarks i reckon the AMD is faster but i'm worried about come january, its gonna be out of date an i'll be stuck with an old motherboard and graphics card!

Sorry for the long post guys but any help would be great!

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by astonbilla on 12/01/04 06:58 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
 
AMD all the way. For gaming it will be much faster, for encoding it will be roughly the same.


AMD AMD AMD

_______________________
<A HREF="http://www.moviewavs.com/MP3S/TV_Shows/Simpsons/flanderssong.mp3" target="_new">Audio Sig</A>
 
So its not that big a deal that the AMD system will lack PCI express?

Just worried about future spending, BUT my money is burning a hole in my pocket. I want to spend it now, haven't had a pc for 2 months or so now!
 
I don't think it's that big a deal right now. PCI Express is still brand new, so it will take a while for regular PCI to get phased out. If you really want AMD and PCIe, there should be nForce4 PCIe systems out real soon, since the reviews are already out. Falcon Northwest is already selling PC's with the new Asus nForce4 PCIe motherboard, for example. But even if you go with PCI I don't think it will cause a problem.

<i>Money talks. Mine always likes to say "goodbye." :smile: </i>
 
Since you mentioned ocing, I will suggest that you go with the Amd, but with the 3000 chip instead. Bothe the 3000, and the 3500 top out at around 2.6 ghz, so why waste the money.
 
PCI cards are already at an adequate level of technology, you probably won't see anything new in PCI-Express x1 that you just "have to have" for many years. As for the graphics cards, that's a bit more problematic, but there should still be good card availability for 2 years.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
 
thanks for the reply guys!

my main concern was being stuck next year when upgrading. I will need maybe a new motherboard and graphics card as opposed to simply a new graphics card.

Have any companies indicated they will continue to craete agp cards?

Is the Intel definately a no no then even though it has the pci express board and x800 card?
 
nVidia's graphics chip is AGP, with a PCI-Express signal converter ("bridge" chip) making PCIe cards possible. ATI releases their PCIe chip to AGP slot "bridge" in a couple months.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
 
So i'm safe with AGP for a while at least?

as long as i get at least a year of good gaming from the machine i will be happy.
 
Yes, there are simply too many new AGP motherboards on the market now for this market to be ignored.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
 
Wouldn't a 3400 or 3500+ be a better bet to reach 2.6GHz since it passed higher clock standards than the 3000+
Plus it would be closer to that stock...

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>
 
Yah, if you are going Socket 939, which you would be dumb not to, then the 3000, 3200 are only offered in the Winchester(90nm) core, however the 3400 is only offered in the Newcastle core(130nm) and the 3500 and up's are offerend in both. Anandtech did a review and both their 3500 and 3000 topped off at 2.6GHz with stock cooling and only miner voltage increase!!! That's verry impressive, AMD's $150 processor outperforming Intel's 3.4GHzEE chip that costs $1,000. Of course it is OC'ed, but the 3500 will beat the 3.4EE in almost every game and it is onlt 270. So for gameing AMD is considerably ahead of Intel, plus they have 64 bit(which is useless right now, but at least it will run Longhorn well). I currently have a P4(just ordered a A8V and A64 3000 as this year's upgrade), my buddy just build one with a 3500 and his system runs HL2 noticeably faster. I get about 120 FPS in CS benchie, he gets 130 at 1 resolution higher. Although most games like D3 and FarCry are not nearly as CPU dependtent, it never hurts.

P4 2.6c@3 / 1GB OCZ DDR533 / Abit IC7-Max3 /
BFG Geforce 6800 GT @ 410/1100 /
Baracuda 7200.7 120 GB SATA / Lian-Li PC-65 Case
/ SyncMaster 700nf Monitor / 3DMark03-12100
 
Thanks for the replies guys

I ordered the AMD system, now all i have to do is avoid the manufacturers website for a while so i don't cry when the sales begin in a few weeks!

I just couldn't wait!
 
I am close to buying my processor, but Captain_insano you just threw in a curve ball I wasn't ready for. So, if I understand your last post, which I don't think I did, a 939 90nm 3000+ 1.8ghz processor is better than:

1. 90nm 3200+ 2.0ghz
2. 130nm 3400+ 2.2ghz
3. 130nm and 90nm 3500+ 2.2ghz

if you overclock?
 
Heh, I think what he's saying is, for the money, yes.

Pretty much all the A64's can hit 2.4ghz. The 90nm ones find it a little easier to hit that 2.4 mark, and may go beyond with better cooling. The 90nm is a fraction (2-5% per benchmarks) faster at the same clock as the 130nm ones.

So:
Get the 90nm, it's faster clock for clock.
Get the 90nm, it oc's at least as well as the 130nm ones do.
Get the cheapest 90nm as both the 1.8 and 2.0 clocked ones OC to about the same level.

The only reason I'd go for the 2.0ghz clock is for the 10x multiplier - don't have to over-rev the fsb as much to hit that max OC. But that may not be much of an issue.

:)

Mike.
 
Yes, there are simply too many new AGP motherboards on the market now for this market to be ignored.
Click to expand...
Very true. I wonder why ATI and nVidia are trying their best to kill AGP as soon as possible, when it really doesn't depend on their wish.


------------
<font color=orange><b><A HREF="http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox" target="_new">Rediscover the web</A></b></font color=orange>
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom