sorry - amd vs p4 thread - buyer needs serious help tho

I cant wait til march - im doing a degree in computing and need my pc replaced NOW, nor can I "get a 3400 and spend the rest on cooling" - the insurance doesnt work like that. Iv fried cpu,gpu and mobo - the insurance company will pay the bill for a replacement cpu,gpu and mobo - so thats ALL i can order....hence why I only wana know what cpu and mobo are best at the moment! at the mo it looks like the p4 3.4ee or 3.2ee are the best(surely i can just get the 3.2ee and OC to the same as OCing a 3.4ee - ie so they both end up at 3.6ish surely, without any heat difference between the 2 OC'd chips?). Now iv gotta find out if my ram is up to an Extreme edition tho - as theyre 800mhz fsb and I wanna OC (maybe to 1000fsb or similar - whatever gets me to 3.6hz ish) but my ram struggles at 204 (ie 408) fsb - am i getting confused here? my ram is kingmax pc3500 super ram - i cant afford to replace it, so i cant get an FX51 unless i can persuade the insurance to replace ram (which they wont), but will it be ok with a 3.2 ee or 3.4 ee???!!!
Im not gonna get a pescott - my central heating works fine, hitting 4ghz on an extreme edition on air would be cooler than that b**ger at stock idle.
This stuff needs to be the best that I can get now - no waiting or investing in extra stuff - just what i asked. Come on guys stop arguing and give me concrete ideas here. Thanks

Tornado Guy

Somehow I don't think you'll get an insurance company to buy you the P-4EE since it costs 4X of what your original CPU cost. The reason there is so much argument is that there is really no clear winner. Both AMD and Intel have pros and cons. It depends a lot on your application and budget. Actually, you can build either an A64 and a regular P-4 system that will nearly match the FX51 or P-4EE for a fraction of the price.

I'd say just flip a coin. Its just that trivial of a decision.

Get a good mobo, vid card and the most expensive CPU, then sell the CPU on ebay and get an A64/P4 to go in the mobo. That will leave you with pleanty of extra dough for cooling or something else.

I'd also go with the A64 since it is more powerful in more apps then the P4 right now and were it does win it does so by a good margin. If you do the specific things that the P4 is still faster at like encoding then get it, but the A64 performs better in games and office apps which fits the profile of a student pretty well.

It will be interesting to see what Intel can do with prescott and Tejas (or whatever its called), but you need it now.

btw, what home owners ins. do you have that pays the bill for PC parts? My ins company just cuts a check for property, unless its something like a roof repair or something along those lines.

Personally I would go with the 3400+ its up there with the 3.4EE, in that link batboy posted it was beating or very close to the 3.4EE in almost all benchmarks. And since Xp64 was released the other day all that can happen is improvements. The p4EE is nice, REALLY NICE! but i don't think its worth it regardless of who's paying for it.

What is the best motherboard for pentium4's at the mo? im seriously thinking of the p4 3.4ghz ee...especially as im not paying... how hot do these things get on air at stock? and OC'd?
im thinking of hooking this up with 2gb (4x512) ocz gold pc4000 - what do you think?

Tornado Guy

ps - my insurance is a student package with endsleigh

I hear the Abit Max3 IC7 is the best but I also heard bad things about its Vdimm. Wow 2gb of ram THATS ALOT! Doesnt windows have problems addresssing that much?

2 gig is overkill. whtat the heck do you do? video editing? I don't even think that comes close to taking 2 gig of ram. And I thought your insurance wouldn't cover you on the ram.

i heard that the IC7 has major issues with reporting temps wrong....isnt the Asus P4C800E Deluxe supposed to be great??
if i was to go with an Athlon64 3400 whats the best mobo to OC it on? what kinda results am i looking at for an OC - would i get it to 2.4ghz ish? are they really better than the p4's with a much higher fsb? bearing in mind id be OCing to 3.6ghz if i can get that at reasonable temps on air (can anyone verify this?)

Tornado Guy

im gonna buy the ram myself - iv dropped the idea of the fx51 as all the registered ram i can find is kinda crappy
i use 3dstudio max, truespace, lightwave and maya a lot - so 2gb seems reasonable to me - im running 1.5gb pc3500 already, even if i dont upgrade my ram!

Tornado Guy

Just how did you fry both your CPU and video card at the same time? I wouldn't be surpised your motherboard was damaged along the CPU. Well how come video card too?

the cpu socket exploded in a shower of sparks - all of which fell beautifully onto my gpu - which wasnt in its metal casing as id just custom cooled it. id got the plastic and metal washers on my 947u mixed up - and the metal ones where touching the mobo and bridged the connections somewhere. The gpu's covered in small burn marks...the mobo and cpu have bad scorch marks on em...

Tornado Guy

Talking about the disadvantage of tower cases. Where CPU is above the video card and all PCI devices.

#18 said:

Looks like it's the disadvantage of tower cases. Where CPU is above the video card and all PCI devices.

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yep - bring on btx - protecting gpu from exploding cpus!!! LOL - it would never have happened if I wasnt so stupid tho....
it was a beautiful week 29 unlocked barton 3000+ 400fsb edition too
can anyone tell me what the best mobo is for OC'ing an A64 3400?

Tornado Guy

Crap said:

IAs for a motherboard, everyone seems to think that the Shuttle AN50R is the best overclocking board for the A64.

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Already answered . The Asus board also seems to overclock well, and it is more stable than the shuttle board. Many people have fried CPUs with the shuttle.

if they allow you to get a mobo and cpu then I would get a DUAL opteron with 2G of registered memory and the fastest 2 way opteron possible (or if they allow you get a 4 way even 8 way if allowed). Then later buy another cpu. I say go amd cause you will later be able to run 64 bit OS when it comes out (already out in linux and beta win64) and benchmarks shows that once a software is optimize (not just complied for 64 bit) encoding is cut in half.

What about the abit max3 range of mobos for the athlon64? are they ok? i really need 4 sata connectors minimum...
will an A64 3400+ at 2.2ghz (or maybe 2.3 or 2.4 if they OC ok?) really come close to a P4 3.2ghz (iv passed over the 3.4ee as it'll have a higher multiplyer and id like to hit 1000fsb if i get a p4) @ 3.6ghz??!!

Tornado Guy

(v)estra said:

negative. The fx-51 has a changable multiplyer. Thanks for playing!

You lose.

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Whoa back down fanboi. I was refering to the bartons.

Trueweltall said:

Pentium is FSB overclocked, you cant change the multi like most AMD's.

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From what I have read, the Abit board is not all that great. And yes, the A64 will stomp all over the pentium when it comes to gaming.

#18 said:

Talking about the disadvantage of tower cases. Where CPU is above the video card and all PCI devices.

Click to expand...

isnt the CPU above the video card / PCI in almost 99% of boards?