Intel P4 vs AMD

Yea, sadly I'm stuck with AI Booster. I'm actually to scared to try to overclock my computer any other way. The last 2 computers I had both blew out. 1 was an HP, the other I built. I fault that to heat/airflow but they made me scared lol. I tried looking up how to overclock but directions are very broad and general. I wouldn't want to mess up my pc when its only 3 months old.

Anyways, P4 CPU's at high speeds are definitely coming to be cheaper, but here is the thing, most of them are for boards that are becoming outdated. Or I believe they are becoming outdated or phasing out. Like a P4 3.2 will be for a 478 socket board which I was told was being phased out. Hence I went with an AMD 64 3700+ which is a socket 939 board which is relatively newer and more compatible. I wasn't disappointed since I could pick up more features on the newer motherboards like gigabyte lan, etc.

Plus Prescott's run very hot. I remember on my old P4 was a prescott and that thing ran to past 100C when it was going full load. That was partly due to a broken clip on my cpu fan (lol) but I had to buy another cpufan (artic cooler) which helped fine. But if it was running that hot, I know it was running hot with my old stock fan. But the new Artic Cooler Fan brought the temp down to 60C under full load. The trade off was that the fan was freakin huge.

 

vsepde,

Take your que from me and start reading this thread from the begining! There is a treasure trove of knowlege in this thread. Feel free to ask quesions of any or all the members. Before I joined AD, I had done one very mild over-clock on a P-166. I upped it to 185 and it started acting flakey so I went back to stock and never OC'd again until my present build. I've learned a lot, as you can see by my sig. Everyone here helped me get it to this point. They are a great bunch of people. Not very many threads in any forum ever get to 100+ pages. and this one is still going strong.

Another word of advice! When you do make changes in the bios (and you eventually will), make small changes. If it runs O.K., live with these settings for a little while before making more changes. Learn what the changes you make do to the way your computer runs. Run the benchmarks and you will learn what is going on inside it. Once you grasp all of this it's a lot easier to know what to change to make improvements. If I had OC'd this machine 20% "right out of the box", it wouldn't even have booted (I know, I tried!). Trust me when I say that over-clocking is much more than just upping the CPU frequency. I can now run mine as fast as 3.70 but It gives me glitches when encoding. If I back it down to 3.60, it never creates a coaster. Temps are no longer a problem thanks to a Zalman 9500 cooler.

This forum has been good to me and I can assure you that it will be good to you as well. Stay with it long enough and you will learn enough to make your computer run a whole lot better without the danger of hurting anything. Most important, don't be afraid to ask questions. These folks will help you, and that's a promise!

Happy Computering,

theonejrs

 

Yea definitely. I love this place. I'm actually learned a whole lot just reading the forums. This forum and the TV forum are the ones I usually love to inhabit.

Hopefully I'll learn a lot more. Btw, I have a Zalman CPU Fan too with blue LED. Don't you love it? But I was so suprised to see how heavy that thing was, wow. Yours heavy too?

System
Asus A8N-SLI
AMD 64 3700+ San Diego w/1 MB Cache
1 Gig Corsair Valueselect Memory
600 Watt EchoStar PSU
I/O Magic DVD Dual Layer Burner x16
Geforce 6600 GT PCI-E x16

 

vspede

40C = 103.9F
60C = 139.9F
100C = 211.9F

Looking at the numbers, it makes me wonder what was making those temps go ballistic. 100C looks like a malfunction and little thermal paste with no cooler. Once you see the smoke, you're supposed to shut down and do the repairs. You're talking hot enough to boil water. The metal would have been hot enough to start melting the plastic insulation. No wonder the PC melted down. What happened to the thermal shutdown?

Not all P4s were Prescotts, though the move was to the faster clock speed Prescotts. Scubabud and I are using Northwoods. 40C is what mine runs at under load for a few hours of encoding. It varies from 40-42C. That's 20C cooler than what you encountered with your Prescott with the better FHS. I'm using a Zalman on my system, but the temps weren't drastically higher before. I've seen AMDs run hotter. So, Intel could have stayed with a cooler running CPU, they just took the easy way out and for sales moved with the higher numbers. People were buying into the hype of larger numbers (even AMD went with it for a while). Now Intel realizes they "shot their foot" on that one. The older Northwoods are cool running and OC(ing) doesn't cause heating problems. If you fry the system, it would have to be from going beyond component spec limits.

The Zalman 9500 is actually a bit lighter than the 7700. The hollow heat tubes are ligher than the solid, finned heatsinks. They're a bit heavy and there's a warning about moving the PCs around. In other words, drop the PC and the FHS may drop off the mobo. Great coolers though. So, with some common sense there's no problems.

At this point in time, you may notice that the Prescott has a rep for running hot. After reading most of what's in the thread (I've been around for a while), I'm glad luck led me away from that processor. After that initial stroke of luck, I found out and the last P4 I purchased was intentionally the Northwood. I have Sophocles to thank for pointing out some of the differences in the Intel processors. One of his past builds was a Northwood. That's older tech now, but still a formidable CPU as far as single cores go.

There's good audio and graphics cards for the older Socket 478 systems; so they're not that far behind. Unless one is into extreme gaming, a 478 system will do what it's called on to do. They're good single core systems. Naturally the newer boards with twin GPUs and more updated chipsets are going to perform better. Surprisingly though, if the newer system isn't using a CPU and mobo that's optimized, the older systems can do better, as shown by some of the bench tests shown in this thread.

 

Yea, currently my new pc runs at 37C and tops out at 43C at full load.

