Pentium to Athlon switch, advice please.

[mathewdbarlow]

My current gaming machine is running a p4 3.ghz 2mb cache 800fsb with 1Gb ddr2 533mhz and a xfx 7900gs pci-e.

I have always bought Intel chips, right back to the days when I was running my 386x. Recently I have been toying with the idea of switching to AMD as the perfomance of their chips seems to be superior to the number crunching Intel's for gaming.

All I want is some advice on which Athlon processor to get and which motherboard to maximise my gaming capabilities. I don't really understand the AMD way of classing chips (with numbers rather than Intels methos of mhz) and have been told that direct comparisons with Intel chips on the basis of mhz, fsb etc are not valid.

My budget for processor and mobo is about £180.
I am not concerned with dual core at this moment.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

[MadduckUK]

1. Dont change to AMD at the moment. Intel is where its at right now.
2. Intel have dumped the Mhz names a while ago eg: "Intel Core 2 DUO E6300" is a 1.86Ghz part with 2MB L2 cache
3. you dont have much choice with cores at the min. it will have to be a core2 duo.

[dave87]

Unless you wait and get the Core 2 Solo - which is the single core budget orientated processor.

Though I would say, once you own a dual core, you won't go back

[mosherben]

don't forget that you'd probably need a RAM upgrade- most boards now only support DDR2

[dave87]

Nope, according to his initial post, he's on DDR2 already

[chuckskull]

Seeing as you already have some DDR2 memory. I'd be looking into Core 2 Duo, you can get an E6300 and a motherboard for £180, work out much faster than anything you can get from AMD for the same price.

[MSIC]

Whether or not you want dual core, it'd be silly to look a gift horse in the mouth.
In terms of value for money buy Core 2 Duo. The only area, bugdet wise, that it's not the best is sub £100 market (ie building an entire machine for under £500 inc monitor.

If you are desperate, and I mean allergically desperate not to run dual core, you could always buy C2D and get the hacksaw out?

Edit: Well, in the spirit of humouring the guy, here are a couple of reasonable buys:
An AMD Athlon64 3800+ (single core) £67
with an Asus motherboard £50 that will run the current memory.

[maverick77_uk]

Agreed. Although I've tended to go with AMD the last few years due to them having much better performance/cost, at the minute Core 2 rules - unless of course you're on a REAL budget. As you currently have a P4 3GHz, the only real way you'll see an improvement is really Core 2 Duo - £115-ish will get a E6300, overclocked would see off (unfortunately) most of AMD's chips in the same price range.

Apparently soon to be released are the E4000 series of Core 2 Duo - same MHz but with a 800MHz FSB (as opposed to the 1066MHz of the E6000 series) - Probably retail a bit cheaper and all.

[MadduckUK]

its weird. but does anyone else get the feeling this guy posted this a year and a half ago and its only just shown up?

i mean, people lose track of whats happening if there away from it for a while. but he seems to really know what he wants here

[mathewdbarlow]

Got Crucial ddr2 667mhz dual channel ram and a mobo that is capable of running a dual core cpu at 1066fsb and have a decent graphics card (7900gs).

ALL I WANT THIS MACHINE FOR IS PLAYING GAMES!

Everything I read is that games engines are yet to catch up with the dual core technology and so running a dual core processor is completely wasted if all you are going to do is play games. Maybe in the near future this will change and then I may consider changing to a core duo or something. If anyone thinks that hs is wrong and that newer games are taking advantage of dual core then let me know.

I still think I would be better off getting a P4 extreme edition 3.7 1066fsb with 2mb of cache or something (which you can pick up pretty cheap now seeing as they were over $1000 when they were launched)

I may be wrong, let me know...thats what i'm posting for!!

MadDuckUk - You're pretty close to the truth actually, i've not been near a pc in about a year!

STILL NOT CONVINCED ABOUT THIS DUAL CORE BUSINESS!

[mathewdbarlow]

In addition to my previous post...

I have a SLI ready motherboard. Would I not be better off investing in a second 7900 and running them in SLI mode rather than spending money on the processor?

[MadduckUK]

game benchies, telling you to stay away from pentiums from now on

[mathewdbarlow]

Well spank my ass and call me Charlie, shows what I know!

Might as well go and get a Core 2 Duo then, unless AMD have somethig up their sleeve that will be better than the Intel in the near future?

[MadduckUK]

not until late this year, and thats an unknown quantity at the moment

[nvening]

May I just pick on those results in saying that all the tests where carryed out on dual core chips so kinda defies what he was asking but C2D is the way do go anyway

Infact some of the new DX10 are supposed to be using quad core to an extent.

[MadduckUK]

May I just pick on those results in saying that all the tests where carryed out on dual core chips so kinda defies what he was asking

gaming benchmarks are generally single threaded so doesnt matter a great deal