processors

after reading a remark about staying away from pentium 4's and celerons (common knowledge)...

i was wondering what everyones personal preference is for processors, i still have a pentium 2 so i don't have much knowledge about this

Ok. So my "macness" is showing. PowerPC! ;) RISC Chip baby!

If I have to use a windows machine tho', I have been partial to Pentium II/III(full versions) and haven't yet experienced AMDs. I am tempted to build a machine next year as a dual CPU box. Maybe Athlon?

Here AMD are low in price compare to Intel. Right now I'm using Pentium III 500 mhz. The performance is ok. But I've plan to change to Pentium 4.

RISC over CISC anyday in my book.

but then, you have to have the OS to harness that power.

Pentium <4 aren't bad, but would rather an Athlon because they are less expensive.

Mittens, I am with you, my next machine I am building is going to be a Dual machine, preferable Athlon, but so far as I know there isn't a MoBo out there yet that supposrts dual athlon, in developement the last I heard.

I am interested by these next chips that are coming out that are 64-bit.

I just want something with LOTS of power and that can run some flavor of Linux.

Athlons are cheap and powerful, Pentiums are powerfull.
Antyhing RISC rocks, but they tend to be very expensive.

I don't really have a preference, I just like things that do things.

dhej

If you care to do a little research online you will find that the AMD Athlon 1.4mhz out-works almost all Intel processors that are faster (e.g. 1.6mhz, 1.7mhz, 1.8mhz). Recently AMD released their Athlon XP chips (the 1500, 1600, 1700, and 1800) which core out at 1.33mhz-1500, 1.43mhz-1600, 1.47mhz-1700, and 1.53mhz-1800. The difference between the regular Athlon and the Athlon XP is that AMD doubled the onboard cache and added 52 new multimedia instructions as well as Data Pre-Fetch which gets the info before the CPU needs it. If you go online and check out benchmarks run between the XP's and Intel 2 gigs the XP smokes the Intel chip in almost every single benchmark. The reason I believe that AMD just makes a better chip is because of performance, cost, and quality. Also the PC shop I work in is an AMD authorized dealer (go figure the bias). Also if you ask a lot of game developers they run their systems using AMD chips, Microsoft admitted that their labs used AMD Athlons to built XP.


As far as the dual Athlon board goes that has been out for awhile. They just use Athlon MP Processors. Microstar (motherboard manufacturer) has been making then for some time as well as Gigabyte. Alieware has been offering a dual Athlon board for about a year now.

8k L1 cache on p4 was stupid idea, and intel still loves their CISC

Athlon XP's are RISC kill p4's on 95% of benchmarks at half the price of the p4

I just purchased an Athlon XP 1800+ on an EPoX 8kha+ KT266 motherboard and its great.

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I have been using AMD's in all my machines that we build for customers and my personal ones too. I have noticed that all the AMD's that I have built or played wth work and run faster than the Pentiums that I have used.
But thats my personal preferences.

I've heard rumors of the P4 being able to reach speeds around 3.5 G I currently run a lowly celeron processor on my computer due mainly to budget limitations, but I do not currently have the need for that much speed.

i think it all depends on what you want to do. risc and cisc wise. i don't know, i would like to fall more towards the p4 only because right now they have a faster speed and faster FSB. i don't know, but i could be wrong, but is there a Motherboard out there that supports P4 and DDr ram? lately i've been looking around and havan't found any. and this might seem like another dumb question buy have they dropped the pc800 ram and just going to stuck with pc133 and pc166??

-havanger

Well AMD is my choice for *nix based systems. And If I’m forced to use Win I prefer Intel. Ive had bad experiences with AMD in win. :P But over all id use AMD over Intel.

AMD for me. Speed, quality, reliability, and cost...

Intel Pentium 4 baby, 1700mhz oh god I'm getting to excited. I love that chip.

Check out http://www.tyan.com if looking for a dual Anthlon motherboard. I've been using the Tyan brand both at work and home for some time now and they've left a very good impression on me.

I used to favor Intel. but they really screwed up with their release of the Pentium 4. The AMD Thunderbird runs circles around the Pentium 4 right now.

why would anyone say stay away from celeron. the price is right and they are tried, tested and true. as for P4 other than the price what's the problem? I would never trust myself to buy a new amd (tb, ath, dur) - they are cheap for a reason and i wouldnt count on them making it past the 5 year mark.

Celerons are cheaper because they *didn't* make the cut. Celerons are chips that are run through the benchmarking process and come up short of the benchmark expectations.... therefore they have a defect somewhere. The only reason they are purchased is the price. I wouldn't want a Celeron in my system.

or maybe they are processors with less cache

Celerons are not cheap because they are faulty junk that didn't make the cut. They are cheap because Intel realized that AMD was killing them on the bargain processor market. The processor I would suggest staying away from is the cirrus.