The Intel man..goes AMD

[sllewe]

Ive built quite a name form myself as a Intel man. And true that assumption is.(a little yoda speak for ya)

BUt with the lackluster performance of the prescott core, and my old northwood not cutting it anymore, its time for an upgrade. To be more specific a upgrade to play my favorite game of all time, which comes out around christmas. Elder scrolls 4: oblivion. Some screenshots as well as the offical site can be found here

Well i think my Gfx card can stay in for a bit longer, i fear my CPU can not. But with the options of Intel chips very limited (im not buying another prescott!) ANd the fact this rig is for gaming, i think AMD might have to be the answer.

Thats the dillemma, ive never owned a AMD (aside from a 300Mhz k-6) so i need your help. I know the basics (venice core is good, same with 939 socket) but i need help with more then just the basics, and i need a decent MB as well.

Here is what i have now,

3.0Ghz P4 (prescott)
1 GB corsair xms PC400 -(soon to be 2GB)
80 GB Maxtor SATA
ATI radeon x800xl
480 W Vantec iON 2
and my budegt is whatever i need to spend, with out being excessive (so no more then say 400 USD??)

THanks

Sean

 

[vegasgmc]

Im guessing you have an AGP video card. If so you can get an Athlon 34 3800+ and a mobo for $400 from Newegg.com.

 

[pkroks]

ROFL... Intel loses yet another! yay for AMD!

good man! here are some cool products:

Motherboard-
ASUS A8N SLI PREMIUM - here US$169.99
OR
DFI LANPARTY 4 UT..
here- US$128

Processor:
AMD ATHLON 64 3700+ SAN DIEGO CORE -
here - US$267


*EDIT: if you have an AGP card you could try this mobo, it has had some good and some bad reviews but its cheap and it supports both AGP 8X/4X and PCI-E 16X. It is an ASRock 939 Dual... here US$69

 

[sllewe]

Just a note: i said XT...when I actually have a XL. My mobo has PCI-E. Not AGP. sorry for the confusion.

I guess my main concern is using an ATI card with a nforce chipset a bad idea? Ive heard yes and no, but never the real answer. What alterntive chipsets are there to the NF4? i know at least on the intel side of things, you have SiS which in all of my dealings have been absloute crap.

 

[pkroks]

I guess my main concern is using an ATI card with a nforce chipset a bad idea?

I asked the same question on another forum, they still joking about it now, about 3 weeks after the fact...

You can use ATI on an nForce board, the chipset has nothing to do with what graphics card you use...

 

[howard_hopkinso]

Hello Sean.

New avatar required eh?

Try this one without the cross lol

Hope you are keeping well mate.

Regards Howard :grinthumb

 

[SOcRatEs]

Chevy/ford intel/amd harley/japan

I've owned 54 bikes: 7 harleys
the rest were Japanese (curently Yamaha RoadStar)

7 Trucks: 4 chevy's and 3 fords

I don't know how many intel/amd's I've had,
I think it's real close to even.

So I can't say either way.

My contribution to the New avatar

these are 50 x 50 pixels, right click and save.........if you like! :haha:

 

[sllewe]

I asked the same question on another forum, they still joking about it now, about 3 weeks after the fact...

You can use ATI on an nForce board, the chipset has nothing to do with what graphics card you use...

Actually i remeber some problems with the old Nforce3 chipset with ATI cards. And yes the chipset does have something to do with the graphic card. The northbridge deals with the graphic card.

ANd howard i knew i would hear something about this from you....haha. Maybe instead of a AMD i should go with a nice 6xx series p4?

Socrates..thanks for the avatar. But i cant get it to work. It was first to small, so i shrunk it, and now the filesize is too large. Rather strict regulations about avatars here on techspot eh?

