arshadmomen Posted July 25, 2004 Report Share Posted July 25, 2004 Hi, I have been meaning to upgrade my aging 733 MHz PIII. I am not sure which path to follow - stay with Intel or move to AMD(XP or AMD64) . I use my machine mostly for scientific computing (Mathematica/Maple/C programming) and latex ...... Could you folks suggest me what avenue to follow highlighting the pros and cons for each processor- especially the AMD64 series for my purposes? Are there any advantages like higher precisions and floating point arithmetic on AMD64 compared to Pentium4 or even Athlon XP. On the other hand, being a third worlder - I'm on a bugdet. One more thing - My current card is a GeForceMX200. It is OK for my current usage but I was wondering would there be any advantage to upgrade to another cheap card like MX440? Though I do some occasional gaming (Q3 for eg) - gaming performance of the card is not the absolute priority. I was thinking of switching an ATI card but what I gather their linux support is not up to the mark.For instance, I tried using the 9200SE with the ATI-3.2.8 drivers ( after borrowing from a friend) but some of the gl-enabled hacks from xscreensaver were not displayed correctly. Thanks in advance for all your forthcoming recommendations. :D A. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted July 25, 2004 Report Share Posted July 25, 2004 I doubt there are many people on this board who have both an AMD64 and a P4 xxxxx. If you want comparisons I think you would be better off at a site dedicated to hardware reviews. Good luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arshadmomen Posted July 25, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 25, 2004 I doubt there are many people on this board who have both an AMD64 and a P4 xxxxx. If you want comparisons I think you would be better off at a site dedicated to hardware reviews. Good luck. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You have a point - but most of the hardware sites are mostly windows specific. Linuxhardware.org is there but doesn't seems to have active forums like this site. Besides, I really did not mean to ask for comparisons but rather opinions. I don't reckon you would need both a P4 and Athlon rig to have such opinion. Thanks for the response though - A. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xbob Posted July 25, 2004 Report Share Posted July 25, 2004 I doubt there are many people on this board who have both an AMD64 and a P4 xxxxx. If you want comparisons I think you would be better off at a site dedicated to hardware reviews. Good luck. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You have a point - but most of the hardware sites are mostly windows specific. Linuxhardware.org is there but doesn't seems to have active forums like this site. Besides, I really did not mean to ask for comparisons but rather opinions. I don't reckon you would need both a P4 and Athlon rig to have such opinion. Thanks for the response though - A. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well as both a network admin and custom PC builder I have run both side by side many times. Bang for the buck goes to AMD, the Athlon XP is a bargain and most chipsets are well supported under Linux. Nothing wrong with Intel, but the price/performance ratio goes to AMD by a long shot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arshadmomen Posted July 26, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 26, 2004 Anything specific for AMD64 ? A. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xbob Posted July 27, 2004 Report Share Posted July 27, 2004 Anything specific for AMD64 ? A. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You can't really lose right now, you can spring for the newer Socket 939 stuff and have a long upgrade path or get really good deals on the Socket 754 stuff and even the 2800+ and still get far better performance than anything else in that price range (and an upgrade path through early next year, at least on the last AMD roadmap I saw). Obviously with Linux it sometimes takes a few weeks longer for the hackers to get really bleeding edge stuff working, so I would lean toward stuff that's been out a few weeks/months (but I tend to be somewhat conservative in this area, so your mileage may vary). Personally, for the money right now I think the Athlon XP is the best bargain on the planet. I can't wait for 64bit computing to really hit mainstream, but for now I get plenty of juice out of 32bit. You can build a really peppy 32bit box for around $600 and be pretty loaded up. The box in my sig is less than a month old and runs Linux quite fast with very little tweaking (and damn amazing with some tweaking). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.