help..! processors !?

[an_arien_4u]

hi guyz,

Me currently havin an P4 1.9Ghz and planning to upgrade or most probably buy a new PC.

Me interested in P4 2.8HT,3.0Ht & 3.2HT.

I really dunno if their any difference in their performance etc..between these 3processers...

Is the difference between the speed of 2.8HT and 3.0HT is too much ?

Me into high graphical games like so any Tips which prcessor will be best suited 4me?

The AMD is nowadays providing with 64-Bit PCs.....are they worth to buy as compared to intel ? or its just a marketing gimmick ?

Intel has 64-bit PCs in your market...please tell me.......coz here its not available...

[McKinley]

an_arien_4u,
The differences between 2.8 to 3.0 are not so big but it gets more obvious once you jump 400MHz and particular in advance games when you have a high end graphic card like GeForce 6800 GT/Ultra and above or ATi X800 XT PE.
Concerning AMD and their 64bit part, no use for that so far unless you don't use Windows server 64bit or the coming Microsoft Longhorn (will probably have another name once it's done). Longhorn will not come until late 2006. You will have Intel with 64bit extension by that time and also Intel processors as fast as 5GHz if they don't develop a good desktop solution for their Dorthan processor which outclass everything at the same clock speed, this is however not likely to happen soon.
If you are going to buy a completely new PC, may I suggest Intel processor on i925 motherboard like Asus P5AD2 Deluxe/Premium with DDR2 and PCI-E x16 instead of AGP port and of course WiFi-g. You will have to look for graphic card which use PCI-E instead of AGP and what ever you do don't pick ATi based graphic card if you are into high graphical games such as Doom 3 which today is the most advanced game in terms of graphic. AMD 64bit processor on the upcoming nForce 4 Ultra motherboard is also a good solution.

[a2k24]

my friend jus got a 2.8 HT. i have a 1.6Ghz P4, from over a year . normal functionality (basic operations, nothin extensive) , u can't tell the difference. honestly, apparently my pc seems to be faster than his. a 2.8HT is kinda the lower benchmark right now. its the least u can get in the market right now.and is sufficient, i think.
McKinley, is there some site where i can learn about these technicalities that u've stated. a detailed explanation of the latest h/w available.
P.S. these are pretty hi-fi specs u've stated, i think. might be costly (most probably will be). something a lil less might suffice, but then again, the best is the best.

[McKinley]

a2k24,
You might want to visit
http://www.tomshardware.com regarding processors and motherboards.

http://www.beyond3d.com is the place if you want to know much about graphic cards but I have to warn you:
you must be interested in this, otherwise it will be very boring and very difficult.

There are of course other sites but these two sites write very extensive things.

[a2k24]

McKinley, thanks a bunch. i wont be bored, thats for sure. thanks

[a2k24]

McKinley, and technical stuff bout cell phones ? any site ? other useful sites, any at all, every i mean. please post here. thank you

[an_arien_4u]

Thanks 4dat infos.... !

I have some queries about graphic card which i'll B getting on mah PC,but dunno have the xact model# at the moment...

Gonna keep updating....

[Shmee150]

My Centrino Laptop with 1GHz does just about anything i want from it :) Not serious gaming though, but it handled Need For Speed Underground very well!

I can imagine that it doesn't make that much difference, so long as you have a decent amount of ram and a powerful graphics card. And it is soo much more expensive for a 3.2GHz processor compared to a 2.8.

ShMeE

[McKinley]

Shmee150,
No it isn't much more expensive anymore.
Only matter of 55 EUR / 36 GBP between those processors.

[a2k24]

yea, wait for a couple of months more. 3.2 will b down to 2.8's current price.

[Shmee150]

Really? Wow

When I looked into building a PC around 3 months ago, the 2.8 was like 100GBP and 3.2 like 200GBP+

As time goes past, the'll all get cheaper though I guess.

ShMeE

[a2k24]

yep. but how long will u wait ? the story is like thism pretty funny. the current price of 2.8 is say 100 bucks. and 3.2 is say 150 bucks. then after one month 2.8 will b out of the market, the 3.2 will come down to 100. and there'll be the 3.6Ghz available for 150 bucks. this is how the computer industry moves. wait for ?
they'll get cheaper alright. but they'll remove it from the market once it gets a bit cheaper. u'll get older pieces. not too old though. but they'll jus remove it from the market. so the value of the cheapest processor will remain the same, jus the next processor will come down and the lower will b out of the mkt. but of course u will still find it.

