939 vs 775 Longevity question

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zedpol

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So this question really boils down to which chipset do you guys think will be the most upgradeable, AMD's 939 mobos that will be coming out with PCIe support, or intel's 775 915/925 (sorry if my numbers are off). My question stems from the fact that i am looking to build a new computer, and I would like to be able to upgrade my processor someday in the future.

Thanks
 
If you are thinking in processor upgrade, get the AMD 939 platform. It'll work with Windows XP 64 bits sooner than the 64 bits-P4 and you'll be able to get a better performance with graphics with AMD Athlon 64.

Intel has the (bad) tradition of changing its sockets often and processor upgrades are not guaranteed using the same mobo ...
 
Id really suggest a s939 A64 setup. If you wanted to wait, you could pick up an NF4 board that's SLI capable, pick up a single card, and a 3000 or 3200+ 90nm cpu with some ram. That way you'll have a lot of upgradability as more s939 chips come down in price and become available, as well as having the option to add the second PCI-E card down the road for a nice upgrade without any system changes. I try not to comment too much on XP-64bit right now, but having the 64bit CPU now may come in handy.....it just depends on how long you're gonna keep the setup, as God only knows when the OS will be ready. :p
 
You guys make sense. In response to cornelious0_0, I will want to keep the setup at least 18-24months, possibly longer, so the ability to upgrade my system is a big concern. Currently thinking i will wait until PCIe comes to 939, perhaps SLI, but it sounds like the SLI boards are going to carry a significant premium...like 70 dollars, so the SLI upgrade benefit isn't quite as sweet as i was originally thinking. This is a little bit off topic but any of you have experience with the P4 HT? Sounds like a nice technology, but i am thinking it is not worth giving up the performance and long term outlook of the Athlon 64. I have been lurking in the forums for a while, but i haven't seen anyone really address which A64 OCs the best...I am not looking to go the watercooling route..nor spend the price of a processor upgrade on heatsinks and stuff. Any input?
 
zedpol said:
You guys make sense. In response to cornelious0_0, I will want to keep the setup at least 18-24months, possibly longer, so the ability to upgrade my system is a big concern. Currently thinking i will wait until PCIe comes to 939, perhaps SLI, but it sounds like the SLI boards are going to carry a significant premium...like 70 dollars, so the SLI upgrade benefit isn't quite as sweet as i was originally thinking. This is a little bit off topic but any of you have experience with the P4 HT? Sounds like a nice technology, but i am thinking it is not worth giving up the performance and long term outlook of the Athlon 64. I have been lurking in the forums for a while, but i haven't seen anyone really address which A64 OCs the best...I am not looking to go the watercooling route..nor spend the price of a processor upgrade on heatsinks and stuff. Any input?
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Well, if you're looking for future upgradability and flexibility with the system then I'd still point you towards a s939 A64 setup. Hyper threading is nice, but in your case I think you'd get more out of the A64. The thing is with me is that I really dont game that much, so I'm not overly concerned with the (increasingly large) lead that the A64's hold in game performance.....I'm more concerned with how it feels when I'm using the system. To me, even personally sitting at a 2.4GHz overclocked A64 seem slow in XP when I'm multitasking....because I'm so damn used to hyper threading....and it DOES make a noticeable difference.

Dont despair though, for you, and in your situation it's far more worth gonig with an A64 and being "good to go" for that much longer. Just wanted to make sure you knew the pros and cons is all.
 
HT makes really better when the subject is multi-tasking under windows. I have a 2,8 GHz (NW) running in a P4P800 with 2x512 Kingston Hyper X and it just kills any AMD I've ever seen with many simultaneous tasks. Still, if you intend to keep your setup for years, making just processor/memory upgrades, Socket 939 will bring what you want.
 
Thanks for the input. I really appreciate non-!!!!!! (haha f.a.n.-b.o.y. is blocked out)responses that are well thought out such as your comments.

Peace
 
According to AMD, the 939 is going to be good at least until the FX-57/4200+ generation of processors, along with some future dual-core CPU. With the P4 3.6 already slower than the A64 3500+ at almost everything (and 50% more expensive), and AMD having 3800+, 4000+, FX-55 and a future 4200+/FX-57/dual-core monster to look forward to makes 939 look really good right now.

IMHO the HT advantage of the newer P4s is largely mythical, and I say this as a current P4 3.2E owner. Almost NOTHING is written to actually use hyperthreading, and there have even been benchmarks that use HT where the P4C/E is STILL out-performed by the A64 (Aquamark 3 comes to mind here). I think it is more of a case that some apps that people happen to be multitasking with are simply faster on a P4C/E, since as good as the A64/FX series look, they aren't better at EVERYTHING than a P4C/E... just alot of things. And cheaper at a given performance level.
 
Hyperthreading cannot be considered as "missing" from the AMD platform.

HT was created to compensate for the problems created by intels long pipe design.... the amd chips do not follow that concept in any way, and thus do not require HT.

HT is a band aid.

Socket 939 is the way to go.
 
IMHO the HT advantage of the newer P4s is largely mythical, and I say this as a current P4 3.2E owner. Almost NOTHING is written to actually use hyperthreading, and there have even been benchmarks that use HT where the P4C/E is STILL out-performed by the A64 (Aquamark 3 comes to mind here).
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Wow, how can you actually say that? Something doesn't have to be written or MADE to use hyper threading. Something as simple as running a dozen programs at once and loading up a game or browsing the net brings HT into play, and it DOES send the P4 ahead in the multitasking department. The Aquamark3 thing isn't really relevent, as it's not quite what I'm talking about here. I'm talking specifically about being able to do a multitude of different things at once, run 12 programs, and still get around the net just fine when I'm talking about hyper threading.....not running one specific program and seeing gains from "enabling" hyper threading in it.....as I don't see that as it's true use. The black and white truth of it is that when you are doing a number of things at once, P4's ARE the better performers, and hyper threading DOES work how it should for day to day multitasking.

