P3 vs. Thunderbird in price

[Guest]

I was just wondering, knowing that Intel Pentium 3's are more expensive than Athlon's, and that P3's are better at 3D-games, which is the best purchase for a set price - ie between £100 and £200. I mean i could get a 800 Mhz athlon with that, or a 700 MHz P3. Which should i get for best performance but baring in mind cost??

 

[Guest]

Hey,

Go with an Athlon. The Thunderbird core brought the Athlon up topar with the PIII in terms of games. Overall the Athlons are superior in price and quality. Go with AMD.

Timothy Stankus
One of the First AMD Athlon Users =)

 

[Guest]

but i thought that the P3 chips were much better than the athlon Thunderbirds, i know there is a HUGE price difference so please could u tell me more info to convince me, i want a kick ass system for a resonable cost and the processor is going to make a lot of difference.
thanks

 

[Guest]

Hey,

Look around Tom's for benchmarks. Athlons (even the originals) blow away the PIII. I benchmarked my system when it was running just a K7 500, I replaced my board and chip with my friends 650 and I was still able to beat his processor, with tweaked drivers and such. Goto AMD's website and look at their benchmarks. They give you a much bigger bang for your buck. Athlons are very overcloackable too (Not saying that Pentiums aren't) Intel wants you to think your getting more for a bigger price. In this case your not.

Timothy Stankus
One of the First AMD Athlon Users =)

 

[Guest]

It is true that a pentium 3 and equal clock speed will give a few more frames per second in most 3d games. its definately not worth paying twice as much. Go with the athlon.

 

[Guest]

Bear in mind that Athlon motherboards are usually more expensive than Pentium mobos. BUT they offer 200 Mhz bus and lots of features that Pentium boards don't. If you look at a Duron, then the price is WAY below Pentium III and equal in performance or very close. The Athlon core is MUCH more advanced than Intels which is almost the same as in the Pentium Pro from 5 years ago, I have an AMD K6-III and it feels MUCH faster tha my Pentium iii 500 at work.

 

[jeffg007]

Dude if your into games get the best vid card out there. The cpu does not really mean much to games. I have a 3d phophet II Geforce2 64 megs and it kicks ass! I paid $400 for it a month and half ago. I run UT at max setting 32 bit color and rez and no slow down none!

I have 850 t-bird on an abit kt7-raid.

Jeff

 

[Guest]

Well here is my system that i am gonna get so if u think i am wasting valuable money on a P III then just say so:
amd athlon thunder bird / Intel P3 800
asus av7 motherboard
128mb PC133 SDRAM
30 GB hard drive, 7200rpm,2mb,8.5ms
Ge-force 2 GTS 32mb
creative 1024 live!
16x DVD drive
300w Case
that is basicall it, there is more stuff but that doesn't matter. So do u think it make a noticible difference if i get a P III or an Athlon Thunderbird?

 

[Guest]

At pricewatch u get a 900 thunderbird for less then an 800 PIII 133 bus, Even if both the chips were equal in performance 800 vs 800 (which i believe is not the case, AMD being slightly better) there is no argument you get more for your hard earned money with AMD. If you want to see real performance difference get an 750 t-bird and treat yourself to an extra stick of 128 ram from crucial.com.

 

[jg38141]

Just get the thunderbird- not only will you find it performs as well if not better than the p3, you will also have upgrade options in the future up to 1200mhz, probobly even 1250 with that board eventually. p3's however will most likely stop around 1133 if they ever get there at all now that the p4 is out. even at 1133 though the chip may not out perform the athlon 1250, and I can promise it will cost at least twice as much.

 

[Guest]

Get the Athlon!!! If the previous post have not been enought to convince you that the Athlon would give you more bang for your buck, I suggest that you research the topic yourself. I have included some URL's of articles that have been written by Tom's Hradware Guide.

(here is an article that has information about perfomance and price per pwerformance comparison)
<A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q3/000828/index.html" target="_new">http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q3/000828/index.html</A>

(another article with more inforamtion about Thunderbirds)
<A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q3/000925/index.html" target="_new">http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q3/000925/index.html</A>

(yet another article about Thunderbirds. This is the most recent)
<A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q4/001017/index.html" target="_new">http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q4/001017/index.html</A>

All of these pages (and more) can be found under the CPU guide

<A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/index.html" target="_new">http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/index.html</A>

The final decision is still up to you. But you have asked for our advice and I think from what I have head and from what I know (personal experince with Tbird 1000) that the Athlon would be the better product for your money. Like it was said before, it will also allow a better route for you to upgrade in the future. Good luck in whatever you decide to get!!



