Undecided about moving to P4

Hi all,

See my sig for my current setup.

I don't do much gaming, mostly application work like in Adobe products, some TMPGEnc/WinAVI stuff, and mp3 encoding. Would it serve me better to move toward an Intel setup?

What I hate is the huge lag i get when i'm trying to re-encode my cd collection to mp3 and try to open any app. Does Hyperthreading really help with this? Basically, I think multitasking really is not good on the Athlon64 platform.

What I was thinking of doing was going with either the Abit AS8, Asus P5P800, or MSI Neo3-FS. Out of those 3, which board would serve me best? I do intend to overclock (who here on these forums doesn't?) and use my Zalman along with the LGA775 adapter.

Which CPU would be fine? we don't have the 6xx series yet and from what I've seen, there isn't anything worth waiting for anxiously, as it doesn't really seem much faster clock for clock. I would probably be looking at a 2.8E or 3.0E and overclocking it to at least a 250FSB.

Thanks in advance for all suggestions.

i can't really help you much on the new P4 cpus, i havent really read much about them, but i myself do alot of video work as well, and i can still use my pc whilst doing so. Intel will be a great choice for this. Abit / Asus still seem to be the best boards at the moment, although DFI have started to shine recently.

eh man, i don't give much credit to the new P4's but ive only worked with a 2.8 (520) with ht. I built a server with that cpu, along with 2 raptors for a small company. They're satisfied with it, and im sure they don't use it for gaming. However if you do switch to intel, can you sell me your cpu/mobo? lol (im the gaming type)

like i said the 2.8 is ok, but i'd go with the 3.0, its a better OCer, and the price difference isnt at all that big (try to get a 520 or 540 but make sure they are the "J" models. These seem to OC much better than any of the rest)

I'm still debating as to when to switch. I'm pretty much sold on switching, just a matter of which CPU to get.

If you want, i'll sell it to you, I wouldn't know what to ask. CPU is about 5 months old, board is about 3 months.

I'd go P4. You know my expereinces and on the 600s the gaming potential is within 5% of a true A64. I'd go for either a 560J or a 640. Also overall the P4 is quite a bit better in non-gaming applications.

Thanks Sen.

Is there a real advantage to going with a J series other than the XD bit? I don't care much for it, I don't find it very useful for what I do, and I'm pretty good at keeping my system clean. AFAIK, they didn't really lower the power consumption any with the J series. Do the J's really overclock better? If so, I will definitely put it in consideration.

I have to wait for the 6xx series to make it to where I live first. I'd probably go with a 630, as I don't need to push to insane limits, i'd be extremely happy with 3.75GHZ, as long as the cooling is still silent.

Know Nuttin said:

Thanks Sen.

Is there a real advantage to going with a J series other than the XD bit? I don't care much for it, I don't find it very useful for what I do, and I'm pretty good at keeping my system clean. AFAIK, they didn't really lower the power consumption any with the J series. Do the J's really overclock better? If so, I will definitely put it in consideration.

I have to wait for the 6xx series to make it to where I live first. I'd probably go with a 630, as I don't need to push to insane limits, i'd be extremely happy with 3.75GHZ, as long as the cooling is still silent.

Click to expand...

the Js support better thermal techonologies like powerstrip. However you are much better off waiting for the 600.

If it makes you feel better my 640 does 3.7 with stock volts.

Sen:

How do you like your AS8? I've read through your review of your new setup. Did you completely find a way to disable EIST?

I've been looking for a 630 but no one in town has the 6xx and no one knows when they will be here. There doesn't really seem to be a huge advantage right now to it but I know that 64bit will bring some improvements.

look here for adobe products review (photoshop, premiere pro) mp3 encoding review...

mp3 encoding

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/pentium4-600/index.x?pg=9
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050221/prescott-09.html#audio

adobe products review:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium4-6xx_16.html
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2353&p=7
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/pentium4-600/index.x?pg=10
http://www.lostcircuits.com/cpu/p4-600/9.shtml


for video encoding are no story, p4 win...from 5-20% (in some more)... (you better get dual-core, because then u will get 50-70% or more performance improvement) dual-core is for video encoding, because u get huge gains in that type of aplication.

if you dont believe in hardware test sites, then are better to you to believe to a true-fanboy, because only true-fanboy will tell you that his processor is better/faster no matter what reviews say....

so i recomend you to wait for dual-core intel smithfield...

eh, know nuttin. I'll pm you later on today. As for thge switch to p4, i dont know about the 6xx series. they don't seem to oc that high as 5xxJ series

P4 is the way to go if thats what you are after from your system... you should be nicely suprised at the difference when doing such tasks
As for the gaming... It's just slightly different.. after using a p4 for a week orso you forget there's a difference at all.

For sure, let me know if you want it, how much, and how to handle payment. I only have ebay feedback to go on though, as I haven't sold anything on this forum yet. jke2k is my ebay name.

I'm seriously thinking about a 530J and either the Abit AS8 or the MSI Neo3-FS. I like the layout of the MSI but the Abit just seems to be always a good overclocker.

I don't game much, I usually have a tendency to keep video cards for about 2 years. So the AMD64 advantage is not much for me. I'm more of a multitasker.

I'm not asking for fanboyism, or what not. I'd like to keep the thread clean of turning into a cpu war. Unbiased opinion is what I want. That entails users that have used both, like Sentential.

