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Nov 13, 2001 at 3:10 AM Post #46 of 95
You can never be too cool, so go for all the cooling you can.

Do not get the Athalon. Stick w/ PIII or P4.

Read this...
Athalon goes up in smoke
 
Nov 13, 2001 at 3:32 AM Post #47 of 95
Hey, AMD has a fix for that problem out.

And if you're smart, you wont TAKE THE FRIGGIN HEAT SINK/FAN OFF OF THE PROCESSOR!

And besides..... Both Thunderbird and Athlon XP whoop the Pentium III *and* the Pentium IV...
 
Nov 13, 2001 at 3:49 AM Post #48 of 95
Heat sinks fall off from thermal expansion/contraction cycles all the time if they're not well designed. Yes, AMD responded, after it was made an issue of. Don't get me wrong, Intel has made mistakes before too, but the P4 has not come into its own yet. You'll see. There's a lot under the hood that's not being exploited yet.
biggrin.gif
 
Nov 13, 2001 at 3:55 AM Post #49 of 95
Well, I'll be the first to say that I'm not happy with the heat of my Athlon 1.2... it burned up a few weeks ago, forcing me to wait a week for a new one to arrive. But yes, a sufficient heatsink should solve the problem, and so I don't think that the Athlon's heat alone is a fair reason to discard it from a number of candidates. I think that the P4 is overpriced and generally underperforms -- unless you only play computer games. For good old programs like Mathematica and Matlab (which I fortunately/unfortunately don't have/get to use this semester) which need good old flop-ratings, a P4 does no good.

The P3 is a fine processor though, and I don't think it should be ragged on so much! Dependable (as far as I know), and when it says it performs at 1 GHz, it usually does.
 
Nov 13, 2001 at 4:35 AM Post #50 of 95
Quote:

kwkarth said...

There's a lot under the hood that's not being exploited yet.


Uh huh. Care to back this up? Even given a solid motherboard and the fastest available RAMCRAP memory, the fastest P4 still loses to the fastest Athlons in the large majority of benchmarks (real-world and synthetic). For a good example of this, read the latest Ace's Hardware article. Look, the P4 is not a bad CPU, but there is no way it is a better CPU (by price or performance) than the Athlon.
 
Nov 13, 2001 at 4:45 AM Post #51 of 95
I've got a PCRAPIII with SDCRAP memory...

and I won't buy any of the faster CRAP processors with DDR-CRAP memory anytime soon!
tongue.gif
 
Nov 13, 2001 at 4:56 AM Post #52 of 95
Quote:

Originally posted by Eagle_Driver
I've got a PCRAPIII with SDCRAP memory...

and I won't buy any of the faster CRAP processors with DDR-CRAP memory anytime soon!
tongue.gif


Amen,
 
Nov 13, 2001 at 5:06 AM Post #53 of 95
Sorry, Eagle_Driver, didn't mean to steal your catchphrase...
tongue.gif
 
Nov 13, 2001 at 5:18 AM Post #54 of 95
Nope, you didn't, dhwilkin. It was your statement about those overpriced PCRAP4s with the equally overpriced "RAMCRAP" memory that prompted me to write my catchphrase.
 
Nov 13, 2001 at 5:37 AM Post #55 of 95
Nov 13, 2001 at 5:56 AM Post #57 of 95
I am a bit loose in my judgment criteria, but most software currently on store shelves - even some of the newest software titles - can't use the "new" capabilities of the P4 processors. Which is why I can't yet recommend any P4-based systems; the RAMCRAP memory that the i850 chipset uses now costs three times higher than SDRAM or DDR-SDRAM memory ($75 for two 128MB PC800 RAMCRAP modules, versus $25 for one 256MB PC133 or DDR266 module), and the newer i845 chipset only supports PC100 or PC133 SDRAM memory!
very_evil_smiley.gif
And those i845-based systems, if anything, deliver even crappier performance than the i850-based systems! Early next year, the i845 will add DDR-SDRAM support in the i845D chipset... But according to Intel it will only support DDR200 (PC1600) memory!!! What the *****'s going on?
 
Nov 13, 2001 at 6:31 AM Post #58 of 95
I'm not sure exactly what kwkarth meant by under-the-hood potential, but one thing that I do know is that the p4 will ramp up in speeds much faster than the current athlon core. The downside to a longer pipeline in a processor is that it slows down per mhz (amd's big IPC argument), however, the p4 was designed so that the clock speeds could be increased rapidly. The p4 core will get up to at least 4ghz, and that will be attainable within a year. the current athlon core will never do that in a mass-producable fashion...possibly never at all. That's not to say that AMD doesn't have other technologies in the works...just that the advantages of the p4 aren't fully obvious to most consumers yet.

However, I agree that if you are building a computer today, the athlon beats the p4 hands-down for price and performance. The only situation in which I would personally buy an intel machine right now would be if I wanted a super-quiet machine. A p3 can run perfectly well with a heatsink and no fan attached. Try that with an athlon or duron and you're likely to melt your heatsink in short order.
 
Nov 13, 2001 at 8:11 PM Post #60 of 95
aiOtron, I am trying to find more information about the ATC 200 case, but every phone number I call the persons first language is not English. I'm having a very hard time understanding them. Do you know of a place where I can call for information? I am really interested in this case. My common sense tells me if heat rises it would be nice to have a fan on top to blow it out. I really like the idea of the ATC 200. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 
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