Athlon64 3000 - who's taking the $215 plunge?

[Adcadet]

just wondering if anyone else is intrigued by the Athlon64 3000, the one with 1/2 the cache of the 3200 but the same clock speed. Oh, and it costs significantly less

As I'm getting tired of my trusty old computer, the time is coming for me to spend some holiday gift money, and I'm thinking very seriously of going with the A64 300 with a Gigabyte GA-8VT800 board and half a gig of DDR400 RAM. The other contender for my dollars is an Athlon XP 2800 on Nforce 2 board. This is significantly cheaper (the 2800s now go for $144, adn the motherboard will be about $25 less than an A64 board), but I'm not sure it it'll be as future proof. I like the idea that the A64 can run 64 bit stuff when it become available (i.e.-Linux now).

I'm getting to the point where I'm not sure it's worth it to upgrade just a CPU, so whatever system I build I'd like to stick with until the next big thing. Which given my financial situation for the next, oh, 8 years, will need to be in a number of years.

Just wondering what ya'all are thinking about what's worth building in the next month. This seems like a weird time in CPU history, given the 64 bit "revolution" that may or may not be happening.

 

[fool]

I’d leave the A64 3000 well alone.
It fits in a socket 754, whose future can most charitably be described as unclear. So there’s a very real chance that whichever motherboard you’d buy will be incompatible with future CPUs sooner rather than later.
On top of which, with PCI express coming out in the nearish future, and certainly sometime in the next 8 years, any CPU/mobo you buy is going to be out of date sooner than you’d like.

 

[Adcadet]

Of course, I'd prefer using a pinout that will be around for a while, but I'm not sure if that's incredibly important for me right now. I wouldn't plan on upgrading the system for a number of years. When the time comes, I would do another chip/motherboard/RAM upgrade.

PCI express? How will this affect CPU stuff? Is there any chipset on the horizon which uses it?

What I'm concerned with on the A64 is the maturity of motherboards. I do NOT want to set up a system only to find lots of bugs and annoyances. I really want a system that works and works well. Maybe an Athlon XP 2800 is more than way to go. But then again, I suspect the AXP platform is coming to an end in the next year.

 

[Adcadet]

... and if the AXP line is coming to an end (which the current socket 754 may be as well), it would mean I'd be stuck with a system that is a little more obsolete a little quicker than an A64. So again, which is the better system?

 

[Adcadet]

anyone think I'd be better off spending $200 on a P4-2.8/800? I play the occasional game, photoshop, and lots of "office" type stuff.

 

[Adcadet]

... I'm thinking the P4 line may be a little more trouble-free, although it will give me less performance for th price. Anyone care to comment?

 

[Mercutio]

1. Intel has a history of orphaning CPU interfaces. Anyone know if Prescott will work on i875?
2. The 2.8 P4 and the XP2800 are both toward the low end of the performance spectrum in this case.
2. The Athlon64's future is murky at best.
3. No sign yet of the "future-proof" Socket 939 from AMD.
4. Adcadet is a student in Medical school. I know your pain.

Given about 3 months, things will clear up quite a bit, I think. Bound and determined to upgrade RIGHT NOW I'd probably look at something like a Barton 2500 (cheap solution) or the P4, which looks good right now as a midrange performance chip.

 

[CityK]

5. Current chipsets are uninspiring

 

[Adcadet]

4. Adcadet is a student in Medical school. I know your pain.

the wife and I just finished finished our last buget cycle (semester) and have done our buget for the rest of the academic year. We've got money to spend, that's for sure. Money isn't all that hard to come by as a med student. The only problem is that I have to pay it back. Granted, my 2.82% interest is probably the best any med student has had to pay in the last century, but it's still not negative.

 

[ddrueding]

The words "budget" and "Intel" haven't gone together in a LONG time...

And as a more recent development, the word "fast" hasn't been with that company in a while, either.

If you (like me) never plan on upgrading components, rather anticipate replacing the entire system when the time comes, there is no reason not to get a A64. All the reviews/feedback I've read are positive regarding stability and performance.

 

[Adcadet]

The words "budget" and "Intel" haven't gone together in a LONG time...

And as a more recent development, the word "fast" hasn't been with that company in a while, either.

If you (like me) never plan on upgrading components, rather anticipate replacing the entire system when the time comes, there is no reason not to get a A64. All the reviews/feedback I've read are positive regarding stability and performance.

Seems the reviews from October mention many little annoying issues, but the later reviews and forum posts don't. I'm guessing the bugs are getting squashed.

 

[e_dawg]

I question the advantage of getting any 64-bit processor, AMD or Intel. Overclocked Tbred B 1800 or Barton 2500's are the only two processors I would bother with at this time. A P4 2.4C would be the one to get if it had to be Intel.

 

[CougTek]

I say it depends on what's your budget. If you are willing to lay enough cash for an Athlon 64 3000+, then IMO it's the current price/performance leader...and easily. Look at the results posted on the innumerable (<= I think I could use the spell-checking feature for that word) reviews online and you'll see that even an overclocked Barton is no match for it. Not to mention that the clip-retention mecanism is safer and more efficient too.