Michael Cancienne

 

[SoulReaper]

You want to play games huh? Well I have a PIII 800EB with 512mb of ram and a GeForce 2 GTS card. I also have a Athlon 1ghz with 768mb of ram and the exact same GeForce 2 GTS. Both run 133mhz ram and bus. The Athlon runs all SCSI and the PIII runs ULTRA/100. My athlon cost board and chip cause just about the same as the p3. my P3 gets 98fps in half-life but my athlon gets 150+fps in Half-life. you tell me who's the clear winner here....hehe =)

 

[machow]

P3 chips are more expensive but their mobos are cheaper. But if you you do some calculations the price of mobo + chip will be the same for both sides. Prices aside, the features are also better. Intel comes with so many kinds of boards, it is sometimes confusing. AMD had one specialized chipset, and you know you won't go wrong with it.


Smart guys are not smart; they only see things in different perspective.
1st <b>member</b>!

 

[Guest]

There's one major flaw in your comp setup, you are saying that you are going to use a pIII 800 MHz with an Asus A7V, which is an athlon mobo those 2 wont fit together!!!, if you are getting a p III get an Asus Cusl 2

 

[Rop]

I would most definetly get a Tbird. Though i would also look at the Abit KT7. I have nothing against ASUS. In fact it was my number 2 choice for my system. But the Abit the i have now works great and would do it again if i had to. Tbird is a much better deal price/performance wise.



Why do I use LINUX ? Cause its the BEST OS
Why do I use Windows? Cause its the BEST Nintendo..

 

[Guest]

If you're considering building new machine, definitely go with T-Bird. In my opinion buying PIII makes sense only if you already have a really good Slot1/Socket370 mobo and don't want to get rid of it. Socket A motherboards indeed are rather expensive but oh well... i815 based boards aren't the cheapest either. T-Bird and Abit KT7 would be my choice anyways... If you're looking for an inexpensive Socket A mobo, I'd suggest Microstar K7T Pro (MS-6330).

 

[Guest]

You should go for the PIII because... just kidding, Hey what can I say that hasn't already been said. Just get that T-bird you'll love it

----
Saddamn Insane

 

[Guest]

Go with a AMD supported mobo and something like a 600-700 mhz duron. Over clock it and the 100 pounds you save can go to a top end Nvida graphics card. This will run any game fantastically and leave you with an upgrade option to a 1 to 1.2 giga hertz thunderbird when they are really cheap.
Good luck.

 

[wolverinero79]

I brought up a really old post, just cuz i figured i could . I was curious what was wayyy back in the archives and found this to be kind of funny. Gosh, i'll have to save up my money to buy a 1.2 Ghz thunderbird. I sure hope the price goes down soon so i can upgrade from the 600 duron! he he

Althons and Pentiums are just melted rock. Who’s rock is better? Who cares, let’s play some games

 

[AMD_Man]

Get the Athlon for sure. It will be significantly faster than the Pentium 3 in every imaginable benchmark. SSE is the only feature that might make the P3 faster than the Athlon in some games, but for 90% of today's modern games, the faster clocked Athlon will be far superior than the 100MHz bus P3. With DDR RAM, an equally clocked Athlon will probably beat the P3 in SSE optimized too. Modern Athlons are no longer comparable to P3s. The Pentium3 1 GHz came out over 1 year ago while the 1.4GHz Athlon with DDR came out a couple of months ago and costs half as much. You cannot compare a regular coppermine P3 to an Athlon. A 1.4GHz Athlon is comparable to the P4 1.8GHz. Basically in most tasks an Athlon = P3 + 100MHz and Athlon = P4 + 400MHz

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[Crashman]

The main reason for getting a PIII is for the motherboard/chipsets. VIA has never made anything but garbage, and most Athlon boards use a VIA chipset. Now the reason Intel chipsets are better is because they do not suffer from compatability issues/stability issues/data integrety issues. But these problems with the VIA chipset only show up in non-typical hardware situations or when using the Soundblaster Live series cards. So most people don't notice them.
Having said that, I doubt that you, a typical user/gamer, will ever see most of those problems. But you may get the "OMG can't get this F*CKING P.O.S. CONFIGURED" syndrom.

Good insurance against those problems with an Athlon system is to use a motherboard with the ALi MAGiK 1 chipset. But many of the motherboards supporting these have BIOS problems.

Another solution you may try is the SiS 735 chipset motherboards that are starting to appear on the market. While they have not been around long enough to prove 100%stability/compatablility, they have been around for several weeks without any known issues so far. I suggest you wait until mid September to build your system and check back with us. I would definately advise you to STEER CLEAR of VIA equiped boards when there are now other viable options.

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