Prescott vs. Northwood

oi ... im getting a headache deciding ... opinions?

 

Prescott! there hotter "literally"

 

whats the difference? no really, whats the difference?

 

lmao ... that's what im trying to determine

 

lol, are they made of different materials or somethin? i thought you were just askin somebody to decide for you cuz you couldn't make up your mind, didn't know you were askin whats the difference too. but if anybody can help that would be great, help two guys at once.

 

im gonna go with the northwood ... although prescott has a higher cache, it has a higher latency and it is not going to show its potential until they make em 4GHz ... i found this article if you're interested:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040517/index.html

 

Prescot has somewhat longer pipes (if that is possible) and supports the SSE3 instruction set.

Prescott performs worse than the Northwood at lower speeds (the two lowest Prescotts, IIRC, should be avoided) but the Prescott apparantly ramps much faster than the Northwood. That is, it gains more benefit from an increased clock speed. In any case, the P4 is still pretty much memory-bandwidth limited, so be sure to get 800MHz FSB and run dual channel.

 

is the barton core any good for amd cpu's?

 

Barton is AMD Athlon XP. IIRC, it is the latest core for that processor line. It supposedly overclocks well, if you're into that (I'm not).

Personally, I'd avoid Athlon XPs. Socket A is being phased out (which will be followed by socket 754). It's very frustrating to buy AMD right now.

 

I'd agree-- if you have the money to go Athlon 64. if not, you can still get far better performance out of an Athlon XP for less money than P4. (for example, an XP 2800+ is $90 where its counterpart, the p4 2.8C is still $170)

 

Socket A will still be around for some time. AMD is still more bang for the buck. IMHO!

 

Hey all...
Isn't the biggest deal about the Barton Core the bigger cache that it has?
I am under the impression that the larger cache counts as a major factor for performance...

Thoughts?

 

where do you get the 2800 for 90 bucks, the cheapest i seen is 113 at newegg?

 

@ Robster, the larger cache and higher FSB do make the Barton perform better than the Thouroughbred, but not by leaps and bounds. it's definetly the best athlon XP you can buy though.


@Steak and Eggs, i was referring to an OEM 2800+, as you can see here for $80 after you strip down all their options, as I usually buy a better heatsink anyway. http://www.portatech.com/catalog/viewitem.asp?ID=7352

I have ordered 2 of those from them when building systems, since It's the same price as a 2600+ barton . they once sent the wrong processor, but very easily acknowledged their mistake and payed for me to ship it back, and promptly overnighted me the correct one.

 

yeah, i was referin to the oem too, the oem at newegg is 113. where can you but the 2800 for 90 bucks? have you bought somethin from there? are they any good?

 

lol, never mind, totally forgot to click the link that u put, disregard that last post, lol. dumb me....

 

Not really. Athon XP's are going away. So are Durons. The only remaining processor that will be available on Socket A will be the Sempron, which is itself a budget processor. I give Socket A six months to a year.

I give socket 754 twelve to fifteen months.

 

What consequence does this hold for the user?
That if your chip is toasted, you can't replace it easily?

Meaning, if you kill your chip, you must then replace mobo as well?

Considering the lower prices of Socket A, for the non-performance user, would this still hold some value, to go with the Socket A, considering...

(I myself would not be too shy about still buying one, but admittedly, I am not so savvy....)

 

AMD Athlon XP > Intel
AMD Athlon XP $ < Intel $
I like amd Athlons much better than overpriced, overheating, oversized processors. I'd rather just OC my athlon up Up UP! then pop another one in when it burns...

 

in intels defense ... from all the benchmarks, etc i have seen the pentium4 trounces the athlonXP time and time again, in fact P4s even inch out Athlon64s(754) ... you get what you pay for (as someone told me about my current system)

 

Well, IMHO

Intel Chipsets and Processor (P4) seem to be doing very very well, I havent seen a advertisement on cable for an AMD system for a long time now, DELL for instance is all out with P4

The Intel chipset seems to have more stability than any other chipset, I have never had a problem with ANY of my P4 systems over the past 3 years, not a 1! And I`ve constructed, built nearly 10 and either upgraded the guts or sold off to upgrade.

