Dual Core: Athlon vs Pentium?

[Shmee150]

My research while looking to spend up to £400 on a processor has brought me the Athlon X2 4400 (2.2GHz) and Pentium D 840 (3.2GHz). The FX55 is out of my budget!

Tom's hardware guide has a good comparison of the Athlon *4800* against the PD 840 but that is vastly more expensive: http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050603/

So my use of my computer: large amount of video editing from and with MiniDV, converting and creating dvds etc... But I also play a number of games, but put video editing above games in terms of what my system spends the most time doing.

So anybody able to tell me in this range which is best? If I was just taking into account the guide with the 4800 and that it only slightly outs the Pentium when you take everything into account, I can't really imagine the 4400 doing this?

Any opinions appreciated!

Thanks,

ShMeE

[Shmee150]

And I've now worked out that they are comparing the Pentium D 840 Extreme Edition so that makes a difference.

Is anybody actually able to simply decide on my behalf between the two processors which I should have for my needs?

Thanks,

ShMeE

[Mike Fishcake]

Not sure, but what I do know is that in 32 bit single core mode, with Athlon 64s and P4s from a similar price range, the P4 actually outperforms the Athlon in things like video encoding.

http://216.92.52.205/index.html?mode...l2=18&chart=21

Does the same comparison carry over to dual core? Haven't the foggiest But there are probably some more up to date benchies out there. I'll let you know if I find them.

[Rave]

No, the trend doesn't really continue over with dual core processors- with two cores the P4's relative lack of bandwidth/high latency becomes more of a handicap whereas the A64 X2s scale much better thanks to the onboard memory controller. The 4400 and 840 would be pretty much level in encoding terms, some apps will favour AMD, some Intel:

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2.../index.x?pg=11

(see 4200 scores, the 4400 will be very similar)

The thing is though that the 4400 will give an 840 a savage beating for gaming, and it uses MUCH less power and runs MUCH cooler, so it's by far the better choice IMO.

[Mike Fishcake]

I'm glad I know that now. Ta!

[Rave]

NP. Also see here where the Intels get a kicking in all their video benchmarks:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2410&p=6

[Shmee150]

It's interesting to hear somebody with a strong opinion like that!

The benchmarks found on Tom's Hardware Guide don't seem to show that so strongly. They claim that the Athlon X2 4400 may produce 160fps to the Pentium D 840 at 125fps on a game like Doom 3. I know that's quite a lot but I am pairing this processor with an nVidia 7800 and 2gigs of PC5400 DDR2 ram so presumably will be good with any high end processor.

I suppose the important question is will the X2 4400 still be faster for video editing than my current P4 3.2GHz Prescott? I presume quite significantly so.......

Thanks,

ShMeE

[noah]

The benchmarks found on Tom's Hardware Guide don't seem to show that so strongly. They claim that the Athlon X2 4400 may produce 160fps to the Pentium D 840 at 125fps on a game like Doom 3. I know that's quite a lot but I am pairing this processor with an nVidia 7800 and 2gigs of PC5400 DDR2 ram so presumably will be good with any high end processor.

i'd have thought the opposite, since you are using such a high powered card pretty much any cpu will be a bottleneck so you want the fastest cpu available. because these are both some way off the fx57 they will both indeed be bottlenecks. due to you being cpu limited any increase in cpu will not onlly help the game from the cpu power point of veiw but also unleash a little more of the card's power than a weaker cpu, making a bigger difference. hard ot get across my point, i hope you see what i mean.

[Rave]

It's interesting to hear somebody with a strong opinion like that!

The benchmarks found on Tom's Hardware Guide don't seem to show that so strongly. They claim that the Athlon X2 4400 may produce 160fps to the Pentium D 840 at 125fps on a game like Doom 3. I know that's quite a lot but I am pairing this processor with an nVidia 7800 and 2gigs of PC5400 DDR2 ram so presumably will be good with any high end processor.

You couldn't pair an A64 X2 with DDR2. Anyway, a 7800 is going to be great with whatever processor you pair it with, but in the very latest generation of games you might still be looking at maybe 75fps with A64 X2 vs 65-70 with PentiumD. It's a small advantage but it'll pretty much always be there as far as I can see.

I suppose the important question is will the X2 4400 still be faster for video editing than my current P4 3.2GHz Prescott? I presume quite significantly so.......

For any video app that's multithreaded it should be, yes.

[StormPC]

My research while looking to spend up to £400 on a processor has brought me the Athlon X2 4400 (2.2GHz) and Pentium D 840 (3.2GHz). The FX55 is out of my budget!

Tom's hardware guide has a good comparison of the Athlon *4800* against the PD 840 but that is vastly more expensive: http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050603/

So my use of my computer: large amount of video editing from and with MiniDV, converting and creating dvds etc... But I also play a number of games, but put video editing above games in terms of what my system spends the most time doing.