Thanks again to all for the advice. Keep it coming!!

I am in the same boat as you are. I am looking to build a new P4 rig with HT to see how it handles day to day tasks. I am looking at the Presscott line B/C i already have a I865PE board

ronaldo said:

look here for adobe products review (photoshop, premiere pro) mp3 encoding review...

mp3 encoding

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/pentium4-600/index.x?pg=9
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050221/prescott-09.html#audio

adobe products review:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium4-6xx_16.html
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2353&p=7
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/pentium4-600/index.x?pg=10
http://www.lostcircuits.com/cpu/p4-600/9.shtml


for video encoding are no story, p4 win...from 5-20% (in some more)... (you better get dual-core, because then u will get 50-70% or more performance improvement) dual-core is for video encoding, because u get huge gains in that type of aplication.

if you dont believe in hardware test sites, then are better to you to believe to a true-fanboy, because only true-fanboy will tell you that his processor is better/faster no matter what reviews say....

so i recomend you to wait for dual-core intel smithfield...

Click to expand...

I dont get it, most of those sites showed the FX's winning, except for the intel optimized programs and even on many of those the FX's were keeping up if not beating them. Someone please explain, I dont understand all this 5-20% better thing, simply because I dont see it. Plus one more thing is that soon the new 939's will be supporting the SSE3 instructions, this, I would assume, would definetly give the encoding edge back to AMD, not to mention the 64 bit windows coming out, although intel has that too, but we will see this one when its benched.

And whats this about?

Tech Report shows intel winning on LAME mp3 encoding

yet

Tomshardware gives FX the lead??

they've already done testing with the Opteron's that have SSE3, and they didn't really show any large improvement. It is entirely possible that the A64 architecture does not lend itself to using SSE3 efficiently or effectively. Perhaps Intel designed the SSE3 instructions with the long pipeline in mind? In any case, it's easy to see that the SSE3 instructions are completely tailored toward an Intel P4 CPU architecture and that AMD is just adding them for compatibility and marketing reasons.

Hold on...... the opteron is not the same as the FX series, second off, I've only seen 3 tests done on anandtech. Next, the results were the same as the increase in Intel's performance with the added instructions (I believe its only 8 new ones)

And as far as

"In any case, it's easy to see that the SSE3 instructions are completely tailored toward an Intel P4 CPU architecture and that AMD is just adding them for compatibility and marketing reasons."

Programs are optimized for intel, intel pays companies to do so, and AMD has to follow to compete with these benchmarks, even though their initial design might be better, if the programmer decides that he wants to take a different route, you the company follow what he says. If innovation is the question the here's what tomshardware had to say:

(refering to the new 3.73) Yet as we have pointed out before, its feature list sounds very familiar: AMD has been offering 64-bit capability since Fall 2003, even though only a few users have been able to really benefit from it. The Execute Disable bit has been part of the Athlon64 - known as NX (non execute) - and demands for quiet and energy-efficient computers were answered by AMD's Cool & Quiet.

We would like to call the recent Pentium 4 a "face-lifted Prescott," since all the actions Intel took help to improve an existing product, but don't change its fundamentals. And given this, we must wonder why Intel is asking the user to pay so much more for features that cannot be called truly innovative. The new models really offer differ from the 500 series in offering SpeedStep and the larger cache. Why does this have to cost between 25 and 45% more?

Next: Could someone please answer my question regarding the audio encoding difference between amd and intel, i mean they seem to be rather small in many instances, and in others it seems that either one or the other is ahead by a bit more. Both have an, if you want to call it that, "extreme" point where they win by considerably more, intel has intel optimized encoding software and AMD has games, but in either case both processors are pretty darn quick about it, I say give credit to AMD for innovation, give credit to Intel for optimization, both are rather equal.

P.S. Dual core? Amd will have dual core out before intel will, they already beat them intel to the punch of showing off a dual core desktop at work


Linky

You're right, the FX series has 2 less HTT bus interfaces and the Opteron's need registered memory.

As for the audio, it essentially comes down to what the programmer decides to use, instruction/coding wise, to execute the tasks. It's not so much an optimization for a certain architecture more than it is "this is how i'm going to write it", and the CPU architecture comes into play here, on how it handles those instructions.

Again, I don't want this to become an AMD vs Intel thread. I do realize each has their strong points as well as weak points.

Know Nuttin said:

Sen:

How do you like your AS8? I've read through your review of your new setup. Did you completely find a way to disable EIST?

I've been looking for a 630 but no one in town has the 6xx and no one knows when they will be here. There doesn't really seem to be a huge advantage right now to it but I know that 64bit will bring some improvements.

Click to expand...

EIST wasnt the issue, it was more of me being a dumbass and undervolting the chip . The AS8 is great but I would much rather prefer a PCI-E setup. Plus it undervolts the vcore something fierce.

The advantages of the 600s is the power consumption, 64bit, and of course 2X the cache

Saruji: that was a mobile Pentium m overclocked...
and where i say that Intel p4 is better at those things ?
i just copy paste link to bench, from some respected sites, and everyone can see what is better for adobe products (A64)

in video encoding there are many benchs, and i see 5-20 (sometimes more, sometimes less) performance lead from Intel p4. ad you can see here:
http://www20.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050221/prescott-09.html#video
for me, 5-20 performance increase in video encoding is not enought, thats why i recomend dual-core cpu, then it will be up to 70% increase...