Buy a Northwood or wait for Prescott??

[Stringent]

Will still be 32 bit I think.

I'm in the position of the first couple of posts. Will probably wait now till the 3.2 Prescott comes out next month.

[unrealrocks]

I wouldn't buy a new CPU just yet, as the 2.8Ghz Prescott is £170 preorder from OcUK I'd hang on to see what there like but I stand by saying the A64 is the best option ... at least from what I've heard and seen!

[chrisf6969]

type that in gogle or try tomshardware.com ,
and chrisf6969, how the hell did you overclock a 2.4 to 3.6
did you use vapochill or watercolling or just air

Aircooled, its a sweet chip. I'm just a lucky bastard.

[chrisf6969]

There's some unaccounted for die space & rumored transistor count. So there's probably more than just SSE3 and HT2 added. (x86-64) AMD has said it takes up very little die space to add 64 bit functionality. So they probably have it ready to go.

[shamus21]

wait until march if you can before building a new rig. some good savings to be had by then.

[serlex]

when are 32bit software coming out? and does any one know when 775socket intels are coming out.

[Darkmatter]

Errrr serlex you using 32bit software right now, if you using that AMD system in you signiture.
Socket 775 is ment to come out i believe around April-June time but i could be wrong

[serlex]

crap, im stupid, i ment 64bit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[[GSV]Myocardial]

I personally think you should wait till prescott, then you can see some proper benchmarks of it compared to both the Northwood and the AMD64 chips.

From the prices posted on OcUK then I'd say that the 3.2 prescott is at the moment slightly more expensive than the AMD64 3200 so to compare like to like you'd really have to be talking of the top end chip for prescott against the current second AMD64 chip.

I don't know how much performance increase you'd see if using a 64bit OS with the AMD but this doesn't seem to be a possibility with the initial prescott from my reading.

[serlex]

I YOU LOOK AT HEXUS'S REVIEW OF AMD 64 3400+, it shows that even a amd 64 3200+ is better than a pentium 3.2ghz.

but do you think if i got a 3.0ghz prescott (£210) and overclock it to 3.6 or more, will it perform better than amd 64 3200+ (£210)?

OC 3.0 at 3.6 vs amd 64 3200+ OC (if you can)

[bennydad]

prescott will be cheaper - cos its a smaller die than NW and you get more chips to a wafer. therefore lower production costs.

[[GSV]Myocardial]

Yeah but thats presuming that you can't overclock the AMD chip, it the AMD overclocks by say 200MHz your looking at about a 300-400 MHz overclock on the Intel chip, so if their performance is similar then your going to need better ram to push the Intel far enough.

The AMD won't need such exotic ram as the Intel ie Pc4000 etc to push it as far in performance terms.

If your unsure I really think you should wait until a few more reviews come out about it. I've made my decision and gone for the AMD64 3200 for £195.16, but I think it's climbed in price a little since then.

You can also pick up a mobo like the Gigabyte Ga K8N pro for about £89.97 so thats about comparable to the Intel Asus mobo (OcUK price is £105, but I'm sure you'll find it cheaper elsewhere, like simply/komplett )

That'll leave you a little more for your grafics card which imo is the weakest component in 2800CC's selection

And the Pc3200 memory won't be too much trouble to overclock the AMD rig further in performance terms of the chips.

It's only my opinion tho, and if your unsure about that then I'd seriously wait as it won't be too long before the prescott is on the market and then you can pick up a better feel for how it will perform Also would give you a little more time to save for a better grafics card.

[bennydad]

if you can't wait 2 weeks

[Stoo]

rumours abound that prescott is actually slower clock for clock than northwood.. but I guess we'll find out properly before too much longer

[bennydad]

hope not - ive sold my northwood and waiting for my prescott