Tell me about intel...

[Chris]

So I'm considering an upgrade in the not so distant future and am considering the possiblity of moving over to Intel, when I say considerign I mean I'm weighing it all up, info from this thread will hopefully help me make up my mind.

So having not owned an intel setup since the PII 350Mhz back when they were cutting edge (about 99?) I don't have much kowledge in this area.

So, from what I remember intel used to run pretty cool, when compared to AMD (no AMD vs Intel please I just want some facts) is thi still the case? I want my next setup to run very quietly so the chip I choose needs to run pretty cool.

Whats the current "overclocking chip of the moment"? As I under stand the 2.4c and 2.8c overclock pretty nicely?

Finally whats all this with springdale etc? As I understand this is the chipset intel boards use any particular chipset to look out out for?

I will of course be searching the forums for some of these answers but most of them I feel warrant a new thread to get the current info.

-Chris

 

[Indyxc1]

Here is a quick summary:

Intels don't really run that cool anymore. Pretty much for pentium 4s you have 2 cores now a days.

The northwood and the prescott. The Northwood runs cooler, and is rated at speed from 1.8 to 3.4. It only has 512mb of L2 cache. It usually does ok with the stock cooler, but if you OC an aftermarket hsf is a good idea.

The prescott is the newer core p4. It runs hot as hell. On stock cooling you won't OC much( you don't really want to). Aftermarket HSF required. Clock to clock it runs slower than northwood cores. Although it's faster clock to clock I'd say after 3500. Advantage is 1mb L2 cache.

The current good OC chips are:
Northwood
2.4 C (fading out) 2.8C. 3.0C and 3.2C OC as well as the 2.8 about, but have a higher multipler so an overall slower fsb.

Prescott:
3.2E is the "it" chip right now.

Springdale is the I865 base chipset. About equal to the I875.
Canterwood is the I875 Chipset. Adds some minor features like PAT, and ability to flawlessly run 1:1 PC 4000.

Intel is also moving towards (still relatively new) the 775 socket, with DDR2, the new P4s (all prescotts), and PCI-X video cards.

It really depends on your budget.