Wait for Athlon64 or upgrade NOW?

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Zuse

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Jun 29, 2003
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I am really eager to get rid of my 600mhz celeron but i dont know whether i can wait until september for the athlon 64 launch... Is it worth it? Should i wait or should i just say 'stuff all' and buy an Athlon 2600+ now to start catching up on the years of gaming ive missed? Im asking sincerely for your advice as i dont know whether the athlon64 is gonna cause a big storm or not...

Im waiting in anticipation for your replies....
 
Hey,it looks like you are in the same situasion as me...i have an unusual AMD K6-III 450Mhz and its working realy beyon its limits.
Im not very sure if the Athlon64 is going to be so revolucionary as it thinks, but one things for sure: its faster than the Athlon XP.
For me, im going to upgrade to a P4 2,66Ghz (or a 2,4Ghz with HT) and the board will be an ASUS p4p800.
Why:
Mainly because the Athlon XP plattform has its days numbred and the socket 478 will suport the "prescott" CPU, so i can upgrade later to a more powerfull CPU if i want to(in a year or two).
IF YOU CAN HOLD ON TIL THE LAUNCH OF THE A64,YOU DO IT.IF YOU CANT (LIKE ME),CURRENTLY THE BEST PLATFORM IS THE 478 FOR THE MOMENT...
 
Wait if you can. If you don't wait, don't get the 2600+, get the 2500+. It has a more L2 cache, so it performs better under most circumstances besides costing less. Also,I believe the 2500+ is a better overclocker.
 
I'm really not sure if it's worth it, and I don't think anyone around here really has any solid facts that make A64 look great.

What we can suspect, from given workstation benchmarks here at THG, is that it would probably take at least a 2.2Ghz Opteron core or something to completely defeat a 3.4Ghz Northwood in typical 32-bit code. And Opteron is more feature-rich than A64 (which has, for instance, only one memory channel). And A64 will have to compete with Prescott at 3.4Ghz, not Northwood at 3.4Ghz - Precott is supposed to be 20% faster per clock, and that puts it at 4.1Ghz "Northwood scale". This comparison might be reasonable, considering that Opteron uses the same core as A64.

So what I'm saying is: I wouldn't hold my breath for A64... it looks exciting, but let's just wait and see, shall we?...
 
If you're planning serious gaming, then you may wait for Athlon 64. Athlon 64 looks very good for gaming from initial benchmarks

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it would probably take at least a 2.2Ghz Opteron core or something to completely defeat a 3.4Ghz Northwood in typical 32-bit code
Click to expand...
Don't you mean 3.2GHz Northwood? The 3.4GHz Northwood does not and will not ever exist. The 3.4GHz will be Prescott.

Listen to me now and forget me tomorrow
 
What benchmarks are you referring to? I've never seen any yet. I would really like to check it out if you have a link.

Listen to me now and forget me tomorrow
 
hm... yes, I know that.

But I was kind of thinking hypothetically: when A64 comes out, then not only will it compete with a 3.4Ghz CPU, but it'll be 3.4Ghz Prescott. And a 3.4Ghz Northwood (if it existed) would already be very tough to beat with a 1.8Ghz... I explained my opinion <A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=141516#141516" target="_new">here</A>.
 
Found one. <A HREF="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64.html" target="_new">http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64.html</A> After reading this review I would have to disagree with your suggestion to wait for Athlon 64. The A64 2800+ was beat down by the XP 2800+ in nearly 1/2 of the benchmarks and was destroyed by the P4 2.8 nearly all of them. Admittedly it did come out on top in the UT 2003 marks, but this is not enough to make me a believer.

Listen to me now and forget me tomorrow
 
Thanks for posting this link. It's lackluster scores like that and probable delays that made me decide to build my next PC with either P4s or Athlon XP's (and I have no patience). One side note, the prices of both CPU's (P4+AthXP) will plummet once the next wave hits the street.

--GNOMES ARE GOOD! GNOMES ARE GREAT! GNOMES GO ON MY DINNER PLATE!!!--
 
That's a good point. If the 2800+ A64 can't even compete with a 2.8 P4, I don't see how it will offer any competition to Prescott.

Listen to me now and forget me tomorrow
 
You can milk a bit more out of that CPU by overclocking it. Most Celeron 600's would do 900MHz at 100MHz bus without problems. Often this required an increase in core voltage. And if your board doesn't support these adjustments, they can be made to the CPU itself.

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>
 
The only thing you really need to condsider is cost. I don't expect the new 64-bit processors to be cheap, and until 64-bit versions of software become available, all it'll do is revert to 32-bit, so any performance gains will be down to clock speed, cache size and chip efficiency.


