Seeking advice- get rid of my AMD before I go to far and go P4?

[i810 Forever]

Right now, in front of me I have:

Athlon XP 1600+ AGOIA Y
256MB Mushkin PC-3200
no mobo (if anyone can recall my dead A7V333 fiasco, and trying to make a decision on the new board, but havnt purchased yet).

I then proceeded to find that for $15 cheaper than my AMD setup completed I could get-
P4 1.6A for $110
Abit TH7-II (refurb) @ NewEgg for $35
2x128MB Mushkin PC-1066 (Sammy chips) $140

A 64MB Kyro2 will be used with the combo until I receive a Radeon 9700 this Christmas.

In your honest opinion, should I stick with the AMD route (and order an AMD mobo this week), or get rid of the Athlon & DDR (which can be done extremely easy) to put together a P4/RAMBUS setup that I'm thinking would do 2Ghz+ on air?

I want the system to overclock well yet be extremely stable & trouble free (parts less prone to dying or failure, less driver issues & BIOS bugs, etc.). I also need the system to last a while (want Doom3 to play better than "playable").

TIA

 

[Breadfan]

You'll most likely get more OC'ing out of the P4, but I'd avoid the RAMBUS. Try and look for a P4 DDR board...

As for sticking with AMD, that's not a bad idea either, but probably you won't get as high an overclock. However, you can find good refurb boards on newegg for them...

Mike

 

[i810 Forever]

Edit: I found 128MB RK-Byte Rambus for $9.99 ea, $40 for 512MB!
$75 for mobo + 512MB RAMBUS....leaning towards getting that....

 

[Captain Slug]

Stick with AMD. Appearantly all you need is a good motherboard and I recommend the MSI MT3 Ultra2

 

[Deathknight]

Hmm I would stick with amd as well but as for the MSI mobo its a great feature filled board but I don't think most MSI owners would rate them in the elite of OC boards.

 

[Fluxer]

The Abit TH7-II has a few problems with pc1066 RDRAM if i'm not mistaken so I would avoid that MB...

 

[Lithan]

Go with intel and sell me your cpu and ram for cheap.

 

[TimDgsr]

you already have the stuff sitting in front of you, personally i would just keep what i had and work from there. and if you do decide to go intel, i would stay away from rambus as well.

 

[Warlord2]

just stay with AMD and get a refurb board, you can always upgrade in a couple of months when newer intel stuff comes out. I 2ghz p4 isnt even that much better thin a 1.4 AMD plus I remember you can overclock the 1600 pretty easy too.

 

[Fluxer]

You'll most likely get more OC'ing out of the P4, but I'd avoid the RAMBUS. Try and look for a P4 DDR board...

I don't see why he should stay away from Rambus -- RDRAM has been and currently is the fastest memory for a p4. You can get RDRAM for about the same price as good quality DDR too (in fact, I just bought 512mb of pc1066 Samsung RDRAM - supposedly made by Dane elec, even though it doesn't say Dane elec and has "Samsung" and a samsung part number on it - for only $188 and that price includes shipping cost). Newegg increased the price on that stick from $94 shipped to $113 shipped the past two days unfortunately.

If you go with Intel and aren't going for an insane OC then I would stick with RDRAM as that will provide the best performance. And if you go with DDR, you will need the extra OC that that provides to get on par with a p4 coupled with RDRAM overall performance (with gaming, 3dmark 2k1 etc.) anyway, so either way.

 

[Henry Rollins II]

Judging by your name you´re an Intel fan.

Ofcourse the smartest thing would be getting a new AMD motherboard, and why not an Nforce2. I dont really think there will be a noticable difference between an XP1600 and a p4 1.6. But if you like Intel, why not go for that?

 

[Fluxer]

Judging by your name you´re an Intel fan.

Actually, I am. My main rig is a p4 2.53 (at stock speed) with pc1066 RDRAM. I'm currently updating my profile signature.

Date I joined this forum: 03-02-2002

I apparently thought "amd_builder" would be a good name at the time... is it possible to change names?

Anyway, sorry for getting off topic.

 

[Tipycol]

You can get a name change if you wanted to. I think you have to PM an Administrator asking for a name change. Don't think there'd be any problems, unless you DEMAND them to change your name or something. Then they might ban you

 

[NookieN]

I say keep your current setup AND get the Intel setup. No one ever said you're limited to one computer...

 

[Fluxer]

NookieN, that's true.

Tipycol - thanks for the info

 

[Henry Rollins II]

Actually, I am. My main rig is a p4 2.53 (at stock speed) with pc1066 RDRAM. I'm currently updating my profile signature.

Date I joined this forum: 03-02-2002

I apparently thought "amd_builder" would be a good name at the time... is it possible to change names?

Anyway, sorry for getting off topic.

Ehm - I wasnt talking to you. Thread starter´s name is "i810 forever"

 

[Ugmore Baggage]

2 ghz is still only equal to an Athlon XP2000+ (they run about $90)

Sounds like chasing your tail to me.