question! [AMD64 vs P4]

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Postby dwchang » Tue Aug 24, 2004 5:13 pm

Brolly345 wrote:I'd say if you want to spend a whole shitload of money on a processor that you can't even use to it's fullest potential for a while, due to the lack of 64 bit applications and OS, then I would buy an AMD 64 bit processor, but if you want something that is a decent price I would go with a P4. All the equipment you would need to buy just to run the 64 bit processor would cost an insane amount of money, and in my opinion, is a total waste.


Except you can buy an Athlon-64 3000+ for under 300 dollars and a Prescott will easily cost the same or more.

On top of this, it's not like 64-bit applications are that far out. It's not even a year and even if it was, a year isn't that long either. I could use a similar argument with 'Why waste your money on something that will be obsolete in a year?'

Brolly345 wrote:If you really think about it, buying what's good now and then upgrading later is a better idea because, after a year or two, you arent going to miss the money you spent on the thing before you upgraded. But it all boils down to how much your willing to spend.


Except you *can't* upgrade from Prescott. You can't just take the chip out and magically put in a 64-bit processor into your motherboard. If you go with 32-bit now, you're effectively saying you'll stick with 32-bit with no possibility of upgrading to 64 without buying a whole ton of stuff.

It effectively comes down to buying now for the future or buying in the future. One requires you to put the $ down now while the other will be cheaper (not really based on what I said in the first part of this response), but then you'll spend a bunch of $ again to upgrade. You still spend a ton of money, but it's a matter of when and how much.
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Postby Brolly345 » Wed Aug 25, 2004 11:17 am

dwchang wrote:it's not like 64-bit applications are that far out. It's not even a year and even if it was, a year isn't that long either.

I never said they were far out. I just haven't seen any of them yet. So If I go and buy a 64 bit processor I want to use it, not wait for those fancy 64 bit applications to come out.

dwchang wrote:You can't just take the chip out and magically put in a 64-bit processor into your motherboard. If you go with 32-bit now, you're effectively saying you'll stick with 32-bit with no possibility of upgrading to 64 without buying a whole ton of stuff.


Brolly345 wrote:All the equipment you would need to buy just to run the 64 bit processor would cost an insane amount of money, and in my opinion, is a total waste.

As you can see I'm aware of the cost of all the equipment you would need in order to upgrade from a 32 bit processor to a 64 bit processor. That and the only thing, I can think of, you would have to buy with this processor is a new motherboard, new OS, and maybe a new power supply. If you bought these when the were pretty mainstream it wouldn't cost that much money.

dwchang wrote:It effectively comes down to buying now for the future or buying in the future. One requires you to put the $ down now while the other will be cheaper (not really based on what I said in the first part of this response), but then you'll spend a bunch of $ again to upgrade. You still spend a ton of money, but it's a matter of when and how much.

I agree with this. But as I said before, if you buy the upgrades after a year or two it's unlikely your going to miss the money you spent on the new upgrades. I know that's wasted money, but Average Joe Computer User doesn't plan on the next best thing that is going to come out. He buys what's in front of him and available.
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Postby Scintilla » Wed Aug 25, 2004 12:47 pm

Brolly345 wrote:
Brolly345 wrote:All the equipment you would need to buy just to run the 64 bit processor would cost an insane amount of money, and in my opinion, is a total waste.

Didn't DW already point out that there's a good Athlon64 that can be had for less than most Prescotts? And I find it hard to believe that the motherboard and memory would be that much more expensive...
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Postby Brolly345 » Wed Aug 25, 2004 12:58 pm

Scintilla wrote:Didn't DW already point out that there's a good Athlon64 that can be had for less than most Prescotts? And I find it hard to believe that the motherboard and memory would be that much more expensive...

I'm not even talking about Prescotts >_<, I'm talking the price of an Athlon. And, yes, he did point that out. When I talk about price I mean extremes. The Athlon FX-53 is $740. That's much more that anything else I've seen (except for a P4 3.6 Ghz which is about the same amount). Then if you add the mobo that's about $120. I don't know what they're going to be selling the 64 bit OS for... And I never mentioned memory. If I decided to switch to an Athlon 64 I would just need the processor, the OS, and the new mobo to put it in. Everything else I have would plug right into the thing and run without a problem.
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Postby Kalium » Wed Aug 25, 2004 4:27 pm

64-bit OS: $0. Linux is free.
64-bit apps: $0. Open Source Software is free.

Go look on sourceforge. There are 64-bit apps out there, most definately.
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Postby dwchang » Wed Aug 25, 2004 6:09 pm

Brolly345 wrote:
Scintilla wrote:Didn't DW already point out that there's a good Athlon64 that can be had for less than most Prescotts? And I find it hard to believe that the motherboard and memory would be that much more expensive...

I'm not even talking about Prescotts >_<, I'm talking the price of an Athlon. And, yes, he did point that out. When I talk about price I mean extremes. The Athlon FX-53 is $740. That's much more that anything else I've seen (except for a P4 3.6 Ghz which is about the same amount). Then if you add the mobo that's about $120. I don't know what they're going to be selling the 64 bit OS for... And I never mentioned memory. If I decided to switch to an Athlon 64 I would just need the processor, the OS, and the new mobo to put it in. Everything else I have would plug right into the thing and run without a problem.


