Thinking about upgrading. how do they Pentium4 and Athlon XP compare clock for clock in fs2002

[JohnPenn]

Hi

I,m wondering if I could get a worthwhile improvement going from my Athlon 1.3 @ 1.43 to the latest Athlon XP 2600 or or maybe even the new Pentium 4 3gig,If it is noticable faster than the XP.
Just curious how Intel and AMD compare at the same clock speed.

I will replace motherboard ,memory and HD as well.



Athlon 1.43
512MB cas2 133 Sdram
Aopen Ak7 MB
Geforce 4 4400
Sblive
WIndows XP

Many thanks
John

[CapMason]

Don't bother with AMD. Go eith Pentium 4. Intel has blown the doors off AMD with speeds approaching 5 GHz (demoed at the Intel Developer Forum) and hyper-thread technology. AMD will give you lots of integration headaches for not much performance gain or cost savings. I have used both and would NEVER touch AMD again. A good value right now is Intel 2 and 2.5 GHZ motherboards. I would not spend the buck for 2.8 or 3 GHz CPU's right now. The 5 GHz monsters are coming soon (maybe in 2003, late) and when they do, the 3 GHz machines will see a huge price drop.

[radelow]

Have to dissent here. I have used Athlon XP processor and the previous generation for over 2 years now and have had nothing but good results. The Athlon processors provided better speed for the money pure and simple. Why they aren't the fastest right now, the fastest is always too expensive.

Mark R.

[JSkorna]

AMD will give you the best bang for your buck.

[link:hifi.avsim.net/activesky|http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg]

[JohnPenn]

Thanks for the replies.

I may wait a little to see what the chip giants release next.

In the past I have upgraded when I could double my FPS with my new kit
I don't think I could achieve this even with the 3 gig Pentium??.


cheers
John

[FL_Flyer]

I have been building systems on both platforms for years and have been a flight sim fanatic since its first release. Currently I have two systems running in my house that I have built, an AMD XP 1900 on a KT266A chipset (for wifes RP games) and a P4 2.53 on a SIS 645DX chipset. Both are ATA 133, have 512 MB memory, GF 4 and SB Live X-Gamer cards and are both overclocked. Here are the facts: AMDs have much better floating point processing and at same clock rate, will provide greater FPS in FS than Intel, this assumes a fast chipset and all else being equal. Intel Hyper-threading is no use in FS for the same reason multi-processors are not, the code must be written to use multiple processors (HT is just virtual multi-processing) and FS cannot use more than one CPU! I use to prefer AMDs when they were half the price of Intel and had a lot of overclocking headroom. This is no longer the case. Northwoods and above (HT) run cooler and overclock better than the latest AMDs which run much hotter and use more vcore.

My recommendation, if your current MB can take an XP2600 go that way, if you need to replace your MB anyway, go Intel. I just purchased a MB and P4 2.53 (retail) for $311 including second day air shipping and was able to get over 3 Ghz out of it without a vcore change. I do not run my own that high as I am using year old RAM but it is easy to do.

Happy flying.
FL_Flyer

MSI 645 Max-U (SIS 645DX chipset) latest SIS drivers and 5.2 BIOS
Intel P4 2.53/533 OCD to 2.8/590 with Intel retail cooler @ 32c idle 40c full load
350 watt PS, mid-tower w/ 1 intake 2 exhaust fans (negative pressure)
512 MB DDR 2400
Abit Siluro GF4 Ti 4400 275/550 OCD to 300/600 nvidia 41.09 Drivers & NVHardPage
(1280x960x32@85hz, SBA 128MB, Quincunx AA, 2x AF, Aggressive, High)
Maxtor 30GB HD ATA 133 32 bit addressing NTFS w/ seperate partition for FS2002
SB Live X-Gamer/ Altec Lansing ADA-305 Creative Live Driver Pack 3/02
Alcatel USB DSL modem (using USB 2.0) 1146 Kbit dn/221 Kbit up
Windows XP Home, SP1, tweaked to minimum services and fixed 1 GB swap, DX9.0
3D Mark 2001SE - 12,573, SSS 2002 - Dhry 5163 MIPS, Whet 3405 MFLOPS, PR Rating 3.08

FS2002 with all sliders maxed all boxes checked, real world weather and AI.
DreamFleet 737-400 is only aircraft flown.
Simflyers scenery for all airports flown.
Numerous addon City sceneries.
Radar Contact 3.0 for ATC.
Lago FSAssist for pushback.
FPS locked at 30, 15 on ground in traffic w/ AI, moving gates/vehicles etc. 24-30 airborn depending on weather, view, altitude, etc. Smooth, realistic and full of eye candy.