Keep the suggestions coming my fellow geeks

Sean

 

[mailpup]

I have an MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum with an NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra chipset with an ASUS Radeon X800XT PE graphics card and it has worked fine for me since I built my PC in April 2005. Just one person's experience for what it's worth.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Mailpup's mobo is the one to go for, with tha best AMD64/S939 you can afford.
Any one will beat the Intel you have now.

One thing to consider: if you have DDR2 RAM now, it won't fit on that board, it needs DDR!

 

[kirock]

Ok, I attached his new avatar.

Buy the 3500 or 3700 San Diego (1Mb L2 cache) and MSI Neo4 SLI Platinum is a good board, I have the same.

 

[sllewe]

After a long hard meditation...im starting to rethink my ideas. I might just by a 360...

a. Would a 3500+ be able to compete with the 360s CPU? (which has 3 cores, at 3.2GHz)
b. Would my current video card suffice for that game?

or should i just buy the 360 and know it will work?

I know these are hypothetical questions, which you do not have the answer to...

My friend recomended that i maybe get another intel (i know crazy right?) but one with a 800 (200) or 1066 (?) Mhz FSB. My question to you is...is my 533MHz (133) really all that limiting?

ANd thanks RBS about the heads up about ddr2 memory. Thnakfully i have not invsted in that lackluster interface.

 

[PanicX]

I think you'd be cheating yourself if you tried to play a PC designed game on a console. Perhaps it'll be really well designed and integrated, however I've found myself longing for a keyboard and mouse on console games more often then a controller on a PC.

As for a 3500+ competing heads up with an overhyped (IMHO) next generation IBM CPU, any comments are purely speculation. I'd venture to guess that the IBM chip will indeed be faster, but not likely to be a huge difference. The biggest offset will be at the video card level. With the specs of the integrated ATI video on the 360 I'd suspect that its also overhyped and will probably perform on par if not less than a 7800 GTX SLI setup. Also note that the only supported resolutions for the 360 I found were 720p and 1080i max. Thats conciderably lower than what you can run on a videocard. (Its possible the xbox supports higher res, but i didnt see it anywhere)

Concerning upgrading your FSB speeds, there is a performance gain, but its one of diminishing returns and definitely not up to par with an AMD's hypertransport bus.

However, what your post really comes down to is whether or not your going to be able to play Elder Scrolls at enjoyable levels on your PC and what would it take to make it so. Unfortunately I couldn't find any specifications about the type of hardware requirements that Elder Scrolls will demand. However by depicting the current games of that genre, I'd say your current system could run it and mediocre to decent levels. You'll definitely want 2 gigs of RAM. But for the rest of the system, I'd think you could make up the performance gap with either a new video card or a new mobo/proc like you're currently considering. That being said, video card prices drop much faster than CPU's and Motherboards, so if you want to upgrade now, I'd go with an nForce4 board and the best CPU you can afford (I'm partial to the DFI lanparty). But if you want to wait until closer to the game release, I'd pick up the best video card affordable at that time.

 

[sllewe]

First off, i will be buying the game for my PC even if i decide to go with the 360. I was just thinking instead of a 360, put that 400$ into my PC. I can not find any hardware specs either, which is one of the reasons i started this thread. So im in a AMD mood right now, so i have something bugging me..why are there so many different AMD cores?? :haha:

Why is this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103514

more expensive then

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103533

when they have the same clock speed...same cache (both L1 and L2) just a the cheaper on is built on the 90nm (shouldnt this be worth more)

and the only differnce between the 3500 and the 3200 is 200 MHz..would it be worth it to OC? i know i could OC an intel 200Mhz without any trouble at all...

And bit more confused

Sean

 

[RealBlackStuff]

You should not overclock, but buy a faster CPU instead.
90nm is the newer and better AMD technology, 130nm the previous one.

As to CPU-speed, if you go for numbers, realize that an AMD64/3000 runs effectively at 1.8HGz. AMD is just more efficient than an Intel and an AMD64/3000 has better specs than a comparable Intel 3.0GHz

 

[kirock]

:blackeye: I'm a little dissapointed my avatar made no impression whatsoever, but so beit.