However, if you aren't quite ready yet to spend the money needed to purchase a '64 3000+, a 2500+ Barton on an nforce2 motherboard is the way to go IMO. While Intel's Pentium 4 with the 800MHz FSB used to be a more interesting route to go in the higher-price segment, since the arrival of the Athlon 64, they are far less interesting, unless your apps are very SSE2-optimised (Athlon 64 is slower than the Pentium 4 to run SSE2 instructions).

 

[Adcadet]

for someone OK spending $200 on a chip, you could go P4 2.6 GHz, an Athlon XP 3000, or an A64 3000. Now, why not go A64, since it will sometimes perform a bit better than the AXP 3000, plus gives you the possibility of running 64 bit stuff? Plus, they seems to outperform the P4 2.6 easily.

Of course, if A64 turns out to be buggy still, that's a different story.

 

[Pradeep]

1. Intel has a history of orphaning CPU interfaces. Anyone know if Prescott will work on i875?

I believe the first Prescotts will still be 478 pins, but of course "incompatible" with current mobos. God forbid you would want to upgrade your computer without throwing the old mobo out!

 

[LiamC]

A64

AMD's intention is to move to Socket 939 - consider it like Socket 754 except dual channel memory. Socket 939 will use unbuffered (normal) DIMM's (like Socket 754).

Socket 754 will still be cheaper to implement so should be around for a while.

Socket 940 (Opteron/FX) requires registered memory.

If you look at the benchmarks of A64 v AthlonXP & P4, you will see that the A64 spanks allcomers in

Office/Business apps
Most games
Software compilation/database

P4 wins in 3D image /Video encoding.

AthlonXP is cheap

http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1941
http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/6070
http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000299
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-3400.html

Cache size does not seem to matter too much to A64 performance - check out scores of 3000+ v 3200+ on Anandtech and X-bit (same clock speed, 1MB L2 v 512KB L2). Also compare the 3000+ to the Athlon XP 3200+ (same clock speed, same cache size - the main difference is the integrated memory controller - funny, I had a huge argument with honold over this and he didn't seem to think it made much difference or was a valuable idea because Intel wasn't doing it - but then again K7 and K8 have always been indifferent to cache because of their design - but marketing is just as important these days )

Socket 939 should show some good performance gains, but won't be out for a few months.

Intel is going through a socket change as well.

The industry as a whole will go through big changes this year - PCI-X replaces AGP/PCI, AMD and Intel both have Socket changes, DDR2 memory is set to be introduced (May ish I believe) and NVIDIA, ATi, S3 and XGI will all introduce new video cards (circa COMDEX - March) so I will either hold off until the last quarter of this year after the fallout, or I'd be doing as cheap an upgrade as I could.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13425

 

[Buck]

Nice synopsis LiamC. I wish you would have the time to update your website.

 

[CityK]

PCI-X replaces AGP/PCI

They probably should have named PCI Express something like PCI Wave (PCI-W)....thus preventing simple slips like this, as I know that Liam certainly knows the difference.

 

[LiamC]

CK Oops!

At least I didn't get married in Vegas. :mrgrn: Oh Britney!

Buck, I wish I had time. :eekers: Maybe soon, the kids are getting a little more independent, so maybe...

I don't think that PCI Wave will make much difference from a performance POV, but if you want to future proof yourself...

SATA-II should arrive towards the end of the year, does anybody know if the physical connectors will change? How about all the chip vendors south bridges? I imagine they would have to. I've skipped SATA altogether so far so I think I'll wait for SATA-II - Mind you I've got 300GB of storage in my machines and another 100GB JB lying around, so I don't think storage capacity is an issue.

Going out on a limb
The Tejas core from Intel - Prescott replacement - due late this year has a lot of unexplained transistors - ie, transistors that aren't accounted for in extra cache, HyperThreading etc., or at least in the block diagrams and commentary I've seen. I'm betting Tejas (Pentium 5?) will have an integrated memory controller a la AMD.

 

[The JoJo]

Going out on a limb
The Tejas core from Intel - Prescott replacement - due late this year has a lot of unexplained transistors - ie, transistors that aren't accounted for in extra cache, HyperThreading etc., or at least in the block diagrams and commentary I've seen. I'm betting Tejas (Pentium 5?) will have an integrated memory controller a la AMD.

Or x86-64? Any news on this it will/wont come thing from Intel?

Britney, married one day, divorced the next. Celebrities.... :eekers:

 

[LiamC]

Intel x86-64 - codenamed Yamhill

http://www.chip-architect.com/

or more specifically

http://www.chip-architect.com/news/2003_04_20_Looking_at_Intels_Prescott_part2.html

Hans DeVries (no relation to Pieter AFAICT ) seems to have respect amongst EE's and VLSI engineers - so this isn't anybody's fanboi site.

Latest word I have heard is that Prescott will have (has) x86-64 capability but it isn't (or won't be) switched on (at least in the first Prescotts) - possibly for similar reasons to HyperThreading in early Northwoods - a buggy implementation not ready for prime-time. After a few revisions of the silicon, it should be ready - especially if AMD starts gaining market or mind share.