I`ve had roughly 6 AMD Athlon, XP and Duron systems, and they didnt feel stable, all had one problem or another.

I can throw anything at an Intel chipset, and chances are it will run without a hiccup, but on my AMD experience, it wont do as much.

Also what I have noticed, I am a user that does utilise multi-tasking, ie: Play games, burn a CD while playing a MP3 in winamp, I do it often on my P4 system, but the last AMD system I ever had, crashed 7 out of 10 times (Est) everytime I did it on that system!

I cant describe it, I just like Intel, I dont sit there and whack in the latest AMD processor to run 3DMark, I like to do everything, play many diffrent games, utilising many diffrent game engines! I run a substantial amount of programs, ranging from Office XP to Soundforge.

For instance, for the past week since thursday last week, 8 days ago, I have had my system on constantly, the only time I have reset is when I installed SP2 on friday night, then again friday night last week becuase of Norton Anti-virus and Firewall updates. I have been running Flashget, Emule (With roughly 12 concurrent 600MB+ Each downloads), Norton Anti-Virus, Norton Personal Firewall. I've installed/played/deleted roughly 20 games (commercial, like Doom 3, unreal 2004, War Chess, Splinter Cell PT, CS-CZ, Halo, etc) since my last reset, opened roughly IE and surfed the net over 500 sessions, opening roughly 5 to 10 browsers at a time, checked my e-mail every couple of hours (XP OE SP2), Run Adobe Photoshop 8 CS many of times, Compressed roughly 10 (1x CD+) items, decompressed thousands of Zip/Rar/Ace files and I still havent had slowdown or a reset! Thats all since my last reset 7 days ago today! its 1:38pm, Friday 20th August 2004, so accumatively, thats been roughly 153 Hours since my last reset and I have done all of the running, opening and closing since!

When I tryed that on my AMD system, look out! Slowdown, crashing (Which is also apart of the nforce and via chipsets I found)..

Intel lets me do what the competition doesn't in my honest opinion..

Then again, thats just my 2c, since everyone else was adding their valuable opinion, I thought I might as well add my 2c

 

the crashing is certainly not a characteristic of a chipset or processor.

I've built plenty of systems, both Intel and AMD, and the only time either of them crash is after the user messes something up, or if their is a faulty piece of hardware.

I do a TON of multitasking, and my system (athlonXP 2800+ on an Asus A7N8X Deluxe) takes it seamlessly and as quickly (faster IMO) than my P4 2.8C.

the one thing i will agree on is the uptime of the processors. I habitually shut down my computer 3-4 times a week anyway, so its not an issue for me, but i have noticed that prolonged uptime on an Athlon XP causes 'slowdown' as you put it, where it wouldnt affect it as much on an Intel system.

the only thing i can think of about your dismal AMD experience is possibly bad choice of motehrboards, or bad choice in cooling as they run hot.

 

Well heat could also be an issue, as I do live in the hottest part of australia, but even my Dual Processor AMD system on the Tyan board, stability was an issue, not instantly, but after a period of time. Cooling is my main priority, with any processor these days, my current P4 CPU does 39c Idle and about 45 at peak.. where most of my AMD Duron systems did the same, with the Athlons going just over the 50c mark at times on peak..

I am not dissing AMD, or rubbishing them, heck i've owned them, built them and sold them off, even a Dual Processor system, but I just feel that intel are just that much better all round...

I`ve got a 2.8 Northwood, it hasnt let me down, and heck, I`m even bottlenecking the CPU with poor apacer memory until I can afford better...

I wouldn't usually say this, I just think Intel have the upperhand, things just seem to run right and better on Intel systems... I`ve never had a weird problem arising becuase of the Intel chipsets, unlike via chipsets, and they DO have problems with diffrent boards/chipsets, I mainly stuck with Asus, Tyan and MSI for my AMD Experience, and I hardly liked it, it felt better to have a Intel system.

 

i guess thats why there's a choice user preference is always very important.

 

ive had both and i liked them both the same, lol , im running amd athlon 2400 now, buildin a system that will consist of asus board and athlon xp2800(exactly what "inyearstocome" has). see how it turns out. just my 2cents.