PC fried: time for upgrade - What gives best longetivity?

[Berean]

Past week gave me a scare when my PC got fried, but fortunately I've been able to salvage most of the parts. Not to mention it finally gives me a reason to upgrade

Now I need to find a CPU/mobo combo that will suit me well for a while. I'm in a bind because I want performance, but the bottom line for me is longetivity and stability.

I was thinking of getting an Asus P4S333 if I decide to take the Norwood PIV route, but I'm still undecided on what mobo should I take the AMD (XP) route.

I think the biggest problem is the uncertainty of AMD's up and coming Thoroughbred, should it ever come out during my lifetime. There seems to be no indication at all if today's chipsets which support the Athlon XP would also support the T-Bred. This irritates me because I was planning to wait till next year to see how it turns out with the T-Bred, but now I have no choice but to decide now.

Presuming though that a KT266A board would support T-Bred, I was considering boards like Epox's 8KHA+, the Soyo Dragon, or IWill XP333


Im probably going to rule out the IWill, not only because the Ali chipset will probably not support the T-Bred, I really dont have the skills of a NASA engineer to be able to tweak that board to my liking. That leaves Epox or Soyo. Which will scale better, has better stability. WHich mobo manufacturer would be most likely to offer T-Bred support for these boards, if it's possible?

As much as Like AMD, I think now it would be more prudent for me to get a low speed Norwood (to avoid high costs), and overclock it on the Asus board Im considering. I like the longetivity of the P4S333 since it looks pretty good in terms of CPU scaling, which is liable to keep me in business longer than the AMD based boards would, and enough research makes me believe the board will prove rock solid stable, as Asus boards tend to be.

I guess Im really looking for someone to tell me to stick with AMD for the long haul, and I believe their performance is superior, but I wish I knew more about AMD's damned Thoroughbreds enough to make a more informed decision. I get the impression that they would just rather skip over the Thoroughbred line altogether and focus on the Hammers.

Just want to make a good investment is all

 

[Bull]

Well thats a tough question. I don't think you can go wrong with Asus. I've owned 2 of their boards and haven't had any problems. I have 2 AMD systems and 2 Intel systems. The Intel systems are old and thats why I like Intel because they last along time but i also like AMD and I believe that their processors are the best speed for speed with Intel.

I'm sure the Thoroughbreds will be an excellent processor but I don't know if they will be compatible with existing motherboards. In the future I'm going to try the northwood probably a 1.6 or 1.8. i hear they overclock great and the board of course will be Asus.

I probably haven't helped that much but maybe someone who has more knowledge of the Thouroughbreds and if they will work on the older boards might help.

Myself I'm going to get an intel sometime this year and experiment with it.

Daniel

 

[marc.L]

Excuse my ignorance, but can you tell a difference between an AMD Athlon 800, Duron 900, P42.2GHz Northwood or XP2000+ simply using word processor?
My point is;
What are you using the PC for?

Assuming its for gaming and u have unlimited budget go Northwood (i would have liked to do that but for 1000$Au for the top of the line chip i dont think so!)

I always wanted to know what a cheap and nasty processor together with a high quality graphic card would achieve in a gaming system so i took a punt (duron 900 and geforce 3 ti200...se my sig) and it is much better then anticipated.

So if u want to head down the XP road, get a duron, wait a year, then upgrade to an XP and u would have saved a fortune. I got my duron for 100$Au at the time XP2000+ just came out and was 700$Au...now its around 560$Au and still falling. but now i'm thinking....is there a game out yet that i cant run on my duron, or is there a program i use that actually needs an xp2000+...not really (appart from the 2 hours to rip a dvd to avi/wav then 7 hours it takes to convert to mpeg)

Im not a cumputer expert, i'm just sharing my experience

 

[Yodums]

Excuse my ignorance, but can you tell a difference between an AMD Athlon 800, Duron 900, P42.2GHz Northwood or XP2000+ simply using word processor?
My point is;
What are you using the PC for?

Assuming its for gaming and u have unlimited budget go Northwood (i would have liked to do that but for 1000$Au for the top of the line chip i dont think so!)

I always wanted to know what a cheap and nasty processor together with a high quality graphic card would achieve in a gaming system so i took a punt (duron 900 and geforce 3 ti200...se my sig) and it is much better then anticipated.

So if u want to head down the XP road, get a duron, wait a year, then upgrade to an XP and u would have saved a fortune. I got my duron for 100$Au at the time XP2000+ just came out and was 700$Au...now its around 560$Au and still falling. but now i'm thinking....is there a game out yet that i cant run on my duron, or is there a program i use that actually needs an xp2000+...not really (appart from the 2 hours to rip a dvd to avi/wav then 7 hours it takes to convert to mpeg)

Im not a cumputer expert, i'm just sharing my experience

Good point about what's it used for, but I disagree saving the money. Not too many people like staying behind technology and it isn't fun at all to do that unless there is some sort of reason where it's a workstation.

Berean:

Is it possible you wait like a few months for the AMD Thoroughbred 0.13 Micron processors to come out with the new better motherboards? It would be a great buy, and it would last you like 3 years literally.

If not, I would take the plunge now and get me an Athlon XP system.