So anybody able to tell me in this range which is best? If I was just taking into account the guide with the 4800 and that it only slightly outs the Pentium when you take everything into account, I can't really imagine the 4400 doing this?

Any opinions appreciated!

Thanks,

ShMeE

If you game and do a lot of video stuff the AMD 4400+ is the way to go. P4's are very weak in games compared to A64's and gluing two Prescots together does not change this. Also, the X2 has a much stronger FPU than most single core A64's (which doesn't get talked about much but I see a huge difference in applications that do a lot of floating point math). The Intel chips are technically dual core CPU's but they are not actually on the same silicon. They are not two cores on a die but two seperate dies.

If you are going with a videocard like that you'd be crazy not to use an A64. To use anything else would be a crime. Yes, no matter what dual core chip you go with it will not do your 7800GTX justice the way an FX-55 or FX-57 could, but with a 4400+ running 2500MHz (or even stock) your framrates will be much higher than on any P4.

Now Dothan is another story!

[Nein]

It's interesting to hear somebody with a strong opinion like that!

Everyone can have an opinion including completely ignorant people and dumb as a tree-stump experts.

The benchmarks found on Tom's Hardware Guide don't seem to show that so strongly. They claim that the Athlon X2 4400 may produce 160fps to the Pentium D 840 at 125fps on a game like Doom 3. I know that's quite a lot but I am pairing this processor with an nVidia 7800 and 2gigs of PC5400 DDR2 ram so presumably will be good with any high end processor.

I suppose the important question is will the X2 4400 still be faster for video editing than my current P4 3.2GHz Prescott? I presume quite significantly so.......

Thanks,

ShMeE

Are you actually into Video Editing? Or just converting videos and DVDs offline (non-realtime)?

If Video Editing is your thing then follow through with this thread.

[StormPC]

He already said he does DVD ripping and gaming. Even if he was into actual video editing the 4400+ is monster bang for the buck. I have 3 X2 systems so I know firsthand.

[Shmee150]

Ok well I'm now more lost than ever. I feel like buying the Athlon because it is so much better for games and I suppose that if the Athlon X2 is still faster than my current CPU then that isn't a problem at all!

So now I'm going to be getting even more confused because I'm faced with the following decisions:

Ram

If I go Athlon, what difference is there between 2GB of Ram with the following timings:

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=66393
3-3-3-8

and this:

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=85958
2-3-3-6

Is it much better? - noticeable? Is getting just 1GB of say 2-2-2-5 even better?


CPU

Athlon64 X2 4200+ - £370
Athlon64 X2 4400+ - £410
Athlon64 FX55 - £530
Athlon64 X2 4600+ - £550
Athlon64 X2 4800+ - £650+
Athlon64 FX57 - £730

As I've said, I don't mind spending quite a lot on this, but I'm swinging towards X2 4400+ for price vs ability. Is this a good choice to go with the rest of my system? Having read reports on Techreport I am swung this way as the 4400 matches the Pentium D right across the board. Do I get anything significantly better by paying more?


I am sorry to be so annoying with all these questions but I want to make sure I'm getting components that will run happily together and not end up being regretably the wrong choice.

Thanks again,

ShMeE

[noah]

lol, im sure that ebuyer link to the silver corsair c2 2*1024 ram was about £150 on overclockers.co.uk a week ago and is still only £170 odd. must be a mistake.

personally im going to go the 2gig route soon, which has ups and downs. the lower latencies of the 1gig route are faster but a crucial chart showed it to be 5% at best. the reason i go 2gig is for things like photoshop and the newest games like bf2 are supposed to run well on it.

looking at the cpu prices the 4400+ looks like the sensible choice as its only a small jump from the 4200 and still much cheaper than the 4600.

[Rave]

Yeah I was going to say that noah, jeez what a ripoff!

http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?sku=302138&cks=PRL

AS for the CPU, I'd say the 4400 is definately the one to go for.

[StormPC]

As Rave pointed out, the 4400+ is the most power for the money. If money is no object, or even if it is but you use your computer to make money (time=money) you will get a substantial boost in power whether you overclock or not by going 4800+. If you are not a hardcore gamer (meaning the bulk of your time is spent crunching or CD ripping) the 4200+ will be just as fast as the 4400+.

About RAM... For most people more than 1GB is way overkill. If you must have 2GB use only 2 modules and get the cheapest stuff possible because 2GB is not going to run very fast on an X2 anyway, but luckily for you it doesn't need to. All dual channel A64's have insane bandwidth. While increased bandwidth helps in many respects it's not very substantial most of the time. This is evidenced in the differences between the S754 and S939 CPU's performance. Double the bandwidth gives only a very small percentage increase in realworld benchmarks.