Deciding between Athlon 64 3400 and Intel 3.2 Ghz

JadeDM

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 7, 2005
Messages
291
Hello all,

I'm new to the forum and I'm in the process of upgrading my computer. I previously had a Athlon 2200 with 512 ram and a geforce 2. I want to start playing half life 2 and doom 3 so I realized its time to beef up the system.

Currently I have bought:

Sapphire X800 XT Platinum Edition 256Mb AGP8X
1 GB of Corsair Pc3200 Non-Ecc Ram


I'm trying to decide between buying the Athlon 64 3400 processor with asus motherboard or a P4 3.2 Ghz with H-T technology. Im wondering which one would be better for games mainly? The other thing I was curious on was Buying the 757 pin athlon 64 3400 with 512 mb L2 cache vs buying the athlon 64 3400 with 1 mb L2 cache? Will i see a big difference in performance over the 2? Also is there a speed difference between the 939 pin and the 757 pin models?

Any help would be appreciated
 
I would go with the AMD Athlon64, because your more into gaming. I would try to stick with socket 939 processors/motherboards so later down the line you will have easier upgradability. As for performance diff 939/754 I believe its pretty much neck and neck even though Socket 939 has Dual Channel support. :)
 
Currently, socket 939 has no speed increase over socket 754, and the athlon 64 3400+ will give you a much better gaming experience then the intel 3.2.
 
Im also wondering if it is worth it to spend the extra 100 and just got with a athlon 3700? I looked at some reviews and apparently the 3400 and the 3700 were about the same, but most games the 3400 did better than the 3700!
 
The 3400 & 3700's you're looking at are socket 754. This is not necessarily a performance problem, however in a year and a half when the next big games come out and you want to upgrade, you'll need a new mobo. I would suggest going for socket 939, it has a bright looking future.

That AGP card may hamper your upgrade though. I bought a 6600GT AGP to upgrade my old PC and I'm regretting it now. I have since decided to go with a PCI-e setup because I *really* want the DFI Lanparty nf4 ultra board so now I have to sell the AGP card on ebay.
 
I am debating a similar issue - whether to go with a 939 3200+ or the 754 3400+. With top of the line motherboards (i.e. MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum vs. DFI Lanparty UT 250Gb), the 3400+ is actually cheaper than the 3200+ ($321 vs. $334 at newegg, assuming they actually get the MSI in stock at some point). I'm not interested in PCI-E right now because I have an AGP BFG 6800GT OC and I'm not about to ditch it for a PCI-E setup.

The 3400 has 400 MHz (!) on the 3200. The 3200 has the 1 GHz HTT link (vs. 800 MHz) and dual channel RAM. The dual channel is both a plus and a minus though - it makes upgrading harder since you have to do it in pairs. The 3200 is also a cooler and less power hungry CPU, which is somewhat important to me, but perhaps not enough to outweigh the 3400's clock speed advantage. Plus with CnQ it's not as big a deal - either will take less power than my existing AXP 2700+ when idle.

Upgradeability is not as important to me, since when I do upgrade I will probably get a new motherboard and CPU and put this set in my wife's computer.

So after all this I'm definitely leaning towards the 3400+.
 
umm i would say for both people get a 939 socket it will be able to handle dual core when it comes out and it has the dual chaneel controller also i know for a fact that the 3400 is good but it is 754 it may have 1mb chache but it is has the old core and is going to be outdated in a few months i say if u can get a 939 maybe above the 3500+ or even the 3700+ they all have been known for great chips but in my opinion i say get an amd for gaming and a 939 socket for down the road upgrades.
 
I'm personally an Intel man.

But if I was building a gaming rig, right this second, I think I would have to go with a 3500+ and Nforce4 mobo. (939 pin)

You could go with the 3000+ or 3200+ if you want to save some $.

If you can upgrade down the line to a dual core on 939 like is supposedly going to happen. You'd have a great upgrade path for your system too.
 
939 = upgradable to dual core, overclockable, more memory bandwidth. nuff said.
754 = typically higher stock clock speeds and more cache (to make up for the lack of dual channel RAM)
 
chrisf6969 said:
I'm personally an Intel man.

But if I was building a gaming rig, right this second, I think I would have to go with a 3500+ and Nforce4 mobo. (939 pin)

You could go with the 3000+ or 3200+ if you want to save some $.