Yodums

 

[Malakai]

tbred is the exact same thing as xp just lower voltage and some higher multi's.
the dragon+ and 8kha+ should both do tbred with a bios flash, almost definately
-Malakai

 

[Berean]

Good responses

I'm a light gamer, but I'm also heavily into video editing and such, (I'm an amateur moviemaker), so it would be nice that the computer can compress MPEGs in a faster manner. I also develop FLASH intros every once in a blue moon Only good CPU power would accomplish that though. I see some great value in the 1.6A GHZ Norwood, but it remains to be seen which will scale better (and hence last longer). Im really disappointed in what Im hearing about T-Bred, but I was hoping that it would have a 512K cache, SSE2 support, AND the micron .13 It just seems to be a tweaked Athlon XP, which is not bad in itself, but it doesnt appear that it will scale very well. Could a T-Bred scale to 2.4GHZ from XP's 1.667GHZ top rated speed? Man i wouldnt think twice about going AMD if I found that to be true

 

[stefanb]

I just had the same question when upgrading recently and I went with the 1.8a Northwood, simply because this is a new architecture, only $170 (I wouldn't go for the 2.0 or 2.2 because the price jump is significant), and there will probably end up being 3+ Ghz chips on this core before they retire, meaning PLENTY of room to upgrade.

I hope the 3 Ghz will do 4+.

 

[paupton]

I read an article that said the present chipsets for XP will not support the Throughbred CPU from AMD. When it comes out it will require a new MOBO to support it. That is why I went ahead with the XP 2000. They are close to 200.00 on pricewatch now. They are screamers too. You cant beat the performance of an AMD chip. Pound for pound they come out on top.
Its your decision though.

A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.

good luck
allan

 

[Malakai]

Re: Good responses

I'm a light gamer, but I'm also heavily into video editing and such, (I'm an amateur moviemaker), so it would be nice that the computer can compress MPEGs in a faster manner. I also develop FLASH intros every once in a blue moon Only good CPU power would accomplish that though. I see some great value in the 1.6A GHZ Norwood, but it remains to be seen which will scale better (and hence last longer). Im really disappointed in what Im hearing about T-Bred, but I was hoping that it would have a 512K cache, SSE2 support, AND the micron .13 It just seems to be a tweaked Athlon XP, which is not bad in itself, but it doesnt appear that it will scale very well. Could a T-Bred scale to 2.4GHZ from XP's 1.667GHZ top rated speed? Man i wouldnt think twice about going AMD if I found that to be true

an athlonXP will perform right on par with a NORTHWOOD over 500mhz faster. XP2000+ and 2.2ghz northy can do video editing at about the same speeds. XP wins some and the p4 wins some. theres nothing to be "dissapointed" about with that.
and an xp that fast will beat the crap out of a 3ghz northy, based on the scales of performance of XP's and p4. when an XP goes 100mhz faster, an equally performing p4 needs to go like 150mhz faster to keep up.
I would go with an XP. better performance for way cheaper
-Malakai

 

[David]

I would get a KT333 based motherboard when they come out, and a Tbred CPU. The Thoroughbreds, due to a smaller core and higher mulitpliers will overclock cooler and better.

If you cant wait to get a computer - go for an Epox 8KHA+ or similar KT266A based mobo and a second hand duron 600 or thereabouts. The Duron will overclock great (a 600 can often reach 1000+) and when the Thoroughbreds come along, ditch the cheap Duron and get a new XP.

If you do not have DDR RAM just now, you will need some. I would buy at least 256MB DDR RAM now. Prices are set to rise even more.

 

[Berean]

I would get a KT333 based motherboard when they come out, and a Tbred CPU. The Thoroughbreds, due to a smaller core and higher mulitpliers will overclock cooler and better.

If you cant wait to get a computer - go for an Epox 8KHA+ or similar KT266A based mobo and a second hand duron 600 or

I was thinking about that, but I'm not a real big fan of VIA's chipsets, as much as they offer new features like AGP 8x, it doesn't really perform that much better than a KT266A, and I'm leery of how finicky they tend to be with certain types of hardware. I dont need the the stress of troubleshooting the system for weeks on end only to learn it's because of some technical issues between the chipset and hardware and the company is currently "investigating the problem" I have an AIW Radeon 8500DV for example and I know there's an issue between this card and the Epox 8KHA board regarding time shifting, though it works fine on a p$ based system. I dont know if its been resolved yet, but it's those little things that make me hesitate.

I like AMD's XP line, but they have plenty cheesed me off over their spinning regarding the Thoroughbred. I dont appreciate a company that flat out lies to its customers. Intel is no saint either, but at least when I have a question about the Northwood, I get a straight answer, even if it's not the answer I want to hear.

I know people say the AMD XP is superior to Intel, and I believe it is, but other things have to be considered besides pure performance. Besides, AMD's top CPU wont perform leaps and bounds better than Intel's top CPU, and sometimes the differences will be marginal, and sometimes Intel will be better. We can no longer rate them purely by Ghz speed as some people like to do (AMD performs better than an Intel 400Mhz faster, so therefore it's superior) Do we see any AMD 2.2 Ghz XPs on the market to go up against Northwood's 2.2Ghz? Of course not, since AMD no longer can match Intel Ghz for Ghz, they use their Performance Rating system instead.

Stability is key, i would rather have stability on a system that is slightly slower than to take a chance with a system that screams in speed but cant compete in stability.


So for now Im going with Intel LSN and a good name brand board, and I'll wait to see how it turns out with the Thoroughbred and KT333. More than likely I think the real story is going to be the Hammer lines. I think AMD wants the market to set its sights on the Hammer rather than the Thoroughbred, and that would at least explain their moronic behavior when releasing info (or lack of it) regarding the T-Bred.