64bit Athlon- the major differences

[Stoo]

yup, it appears that the a64's are fairly stuffed for serious overclocking..

[Lee H]

lol They don't have a FSB as such as they have the hypertransport system, therefore you could say theoretically that their FSB is either 1800 MHz or 2000 Mhz depending on which version you purchase

[Zak33]

so we are stuck with a reasonably expensive cpu, and a new mobo, as your option from the Thorobred/Barton level you are prob already on.

Right.....what is the best combe for .....£250 inc VAT. Forget postage, so long as its less than a tenner.....

What can we say is best value for £250 THAT USES PC3200 memory that lots of us will already have.

Lets pressume we all need a sound card built in, and can use out own cars if they are better.

Lets presume GigaEthernet to not be too essential as 10/100 is pretty fast.

Serial ATA if ya fancy..I'm a SCSI man tho....

what so we get....what CPU and Mobo?

[Zak33]

lol They don't have a FSB as such as they have the hypertransport system,

oh.....explain please

[Stoo]

the serious way to get more grunt out is multiplier altering, but this time it appears to be the motherboard manufacturers stopping the overclocking..

I wonder if AMD has applied a bit of pressure to them to stop it?

[Zak33]

so FSB is kinda gone then?

What mem must you have? Whats the defualt memory expected by the Mobo?

[Stoo]

what so we get....what CPU and Mobo?

I'd wait a couple of weeks for the big A64 price drop..

[Stoo]

so FSB is kinda gone then?

What mem must you have? Whats the defualt memory expected by the Mobo?

Although there's no longer a FSB, it still performs the same function, but now due to the way it's implemented it doesn't have the same effect on performance if you overclock it..


PC3200 really, and apparently the timings are no long as critical for good performance, so now you can use the more exotic stuff the Intel peeps have been using for a while..

[Lee H]

oh.....explain please

<brain active>AMD Athlon 64 processors use AMD's HyperTransport to interface with the North & South bridges instead of through the old FSB and run at up to 800MHz DDR (or effective 1,600MHz) which gives a maximum of 6.4GB/s bandwidth.

The AMD Athlon 64 have an increased processor stage pipeline from 10 to 12-stages (Intel Pentium 4 has 20-stages). There are core architecture improvements making up for the slight loss of performance with the deeper pipeline. Having a small pipeline means that AMD processors can do more instructions per clock-for-clock than the Intel Pentium 4, but having such a deeper pipeline partly enables the Pentium 4 to run at higher speeds.</brain active>

Right hope that explains how, what and why

[Zak33]

it does

Nice work guys

[menthel]

Hooray!

[Zak33]

This thread started at 1:38......it's now 4:06 and you lot have nailed about 80% of my questions...

I hasten to add that this is the finest thread anywhere, for a frikkin long time.

A well deserved pat on the back for all of you....superb work.

Truly superb

HEXUS ROCKS

I suggest you all RATE THIS THREAD with a 5 star, so that it shows up for other lost souls (its in the blue task bar near the top)

I've handed out 10 rep points to a couple of you as well, for astounding work and amazing patience with me

Cheers guys

[Stoo]

Begs the question.. what's the 20% we missed?

[menthel]

Eek! Quiet, don't tell anyone!

[Zak33]

you dont even wanna know that

Suffice it to say....job well done

[Stoo]