[CapMason]

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON Dec-29-02 AT 08:47PM (EST)[/font][p]I agree with most of what you wrote here. The one thing I would NEVER recommend, however, is overclocking either for your CPU or your video card. Overclocking significantly increases the heat generated and most systems can barely handle the thermal requirements for normal speed CPU and video units. Overclocking raises the temperature beyond normal operating parameters and will definitely shorten the operational life of both CPU and video card. Plus thermal overloads can also cause RAM and hard drive failures. I know, you'll hear lots of people say they overclock with no problems. Nonsense! It just means they are clueless about the damage they are causing. It can be invisible until you encounter a catastrophic failure. No matter how well it seems to work, overclocking WILL shortent the life of your system. The higher you overclock, the shorter your system life span. And you are also inviting catastrophic, non-recoverable failures that will void your system and video card warranties. OF course, if you don't mind trashing your gear and buying new PCs, video cards, hard drives every year, go ahead and overclock your brains out. I'm sure the PC, video card, RAM and hard drave manufacturers will love to sell you new gear! As for hyper-threading technology, I also agree that the current FS2002 and CFS3 do not use it. But, next year's release of FS9 and future versions of CFS will certainly use hyper-threading technology. It is all the rage at the Intel Developer Forum and whatever is hot at IDF will come into being in the immediate future within the next 9-12 months.

[ilove2ski42]

I will be upgrading my system when the next FS comes out, probably to whatever Intel's latest is (i'll need a new mobo, and graphics card, RAM, etc, and I know this, so dont bother telling me). Anyway, I've been reading up on liquid cooling, and it sounds like it would be PERFECT to counter the additional heat generating by overclocking. You said that overclocking shortens the life of your system drastically (makes sense), but does this apply to a moderately (not extreme) overclocked system with Liquid cooled components for everything (bus, CPU, GPU, HD, drives)? Since liquid cooling also has the advantage of running silently, if it allows for overclocking without the same consequences, it may be worth the money.

thanks

===============
Ben Peters
WWA6605
VATSIM KZLC
Senior Student
Round the World Website:
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/wwrtw

[bilbo]

I agree that AMD is the best bang for the buck. You are going to notice a bt of a difference with the XP 2600. Especially if you can go with DDR RAM. Remember that by the time FS2004 comes out, you are going to want to upgrade yet one more time.
Bilbo

[DennisWag]

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON Dec-30-02 AT 11:48AM (EST)[/font][p]The one thing I would NEVER recommend, however, is overclocking either for your CPU or your video card. Overclocking significantly increases the heat generated and most systems can barely handle the thermal requirements for normal speed CPU and video units. Overclocking raises the temperature beyond normal operating parameters and will definitely shorten the operational life of both CPU and video card. Plus thermal overloads can also cause RAM and hard drive failures.


Not true! It depends on who you are. Ive been overclocking since 1997 (remember the celery sandwich a Celeron 300 with heatsinks on both sides overclocked to 450) Im currently running a Athlon 2100 at 1860mhz (13.5x143)
I have a Athlon 1.4 gig running at 1.56mhz as a second computer been running it at that speed for two years. Ive never had a cpu or component burn up. Heatsinks are critical but most of the time if your going to fry a cpu its because you dont have the heatsink properly connected. As for components. I have an occasional hard drive failure always under warrenty (One IBM crashed in the last two years)

So it really depends on who you are. Do you buy a new computer from Dell or Gateway or Best Buy. If so then overclocking is not for you. Or do you build your own and upgrade to a new cpu or motherboard once or twice a year and use your existing components. If so then overclocking just makes it that more fun.
An oh yeah That celery sandwich is setting in my closet just waiting to be ran at 450mhz for another year or two.
Dennis

Hey Flashpoint! Im curious what the MSI KT4V motherboard got over the Soyo KY-KT400 Dragon ultra?