Stay with Intel, or switch to AMD?

[Spanky52]

Hello

My computer has been inschool for about 3 days now, and i was considering switching to a AMD Athlon XP 2400+ - 2800+ and buy a Nforce 2 based motherboard. I was wondering if this would be wise or should i stick with my P4 2.4 GHz CPU set in a MSI 648 MAX-L motherboard.

What would be a good motherboard and how much money does this range of CPU speed cost?

System specs. yet again:
P4 2.4 GHz northwood CPU
1024MB(512MB x 2) Corsair XMS pc2700 Ram 2/2/2/5 - 1T
MSI 648 Max-L (SiS 648 Northbridge chipset)
soon-to-be 450 ATX PSU
ATi Radeon 9700 pro
Creative SB Audigy 5.1 x-gamer Soundcard
WD 80 GB HDD

[AviD]

What do you plan on doing with the P4 CPU and mobo?

[Spanky52]

One word. Ebay.

[Spanky52]

Or i could sell it to one of three friends wanting to build a new computer.

[EvLwMn]

The AMD/Intel choice is a personal one that usually has to do with money (unless you talk with a fanboy/girl - then it's a "principle" thing). I will say that AMD chips get hotter and are more likely to shut themselves off due to heat. The Intels have historically costed a lot more than the AMDs.

The Asus A7N8X is a good Nforce2 board. Although there are people who have had problems with it, I believe they eventually were able to fix them with a bios update.

Go to http://www.pricegrabber.com to get an idea on the price ranges of each speed of cpu. Just make sure you check out any vendors you find there by going to http://www.resellerratings.com

Good luck and have fun

[Zooooot]

If you have a working P4 2.4, I don't think the athlon is going to perform all that much better for the effort you would put into the system change. Just my $.02, and I'm an AMD guy.

[EvLwMn]

I agree with Z. I look at it this way - if it ain't broke, don't fix it!!

[Foolhardy]

Zooooots jaded. The monkey says SWITCH!!

[Spanky52]

Actually, i believe there is a problem. This low performance thing has to do with low performance chipset/motherboard. It is true that the P4 cools much, much better ( mine runs at about 96 degrees F during games and heavy workloads) but if i could find a good price on a water cooling setup, do you think some overclockage may be possible? Unless you know of a chipset which is just as good as the nForce 2 that is for a P4 (i havn't heard of any nForce chipsets for a P4 yet) I may switch to AMD. (BTW hardy, with the word "fool" in your name and being the only one saying to switch, should i really trust your judgment? He he he) Money is sorta-kinda a factor at this point, it really wasn't too big when i got the original system ( i payed $360+ for ram, $224 for the CPU).

[Spanky52]

But have no fear, this is a idea way down the road. If i get the PSU and it doesn't fix the performance, and i don't get this solved before Doom III, You better start looking for those fish to survive the hot water caused from level 7

[Foolhardy]

Naturally there are pros and cons to almost every upgrade decision. I'll be sticking with AMD until I find it doesn't serve my interest anymore. Pentiums are just too expensive for a mediocre processor.

I'm still waiting on the "64-bit revolution" and what it means to enthusiasts.

[EvLwMn]

Well Spanky - your temps are really good if you ask me. My "mediocre" P4 is OCd from 2.0 to 2.4 and runs at 104 F at idle consistently. I don't really know what it runs at under load without a reboot as I don't have gkrellm or any other kind of software monitoring system installed. But it's stable while I play games or do graphics design and I can tell you that it doesn't seem to get very hot. I can comfortably touch the heatsink while running under load - if that means anything at all.

So I think your temps are pretty good.

Like I said - the Intel/AMD argument is really that of personal choice.

[Spanky52]

Hmm... a friend of mine in school said we could do a project and custom build a water cooling system, He partially owns a computer repair shop in town But im kinda iffy, I'm Screwed if it ever leaks. What i've found is that AMD processors seem to have all the chipsets for gameing and DDR 400 Ram support, while the Intel procs. seem to stick around their RAMBUS and are generally for bussiness apps. For me it isn't haveing a system that looks good on paper, I really do care if im missing out on 5 FPS when im only running at 45 FPS in the begging. like i said, i'll wait for the new PSU, since in UT 2003 it dosn't matter if i have the graphis all the way up at 1280*1024 or the graphics at medicricy at 1024*768, The game runs the same speed, and i think its because my system isn't getting enough power.

[Foolhardy]

On the other hand, my ultra cheap "un-mediocre" AMD xp 1.47GHz cpu clocked to around 2.2 GHz on air cooling. Just didn't stay that way for too long

50 bucks!!!

[EvLwMn]

Yeah Foo - but just remember one thing. My "mediocre" P4 WAS OCd to 2.8 GHz and it was ROCK STABLE - ran it that way for 2 days and had NO problems. The only reason I clocked it down is because I am chicken. I got scared when the temps were a little high and instead of working on a better cooling solution - I clocked it back down to 2.4