As far as the flame of the MSI mobo goes, just stick with your Intel. You have ATI video, and that's what they like to interface with on the northbridge. Going AMD with an ATI is risky. I know some ppl have had no probs, but nvidia4 chipset with a nvidia GForce video card is always safer.

The best gaming rig for the next few years will be an nvidia4 chipset SLI,
PCI-E mobo, with an FX-5x (939) and 2X GF7800GTX( SLI). Add Gb ram as needed.
Cost= W T F? That's the stupid thing!

I have the AMD3500 up to 2.4GHz, at 220, X11, 166/200, 1.45V CPU@5.5%. Stable for all my gaming. HH2, CS.S, WolfET.

 

[vnf4ultra]

"when they have the same clock speed...same cache (both L1 and L2) just a the cheaper on is built on the 90nm (shouldnt this be worth more)"

Yeah, the 90nm is better, but the reason the 130nm one is more $, is that it's out of production now(and likely cost more when they stopped making them that they do now), so there's limited supply, not that there would really be a big demand for older tech.


"and the only differnce between the 3500 and the 3200 is 200 MHz..would it be worth it to OC? i know i could OC an intel 200Mhz without any trouble at all..."

I think Oc'ing is worth it. I get a big performance increase increasing my 3000+(1.8ghz) to 3800+(2.4ghz), but oc'ing is risky, and stuff can die in the process, so ymmv.


Although I like amd myself, I might suggest(since you're an intel fan), that you look into the new p4's coming out based on the 65nm process. These supposedly run a lot cooler than the current prescotts, but have similar performance. I know prescotts(90nm) are hot, I have one, it does make some heat especially in a small case like I have it in.
That said, amd is usually cheaper for a comparable performance level, and for gaming it seems amd is very good.

 

[sllewe]

Yeah, the 90nm is better, but the reason the 130nm one is more $, is that it's out of production now(and likely cost more when they stopped making them that they do now), so there's limited supply, not that there would really be a big demand for older tech.

That was dumb thinking on my part. Thanks for setting that straight.

Ive heard of the new 65nm CPUs and i like the prospect. DOes anyone have any good articles about them...and if they will work with Socket T? (LGA775)

As far as OCing my current rig...For some reason my Motherboard (in specs) OCs horrible...its rock solid at stock FSB but try to push it up a bit and things go to hell. I cant even tighten my RAM timings.

Sean

 

[vnf4ultra]

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20051007/a_sneak_peak_at_intels_65nm_pentium_4-01.html

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2526
^Says socket 775, but it still may need a new bios or mobo chipset to support.

 

[fulchat]

Actually i remeber some problems with the old Nforce3 chipset with ATI cards. And yes the chipset does have something to do with the graphic card. The northbridge deals with the graphic

Yeah. I had heard but refused to listen. Ignorance and the excitement of my first build. Nothing but headaches with the ATI AIW 9600 Radeon. Perhaps it is the Nforce 3 chipset, maybe its just ATI. Ill prolly stay away from ATI anyway for the next build.
Words of praise for my little CPU tho. Athlon 64 3000 1.8GHz. Motherboard is a Gigabyte K8NS-Ultra 939 w/2GB PC3200.


Good Luck.

 

[Mirob]

You will likely need a 945/955 or Nforce4 chipset mobo for the presler chip(dual core) Not sure about the CedarMill(single core). But both of them are realy just a test run for 65nm, CONROE is the one to wait for, due out fourth quarter next year.

I'm kinda looking at biulding a AMD myself, but soon they will have a new socket out(M1 I think) with DDR2. To wait might be the best now.

I think 533 to 800mhz FSB is a big step(prescotts love bandwidth). Even beter is 1000mhz my 540 is running(OCed to 4ghz on air) Benches close to a stock FX57.