It is still unclear whether Intel's x86-64 extension is compatible with AMD's - there have been rumours that MS "forced" Intel to be compatible, but I wouldn't hold my breath - it's not in Intel's interest nor is it their business practice

 

[ddrueding]

Britney, married one day, divorced the next. Celebrities.... :eekers:

Yeah, but it is a darn-good excuse to sleep with your best friend...

 

[Mercutio]

Anandtech says Socket 754 is on AMD's roadmap until at least the end of this year, so it looks like Athlon64 might be a safe investment.

That said, anyone know of a good Socket 754 motherboard roundup-style review?

 

[Adcadet]

there are numerous reviews - Tom's Hardware I believe is one of the few that specifically compares a number. Beware - it seems the early reviews (October) have many gripes that have since been addressed.

I'm going with the MSI K8T Neo board personally.

 

[blakerwry]

i've heard bad things about the soyo k8 board even recently

 

[Mercutio]

Done. Bought a GAK8N nforce3 board and a retail 64/3000. I'm downloading XP 64-bit for Extended Editions from MSDN right now.

 

[CougTek]

If you have the chance, could you try to run FAH4 on it (with the -forceSSE option) and report the results? I'm very curious about the performance of the Athlon64 for that purpose.

 

[Mercutio]

I won't have the parts for a week.

 

[CougTek]

No problem, as you all know, I'm a patient man...

...and very ironic too.

 

[Adcadet]

I'm also more than willing to bench my system for ya'all. But like Merc I won't have the system for a while.

 

[CityK]

Done. Bought a GAK8N nforce3 board and...

Must have been the moon's gravitational pull or some other sort of celestial event that triggered that one....otherwise, its certainly unaccountable Mercian behaviour

 

[Adcadet]

yeah, why an NForce 3 board, Merc?

My choice was an MSI K8T Neo FISR. Love the D-brackets.

 

[blakerwry]

i would most definately bought a SiS based board

 

[Mercutio]

I like Gigabyte. No SiS in Gigabyte's 754 lineup. Which is OK. I'm wary of SiS-based boards anyway.

I'm disappointed that Soundstorm isn't available for nforce3, which would've broken a tie between a Via and an nForce3 board (they're functionally indentical) but as it was I flipped a coin.

If I don't feel I've gotten my money's worth, well, I'm sure I can find someone who would.

 

[blakerwry]

SiS makes better chipsets than VIA... depending on what you're doing they have their strengths over Nvidia as well.

If I were to pick two chipset makers 1 would be Intel, 2 would be SiS. I could do without the rest.

 

[Mercutio]

In my experience, SiS has made a lot of chips that would've done better in a landfill than a motherboard. My memory stretches back to 386 and 486 machines, but even so its rise from the muck is a VERY recent event, and I am not yet inclined to trust that current SiS chipsets aren't just a case of a stopped clock being right for once.

Via, on the other hand, has always offered above-average feature sets at bargain prices. Perhaps still buggy, but less so than SiS and ALI. Perhaps not the height of performance, but at an acceptable trade-off in each new generation.

I'd take Via any day.

 

[blakerwry]

I realize that SiS has been in the pits before, but for atleast 2 years they have been turning out very nice chipsets at low prices with the feature sets equal or better than the others.

For instance, on the ASrock board I bought, it supports native SATA II hot plugging features (SiS 964SB). What other chipset support that?

The SiS 651 NB that competed with the 845GE offers the same features, with the additional ability to use faster or slower RAM than what is allowed by the intel chipset (in other words, RAM clock speed isn't crippled by the speed of your CPU)..

In addition, SiS chipsets have THE fastest link between the NB and SB.. by atleast double the competition last time I checked. (The also have a SB that offers 2 PCI-E x1 ports)


They are also said the have the fastest Athlon64 chipset... but hey, why bother?

 

[Mercutio]

Newegg doesn't seem to sell any SiS 651-based boards...
and I just got an email from them that says the board I'd ordered Friday isn't in stock right now. Oddly enough it looks in stock when I go to their page.

I can either wait or pick another. <grumble grumble>

 

[blakerwry]

They sell the ss51g. (albeit that's not just a board)


The 651 is roughly equivalent to the 845PE. While it will still run willamette and Northwood processors, intel has left behind the 533MHz FSB. One of the *FX or *TX chipsets from SiS would give you more longevity.

http://www.sis.com/products/index.htm?PHPSESSID=016db78bb23843e164e63cdb1624a5d9


I find it interesting they have pentium-M chipsets... maybe that will mean a pentium -M coming to a desktop near you.

 

[Adcadet]

well, on Friday the parts came. Everything is together and running nicely. Got the MSI K8T Neo up and running on the first attempt. Not OCing, and the system is nice and stable. Ran Prime95's mixed torture test all night long without a problem.

Now the question is: is it as responsive as my dual Athlon MP 1.2 GHz? Well, it is definitely faster in single apps than my old system. But when trying to do 4 things at once, I still think my old dualie could handle the load and still respond better. It seems like when a few apps are launching and are delayed by HD reads, my old system's GUI (in WinXP) still stayed responsive where this system will hesitate. Oh well.