If you can upgrade down the line to a dual core on 939 like is supposedly going to happen. You'd have a great upgrade path for your system too.

NForce 4 chipset is (currently) not an option for this post because of the AGP requirement. That being said, I'm kind of in the same boat except that I'm going to wait a little bit and save some more money. The 4200+ screenies that were just released are very enticing to me, and the DFI NForce4 board is looking spectacular (I just set up a 3000+ with DFI nforce4 ultra-d for my room-mate).

I'm going to build a new rig with the new Athlon 64 chip (when it comes out) and a dfi nf4 ultra-d and PCI-e card and sell off my new AGP card on ebay. You wouldn't lose too much by going that route, and you would have supreme upgradability in 2 years.

Just my 2 cents.
 
I ended up going with a 3400+ last night (737 pin). I just felt it wasnt worth the extra 100 bucks to go with a 3500+ 939 pin.

My setup looks like this:

Athlon 3400+ with 512 Mb L2 Cache
ASUS K8V-SE Motherboard
Seagate Barracuda 80GB SATA 7200 RPM
Sapphire x800 XT PE 256MB AGP 8x

Still looking for 1 GB pc3200 ram.

I wasnt sure if I should of went with the 512 mb cache vs the 1 mb cache on the processor but the price difference was signifcant for what my budget was.

How should this system handle half life 2 and doom 3?
 
JadeDM said:
I ended up going with a 3400+ last night (737 pin). I just felt it wasnt worth the extra 100 bucks to go with a 3500+ 939 pin.

My setup looks like this:

Athlon 3400+ with 512 Mb L2 Cache
ASUS K8V-SE Motherboard
Seagate Barracuda 80GB SATA 7200 RPM
Sapphire x800 XT PE 256MB AGP 8x

Still looking for 1 GB pc3200 ram.

I wasnt sure if I should of went with the 512 mb cache vs the 1 mb cache on the processor but the price difference was signifcant for what my budget was.

How should this system handle half life 2 and doom 3?

Very nicely, make sure you buy some decent RAM though.
 
jade:
do you mean 512kb and s754? :D

i'd recommend crucial ballistix as an option if you want some nice oc'ing ram for relatively cheap or some of the higher end g.skill if you really want to pump out that fsb :cool:
 
chrisf6969 said:
I'm personally an Intel man.

But if I was building a gaming rig, right this second, I think I would have to go with a 3500+ and Nforce4 mobo. (939 pin)

You could go with the 3000+ or 3200+ if you want to save some $.

If you can upgrade down the line to a dual core on 939 like is supposedly going to happen. You'd have a great upgrade path for your system too.

I too have been an Intel man forever. However it's pretty pathetic that the A64 3200+ gives better game performance than the 3.8GHz Prescott.
 
Optimus said:
939 = upgradable to dual core, overclockable, more memory bandwidth. nuff said.
754 = typically higher stock clock speeds and more cache (to make up for the lack of dual channel RAM)

939 is like 3-5% faster than 754...you're making it sound like 754 is crap. I'd get the 3400 if I were you. The MSI motherboard ( 939 ) is a POS from what i've heard...there is like a 50 page thread on this board about it and atleast 70% of the replies are negative. I would switch to 939 with that NEW dfi board but I dont wanna sell my videocard also...
 
I picked up my ram today.... 1 GB Corsair XMS PC3200 400MHZ CL2 ram

Anyone know how good this ram is?
 
I ended up getting a 3400+ (2.4/512K Newcastle) and an Abit NF8. I already have (admittedly crappy) PC3200 RAM so I'll just be using that.
 
JadeDM said:
I picked up my ram today.... 1 GB Corsair XMS PC3200 400MHZ CL2 ram

Anyone know how good this ram is?
you just made a thread about this, why ask twice ;)
 
JadeDM said:
Hello all,

I'm new to the forum and I'm in the process of upgrading my computer. I previously had a Athlon 2200 with 512 ram and a geforce 2. I want to start playing half life 2 and doom 3 so I realized its time to beef up the system.

Currently I have bought:

Sapphire X800 XT Platinum Edition 256Mb AGP8X
1 GB of Corsair Pc3200 Non-Ecc Ram


I'm trying to decide between buying the Athlon 64 3400 processor with asus motherboard or a P4 3.2 Ghz with H-T technology. Im wondering which one would be better for games mainly? The other thing I was curious on was Buying the 757 pin athlon 64 3400 with 512 mb L2 cache vs buying the athlon 64 3400 with 1 mb L2 cache? Will i see a big difference in performance over the 2? Also is there a speed difference between the 939 pin and the 757 pin models?

