Not trying to start a huge debate here but....

[Wedge]

An aquaintance starting bad-mouthing my P4 last night when I spoke to him online. He said:
"man my athalon can do just as many calculation per sec as your p4 at half the mhz".

I don't engage in "my puter is better than your puter" fights. But is his statement true? I mean, I'm no expert on this matter, but it just seems to be a gross exaggeration.

[scarecrow]

You should ask him how many reboots per minute it takes to achieve that...

[Wedge]

Ha! scarecrow (almost called you by another well known name), how i wish you were on msn messenger right now to calm this fella down. I don't have enough technical knoweledge else I would.

[X-BoNeS-X]

got a m8 .. gotta have faster PC than anyone .. and he upgrades every 2 -3 months ..faster this and that .. motherboard ..CPU ..ram ..video card .. he can't help himself ..he just gotta be faster than everyone else ..hehe he neva has to say is betta ..as we all know he got better ...

[ad100]

Hi Wedge, you might be better off ignoring idiots who have nothing better to do than brag about how much better their computer is to everybody elses.

You should only use benchmarks as a guide as they can be tweeked (as Nvidia recently demonstrated with 3Dmark 2003).

The only real way to be certain is to line one up next to the other and see for yourself. I do heaps of encoding on both a P4 2.4gig and an Athlon 2gig. Encoding relies mainly on the CPU itself. If P4 ratings and AMD ratings were the same then I could expect the Athlon to be approx 83% of the speed of the P4 (2/2.4). This is not the case at all - it's only about 60-70% of the speed. The AMD is on an ASUS board and the P4 is on an MSI (not that they have much to do with encoding). No doubt the AMD will be better than the P4 in other areas!

At the end of the day it makes very little difference what processor you buy. Both my computers are fast and reliable. My advice would be to ignore what everybody else is saying and be happy with what you have got - whether it be a P4 or an AMD. If it runs fast enough for you then it's a good processor.

[Geoff]

I'm still on my trusty Duron 800, it boots up every morning, runs all day and sometimes all night.
It's fast enough for me and does everything I want.
Upgrading to a new processor would mean a new motherboard and perhaps some kind person would help me here, if you change processor and board do you then have to reload Windows and programs the lot all over again or can the OS cope with the change?
I have a M8 who says it would mean a complete format and reload but I don't think so, so please tell me your opinions.

[RASTABT]

@Wedge you only fall in a trap where by you get sucked in till your bone dry... We all could say our's is better and faster then your's at the end of the day. But what many fail to realise each component is always different along with the set up. As long as your PC is working and meet your needs this is all that counts buddie... Many of these speed freaks out there only use their PC for what? Get my point...

[jorel]

yesterday night i read some articles in tomshardware site about athlon x p4

is a good reference.


http://www.tomshardware.com


Benchmark Marathon: 65 CPUs from 100 MHz to 3066 MHz :
http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/***********

Processors
Articles In Chronological Overview :
http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/***********

[LTR12101B]

Athlon vs. P4 is a combination of issues....

The P4 has SSE2 support, while the Atholn only has SSE compatibility and 3DNow/3Dnow+ support.

Any software with optimizations tweak one way or the other will show a disproportionate result.


The P4 - on the right chipset, scores heavily on memory bandwidth - though AMD's 166 (DDR333) FSB, 512k cached BARTON core may redress that balance a little.

[scarecrow]

Geoff: Normally you remove all peripherals but AGP (or IDE controller) before changing mobo, reboot once, and then shutdown, change mobo and boot the machine. You will be asked for one or more reboots on 9X or just one in 2K/XP. Then remount the periherals one by one (9X) or all at once (2k/XP). It should work under 2k/xp without any glitches, at the very worst you'll need to reinstall windows on top. under 9X things are much trickier, but installing from scratch is a most unlucky case.
Of course you must have the needed drivers handy in any case.

[Geoff]

Scarecrow you have taken a worry from my mind and thanks for your reply.

I didn't intent to change MB or processor just yet but the thought of having to do a format and a complete reload was one aspect I was not looking forward to.

I'll delay it as long as possible but you have made me feel happier about it now. Cheers M8.

[Wedge]

I am very happy with my P4, have never given it a second thought. I was just wondering if the guy's statement "man my athalon can do just as many calculation per sec as your p4 at half the mhz" had any truth to it at all, even though I thought it sounded ridiculous.

[jorel]

LTR12101B, "Athlon vs. P4 is a combination of issues...."
i read it before and now again here,you right!

Wedge,"...I thought it sounded ridiculous."
yes,i'm with you!

and some more good oppinions here,are very good!

after 30 years working with eletronics i can speak:
today one is better,tomorrow another!
this is a "salutar" war,
good for us.

:-)

ps:
the number of my post now is "386" but tomorrow will be a
P4 or Athlon! this is evolution!

[LTR12101B]

http://www.doom9.org/***********?/idct.htm

Interesting conclusions, though the original article links are broken.

It would seem the AMD has a faster FPU than Intel (breaking a LONG dominance of the Intel floating point unit over previous Cyrix and AMD offerings)

But by implication, slower MMX

[Nunyobiznes]

Just one thing to add to this conversation.

Dual 3.06GHZ Xeon
2048MB 1066MHZ Dual-Channel RDRAM
Adaptec Ultra320 SCSI Controller
2 - 15000rpm Seagate 36GB 8MB Cache HDD

I confess to being one of those gotta have the best and fastest kinda guys. In this world you can have or you can want. Me, I get what I want.