[Shmee150]

Yes, but you can always get a slightly older one from eBay or something;

1.9GHz for next to nothing http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=14293&item=6704989341&rd=1

2.6GHz is about 30-50GBP

so why not do that to save money????

ShMeE

[a2k24]

intel's HT technology starts with the 2.8 . now i donno if it'll be required or not. but if somein extensive is done on that machine, 2.8 is a good choice. but in practical i dont know how much effective HT is. it is a gr8 feature, on paper tho. but thats jus my opinion, cuz ive never done nything voluminous on my comp. wait for someone like mckinley's opinion on that one. about HT.
personally, id go for it if im buying a new computer. cuz its somein new and intel is propagating it well.

[McKinley]

Shmee150,
I don't know if I would buy that one. It is a very silly price but you must have a motherboard with 423 pin processor support and that kind of motherboards haven't been on sale since almost three years back so it will not be a good buy even if we are talking about only 1.5 GBP. Why would he buy that one when he already has 1.9GHz processor in his computer. I don't know who you are referring to but I guess it is an_arien_4u or? I wouldn't buy it anyway because it was Intel's worse processor ever made (Pentium 4 with Williamette core)
Regarding HT, you don't win anything performance wise unless the application does support HT and I don't know which programmes or games do that but there are a lot of them, particular 3D application. There are other things to consider for more boost but those things are to complicated to explain.

[an_arien_4u]

Hi fellas...
Me gettin bundled: 128MB-Ati Radeon 9200 8x AGP, wid mah PC...
Any idea is this a gud-graphics card ?
Is this card having P&l ,T&L, support ?

All your replies will be appreciated....

[McKinley]

an_arien_4u,
Sorry I can't say your graphic card is any near good. ATi Radeon 9200 is the former ATi Radeon 8500. It is a low end card which once for many years ago was a high end card when DirectX 8.1 was the most recent graphic API from Microsoft. Radeon 8500 was a competition to nVidia GeForce3 Ti500 on paper but in reality it never managed to touch nVidia performance wise. Then ATi released its Radeon 9700 which litterarly smashed everything and nVidia had to ship their dust buster GeForce FX 5800 which didn't perform well against Radeon 9700 PRO. Nevertheless, now ATi had a premium graphic card, low-premium graphic card (9700), mid-range family (9500 pro and 9500) but no low-end at all while nVidia had in all segments. ATi therefor had to use its old high-end but with totally a new name. Radeon 9200 was the name they came up with. Your card is more or less three years old and is not doing any good in most recent games such as Doom 3 and Farcry. It will not likely to do well in Half-Life 2 either, I would say almost all DirectX 9 games are unplayable with that graphic card.

Regarding T&L it has support for that but I don't know what P&L is??

[an_arien_4u]

Hey Thx for tht precious info...
Ok ! so me not buyin an pc wid a company logo on it !
Me assambling my pc now!

U tellin about 9700,but then how bout 9600? OR 9800 ?
Any idea bout sum gud mid-range sound card ?
lookin 4an 2.1...

[McKinley]

an_arien_4u,
You should be able to get an on-board sound card with most motherboards today and those on-board cards are good enough to give you good sound experience in games or whatever you attend to use it for.
Those cards I mentioned before are old cards but they all but 9200 support DirectX 9.
Radeon 9800 is good but that card is also old by now. These are the cards you are going to look for if you don't want to spend to much money. ATi X700 (is not out yet but very soon), GeForce 6600GT or GeForce 6800(best value today). There is ATi X600 on the market now but if you want to play, you shouldn't look at this one because it is already dead. In high-end segment we find GeForce 6800 GT/Ultra, ATi X800 PRO/XT/XT PE.
This is the reason why I would go for any nVidia product instead of ATi.
nVidia graphic cards have support for PS 3.0 while ATi only support PS2.0b and yes according to them it is at least as good as PS2.0 but that is just wrong. They are afraid of PS3.0 because games which support PS3.0 works faster with nVidia graphic card. This is possible because less graphic operations are needed when you have support for PS3.0. nVidia also use Ultra Shadow II which roughly works as PS3.0 but in the shadow. It is pretty demanding for a graphic card to calculate shadows, try to run a game which lags a bit on your computer with complex/full shadow and then turn all shadows off and you might be able to get 5-15% performance boost.