Andy
 
I doubt the Athlon64 will be *that* expensive. Hell, even Deerfield (1.0-1.3 GHz Itanium 2 with 1.5MB of L3 cache) will be under $1000 (rumors are around $700).

"We are Microsoft, resistance is futile." - Bill Gates, 2015.
 
Personally I wouldn't touch the athlon 64 until next year when the motherboards have gone through several revisions and many of the bugs in hardware/software and drivers have been ironed out.

I think anyone who has previously bought a first geneation motherboard for a new chip has regretted it, especially after following boards have offered superior performance.

I would hold some cash back till then and for now get a good nforce2 board with a cheap midrange XP CPU and ram.

btw, this time next year DDR2 memory will be making an apperance and I'd suggest waiting to see a few benchmarks before spending a serious wedge of cash.

<b>Vorsprung durch Dontwerk</b>.....<i>as they say at VIA</i>
 
Yes I can see how this would be a tough call. Upgrade now or wait untill September. In September, these will be the most expensive AMD systems you can buy. Typically new "flagship" cpu's go for $450 or so. If you overclock, I would recommend something like an Asus Deluxe board(or comparable Abit or Epox board with nForce2 or nForce Ultra 400 chipset) for the Athlon XP 1700+ T'bred B(or 2100+). This cpu/mobo combined with 2-2-2 Corsair XMS or Kingston HyperX PC27000(2 x 256MB sticks = 512MB) memory run at a sychronous FSB 33/166 is know good (excellent) stable and powerful price/performance ratio computer. As you may know, if you use 2 sticks of memory in these systems you get better perfomance. Slap in a reasonably priced Radeon like the 9500 (pro or non-pro)and a 8MB cache 40GB Western Digital hard drive, it will be so fast compared to what you have now you will freak!! hehe cost is only around $700 plus or minus. Then you can check out the AMD64 when it comes out and let them work out any bugs for a few months a let the price come down some and you can end up with two computers for the price of one(almost).
PS you could even then sell the 1700+ computer at that point for around what you paid for it.
 
Opteron gaming benchmarks

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1818&p=6" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1818&p=6</A>
<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1818&p=7" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1818&p=7</A>

Athlon 64 is definately going to be an excellent gaming CPU

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Unfortunately, those benchmarks used a PCI video card. The Opteron machine used a PCI-X interface with a much better throughput peripheral system while the P4 system was using a conventional PCI bus. Hardly a good comparison. In fact, if you look at the numbers compared to other reviews Anand has done using an AGP card for the P4, even a 2.4 P4 managed to outperform both systems with the AGP version of the card they used.
We'll have to wait until Opteron platforms come with an AGP slot before we can determine gaming the way most gamers will play.

"We are Microsoft, resistance is futile." - Bill Gates, 2015.
 
So, what should i do: 1. Get a P4 2.4 533/800fsb and keep my gf2mx400 or 2. Get an AMD athlonXP barton 2500/2600+ w/nforce2 mboard +integrated gf4mx...

And is it true that prescott will work on a 478 chipset mboard with all the cpu features operational(im sure that the mboard wont support the higher cache etc.) cause that would save a lot of cash on upgrading to the 64 bit platform later on...

thnx for your replies...
 
Unfortunately, those benchmarks used a PCI video card. The Opteron machine used a PCI-X interface with a much better throughput peripheral system while the P4 system was using a conventional PCI bus.
Click to expand...
That is right. Conventional PCI is awful for graphics; that's why Intel decided to route AGP directly to the North Bridge. "PCI"-ing the graphics card on current systems is giving them one hell of a bottleneck, and is not a reasonable comparison.

In contrast, as imgod2u said, the opteron can use a better peripheral system overall. The P4 systems' peripheral system isn't designed to handle extreme-high performance devices, like graphics cards.

The PCI-Express changes on grantsdale might change that. Plus, it's a very interesting standart.

(one small note: I don't think PCI Express and PCI-X are the same technology; one is currently available in workstation/server boards and the other is under development for grantsdale. Anyone confirm this?)
 
Unreal is a poor benchmark to include since the compiler used was GCC 3.2 the version with SSE support. Which works well for the Athlon but not soo much for the P4. Wait till the uber P4 optimized Doom 3 comes out then we can compare slanted coded games to each other.

-Jeremy

:evil: <A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=5341387" target="_new">Busting Sh@t Up!!!</A> :evil:
:evil: <A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?pcm=1060900" target="_new">Busting More Sh@t Up!!!</A> :evil:
 
Unreal uses a generic compiler which doesn't give the P4 any advantage for having SSE2. Which is really ridiculous, because Intel compilers are devastating beasties when SSE2 is enabled. (I wonder if AMD even paid for them to use it? it would be a smart move... considering Unreal's popularity amongst gamers...)
 
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