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Posted

This is for someone who knows about the different types of CPUs!:

 

Just wondering what the AMD Athlon equivalent is of an Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz? (roughly)

 

Was looking at the AMD Athlon XP 3000+ but apparently its only 2.1Ghz? I know that the 3000+ doesn't relate to the Ghz in AMDs now, but I thought a 3000+ would still be faster than a P4 2.6?

 

Thanks

James

Posted

James, the Athlon 3000+ is faster than a P4@2.6 GHz. :wallbash:

 

While Intel worked mainly to improve their CPUs' clock speed, AMD has worked on other areas and made their CPUs perform as well as Intel CPUs with higher clock speeds. What this means is that although the clock speed of an AMD Athlon 3000+ CPU is lower than an Intel Pentium 4 CPU clocked at 3.0 GHz, the Athlon CPU performance is equivalent to the P4 performance. That's why AMD decided to use this nomenclature, because the clock speed is no longer the most important thing. When they call "3000+" to a CPU, it means it is as fast as an Intel CPU clocked at 3000 MHz = 3 Ghz.

 

For instance, the Athlon 64 3000+ (socket 939) clock speed is only 1.8 GHz but I have one and I can tell you from experience that it is indeed as fast (sometimes faster) than a P4@3.06 GHz.

Posted

AMD rules! lol indeed, while Intel seemed to focus on "getting out the larger numbers," AMD wisely chose to improve the design to squeeze out more performance from a lower "clock speed." Talk about intelligence... :dance:

Posted
James, the Athlon 3000+ is faster than a P4@2.6 GHz. :dance:

 

In general I would agree with you, but in practice I've sometimes found that not to always be true, possibly due all the factors involved in the processing including the front side bus.

 

For example, a particular CPU intensive game I have hammers my Athlon 3200+ desktop system (2.2Ghz, 512KB L2 Cache, 400Mhz FSB) but performs rather well on my Pentium M 770 (2.13Ghz, 2MB L2 Cache, 533Mhz FSB) laptop (using the same game settings). Now the cache size and the bus speed might give the pentium the edge in this particular application.

 

However, across the board, an equivalent Mhz AMD Athlon XP will outperform the P4. But despite AMD's claim, the performance numbers are probably a bit lower... for example, Tom's Hardware's benchmarks show that an AMD Athlon XP 3200+ compares closer to a 2.8 Ghz P4 (which means a 3000+ would probably be close in performance to the 2.66 you are referring to).

 

For instance, the Athlon 64 3000+ (socket 939) clock speed is only 1.8 GHz but I have one and I can tell you from experience that it is indeed as fast (sometimes faster) than a P4@3.06 GHz.

 

Well, the Athlon 64 is a newer 64-bit processor. The P4 3.06 is likely not, unless it's the Prescott 2M core which comes with the EM64T extensions enabled.

Posted

Cheers guys, gonna go wi the AMD (Venice) Athlon 64 3500+.

 

But now for the big question: Should I go for Windows XP x64 Edition?

Posted

Hey yall, I am having siimilar troubles, i am about to buy AMD Athlon 1600, what sort of power is the in PENTIUM form. What is the equvelant in Ghz?

 

What sort of tricks can this computer handle, eg what can it do, play games? if so what sorta games. Thanks

 

:pissed: :cool2: :1eye: :1eye: :sly: ;) :sly: :) :shocking:

Posted

Mike, you are absolutely correct. The FSB allows the P4 to be faster in some situations and yes, I also think that the performance numbers on the Athlon CPUs are probably a bit stretched ;)

 

James, I can't recall if the Venice core version is the one that uses Socket 939. If it's not, pick the one that uses Socket 939.

 

As for Windows XP Pro x64, it really depends on what you want to do. If you're going to use applications that already exist in a 64 bit version, then you probably could use XP x64. On the other hand, if you already own a copy of Win XP (32 bit edition) and you're not thinking of running 64 bit applications, you will not gain much from buying the 64 bit version of Windows. Even more so because there is still not much 64 bit software available for Windows, except for some professional applications and a couple of games. Drivers can still be an issue, too.

 

Unless, of course, you don't mind the price tag and want to invest for the future but in that case, I'd probably wait for Windows Vista. Or install Linux ;)

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