I hope that helped you

[an_arien_4u]

Thx 4ur info....
me buyin Ati Radeon 9800PRO,which i guess far superior than any in its class..

Thanks 4helpin me-out frnds...

[a2k24]

McKinley, You should be able to get an on-board sound card with most motherboards today and those on-board cards are good enough i dont think so. i wouldnt stick to it. d prefer a SB live by creative now. but if it suffices u, the on-board sound card, then its cool. otherwise, id prefer, another one.

[McKinley]

a2k24,
Almost all new on board sound cards comes with very sophisticated sound chip and with a support for at least 5.1 chanels and that is enough for most of us.

[a2k24]

oh. chipsets as well ? is this a chipset we're talkin about or an original intel motherboard ?? i dont know about that. cuz until a while ago there was something of a AC'97 available on almost all of the chipset, mine has one as well. and its pretty ugly to hear that. i think its just 16 bit, i donno, may b 32. thats not good enough. may b now some chipsets are available with those sound cards u talkin about?? and assemblers usually prefer chipsets. not the original intel MBs. the difference is quite a bit, im guessing. it was.
P.S. can u suggest ny good sound card, pretty good i mean. may not be latest, shouldnt b v.v.costly. always a better will exist, but i want something that'll suffice, which doesnt hurt my pocket i mean :P.

[a2k24]

is there something over 5.1 ?? never heard of anything over it :eyes:

[McKinley]

a2k24,
Soundblaster Audigy 2 is the choice and it has 7.1 chanels support
:)

[a2k24]

but whats the cost bro ?

[gaurav311]

CPUs are all good and largely unimportant these days due to more and more of the vertex processing being offloaded to the GPU instead. Anything over 2.6HT will do. That, combined with 1GB, and a recent DX9c card such as Geforce 6600/6800 series is a safe bet for the next 2-3 years. I use a 2.6HT with 6800GT and it runs HL2/Doom3 at 1600x1200 just fine. If you will be running at lower resolutions you can get away with a 6600 (which is half a 6800GT card). ATi's current 9/X offerings are a generation behind in terms of technology employed.

[hitman]

take it from me get the 3.2 or 3.4 HT 1 mega cache /800 and get pc3200 512 ram with any good brand and intel by intel main bored ur pc 'll rocks

[qwerty]

If you really want your PC to rock, Get an intel P4 3.6ghz, an ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, 2gb Corsair memory, 2 western digital raptors 74gb in raid 0,

[qwerty]

"ATi's current 9/X offerings are a generation behind in terms of technology employed"
THAT'S GARBAGE!!! ATI's new X800 is a supeirior card in every way!!!
If you want to keep up to date subscribe to or buy from the news stands "Maximum PC" it is the magazine that will keep you up to date on all the current technologies and rumors!!!

[McKinley]

qwerty,
It is not really up to date.
No SLI support
No PS 3.0 and yes it has PS 2.0b but it is really not the same
No Ultra Shadow for reducing shadow calculation
and poor Open GL performance

How can you recommend such an expensive card like ATi X800 XT PE?
Best bang of bucks is nVidia GeForce 6800 GT which cost $399 whereas ATi X800 XT PE cost at least $650. You could easilly buy two GeForce 6800 GT and pair them together if you are willing to pay $650 for one card. I would do that since ATi X800 XT PE is not worth that amount of money because it doesn't perform $250 better than a single GeForce 6800 GT. Overclock a single GeForce 6800 GT and you will easilly outperform X800 XT PE in every game. You can't overclock X800 XT PE because it is basically an overclocked X800 XT unless you don't v-mod it and use a very sophisticated cooler solution.

Doom 3 is far better to any GeForce 6800 series card compared to an equivalant solution from ATi. Even GeForce 6800 GT manage to leave ATi X800 XT PE in the dust and turn Catalyst AI off and it even pulls away further.
Half-Life 2 was supposed to be the same but with changed roles. Early tests shows it is not what ATi had hoped for. nVidia high-end solution is actually on par and even somewhat faster than ATi's high-end cards. What a shame!!
PS 3.0 is the answer to that surprise.

