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3400+ vs 3.2C

U

UnseenClass

Gawd
Joined
Dec 14, 2002
Messages
539
I'm building a new system soon and i'm trying to decide which motherboard/CPU combo I should base it off of.

Athlon 64 3400+
nvidia nforce 3 250

or

Intel Pentium 4 3.2C (Northwood)
i875P based motherboard

I want your opinion on my intel based system; would that motherboard combo OC fairly well and be stable? I don't know much about intel based systems.
 
I tried nForce3 ... not stable at all (yet?) Give it some time before you spend money on it.

i875P is tested, and proven stable.
 
The i875P platform is one of the most stable you can get. I don't know what people are getting out of 3.2C's on overclocking. But I know 2.8's and 3.0's do pretty well. Both Northwood and Prescott cores do well in overclocking.

As far as specific motherboards go the only two that are really under consideration by the hardcore enthusiest are generally the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe and the Abit IC7-MAX3. Many people will offer conflicting opinions over which is better between those two. Everyone has a preference, but the undeniable truth is both boards yield excellent results when overclocking.
 
spock said:
I tried nForce3 ... not stable at all (yet?) Give it some time before you spend money on it.

i875P is tested, and proven stable.
Click to expand...

With the new NForce 3 250 chipsets, most if not all of the previous problems are fixed.

You did not say what you are planning on using the machine for?
 
I haven't seen Athlon64s been overclocked that far, like 200 Mhz tops in some reviews. But if you're buying for gaming purposes, the Athlon64 is probably the best bet, though I think the new Newcastles are coming out very soon aren't they? I think I'd rather get the socket 939 chips rather than the socket 754 chips (since socket 940 is the future).

However, the Athlon64 will win in some benchmarks, the P4 will win in some. It all depends on your needs.
 
correction A64's win MOST benchmarks and P4s win some. But the real question is which ones a better deal? The A64 are stupid over-price where as the P4's provide a better price/performance ratio. I'd go with a p4 3.2C (northwood) over the egotistic "hey we got the best performance so lets price our stuff so high no one buys them" AMD Athlon 64's. AMD's gotta pull it's head out of it's ass. The desktop Pentium-M's can't get here soon enough.
 
What will you be doing with the system? Depending on your usage, one system may be better suited than another.
 
3400+ doesn't like to be overclocked. Get a nice 3200+ and oc it to the same speeds.... You'd need really good ram though. BH-5, or the new Corsair XL series, to take you to DDR500 at relatively low voltage. High vdimm or 3.3 line voltage kills A64's in a matter of hours. A 3200+ running at 2.5GHz is about as good as a P4c at 3.8GHz.
3.2C and 3200+ cost about the same:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-116-165&depa=0
and
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-413&depa=0
 
Juan Sanchez said:
correction A64's win MOST benchmarks and P4s win some. But the real question is which ones a better deal? The A64 are stupid over-price where as the P4's provide a better price/performance ratio. I'd go with a p4 3.2C (northwood) over the egotistic "hey we got the best performance so lets price our stuff so high no one buys them" AMD Athlon 64's. AMD's gotta pull it's head out of it's ass. The desktop Pentium-M's can't get here soon enough.
Click to expand...

The 3400+ is not a 939 chip. The 3.2C is not a LGA chip. Your rant has absolutely nothing to do with the 3400+ [which is still priced LESS than the 3.4C]. And don't blame AMD for pricing so high, blame Intel that they couldn't solve their 90nm problems in time to meet their own schedule. This market is dominated by competition, Intel hasn't been stepping up to the plate lately and AMD is capitalizing.

Also explain to me what egotism has to do with the price/performance ratio? I swear some people will look for ANY excuse to try to justify their purchase [even if it was a laughabley stupid one].

Personally, I'm getting an A64 becuase I like green...it's so green. :rolleyes:
 
You really need to think about cooling when your trying to OC a chip thats already that fast. Cause before you know it your running at like 3.7+ on the 3.2 and heat is just going through the roof.
 
