Pentium vs Athlon option for new PC

I built my last PC nearly three years ago and went with the Athlon route then. The whole experience including overclocking was a lot of fun. But right after that, I got disconnected from the hardware world.

I'm now buidling a new PC for the 'rents. All my peripherals have been bought. Now, all I want is a processor that runs at 2GHz along with applicable motherboard and RAM. Between AMD and Intel ... what do you guys suggest (best bang for the buck)? What motherboard? Is overclocking even in the scenes right now?

Thanks in advance.

Find more posts tagged with

SAVE $250 on Your Boot Camp — Use Code "EXAM26"

Exclusively for TechExams members for Infosec Boot Camps starting before April 30, 2026

View Boot Camps

Comments

mikiemov

Personally Id go for a Pentium, Our office has purchased a mix of Athlons and Intel P4's over the last wee while and the P4's are definitley faster and better machines..Both spec's were basically identical...

Ghent

The P4 is going to give you a little more bang for buck. And if your willing to spend a little extra, intel offers up to 800Mhz FSB, while I think AMD stops at like 233 or 333.

Sartan

AMD's latest rollout of processors don't let you overclock anymore.
I bought a barton 2600+ with plans of clocking it to 3200+, but it looks like that's not going to happen unless I get out the lead paint.

JOblessELement

Ghent: AMD's max FSP is now 400 MHz but Intel offers DOUBLE that! Just nuts.

Sartan: Seems like the Mobile Barton's are coming out multiplier unlocked.

mikeimov: AMD's new numbering scheme has me totally confused. So, it's hard to tell how identical the specs are. With the Athlon64 out, the AthlonXP series has dRRRRRRRopped prices. Still doing some more research and it seems Athlon has best bang for the buck (at the speed I'm looking for) though undoubtedly the Northwood Pentium 4 has replaced AMD as CPU King.

Thanks for all your suggestions guys. After reading this article http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1927, I think it's quite clear as to what I should get for my parents. Sure it's not top of the line. But it does a great job for 'smoothly' running XP with browsing and emailing unlike the PII400 does right now!

2lazybutsmart

I'd go for Pentium anyday everyday. AMD Athlon and Intel's Celeron aren't really good processors in my books (if they count at all

). I've never used either of them, but I've heard many people rule em out from their choices.

pandimus

Just wanna get my .02 in here.. Cause too many of ya'll bashin on the AMD..

Pentiums Suck, IMO Pay 5 times the price, for a higher number printed on the case. Generally speaking.. since the xp came out. you could buy a slower (cheaper processor from AMD, that would compete with a higher speed processor from intel. (of course depends on models, there are times when intel brings out something that works over amd for ahwhile, but amd always seems to come back.)

My favorite hardware comparison site is www.tomshardware.com

Unless they changed the convention.. Any athlon xp ("") i/e 3200, 2500, 1600. etc etc is numbered that way because it has a slower clock speed, but it still competes with the intel clock likes its naming convention.. xp 3200 = pent 3.2
xp1600=pent1.6

Acording to toms hardware, the new athlon64 3400, lags slightly behind a p4 3.2 (in some aspects. it seems to do better for games thought)

The new athlon64 is a bit pricey right now cause it has no competition, but when pent brings out a full bore 64 bit processor. the prices will come down to compete.

I only build amd machines these day's unless i get a friend who is really name striken with INTEL. I can generally build a faster better(more options) machine for cheaper.

Remember, just cause a certain processor has a fast fsb doesnt mean it is a faster machine..

Anyway nuff ranting time to go take my 70-220

You guy's suck i missed alot of my cram time for this post.. hehe.

Mwgamer

Ive built AMD's , Intel machines. Honestly both worked fine. In a couple months Ill be building another one and if things stay the same it will be a P4.

Sartan

Actually, yes. The barton mobile processors are shipping unlocked.
Currently, there are instructions floating around on how to jump a bridge on the desktop barton processor in order to emulate a mobile processor.
I don't have the tools or the steady hand to do it

I'm not comfortable with overclocking my FSB, for a few reasons, including:

O/C FSB: O/c'd PCI & AGP & RAM.

My ram is PC2100. 233Mhz stuff.
My processor runs at 333 Mhz. My ram is already rediciously overclocked and slow as tar.

My video card (GeForce 4 Ti4400) gets flaky when it's bus runs too fast.
(Not the GPU ~ the agp bus)

From my experience, overclocking in a linear fashion breaks plenty of IDE hardware and accellerates death of hard drives. Try running a PIO hard drive at 37Mhz at a datacenter all day.

The nVidia chipsets have a nifty function that let you override the agp/pci/etc bus and create a *true* divider. Via's divider basically onnly lets you clock your voltage different with your fsb.

Anyways.. BLAH!

You can o/c bartons but it takes lead paint/solder.

JOblessELement

pandimus:
Finally, someone sensible comes along

It will be interesting to see how the Intel Prescott competes with the Athlon FX with speeds > 3.6. But there's still time for that.

After I build this machine, I'm thinking of starting an AMD computer store in my area. A lot of people are just buying budget machines for as low as 500 dollars (Qatari Riyal 1800) here and all the vendors here are Intel Intel Intel to infinity and beyond. I think selling AMD machines, WITH A GOOD ADVERTIZING SCHEME (showing performance to cost benefits), will give a lot of these guys a run for their money.

Sartan: O/C sure sounds like a royal pain in the butt nowadays. What RAM runs at 333 MHz?

bellboy

to be honest the only pentium system that i built was with parts that somebody else had bought. i've been an amd man since i started putting machines together (my first was a 486 with an amd 133 cpu). i always chose their chips purely because of price, although i will never buy another duron processor unless asked - the difference in performance is just not worth the cheaper price.

the only advice i can give you is to avoid durons and celerons. buy what you can afford. it's the bus-speeds that matter and the amount of cache.

JOblessELement

bellboy wrote:

although i will never buy another duron processor unless asked - the difference in performance is just not worth the cheaper price.

Very true in this case because Athlons are cheap as it is. But the price difference between Pentium and Celeron chips is vast causing most web-browsing/email users to buy the highly marketed Celerons. Only if people were advised about how much better the Durons are comparitively AND cheaper.

RussS

It is interesting how people pick up bits and pieces of pure nonsense and allow it to propogate.

I suggest building a machine with whatever CPU you feel comfortable with. The only proviso is that you have sufficient cooling if you are going to mod your system. When it comes to pricing there are usually one or two good bargains out there from either side of the equation.

Me - I run a 2.4 Celeron clocked at 3.1 and it is rock solid. I had it up to 2.3, but had a few stability issues that I would have tried to overcome if I needed to, but what the heck, I'm happy enough.

When building hotrod Intel machines I quite often use heat sinks from AMD. Because AMD chips do run slightly warmer they have put a lot of thought into making their cooling a priority - that equals a decent colling option at a good price for an Intel chip.