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The Athlon 64 3000+, A Budget Gamer's Perspective
VL contributes a link to Viperlair's budget-conscious and game-oriented review of an AMD processor that's not on the bleeding edge, but makes a good showing for the money: "For the price of the Socket-939, you can pick up an A64 3000+, K8T800 based motherboard, and a decent mid-range video card. For gamers on a budget, I think the choice is obvious."
....in Police Quest IV?
I don't know about the US, but comparing the boxed Athlon64 3000+ against a 3.2GHz P4 I see that the P4 is ~50% more expensive.
Not to mention, it doesn't run 64-bit software.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
What part of "budget" didnt you understrand?
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
This review claims that the cheapest socket 939 processor is $450. With the recent price drops, you can get a retail 3500+ for about $350, compared to $220 for a 3200+ or $175 for 3000+. Also, the review would have been much more useful had it shown results for both versions of the 3200+, so that you can compare the impact of clock speed and cache.
From the article:
Although there is no official 64-bit version of Windows, the chip can run 32-bit code natively. For those who are anti-Microsoft, there are some 64-bit versions of Linux, but if you're feeling adventurous, you can always pick up a beta of Windows XP 64-Bit Edition.
Since when was running Linux an anti-Microsoft thing? This is the kind of crap the OSS community needs to stomp out in order to give Linux the reputation it deserves and broaden its adoption, especially on the desktop.
On a more constructive note, since UT2003/4, Quake3, Doom3, and a handfull of other badass games are supported by Linux why isnt there a Linux-Gamers distro. Even if it were just a bootable knoppix CD that could take advantage of the Athlon 64 and play these games off your harddrive it would really help get linux on the desktop in the gamers croud. I can just hear the taunts coming from the LAN dude playing Doom3 on Linux in 64 bit, "You wanna piece of me, you cant handle my BFG! I got 64 bits with your name on it", etc...
Or was it just me?
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Yes, that's what the article says: AMD is pretty much committed to the Socket-939 platform for the foreseeable future, and truth be told, an upgrade to a Socket-754 CPU is going to limit your motherboard or CPU options, which is an important factor since our theme today is budget gaming.
Their point is - the A64 3000+ and a 754 mainboard are so "cheap", it's worth giving up the upgradability of not going with a 939 board.
In a limited way, I tend to agree: don't put too much faith into being able to keep your mainboard for the next upgrade, chances are you'll upgrade it anyway.
However, all of this totally depends on how often you upgrade. If you intent to upgrade within another year, yeah, you'll be able to keep your mainboard if you bought "smart". But if you're going to wait say, 2 years, until your next major overhaul, your current mainboard will be obsolete, even though you bought a "future-proof" mainboard such as the 939 today. Even if Socket 939 is still in use by then, chances are more recent mainboards will run at a higher FSB, support different periphery, different RAM, and so on and so on.
What's more: calling that article a budget gamers guide is a stretch. The definition of what kind of a budget qualifies for a budget gamer is subjective, of course, but I doubt an A64 3000+ is the best bang for the buck right now. Socket-A boards are cheaper, as are Athlon XP (or Sempron, if you will) CPUs, and they aren't a lot slower, at least not compared to a an A64 3000+. And since you're a budget gamer, you're not likely to upgrade within a year, so you're going to toss your mainboard when you upgrade next time, and there's really no reason to buy an Athlon XP mainboard if you don't already have one.
I mean, I'm not saying he's insane for buying an Athlon 64 3000+, I suppose it's a lot better value for the money than going the Socket 939 route, but it's still a high-end choice, for seemingly no other reason than being high end. Considering the author of the story bought a A64 3000+, it kind of seems like he's trying to justify his investment.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
used to be the lazy man's way to make sure you got a good mobo. You could always just buy an Intel branded board and you'd be good to go. With AMD, you had to navigate through several choices to avoid a crappy board (yes, I know those choices where there for Intel too, but they were so easy to avoid).
:).