1st of all, that's not really a fair comparison. :p

The 3200+ is more comparative to the 3.2C. Anyways, if you do mostly gaming on your computer, than I would recommend you buy an Athlon 64 setup. Preferably a 3200+, as they aren't as high priced as the 3400+. If however, you mostly do encoding and such, or MOSTLY encoding, and then gaming, I would recommend an Intel setup.
 
BillLeeLee said:
I haven't seen Athlon64s been overclocked that far, like 200 Mhz tops in some reviews.
Click to expand...
Right, but they can be raised to very high HyperTransport frequencies (think FSBs) when the (unlocked!) multiplier is dropped. They benefit greatly from this increase, regardless of what the final CPU clock is.
 
One of your most important issues will be which OS do you plan to run? If you are using WinXP, then you will be fine with either an Intel 875 system or an AMD K8T800 Pro setup, but if you use Linux frequently, then you can go ahead and migrate to a 64 bit environment.
 
Nuitari said:
1st of all, that's not really a fair comparison. :p

The 3200+ is more comparative to the 3.2C. Anyways, if you do mostly gaming on your computer, than I would recommend you buy an Athlon 64 setup. Preferably a 3200+, as they aren't as high priced as the 3400+. If however, you mostly do encoding and such, or MOSTLY encoding, and then gaming, I would recommend an Intel setup.
Click to expand...


That depends on which encoders you use, some lean towards AMD, some lean towards Intel.
 
xonik said:
Right, but they can be raised to very high HyperTransport frequencies (think FSBs) when the (unlocked!) multiplier is dropped. They benefit greatly from this increase, regardless of what the final CPU clock is.
Click to expand...
No they don't since HyperTransport in single A64 systems are used essentially for I/O only, which given the already high bandwidth are not even close to being a limiting factor for performance. The K8T800 Pro with the 1GHz HyperTransport link is virtually identical to the chipset with 800MHz HyperTransport links.
 
SLee said:
No they don't since HyperTransport in single A64 systems are used essentially for I/O only, which given the already high bandwidth are not even close to being a limiting factor for performance. The K8T800 Pro with the 1GHz HyperTransport link is virtually identical to the chipset with 800MHz HyperTransport links.
Click to expand...
That make sense of course, but how do you explain this?

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1594&page=6

Note the scores of the "Epox 8KDA3+ (290/386") compared to the competition, and note its "HyperTransport frequency."
 
But the performance difference is caused by the increased CPU clock, not by the increased HyperTransport frequency. I would expect a 2.4GHz A64 with the standard 800MHz link to outscore the 2.32GHz A64 with the overclocked HyperTransport links.
 
SLee said:
But the performance difference is caused by the increased CPU clock, not by the increased HyperTransport frequency. I would expect a 2.4GHz A64 with the standard 800MHz link to outscore the 2.32GHz A64 with the overclocked HyperTransport links.
Click to expand...
Something strange is going on. I agree that the HyperTransport frequency should NOT be a major factor in system performance, but something isn't quite right here.

We know that the CPU clock is determined by the product of the multiplier and the HyperTransport bus frequency. This has been demonstrated ad nauseum.
We know that increasing the CPU clock inceases system performance.
We know that lowering the multiplier does not reduce system performance, provided that the CPU clock is preserved (as demonstrated in the EPoX motherboard review, the 8x multiplier did not cause it to perform like a 1.6 GHz Athlon 64)
Thus, since the HT frequency and the multiplier are the only factors in deriving the CPU clock, an increase in HT frequency with the same multiplier will lead to an increase in CPU clock, and an increase in performance.

The only other possibility I see is that the "HyperTransport" frequency is improperly labeled, or is not directly related to this "800 MHz" or "1000 MHz" HyperTransport bus that various chipsets are touting, which is supposedly used for I/O purposes. Maybe the "HyperTransport" frequency that overclockers can mess with is just a front side bus in disguise.
 
M4d-K10wN said:
3400+ doesn't like to be overclocked.
Click to expand...

Ive got mine up from 2.2gig, to 2.6gig. Thats pretty good. Thats with the 11x multiplier, I have not yet fiddled with it, and the ram timings. Just getting started with it.

I would get the 3400+, especially if you are a big gamer.
 
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