CPU info

[Stuart]

Having been an AMD man for 4 years im not aufait with the intel range well enough to make a decision as to waht to buy.

Last i heard (3 years ago) a Xeon chip was a server chip and it was ????????? but now they are cheap,

also whats the deal with many names for the sodding P4 processor??

basically i want to know the important stuff like, does the P4 overheat anymore? any 64 bit chips about yet etc

because the athlon is about at its limit and the high speed chips are too damn expensive (although i have considered a server processor due to its 64bit abilitys)

also any recomendations for MOBO's, ive been a devoted Abit buyer and they seem to have hit a limit with the athlon ones. i want ATA133 (min) with Raid, only onbaord stuff i would like is USB2.0 Firewire and possibly 10/100Lan other crap like video and sound arent needed as ive got decent cards for that.

I dont play games on my Pc as thats what my console is for, but i do use things like solidworks/autocad/matlab (very processor/ram hungry apps)

cheers

[SKoob]

P4's r more expensive that AMD Athlons, i wud w8 till the clawhammers out.

[cmatty]

If I was you I would get one of the new P4 "C" chips such as the 2.4c etc. as these run a 800mhz fsb on the new 'canterwood' mobos. If you run processor intensive apps then go for a 3.0c or the new 3.2c as these have hyper threading and emulate two cpus. Heres what I would get without knowing your budget:

P4 3.2c
Abit IC7 mobo
OCZ PC3700 Gold Dual Channel memory

Apparently people have been overclocking P4 2.4Cs to 3gig+ at standard volts on air cooling!

If you need anymore info check out the forums on www.overclockers.co.uk

Matty

[Snowface]

if u going for intel wait 6 mponths for the 744pin 3.6ghz+ cpu, rather than buy one now cause they will become obsolete.

For athlons the 2600+ is a good buy and overclocks well, or get a Barton core or wait for 64-bit cpu's.

I'd stick with AMD for now as u prob got a motherboard that you can just whack a faster athlon in.

[Stuart]

im going to be building an all out new system around nov/dec time.

i looked at the canterwood stuff, its quite impressive :)

i have even been tempted by an Apple G5 lol

[Aragorn]

if ur planning a build 5 months down the line you should really wait till then

at the moment: the 2500+ barton will hit 3200+ with ease and will go higher if your colling system is in decent shape

plus it retails at about ?70 which would barely buy u a bottom end celery fron intel

an nforce2 board for abit or asus would be my main choice for the mobo

ive nothing against intels chips but i just simply cant justify the cost difference

for starters im still running a 18month old dual 1800 system

ok it was cutting edge in its day but unless im playing games theres nothing that will phase it - and even games the main limitation is the geforce 2 mx

maybe u should tell us what your gonna be using it for - becuase if all your doing is general browsing with some multimedia and games (like me) u'd prolly be better off spending a few bucks less on the main system and invest in extras which are normally missed like a nice 19 or 21" NF CRT (NOT LCD - THEY SUCK), 1GB ram, or even a ultra160 scsi boot drive

the performance difference in buying a 2500 barton cored XP and U160 10 or 15krpm scsi drive to run windows and your apps from (alongside summat like a WD 80GB JB disk) and 1gb of ram would be FAR more noticeable than a cutting edge intel chip with 256 or 512meg and IDE drives throughout