AMD 64, is it worth it?

[IrishSS]

Ok, a little backstory... bought a new mobo and power supply to fit a P4 Prescott and PCI-E vid card. Was hoping to swap out most of my other components, but alas, board gets here today and the processor deal falls through. No biggie, but now I need to do a little system upgrading.

I'm plenty happy with my P4 2.8 Ghz (Northwood I think) system, but the mobo is basically dying. I have a nice PCI-E card here, but havent found jack for mobo's that support a Northwood, SATA, and PCI-E. So I figure I'm basically screwed on that account.

So it's time to bite the preverbial bullet and upgrade, to a certain extent.

Should I just pick up a new P4 Prescott chip and be satisified with it, or should I spend a bit more on an AMD 64 chip? If I go the AMD route, which core to get? NewCastle? ClawHammer? SledgeHammer? Venice? Winchester? I can at least drop my 2Gb of DDR4200 into the AMD system, but I could also upgrade with the P4 and go DDR2...

Whats the deal with the integrated FSB on some of the AMD 64 chips? Good, bad, faster, slower?

I dont need an end all system for the next 3 or 4 years, just something to keep me happily playing the cutting edge games for the next 12-18 months.

Thanks!

[Showtime]

Gaming = 3000+ AMD64 Venice 939 core and oc it. Save on non SLI mobo like the DFI ultra nf4 and you will be set. Around $250 for both if you do some shopping. Monarch has had great combo deals and Newegg, zipzoomfly, etc. always have sales.

[PrObLy]

Gaming = 3000+ AMD64 Venice 939 core and oc it. Save on non SLI mobo like the DFI ultra nf4 and you will be set. Around $250 for both if you do some shopping. Monarch has had great combo deals and Newegg, zipzoomfly, etc. always have sales.

I definitely agree. Hell, you don't even have to OC the thing (but, what's the fun in that?!). I recently built a friend of mine an NF4/3000+ AMD64 system and I was blown away by it.

First off, this thing runs good and cool, even under load.
Secondly, performance wise it just seemed to blow away my Athlon XP ~2500.....I was truly tempted to upgrade after playing around and configuring that thing.

[IrishSS]

Three questions... which board here http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...SubCategory=22

And, is SATAII backwards compatible with SATA150 drives?

And whats the deal with the integrated FSB on the AMD chips?

[Showtime]

http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merch...uct_Code=80152

Right now it's $285 for retail boxed w/fan 3000+ venice and dfi ultra D mobo.
Tax only in Georgia and it comes with a couple of games...

This combo usually hits 2.6-2.7ghz on air (4200+speeds). If you can wait and check back, the cpu or mobo or both have price drops but they raise them back up. If you aren't in Cal, newegg etc may be better.

<Edit>You can get Far Cry and Half Life 2 and some napster dowload voucher for free. I sold them for around $40 when I got my combo.
I am not sure about the backwards compatibility.... <edit>

[shocky123]

Integrated FSB gives the CPU more control of components, and allows much more fine-tuned (or drastic) changes to the frequencies of all the busses.

SATA2 is backward compatible with SATA150. The only difference between the two is how the drive's queueing is handled, so if you drive only supports SATA150 things, then it will run SATA150 w/out all the other stuff. As far as compatibility, that's mostly driver stuff, in which case, yes, it will be bw compatible.

Enjjoy
~Kyle