My old PC, the one that went up to 100C had the cpu fan hanging off LOL. I didn't know so I had to buy a new one. The new one worked well but than something happened and the PC Died. I'm almost positivie it was the motherboard.

I'm still a big fan of the AMD though since I've liked it better than my old P4, I just wish I had better ram. I have Corsair Valueselect and from what I've been reading if your ram is bad, than you can't really overclock that high. Oddly enough, RAM seems to be the only weak point of my computer. Everything else is brand new and pretty decent.

 

I wish afterdawn would actually record my posts!!!!!!

 

I've been hearing that the AMD beats intel by a longshot.....
But i was wondering Are there any advantages for an intel compared to AMD
I have:Intel P4 640 3.20gGHz HT 2M 800FSB Socket 775

SO could anybody maybe tell me so i don't think my intel is totally worthless

 

It's not worthless, it's just slower than AMD in every camp. Not by a great margin though.

 

Ok, but so you mean there are absolutley no advantages to getting one?

 

Not at the moment no.

 

P4s are dated technology at the moment. Intel has better in the works.
The P4 still does the job. It just isn't the latest gizmo.
If your going to build a computer today then AMD has the best choices available.

But the low end Pentium D is a good budget dual core.

 

tocool4u
The Donald made a valid point, currently the high performance dual cores from AMD are the best. However, when you start looking at the mid level PCs, there is no distinct winner that I see. AMD holds an edge when it comes to OC(ing); but how many PC owners actually OC their systems? Most off the shelf systems aren't capable.

If the socket 478 Northwoods had better boards with updated chipsets, they would still be competitive with the other single cores today. Other than squeezing a few more hundred MHz out of the Prescotts, I have no idea why Intel went the way they did. The newer Intels run hotter and are not as efficient. Other than the hype for speed, I haven't a clue why Intel took the direction they did. Anyone know?

As Donald pointed out, the P4s (as well as a bunch of the AMD single cores) are becoming old tech and no longer on the cutting edge. Both AMD and Intel are forging ahead, with AMD having enjoyed the lead the past couple of years. Now it appears Intel is trying to be "king of the hill" once again. The competition is fierce. I don't think either AMD or Intel are bad. AMD just had the lead for a while at top end. Even the hotter running Intels didn't smoke any systems unless there was another problem. AMDs aren't immune to the occasional failure either. So, for the average user, go with what makes you happy. For the performance oriented that likes tinkering under the hood, go with AMD on the new tech. Hopefully the new Intels will pan out and not be the hardware equivalent of vaporware.

 

Absolutely, as we've been saying we'll wait to see if Conroe does become widely available, but come it's launch in July 06 (supposedly), the AM2 socket FX-62 will be out, along with all its counterparts. If a CPU with a branding 3800+ in the sempron range is going to appear, it's going to say things about how AMD are progressing. The initial conroe benchmarks, which if you remember gave ALL the favour to the Conroe, and it came out just a wee bit on top. Given the fact that the FX-62 platform will be around 10-15% faster than the current FX-60, and the fact that its launch will bring about major price cuts (there are already some planned for April), I can see the Conroe not quite cutting the mustard for an AMD refute. However, that all depends whether or not there will be faster Conroes at launch than that benchmarked system, and I'm pretty confident that the AM2 platform isn't going to be vapourware, AMD seem to have managed that not to be the case before, especially with the FX-60 and X2s. We'll have to see whether Intel's latest effort is smoke and mirrors, or a genuine assault on AMD's castle.

 

whats that FX-62 going too run price wise

 

I think it'd seem logical for the FX-62 to debut at about the same price as the FX-60 did, so around $1000.

 

If it's any indication, the FX-57 has been selling for $815 US at Newegg.

Sammorriss
Rumor already has it that Conroe will also appear in an Extreme version. Intel doesn't appear to be setting on its duff waiting to release just the CPU they had at the show. If nothing else, this will force some new goodies from the cupboard of AMD. I noted the results of the tests you quoted. AMD [bold]didn't[/bold] lose in all phases. The Conroe was merely the overall winner of that test. As we all realize, the jury is still out till the Conroes hit the real world market.

 

If AMD didn't lose some tests, they'll almost certainly still be the winners of at least those tests. An extreme edition conroe may up performance slightly, but bear in mind we have to call the FX-62 back into question, which may match the performance increase noted by the EE (which I've noticed hasn't been a great deal for past P4s...)

 

Only recently has Intel been marketing the "Extreme" as a market ploy. It's been there in the past with very good results. I'd love to have one of the 2MB L2 Cache versions of the CPU I have. It's a bit pricey for an old tech item though. But the older Northwood S478 CPUs can easily compete with AMDs single core performance processors. The newer processors have the advantage of more up to date boards and chipsets, so I wouldn't advise going with the old tech if one is into extreme gaming or anything needing PCIe and dual GPUs. I don't mean to keep bringing up because I have one, but at the time the Northwoods were the new toy, they were the best available and are still superior to the single core CPUs they were replaced with. A mild 5% OC of a 3.4GHz NW will bring it up the level of a FX-57. Surely Intel could have upped the performance and speed of the Northwoods as opposed to going with the Prescotts. Seems they just make a wrong direction. I'm looking forward to what the following months bring. I notice that both the AMD and Intel camps are speculating. I'm just going to wait and see. I suspect we'll see better from both Intel and AMD.

 

What's good for one will mean more work for the other, and ultimately faster processors, or more to the point cheaper processors!

 

yeah it would be nice if the highend CPUs would get down to around 500 bucks maybe in time that will happen