Any help would be appreciated

go with the pentium 4, nuff said.
 
and just so that i can be useful to the thread, i've seen a bunch of benchmarks where the 3400+ is on par with the 3.46EE in gaming, sometimes faster. plus the 3400+ is probably a bit cheaper than the 3.2ghz p4, and will definitly own it in all games unless you're video card limited. then you'll see about 2% advantage, which you won't notice :D
 
Circuitbreaker8 said:
939 is like 3-5% faster than 754...you're making it sound like 754 is crap. I'd get the 3400 if I were you. The MSI motherboard ( 939 ) is a POS from what i've heard...there is like a 50 page thread on this board about it and atleast 70% of the replies are negative. I would switch to 939 with that NEW dfi board but I dont wanna sell my videocard also...

I don't mean to suggest that the 754 pin CPUs are crap, they just are not as good as the 939s from the standpoint of upgradability.
 
Too bad you already bought agp, not that theirs anything wrong with it just that if I needed a motherboard and gfx card I would have went for the pci-e upgrade. Anyhow both processors will get the job done, I would suggest waiting for the new 90nm s939 amd64's that are coming april 4th I believe. (Run cooler / support sse3 I believe) Doesnt really matter what you do intel wise seeing how their dual cores will need new motherboards anyway.
 
Redefined said:
go with the pentium 4, nuff said.

All the evidence available indicates that gaming = Athlon 64. Since a 3.74EE can't consistently beat a 3800+ that is half the price at games, that kind of says it all.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium4-570_10.html
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium4-6xx_12.html
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2275&p=10
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2353&p=9

Find some evidence to back up your blind fan-whore thread-crapping, or kindly fuck off. ;)
 
JadeDM said:
I ended up going with a 3400+ last night (737 pin). I just felt it wasnt worth the extra 100 bucks to go with a 3500+ 939 pin.

My setup looks like this:

Athlon 3400+ with 512 Mb L2 Cache
ASUS K8V-SE Motherboard
Seagate Barracuda 80GB SATA 7200 RPM
Sapphire x800 XT PE 256MB AGP 8x

Still looking for 1 GB pc3200 ram.

I wasnt sure if I should of went with the 512 mb cache vs the 1 mb cache on the processor but the price difference was signifcant for what my budget was.

How should this system handle half life 2 and doom 3?


Sorry, but I just have to say I love that huge cache. I personally went for the 3400+ with 1 gig cache. Now I don't even need RAM.
 
Toronaga said:
Sorry, but I just have to say I love that huge cache. I personally went for the 3400+ with 1 gig cache. Now I don't even need RAM.


wtf are you talking about? :confused:
 
he was poking fun at the typo that i see a lot of people make.
512mb of cache :D
 
Well if it makes any diff to you

I got the DFI Board, and 3200+ Winchester

I oc to 2.4ghz on STOCK voltage 100% stable, I havn't had one lockup yet, I also have the x850xt and 1 gig of ddr 500 =)
im pretty sure i could get 2.6ghz out of this cpu but i dont really need anymore speed =D
 
IMO..gaming or not... it is really irrelevant.

Buy a P4 or A64 based on other criteria. When playing games at a realistic resolutions, you won't see more than a 3-5% difference in frame rates if that. No one plays at 1024x768 these days...and if you do, it's a waste of a good computer.
 
If i were you i'd sell the ATI video card. Buy a DFI Nforce 4 socket 939 board and 3200+ cpu. And finish with an ATI pcie video card.
 
CastleBravo said:
Find some evidence to back up your blind fan-whore thread-crapping, or kindly f**k off. ;)

While I whole-heartedly agree with your sentiment, mind your blood pressure. We need all the even-handed hardforum members we can get.

TeCKis300 said:
No one plays at 1024x768 these days...and if you do, it's a waste of a good computer.

Unless you have an NV GF FX video card, in which case, how did you get it up to 1024x768 without melting down your case?
 
the GF6x00 > GFFX ;)
i can run just about any game with the quality all the way up with my 6800gt at stock speeds.
and yeah, they're hot, but it's not terribly bad :D
 
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