Yes, but if we're gonna go comparing "top tier," you gotta do the same on the other end. The person originally asked about performance and to comparing a $700 Athlon to a $300 P4 Northwood isn't exactly fair in a performance standpoint. You should be comparing it to something like the (now dead) P4 EE or something. Maybe even a bloted and expensive P4...I mean Xeon. ;)

And again as Scintilla said, you can get a reasonably priced Athlon-64 for the same (or less) than an equivalently performing P4. You're effectively paying nothing to get 64-bit capability and future computing. Seems like a good deal to me.

And yeah, 64-bit software is already out. If you wanna talk mainstream, 64-bit Windows is less than a year away. Probably even less than 6 months.
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Postby Brolly345 » Wed Aug 25, 2004 9:22 pm

dwchang wrote:And yeah, 64-bit software is already out. If you wanna talk mainstream, 64-bit Windows is less than a year away. Probably even less than 6 months.

I'm curious then, show me where to get these applications. I want to see for myself. And, also, if 64 bit Windows is out where can I buy it? I have yet to see it on sale anywhere.
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Postby billy_wires » Wed Aug 25, 2004 9:35 pm

Back to benchmarks...
When the pictures some people posted a few weeks back about their processorsarx (I can't spell, and frankly I don't care), they compared the AMD 64 something to the P4 3.4 something. The specific type really isn't important for my question, so ignore it. What I saw was the AMD only slightly outperforming the P4 (which was clocked almost 1.0 Ghz higher) in Dhrystone, but got killed by P4 in Whetstone. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is the Whetstone floating point equations? If so, wouldn't the ablilty to do floating point equations be a necessary part of many advanced programs? And if not, what the hell Whetstone represent (I'm not looking for "customer stupidity" here)? Oh, and here's my reference for this question.
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Postby RootHubController » Wed Aug 25, 2004 10:03 pm

I'd definitely go AMD. Solid and reliable. Prescotts are woefully underclocked- The article in Maximum PC clearly showed that it should have been clocked at 5GHz, so that it could take advantage of it's longer pipeline.

Additionally, AMD and Microsoft worked together in designing the 64 bit chjip, with an attention to NX. NX is a pretty powerful toy.

AMD > Intel.
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Postby dwchang » Thu Aug 26, 2004 1:06 am

Brolly345 wrote:
dwchang wrote:And yeah, 64-bit software is already out. If you wanna talk mainstream, 64-bit Windows is less than a year away. Probably even less than 6 months.

I'm curious then, show me where to get these applications. I want to see for myself. And, also, if 64 bit Windows is out where can I buy it? I have yet to see it on sale anywhere.


Uhm....I bolded the lines appropriate. Windows 64 isn't out yet as I clearly stated.

As for 64-bit applications, I believe Kalium already pointed out an entire OS and environment.
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Postby Scintilla » Thu Aug 26, 2004 1:18 am

RootHubController wrote:I'd definitely go AMD. Solid and reliable. Prescotts are woefully underclocked- The article in Maximum PC clearly showed that it should have been clocked at 5GHz, so that it could take advantage of it's longer pipeline.

How expensive of a cooling solution would you need in order to be able to even <i>run</i> a Prescott at 5GHz without it, like, combusting?
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Postby Brolly345 » Thu Aug 26, 2004 11:27 am

dwchang wrote:
Brolly345 wrote:
dwchang wrote:And yeah, 64-bit software is already out. If you wanna talk mainstream, 64-bit Windows is less than a year away. Probably even less than 6 months.

I'm curious then, show me where to get these applications. I want to see for myself. And, also, if 64 bit Windows is out where can I buy it? I have yet to see it on sale anywhere.


Uhm....I bolded the lines appropriate. Windows 64 isn't out yet as I clearly stated.

As for 64-bit applications, I believe Kalium already pointed out an entire OS and environment.

Opps, I misunderstood your previous post. And I missed Kalium's post. Reading comprehention is a good thing... :oops:
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Postby RootHubController » Thu Aug 26, 2004 2:42 pm

Scintilla wrote:
RootHubController wrote:I'd definitely go AMD. Solid and reliable. Prescotts are woefully underclocked- The article in Maximum PC clearly showed that it should have been clocked at 5GHz, so that it could take advantage of it's longer pipeline.

How expensive of a cooling solution would you need in order to be able to even <i>run</i> a Prescott at 5GHz without it, like, combusting?


http://www.maximumoc.com/ln2.html
Nuff said. :P
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Postby billy_wires » Thu Aug 26, 2004 7:53 pm

billy_wires wrote:Back to benchmarks...
When the pictures some people posted a few weeks back about their processorsarx (I can't spell, and frankly I don't care), they compared the AMD 64 something to the P4 3.4 something. The specific type really isn't important for my question, so ignore it. What I saw was the AMD only slightly outperforming the P4 (which was clocked almost 1.0 Ghz higher) in Dhrystone, but got killed by P4 in Whetstone. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is the Whetstone floating point equations? If so, wouldn't the ablilty to do floating point equations be a necessary part of many advanced programs? And if not, what the hell Whetstone represent (I'm not looking for "customer stupidity" here)? Oh, and here's my reference for this question.

But what about my question????!!!?!?!?!?!??!?!!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? L@@K here.
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