choosing a cpu/motherboard

[Guest]

Okay, I've never really kept up on hardware (especially CPUs and motherboards), so I'm afraid I'm in a bit of a situation trying to choose a CPU/motherboard for a new system I'm gonna put together.

Anyway, I'm trying to decide between a Pentium4 and an Athlon TBird 266, both 1.3gHz. The price difference makes me want to go Athlon, but I also want good performance. I'll be running a small webserver on it (just personal use, nothing commercial), and also play games (3D stuff...). Which one is best? Also, are there any motherboards you recommend for your recommended CPU?

I really appreciate the help alot. Thanks in advance!

jason

 

[Kelledin]

You're asking a lot. Flame wars get started on such posts as these

The T-bird currently whips the Pentium 4 clock-for-clock, so your 1.3GHz P4 is a very bad choice. A lot of people will tell you to wait for SSE2 optimizations to make the P4 shine. This may happen, it may not; take such arguments with a grain of salt. If you're using anything but Windows for your webserver, expect such optimizations to come even later than in Windows. Currently, the only way to get a Pentium 4 that stands up to your chosen T-bird in benchmarks is to go for a 1.7GHz P4.

Stability is achievable on the T-bird if you get good quality components. You may have to work for it a little harder than on Intel chipsets.

One piece of advice though--I'd run the webserver on a different machine, one dedicated to server usage. Running the two on the same machine is asking for gaming lag and server outages, no matter what CPU you get.

Kelledin

bash-2.04$ kill -9 1
init: Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?

 

[Raystonn]

For a server I recommend a dual P3 system or a high end (1.7GHz) P4 system. It all depends on if you are going to be bandwidth limited (get a P4) or number-crunch limited (get a dual P3.)

I don't recommend Athlons for serious server situations. They have a track record that's less than optimal as far as stability and lifetime go. (You'll see a great many posts about burnt out Athlons, many of which occured without any overclocking attempt.)

-Raystonn

-- The center of your digital world --

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the replies. Glad I haven't started a flame war with it.

 

[Guest]

If you have to choose between 1.33GHz TBird and P4 (even at 1.7GHz) go with TBird - it is faster and reliable. Just don't listen biased people speaking about reliability problems with TBird - as long as you are using good components (MB, memory and GOOD power supply) you will have perfectly stable system (yes I know about drivers needed for VIA chipsets but all hardware require drivers some more some less). For MB - I suggest you to get MSI K7 Master (DDR with AMD760 chipset)- this is the most stable and reliable board that I have ever seen (I has personally owned 3 BX boards and build this month around different 20 machines) or if you don't need DDR go with KT133A - there are many good boards. And if you don't know (or are afraid) how to place heatsink/fan go to the local store - they will place it for you for a small fee or get a retail TBird. Also for a web server good solution is dual P3 - just get one of those good dual motherboards (TYAN makes very good server boards unfortunately rather expensive). And you should consider really having a secon machine for Gaming if you want your Web server to be always on-line, just because many games still has a lot of bugs (memory leaks and so on).

Regards,
menads

 

[jlbigguy]

Perhaps it is my age and I don't read as well as I used to. I have yet to see any posts regarding burnt TBirds that died by themselves. There are many posts about TBirds burning after HSF removals, replacements, and overclocking attempts.

To those people, if you don't know what you are doing, just leave it alone.

<font color=blue>This is a Forum, not a playground. Treat it with Respect.</font color=blue>

 

[Guest]

I would say go with the T-Bird



-- They have found a way to harness the power of a thunderstorm and expell it with great force!--

 

[FUGGER]

Go with the Intel processor. with Intels recent price cuts its now realistic to go with P4 solution.


Take a minute and click on any link asking for help, thermal, burnt, incompatable, cooked or fried and you will read another AMD sucess story, I mean horror story.

You will be searching for a long time before you find a Intel problem other than what motherboard or chip speed can I upgrade too.

You can run a small webserver and play games on the same machine, shouldnt be a problem (as long as you dont have several gigs of warez) with just small pictures and text.

 

[Guest]

I agree go with the Intel P4. As he said above with recent price cuts in proccessors and the new introductions of the 1.7Ghz as well as RDRAM prices cuts and the just announced today price cuts in P4 Mobo there is more reason in my mind to by a P4. I would suggest the newly realsed Abit Th7-Raid that utilizes the P4 chipshet. It is easly overclockable via the bios and has been tested by several hardware guides out there on the net. Additionally it also has built in raid which would also speed up you game play or you could have you web server off the IDE´s and your games off the raid there by keeping the information seperate and speeding up game play. I have seen benchmarks of a P4 1.5 overclocked to 1.7 easily and in almost all the benchmarks it is killing the AMD, I would suspect that you can get even more out of the newly released 1.7 by overclocking.

To see the benchmarks look here:
www.abit.com.tw

and then look at the news on the first page that comes up...you should see several different reviews of this board.

Dave

 

[Guest]

You might want to wait for Northwood at 2GHz+ for a server. This should be out Q3, smaller, faster, cooler, cheaper than the current P4. It will also change the socket format, so if you buy now there's no chance of an upgrade.

~ The First Formally Rehabilitated AMD Lemming ~

 

[Guest]

You might want to wait for P4 Northwood at 2GHz+ for a server. This should be out Q3, smaller, faster, cooler, cheaper than the current P4. It will also change the socket format, so if you buy now there's no chance of an upgrade.

~ The First Formally Rehabilitated AMD Lemming ~