Looking at upgrading my brothers PC for him, he currently has a AMD 1700 but probably going to replace his m/board etc to run an up to dat Intel P4.

When looking on such sites as overclockers etc, there seems to be two different types, one thats listed as "Intel Pentium 4 530J LGA775 Prescott 3.0GHz (800FSB) with HT Technology" and nother "Intel Pentium 4 Prescott 3.0GHz (800FSB) with HT Technology" what is the difference between the two? the first one is £7 more???

The same seems to be applied to the 3.2Ghz processors too?

Also I have noticed there are different speeds of RAM too, whats the score there then?

 

From your descriptions, the P4s use different sockets.

The most up-to date is the LGA775, the Socket 478 is older and being phased out as Intel push the LGA775 format.

RAM comes in an assortment of speeds. Some of it is mainstream speeds ie PC2700, PC3200 etc and matches with a CPU Front Side Bus (FSB). Stuff like PC4000 and others are aimed at overclockers who are trying to squeeze extra performance out of their PC.

 

For the money you spend on the 3.0GHz Intel 530J, you could have an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (socket939)

From what I hear, the 64-bit Windows OS is going to be a free upgrade (if you have a genuine XP licence), next month and the Athlon64's will come into their own.

Financially, you know it makes sense

As for RAM, the prices are dropping daily. 1GB sticks of PC3200 (DDR400) should set you back a mere £75 each

 

Also note that Intel have just released the 6xx series P4, 2Mb L2 cache now - so on socket LGA775 there is a choice of 5xx or 6xx series.

If your brother is mainly into gaming, you'd be better off with an AMD64 chip.
If he does a lot of encoding whilst surfing the web or general does two things at once, he may be better of with Intel, the HT stuff can ease WinXP's issues with multitasking.

Note that the newer Intel kit, LGA775, has motherboards that mainly use DDR2 ram, although some support both DDR & DDR2 I believe (from memory)..

Take a look at the ASUS motherboards, they seem to be getting good reviews for both 939 and LGA775...

Oh, and go PCI-E re the graphics support, AGP isn't dead - but its on the decline.

 

Ok thanks for the info.

So the LGA775 socket style processors/motherboards are the latest for Intel and the socket 939 AMD 64 processors/boards are the latest for AMD..... that correct?

Am I correct in saying that an AMD 3200 64 processor is the equivalent to a slower Intel i.e. 2.4Ghz or there abouts? or does that apply to the older AMD processors?

I have also been looking at these PCI-E graphics cards but aren’t these rather expensive? Only want to be paying £120ish for a good graphics card?

 

Yes to the first.
A Big no to the second an AMD3200 will be faster in most apps than a 3.2Ghz P4. Don't get confused by the processor speed in Ghz. Athlons do more work per Mhz than their P4 counterparts.

Best bet for 120 quid is an ATI 9800 pro on an AGP bus.

 

...or a 6600GT on PCI-E

 

Where can you get a 6600GT for 120 quid. £160 more like

 

A couple of places actually
www.overclockers.co.uk look at the clearance section
www.aria.co.uk
www.scan.co.uk
www.microdirect.co.uk

cheapest i found was around 110 quid.

Tony

 

thinking of calling overclockers myself PCI-E 128mb DDR3 6600GT, 96 quid!

 

I got one for £140 from Overclockers 2 months ago as part of a new build so they must have come down by now.

Simon.

 

Looks like intel are back on equal ground again really, if not more advanced now
The intel Centrino mobile chips look like kicking some butt, saw a feature on these, even gave the AMD64 4000+ more than its run for its money, and cheaper
See what direction Intel take, but the 6** are still a bit expensive though probably an improvement over the 5**
Id also look at going for a DDR2 Main board, aria are doing Elixir DDR2 PC4200 for just over 45 quid per 512mb, good if your on a budget

Tony

PS, 800 quid will get you a monster system, including decent speakers, no mouse or keyboard though but a good Audigy 2 zs and a DDR2 MB, this includes a 12ms 17inch TFT screen (i have one by the same manufacturer, its very good vfm )

 

stiscooby

AMD's number is s'posed to match their performance rating against Intel (I believe this to be correct - I'm sure someone will comment if not). ie

3200 = equiv to 3.2Ghz P4
3500 = equiv to 3.5Ghz P4
3800 = equiv to 3.8Ghz P4
4000 (FX53) = equiv to 4Ghz P4

You could build a really good system around the following:

AMD64 3200+ 939 circa £120 (or go for the AMD64 3500 939 - about £180)
ASUS A8N SLI circa £100
1Gb Geil Value (2x512) circa £70
6600GT 128Mb circa £130 (not the XFX one! too noisey!)

It would also be good for encoding, but as said before Intel's HT does help make multitasking under XP a slightly smoother experience. Which I would agree with after using a P4 3.2 Prescott for a while.

Although, I run two AMD systems for all tasks, personal choice.

 

No, it is NOT supposed to match against Intel - because if they claimed that then Intel might sue, and the only winners would be the lawyers. Actually it goes back to when the Thoroughbred core replaced the Thunderbird core on AMD chips. T'bred was much better designed so could run at lower speeds - and had to because it got hot. Up until then Intel P3s and T'bird Athlons had run at the same performance for the same speeds so only speed counted. Now Intel went for speed and AMD for effeciency. AMD needed to make their chips look faster so they came up with that "XP" rating. What that AMD rating means (according to AMD anyway) is the speed a classic Athlon Thunderbird core CPU would have to run to have the same performance as the chip under discussion.


M

 

That doesn't really work now though and has become even more confusing as an Athlon 64 3200+ (Socket 754) is far faster than an Athlon Barton XP3200+ (Socket A) even though they both run at the same clock speed & FSB of 2.2Ghz/400Mhz.

Darren

 

I'm sure it will become even clearer when we get the dual-core cpus

 

I did wonder whether it was fact or fiction

Cheers Meridian

Daz - agreed, clear as mud!

Anyhow, I don't think you'd be too far out comparing an AMD64 (939) 3200 with an Intel 5xx LGA775 3.2 ...

 

So will there be a performance increase over AGP, if going to PCI-E?

 

No not at the moment. There is nothing that can take advantage of it and arguably nothing yet that can even take advantage of AGP 8x but if you are buying a complete new system then I would go for a PCI-E solution now as it makes your pc more flexible regarding upgrades in the future and for new technology it seems to be pretty stable.