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Is it a Good Time to Get an Athlon64?
City_Idiot asks: "I'm looking to upgrade my current P4 2.4Ghz and i'm giving serious thought to a Athlon64 3200+. The tests look good, and it gives a 3Ghz P4 a good run for its money but is the technology ready for end users?"
It also depends on how often you upgrade. There is no point in buying a non 64bit system these days if you don't upgrade every year or so. That said I would wait to pick up a 64 bit system for as long as I could. There is always an improvement around the corner .. or a price drop. But if you are in the market now By all means go 64 bit.
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Don't forget alternatives to buying an Athlon 64 that can increase speed and productivity. A Dual-Processor machine can be a real speed boost, and is more natively supported. Likewise, faster system busses, more ram, and going to a RAID setup can increase speed. At that kind of cost, why not put everything in a RAM based rocketdrive? Have you maxed your graphics cards? Do you have a cheap 8139 NIC that taxes your processor?
Let's not forget human-centric productivity increasers, like macro-scriptable keyboards, larger moniters, and deleting AIM. Have you considered DVORAK?
There are many thing cheaper than an Athlon64 that will increase productivity. An intern, for example. Only when the system is both financially sound and better than the alternatives should the transition be undertaken. Perhaps you are the system network maintainer for Google, but for most people the Athlon64 just isn't ripe yet.
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is the technology ready for end users?
I really dont get that question. How can a technology be ready or not ready? It is being shipped and it apparently performs to specs. Like you said it challenges P4 in terms of value, which might answer that question.
A certain number of vendors are making motherboards for it. When you have one or possibly two companies making chipsets, you might have an issue, but with a large number of chipsets and drivers getting mature, you might have the right timing for it.
One other benefit of buying a product early in its selling cycle is that youll have a current product for a longer period of time. Buy a P4 when its really cheap, and youll have a new chip from Intel in the next 6 months.
I am curious about your applications though. What is it for which a P4 2.4GHz doesnt suffice? My P3 550 is giving me good service through games, video and 3d model editing...
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
...to get whatever is one or two steps down from 'top end' and it always is. I find it excellent when there's someone willing to pay top dollar and subsidize my lower-cost choices. I bought a Pentium III 450 when the 650s and what-not were 'current.'
I have a number of 64 bit machines already, if I want to 'dabble' in 64-bitness. My Sun Ultra 1 boxes run NetBSD/Sparc64 and cost me $12.50 each at auction.
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Price are from pricewatch (excluding companies operated by bzboyz)
103.00 Antec Sonata Case
TruePower 380 Watt ATX12V power supply
193.97 ASUS SK8N NVDIA nForce 3 pro150 Chipset DDR RAM AGP8X 5xPCI Audio LAN 6USB2.0 ATX
722.00 Athlon64 FX51
27.00 Thermaltake A1838 CPU Heatsink/Fan for AMD Opteron / Athlon64
202.00 2@512 MB PC 3200 registered
35.00 1.44MB Floppy/6in1 Flash
246.00 2@Seagate ST3160023AS 160GB Serial ATA 7200rpm 8MB
200.00 Visontek ATI Radeon 9600 XT 256MB
58.50 Samsung SM-352BEB 52X24X52X16 CD-RW & DVD Combo Drive
206.00 Plextor PX-708A/SW-BL Dual Format 8X DVD
1179.00 VP201B Viewsonic Monitor
Add in thermal grease, round cables, etc and the price comes in below $3200.
Needless to say, I give AMD64 the thumbs up. If you can afford to go, you will help accelerate adoption.
Plus, don't forget that the Athlon64 is still a very fast 32bit processor. However, I'm not sure if the FX chip is worth the premium. I'll be building the system in January (after I get my xmas dough) and will then know.
The last high-end system I built was a dual ppro200. SMP in Linux was experimental (yet worked great for me) back then. Yet, this very old computer is still running and handling several domains' email. It has more than paid for itself. I hope this new system fares as well.
As an aside, if anyone sees something blatantly wrong with one of my part selections, please explain. I'm torn over going over to ATI. I haven't tried an ATI card since the early 90's and I hated them. However, from what I understand, ATI is the gamer's choice.
BTW, I have absolutely no need for the power this machine will provide. I just want to play and learn with 64bit OS's and still be able to run 32bit games with great graphics.