I've sat down and used many overclocked A64's setups in the last little while, and when I "put them to the test" it's nowhere near the same fluidity when I start doing more then a few things at once.

I dunno what else I can say without sounding biased, other then the fact that a large majority of ppl who say HT doesn't actually work or do anything have never owned a P4 and been able to actually experience it for themselves.....which is too bad.

HT was created to compensate for the problems created by intels long pipe design.... the amd chips do not follow that concept in any way, and thus do not require HT.
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Wow, you couldn't be more wrong bro. If hyper threading was designed to compensate for intel's longer pipe design and it's only meant to "level the playing field" then tell me why there IS such a huge difference in performance and fluidity of the system when you're multitasking with a P4 as opposed to an A64. I'm not saying that the presence of HT isn't making up for some of the lost ground from the longer pipe, but the point is that HT is still a very functional feature that DOES have a lot of use today. To say that the A64's dont "need" hyper threading because intel is only using it to make up for things is basically saying that an A64 without HT is still just as good as a P4 with it.....which again, is dead wrong.

From how you posted that, it really doesn't sound like you've actually owned a system from both platforms and made USE of hyperthreading at all. Maybe you have, but you sure didn't say that like you really knew what you were talking about.

I dont mean anything as a direct slam to anyone, it's just that I'm sick of seeing people talk down a company, or peice of hardware, or feature without really knowing all the facts and/or what they're talking about.
 
it has been my experience that the a64 excels in normal multitasking over the p4...

I guess you disagree :eek:
 
potroast said:
it has been my experience that the a64 excels in normal multitasking over the p4...

I guess you disagree :eek:
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Well all I can say is that I've used a number of A64's and during everyday multitasking I found it more sluggish then my P4.....i guess it might end up coming down to personal preference, or just the fact that some ppl are gonna notice certain things more then others.
 
FSB makes a big difference too ... A64 are not going to achieve 1066 MHz as soon as P4 are... by the way, I have no idea of how Intel is gonna handle thermal solutions with such processors. :confused:

With HTenabled, 800 MHz FSB still get P4 faster with huge memory blocks being processed simultanously. AMD processors (including A64) get slower depending on how you multitask them. If you use sound/IDE/USB onboard, it slows even down. You can feel it when you rip a dvd, encode something, play music and make a hard processing demand task at the same time. With a P4, your browser still opens everithing fast. AMD (anyone, cause ALL of them have half from P4 FSB) would ask for some breath with the same duty.

That' the way it is, AMD engineers like it or not... :rolleyes:
 
Apparently you haven't taken the time to notice the Hypertransport technology that AMD is using on most of their motherboards for A64, which btw runs at 1000MHz, faster than the P4 800MHz. Speaking of memory, how about the A64 built in memory controller which greatly reduces latency when accessing the memory and hence increasing memory performance over the P4. AMD has a big edge in memory performance right now.
 
IMO I would think that LGA 775 would be more upgradeable... mostly because for AMD to upgrade to DDR 2 you will need a CPU update too
 
Hm not to get off topic but I have both a p4 setup and a a64(s939) setup and from personal experience I can say that the p4 feels smoother than the a64 3800+. :) Now that I have my p4 watercooled and at 3.75Ghz it's a no brainer for me. I'm selling my a64 setup. I'm not bashing the a64s because I know it's one hell of a cpu but I just don't think it's worth it and don't even notice any significant performance boost while gaming over the p4. Used a bfg 6800ultra and they both felt like they performed the same. Ah well.
 
actly HTT runs at 2Ghz its full duplex and Double clocked
or on the the 754 its 1600Mhz i.e 800 Double clocked

DaCoOlNeSs said:
IMO I would think that LGA 775 would be more upgradeable... mostly because for AMD to upgrade to DDR 2 you will need a CPU update too
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A64 does not need DDR2 as it does not need 2MB of L2
the mem controler is on the CPU it self infect turning you main mem in to L3 lol
the MUCH lower latency of this setup makes it just as fast as DDR2
 
If you're going to keep the same system for 2 years, you'll most likely need to upgrade the CPU/Mobo in 24 months anyways, although PCIE should definently have a foothold in the video card scheme...mind you if you bought a video card now you'll probably want to upgrade that in 2 years as well...

I really wanted to go with PCIE for an upgrade I'm about to do but the zero availablity of PCIE graphic cards (except the x300s, no thanks) is bunk.
 
SLI is good and all, but you guys are forgetting that if you buy next generation cards, they'll come with more features, then just buying 2 last generation cards.
 
Mickey, i think the point is that you can just buy a 2nd of your old card to get next gen"ish" speeds. I am not convinced the price premium on an SLI makes the whole thing worth it though
 
I dunno what else I can say without sounding biased, other then the fact that a large majority of ppl who say HT doesn't actually work or do anything have never owned a P4 and been able to actually experience it for themselves.....which is too bad.
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You should have read closer, my current PC has a P4 3.2E. ;)
 
I think one thing that you're all forgetting is their respective native clock speeds. I'm sure if you jacked an A64 up to a real 3Ghz it would have much the same feel as a natively clocked P4 3Ghz with the HT enabled.

It is noted however that Intel's second attempt at HT resulted in better performance for multiple "in CPU" threads.
 
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