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brucedeluxe169
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2004
- Messages
- 3,720
Well, I want to upgrade from my Athlon XP 1600. I only upgrade at all every 3 or 4 years, and I want to have a powerful desktop for college this year. I have always leaned towards the Athlon 64 as the way to go, but recently, my decision hasn't been so clear.
A friend of mine fried his Athlon XP 3200, so he went out and got a 3.2ghz Prescott and a 865 PE motherboard. Currently, using nothing but the stock Intel heatsink and fan, he can overclock his system to more than 3.7ghz, with his FSB always above 900. The only thing that really kills his system is his crappy ram (PC 2700). Anyway, after seeing the xbitlabs review of CPU performance in Doom 3, and seeing in a REAL GAME TEST (not a timedemo, which is an unrealistic benchmark), that the Pentium 4 was able to barely beat out the Athlon 64, i was wondering if the Athlon's dominance in the gaming world is really that strong. Like many others, I consider John Carmack's engines to be the ultimate test of a system's power, and if the Pentium 4 is indeed faster than the Athlon 64, then wouldn't the P4 indeed be the better processor?
I know my friend's prescott can hit those high overclocks without changing the default vcore, and it does indeed have low temps with the stock heatsink. Also, I have a very very capable watercooling system (2 bay reservoirs, 2 double radiators), so I know heat will never be a problem for me. What do you guys think I should do? My main concern is: which platform will be more robust for me in 3-4 years time??? If you look at the xbit article (http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/doom3-cpu_5.html) all those P4s are using 800mhz FSBs and dont top 3.4, while my friend's hits 3.7+ghz with 900+FSB. Looks good, but Athlons are almost universally recognized among the enthusiast crowd as being the fastest money can buy.
Can someone please help me, my Geforce 6800GT is just crying b/c its so CPU limited.
Thanks in advance.
A friend of mine fried his Athlon XP 3200, so he went out and got a 3.2ghz Prescott and a 865 PE motherboard. Currently, using nothing but the stock Intel heatsink and fan, he can overclock his system to more than 3.7ghz, with his FSB always above 900. The only thing that really kills his system is his crappy ram (PC 2700). Anyway, after seeing the xbitlabs review of CPU performance in Doom 3, and seeing in a REAL GAME TEST (not a timedemo, which is an unrealistic benchmark), that the Pentium 4 was able to barely beat out the Athlon 64, i was wondering if the Athlon's dominance in the gaming world is really that strong. Like many others, I consider John Carmack's engines to be the ultimate test of a system's power, and if the Pentium 4 is indeed faster than the Athlon 64, then wouldn't the P4 indeed be the better processor?
I know my friend's prescott can hit those high overclocks without changing the default vcore, and it does indeed have low temps with the stock heatsink. Also, I have a very very capable watercooling system (2 bay reservoirs, 2 double radiators), so I know heat will never be a problem for me. What do you guys think I should do? My main concern is: which platform will be more robust for me in 3-4 years time??? If you look at the xbit article (http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/doom3-cpu_5.html) all those P4s are using 800mhz FSBs and dont top 3.4, while my friend's hits 3.7+ghz with 900+FSB. Looks good, but Athlons are almost universally recognized among the enthusiast crowd as being the fastest money can buy.
Can someone please help me, my Geforce 6800GT is just crying b/c its so CPU limited.
Thanks in advance.