Whelp, Nvidia came along and changed that. Now I recommend AMD/Nforce to everyone I talk too, if only for the kick-@$$ sound on the higher end boards
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While CPU speeds may not be going up as fast as they used to, prices just seem to keep falling. You can now build yourself a socket 752 system with a decent video card for $1000, minus monitor.
My last build, a T-bird 1.4ghz, was in 2001. It cost $1200, yet the thing was built with a lot of the cheapest parts - the case, the mobo, the drives. It overheated constantly because of the poor airflow in thge case, which I eventually fixed through a crude expansion to the existing front intake in the bezel, and by moving the case fan from the side to the back.
My next one, to be ordered sometime this month, is going be smaller(using the Antec Aria and an m-ATX), faster(A64 2800+), quieter(better PSU, fans and heatsinks), and cheaper($950 including all-new cards and peripherals, unlike the previous one, which stripped whatever it could from the one that came before it).
XP 2500 ($80), FX5700 or Radeon 9800 ($200), SB Live 4.1 ($30), 1 gig DDR ($200), 160 gig Seagate SATA ($120), ASUS MATX MoBo ($100), CD-RW/DVD Combo drive ($75) and a nice case ($75).
This comes in at just under $700. It's a very nice system that can play any game out there. Really who needs more than that for your current gaming needs? Sure you can shell out another grand for the bleeding edge but I would rather spend another 700 in two years and kick my old box down to the wife.
In the past, I'd agree with you - chipsets were the sticking point for AMD, but nForce2 is coming up on 2 years old this winter, and that was the turning point. Outside of one odd implementation (an MSI board that doesn't even use the standard drivers, but I dislike MSI anyway), I have yet to see an nForce2 machine with stability problems.
:-)
Of the 3 nForce2 based machines I own and all the ones I've built for other people, I've yet to come across a piece of hardware that didn't just work. Time to bring your notions about AMD out of 2001.
I've just upgraded two of my boxes to the 3500+ and 3800+ S939 chips and couldn't be happier with the results. Both Linux (FC2 x86_64 on the 3500+) and Windows (XP on the 3800+) motor along far faster than I was expecting, and I have that dual core upgrade to fall back on when games require that much grunt. As far as I'm concerned it's "Intel Inside" alright - "Inside the store, covered in dust on the shelf". :)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
The last time I assembled a computer, the difference was $0. Granted, this was at a local shop. The chips weren't all that different in cost. This was pricing out the best board and the cheapest chip for each brand CPU.
The kicker at the time was that the Intel chipset board included sound, a couple Firewire ports and a network jack all onboard. Even the shop's best Athlon boards didn't have all three, so it would have been just as much money to buy the extra cards, and then two of precious open slots would be taken.
Those slots were important. I didn't assemble the replacement system (a used Xeon), but seriously, it has six PCI slots (four PCI 33/32 and two PCI 66/64) and I have a card in every slot.
They could have mentioned that, too. It's really nice to see my 3000+ stay below 30 degrees C(at 800MHz) most of the time I'm using it(and no case fans or anything, just what came in the box), and not even always going full-speed when gaming... Fairly quiet, too, even with my really cheap and quite loud case.
:)
Wouldn't help much in comparison with 3200+, but it's still a nice bonus on all Athlon64s, especially when over half of your time is spent on normal workstation tasks, with the rest being gaming
>Granted, this was at a local shop.
Well, there's half of your problem right there. If you don't price compare online, you're going to have no idea if the local shop is ripping you off or not. That simply wasn't a valid sample of prices.
>The kicker at the time was that the Intel chipset
>board included sound, a couple Firewire ports and
>a network jack all onboard. Even the shop's best
>Athlon boards didn't have all three
Then this was either a couple of years or more ago, or the shop's "best" Athlon boards were crap. A quick search at newegg.com reveals a slew of high-end Athlon boards that support all three, along with Serial ATA and a host of additional features.
Sounds like less of a problem with the Athlon platform and more of a problem with your local shop.
unstable+paris+hilton gives 12,500 hits.
Now what do we learn from that?