Gonna build a new system for gaming, well haven't been much of a Athlon fan (since my amd k6 400 way back when lol) I just don't like my system I have atm. So for cpu ???? Pro's? cons? I didn't see a post on these 2 as of yet.

Athlon64 FX 51 or Intel P4 @ 3.2 XE ???

I'm thinking of going to the Radeon 9800xt 256mb card if that makes a diff.

Also will it be good in gaming to go wth 1024mb ram or is 512mb good enough or even 2048mb(over kill?)? For d3, ut2004, WoW ect...(was thinking Kingston hyperx)

Tyvm, god i love these forms!!!! Wish I had found them long ago hehe

lets see here. they are both very fast cpu's. the intel chips win in some benchmarks but are only 32 bit. the 64's trail right behind the intel chips in some benchmarks and are 64 bit. i have yet to see a benchmark that utilizes the AMD's 64 bit capabilities so i dont know how the intel chips compare when 64 bit is enabled. the Athlons tend to be a little cheaper than the P4's. if you would go with the Athlons dont get the fx, their socket is going to be discontinued and wont have an upgrade path. all in all it really comes down to your price budget, what you want, and what you like.

Intel is quite overpriced. Personally, I wouldn't jump strait into the 64's yet, I would stay with the good 'ol 32 bits like the Athlon XP series and the Intel Pentium 4... but I like Athlon XP (*cough*)

64 bit processors aren't very practical yet, no consumer products require 64 bit architechture. Sort of an overkill because even though you may think you're ready for the 64 bit world... there will be other types of 64 bit processors, sockets, mobos, new technology, etc. You're going to have to get a new computer.

Stay with the 32 bits... they are way cheaper than the 64 bit ones right now and are more practical. And every game you play with a fast setup of 1GB of RAM or even 2GB of RAM with a Radeon 9800XT, and even a 32 bit is going to play everything, and play it all quite well...

RAM
2MB (2048MB) is definately an overkill, if all you are going to do is game. All you need is 512MB, but some [newer] games have proven to do better on 1GB (1024MB) of RAM, the gain was from 5%-10%. In the long run, you can always add more RAM in the future...

Video Cards
Top of the line...
Radeon 9800 XT 256MB
GeForce FX 5950 Ultra 256MB

Other good cards...
Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB/256MB
GeForce FX 5900 Ultra


I'm busted for the night... tired... I'll come back tomorrow...

Thx guys this really helped out!!! Think i should wait till the new nvidia card is out?

Again thx

If you can afford it without too much trouble, specifically for gaming the Athlon64-FX is the best chip out there.

On the other hand, it might not be wise to get an Athlon-64 right now as they will change Sockets ( Socket-940/Socket-754 to Socket-939 ) some time next month.

The new Athlon64-FX will not require registered DIMMs making it a lot less expensive & faster.

See there you go... he detailed a little more of what I was trying to tell you about the changes in the 64 bit world...

I have to agree with Didou

If you have the money wait. Wait for the 939 Athlon FXs which will not require expensive and slow registered DIMMs. If you are waiting for the 939's then you should also wait for PCI-X and therefore wait until the NV45 is realeased as the nv40 does not have native support for PCI-X. Then buy yourself a shiney FX-53 and a NV45 and you will have one hell of a gaming machine, and by then Windowz XP-64 should be out as well. Steer well clear of Intel in all forms.

Steg

EDIT - and dont bother with Kingston RAM - get either Corsair or OCZ. If you can afford it 4*512 would be great, if not 2*512 should be plenty.