[bobbinbrisco]

im tossing up between getting an AMD XP 2800+/3000 or a Intel P4 2.4G, which is better? i know that the athlon outperforms the "faster" P4 even though the clock speed isnt as fast but i want to know if speed over performance is best or vice versa??

thanks

[sapiens74]

I would suggest a nice 2.4c with an Abit 1s7 board.

THe bandwidth plus HT, the AMD cannot touch it.

[Tomay]

intel cpu & intel chipset mobo (i personaly recommend abit).

[Avalanche]

Well locally here an AthlonXP 3000+ costs about 25% more than the 2.4Ghz P4 800Mhz fsb. That being said a decked out nForce2 Ultra 400 motherboard for the Athlon is substantially cheaper than a Canterwood based motherboard for the P4.

THere's little doubt that you'd get better overclocking results from the P4, but probably out of the box, at least in DualChannel mode on the nForce motherboard you'd see a bit better performance from the Athlon, but the jury is still out on that one. I've built serveral P4 and AthlonXP based systems, and I have to say that they are very comparable in both price and performance. The Athlon systems tend to create more fan noise though, if that's an issue for you.

[ConQueso]

For what purpose? Digital video? Graphic design? Web Browsing? Gaming? Do you prioritize maximum bang per buck, or maximum performance?

[bobbinbrisco]

well i have decided to get the intel pentium 4 2.66Ghz simply because of intel's quality products. i am mainly going to use the system for gaming

r there any reviews i can find about the 2.66 processor?

[ConQueso]

Hmm... Nice thing about nForce2 and gaming is the mobo comes with a good surround sound built in (that is, if it's southbridge is MCP2-T), which has very low CPU utilization as does the nvidia based onboard NIC.

That, and the XP 2800 and 3000 both do better in UT2003 benchmarks (botmatch and flyby) than the P4 2.4 or 2.66. Seeing as the 2800+ costs the same as the 2.4 and less than the 2.66 and performs better than both, and as you could save money utilizing the nF2 soundstorm APU instead of buying a seperate APU card for an intel shipset mobo, this means the money you saved could be put toward a better video card. Which means substantially more performance for the same ammount of bucks. IMO, with gaming AMD and NF2 are the way to go.

[ViolentGreen]

Quote:

Hmm... Nice thing about nForce2 and gaming is the mobo comes with a good surround sound built in (that is, if it's southbridge is MCP2-T), which has very low CPU utilization as does the nvidia based onboard NIC.

That, and the XP 2800 and 3000 both do better in UT2003 benchmarks (botmatch and flyby) than the P4 2.4 or 2.66. Seeing as the 2800+ costs the same as the 2.4 and less than the 2.66 and performs better than both, and as you could save money utilizing the nF2 soundstorm APU instead of buying a seperate APU card, this means the money you saved could be put toward a better video card. Which means more performance for less buck. IMO, with gaming AMD and NF2 are the way to go.

AMDs perform especially well in UT2003. Intels seem to put up better numbers in other tests.

[ConQueso]

Quote:

AMDs perform especially well in UT2003. Intels seem to put up better numbers in other tests.

AMDs also perform well (as in the 2800+ compared to the more expensive P4 2.66) in Comanche 4 and Jedi Knight 2. The more expensive intel chip does do a bit better in Q3, not that that matters.

So AMD performs better in the newer games with equal comparisons. Let's also factor in the $50 or more bucks you'd save from not needing to buy a soundblaster card, put that money toward a better video card, and the AMD solution would walk all over the intel solution in gaming. Better bang per buck, which is why I recommend the AMD/NF2 combo for gaming above any intel system.

[ViolentGreen]

Quote:

Quote:

AMDs perform especially well in UT2003. Intels seem to put up better numbers in other tests.

AMDs also perform well (as in the 2800+ compared to the more expensive P4 2.66) in Comanche 4 and Jedi Knight 2. The more expensive intel chip does do a bit better in Q3, not that that matters.

So AMD performs better in the newer games with equal comparisons. Let's also factor in the $50 or more bucks you'd save from not needing to buy a soundblaster card, put that money toward a better video card, and the AMD solution would walk all over the intel solution in gaming. Better bang per buck, which is why I recommend the AMD/NF2 combo for gaming above any intel system.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you there completely. I just thought I'd point out that that from the benchmarks that I see, UT2003 is the only one where there is an AMD advantage. I have only seen a few Jedi Knight benchmarks and I don't think I have seen any Commanche benchmarks. I usually only look at the Anandtech site and occasionally tomshardware and amdmb so I can't say how standard the benchmarks they use are.

[ConQueso]

Quote:

I just thought I'd point out that that from the benchmarks that I see, UT2003 is the only one where there is an AMD advantage.

I didn't link to them as they were in the same article as the UT2003 benchmarks, and the dropdown box takes you to other benchmarks pages. Nonetheless, here are the Jedi Knight 2, the Comanche 4 and the ageing Quake 3 benchmarks (where the P4 2.66 does in fact beat the XP 2800, however the XP2800 beats it's equally priced 2.4GHz intel counterpart).