All coming super hits will have support for PS 3.0 and if ATi is lagging behind already now, how do you expect ATi to hold it against nVidia once games start using PS 3.0 and new generation Open GL games based on Doom 3 engine are being released? ATi has lost this generation, they are simply behind and figures from the net is a good proof to that.

ATI's new X800 is a supeirior card in every way!!!
No, that is garbage

[Shmee150]

what's the best gfx card for under 100GBP?????? (175USD)

ShMeE

[gaurav311]

Shmee150, geforce 6600 or radeon x700 pro

[Shmee150]

do u mean 128MB versions?

what about like a 256MB 9600 Pro?????

That seems about the best 256mb card for less than the budget

ShMeE

[McKinley]

Shmee150,
I would try to get one GeForce 6600 GT for 199USD because X700 pro or XT is not on par with GeForce 6600 GT. The latter allows you to play modern game with eas at reasolution of 1024x768 with eye candy turned on. You can also pair them together to get a SLI solution. Remember that you need a motherboard with PCI-e slot because it doesnt exist any GeForce 6600 or ATi X700 in AGP. nVidia GeForce 5900 XT or ATi 9800 Pro is probably your solution here. Don't get an ATi 9600 PRO or XT, they suck!

[qwerty]

well ati will be soon releasing new cards to really copete with nvidia. it's like intel releasing the extreame edition to counter amd's athalon64 fx51. Note: By now amd is on FX 55 by now

[McKinley]

qwerty,
I must say that Intel is doing very, very bad at the moment.
They have serious heating problem with its latest Pentium 4 processor (Prescott).
It was suppose to be able to scale up to 10GHz but it will not even manage pass 4GHz barrier. Intel is capable to produce 4GHz processor but it cost to much and the performance is not on par with AMD's latest offering either. Intel's solution to narrow the gap is Pentium 4 Extreme Edition but they cost a lot of money and performance wise it is better than its non EE brother but still it produce a lot of heat and also requires a big fan to cool it.
Intel's latest addition is Extreme Edition with 1066MHz FSB and 2MB L3 and this is probably its last atempt to battle against AMD FX-55 and later on 57. However Intel can't stack up against AMD FX-series. AMD has the upper hand here because it has a better memory controller solution which they used to lag behind in. As I have mention earlier, Intel will introduce its dual core Dothan solution and it was supposed to arrive in 2006 but now they have to do somethin drastically to not lose to much market share so we will likely to see an Intel Dothan dual core solution this coming spring or summer.
Dothan is Intel mobile processor which only consumes 21W compared to Intel Pentium 4 Prescott which consumes 135W. Dual Dothan solution will probably also support 64bit extension since. One single Dothan processor is able to outbest AMD fastest processor clock per clock wise if Intel can fix its floating point performance.
Another solution is IA64 architecture which you can find in Intel Merced and McKinley also known as Itanium but Microsoft very much decide what is going on here since Intel are waiting for them to release its Longhorn.

[Shmee150]

Well McKinley, you'll be unhappy with me, I decided I had to get a 256MB GFX card, and without too much money to spend when I saw a Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro 256MB for just £70 including delivery I had to buy it, comparitevely, a 128MB 9800 Pro was £120 - i am one for bargains :)

The card is wonderful so far, all of Unreal Tournament 2004, Flight Simulator 2004, Need for Speed Underground, Sims 2, and Hitman Contracts all run perfectly with everything on full and I am very happy with it when what I had before was a 32MB Trident something or other..... :)

ShMeE

[shyam335]

I would try to get one GeForce 6600 GT for 199USD because X700 pro or XT is not on par with GeForce 6600 GT. The latter allows you to play modern game with eas at reasolution of 1024x768 with eye candy turned on. You can also pair them together to get a SLI solution. Remember that you need a motherboard with PCI-e slot because it doesnt exist any GeForce 6600 or ATi X700 in AGP. nVidia GeForce 5900 XT or ATi 9800 Pro is probably your solution here. Don't get an ATi 9600 PRO or XT, they suck!

there is nothing wrong with atis current generation cards. and x700 is on par and even better in some games than 6600 (with aa and af enabled) , and 9800pro beats 5900xt easily. sm3.0 is not gonna be min requirment for a some time (sometimes never) ,always sm2 will be the min req :rotate: .