can't decide on upgrade path, please advise

ok, i'm selling most of my rig to a buddy. It's been great, but i want some 64-bit goodness. on the table are offerings from (surprise) both AMD and Intel. I do not game as much as i used to, but when i do, i'd like for it to run nice and smooth, hence the 6800U. i will be retaining the memory, PSU and cooling from my current setup. Mostly, i want my pc to eat through a DVD faster. it takes ~30 to 35 mins to encode a dvd with my AXP at 2500MHz. I want more power. Here's what i've been looking at:

for Intel: the DFI 875p-t coupled to a 640 LGA 3.2GHz processor. I chose this because of the LGA socket, the AGP interface and the regular DDR. (AND it's a DFI) the drawbacks include the limited number of SATA ports (2) and iffy bios support and controlability for the processor's throttling.

for the AMD side: a (surprise) DFI NF4 SLI-DR. I'm not too worried about actually going SLI, but i want the 8... yes, 8 SATA ports, dual gigabit ethernets, basically what i have now with my lanparty now, but with the turbo-charging of the 64 bit platform. This mobo is awesome. the drawback: i will have to sell my awesome clocking 6800 for a pci-e one, that i can't guarantee will o/c well. i'll most likely get a 3200 winnie, and upgrade sometime down the line to a newer core. Also, i've been hearing about quirks that this mobo has, but i'm pretty sure that this will be fine when i'm ready to buy. (late april-ish)

So which do i get? will the A64 keep up with a p4 when doing the DVD stuff? how big a difference in games? both will be o/c'd (of course) i guess the intel will hit 4 GHZ, and the amd...? at least 2.5...right? i've got the cooling to keep the temps under control. Basically, i want a setup with less attitude, and more horsepower. AND since this upgrade will only hit my wallet lightly, i think this is the perfect time to do it.

Finally, brand loyalty to either AMD or intel is all well and good, but i want the bottom line. bang for buck, and the headache factor, factored in. I am kind of leaning towards the intel because i won't have to give up my vidcard, but i can sell it if i have to. Regardless, the mobo will be made by DFI.

thnx in advance guys (and gals too i suppose)

The Ultra D doesnt seem buggy to me. It can be picky on memory and a lot of hte people getting them are total n00bs. Needs a decent PSU like the one you got and you are fine if you get a decent stepping. you can get fantastic memory bandwidth with the right memory. People with the better memory are getting 280 FSB. The big hold back is the recent Winchesters are not the best so many are not getting much past. 2.4Mh though some are getting better than on old CPU's.

With all that said if you got room for a big heatercor Intell might be the way to go even though they suck in games.


Flip a coin either way will work. If games are more inportant get that AMD if DVD's are more inportant get the intel. If you can find a good stepping winjie I would go for the Ultra sli. Loving mine no end. I have mine running at 2.5 it is very fast and smoothe in games.

thanks for the reply, smokenjoe. anyone else care to weigh in?

The 600s aren't meant to suck in games whereas the 500s are. I think the 600s are pretty much on a par with the A64s for gaming at the moment. I would reccomend that you go Intel as thats a very nice card to have to replace and also they are meant to be better at media encoding, dvd ripping etc. Also if you go AMD then you the recent Winchesters aren't meant to be that good at overclocking and the Venices aren't meant to here for a while yet.

I would go intel simply because you do vdeo encoding and that is supposably faster on intel then amd. Allthough with the 64bit version of windows coming out and if some 64bit encoding apps apaer the AMD will give you a good running chance.

alinosa: if you wannt faster encoding (like me) then why you dont get dual-cpu system ? or wait to dual-core ?
why ?
look here:
http://www.x86-secret.com/?option=newsd&nid=849

you see how much you get with 2 cpu against one ? ...in some programs more than 50% ...

and Unreal Engine 3 will suport dual-cpu or dual-core cpu...(and games bassed on it too)

@ronaldo: i originally planned on dual cpu's , but i got a deal on a storm G4 waterblock and do not wish to drop the cash for another.

@shuiends: i plan on getting a p4 640 (64 bit 3.2 GHz) so wouldn't the fact that the intel chip is also 64-bit negate the edge that the A64 had?

@willkill: don't the venices comeoout in april? this is when i think i'll be getting my new setup put together. (when my friend is going to be buying my old setup) ya know, i don't think i'm ready to give up my beast vidcard just yet. I sure as heck know that i don't feel like buying another one. And then another one later to use the SLI that i paid for. I htink Intel is going to be getting another customer... maybe. We'll see.

I AM right when i say that the 6xx series is 64 bit right? (i hope i am because i've been operating under that assumption.)

thanks, everyone.

willkill1337 said:

The 600s aren't meant to suck in games whereas the 500s are. I think the 600s are pretty much on a par with the A64s for gaming at the moment. I would reccomend that you go Intel as thats a very nice card to have to replace and also they are meant to be better at media encoding, dvd ripping etc. Also if you go AMD then you the recent Winchesters aren't meant to be that good at overclocking and the Venices aren't meant to here for a while yet.

Click to expand...

Actually gaming and encoding as office applications are are not effected by the increase in cache and AMD still has the edge in games, in some cases it got slower because the to increase the cache Intel had to increase latency as well.

In the end your going to have to chose between gaming and encoding, 64bit is still too early to be benchmarked eventhough from some benches that I saw AMD was beating Intel, so it will be a while until we can really see what 64bitness will do for both cpus. A friend who does casual encoding asked me to see how much a new pc would cost, and after looking at some benches both the A64 and P4 where very close, but many enconding programs are optimized for p4 so with optimizations the A64 was left behind. In my opinion I'd vote for the P4 because your won't have to replace your video card and because only if high fps are really important is when your going to notice the A64 advantage, even with the P4 being more of a bottleneck in games then the A64 you will still be getting playable frames while getting a boost encoding whenever possible.

read this review it might help you decide.


According to this thread venise is coming out early april, if so I would recommend it instead of the P4, if they overclock as well as the chip in the thread.

thnx avg, it looks like AMD still beats up on intel, except where i want some boost- the encoding dept. everywhere else it looks like intel is just being abused. (according to anandtech's tests anyways) but i think i want to hold on to my vidcard. i just don't see me getting a decent price for it, since most people that care about the level of performance this card can provide are seeking out this card in PCI-E flavors. again, thanks a lot for all the info.

Yeah, as the AMD A64's seem to be the best in gaming, it doesn't mean that intel's offerings (especially 6xx series) suck. They are still great CPU's and will definately hold their own in games. And as most of you know, its gonna be the video card that makes the most difference in games anyway (and since he has a 6800U, gaming will be no problem even on a good AthlonXP).

I would have to also say intel because it does what you want it to do a little better than the AMD's and if you get a 640, it will game just fine I'm sure Plus you can hang on to your video card which will even out the higher cost of the 640 over a winchester.

Or you can do what I did. This is the generally accepted and cheapest/stable rig possible. (for the money)

Intel 640 = $290

Abit AS8 = $88

Abit's AS8 finally supports the 6xx series (but it boots fine with any offical bios other than 10 unlike dfi) with the new version 17

@gvblake22: These were my tghoughts exactly as far as keeping my 6800 and paying a little more for the cpu/mobo combo.

@Sentential: i like the price of the AS8 and at $88.00 it's a steal, but i'm partial to DFI. I won't be buying until around mid-end of april, so by then, DFI SHOULD be shipping with the new bios so i won't have a problem. (hopefully)