# Please Persway Me

## Lul2x

Hello. I have been debating and reading and researching, yet I still cannot decide between my two options. I know there are many topics on Intel vs. AMD but this one is a little more specific. These are my two options and the cost of both of them...

a) Asus P4P800 Deluxe w/ Intel P4 2.4GHz 800Mhz fsb

Pricetag: USD$ 364.90 CAD$505.00

b) Asus A7N8X-Deluxe w/ AMD Athlon XP 2500+ 1.83GHz 333MHz fsb

Pricetag: USD$262.343 CAD$363.05

I know I can overclock the P4 fairly well, are AMDs easy to overclock with this motherboard? What would you pick? What are advantages/disadvantages to each? Any questions, comments, concerns are more than welcome!! Thanks

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## blueworm

I doubt many people have actually tried both to compare, for me the choice was easy AMD

"the money talks the bullshit walks"besides the 100USD difference if spent on an AMD cpu

will allow you to install a 2800XP (Barton)

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## Vanquirius

It depends for which purpose you are purchasing a machine. If you're assembling a home-server I'd go with the P4 because you won't have to struggle with noisy cooling solutions or spending a lot of cash in water cooling kits, etc... If you're using it for gaming I'd consider the barton - I've had Intel and AMD procs, and I'd say in many cases the Athlon seems to deliver more power than the Pentium.

Your AMD alternative seems to have more bang for the buck, but considering you can overclock the P4 much further with equivalent cooling, I'd put some more cash and go with maybe a 2600+, 2700+ if that is the case.

I myself wouldn't buy an ASUS mobo. If you have the money go for an A-Bit, it performs better and is extremely configurable (voltage and rates for chipset, proc, agp, ram, etc...), and also includes nice overheating protection features. The ASUS will just silently fry to death and bip you in no time to shut it down   :Crying or Very sad:  . The ASUS for sure is one of the best next things, but it could prove better to do it the right way first time.

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## revresxunil

I would not go with the asus XP board.  I had two, one for me and one for my dad.  First, both had memory problems with kingston memory, then both bioses stopped working entirely, even after cmos clearing.  Returned to newegg for the abit nf7-s board, rock solid, Im even over clocking my barton 2500 to a 3200+, runs cold with stock fan and heatsink.

I would recommend abit for intel or xp.  My friend had an abit for a p4 and was rock solid for linux and windows.

I still would lean towards intel for raw performance over the xp processor, but Its been so long since ive personally tried an intel to compare.

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## Lul2x

I have also been posting in other forums and the Abit NF7-S with the AMD Athlon XP seems to be the combination of choice. Thanks for the input, keep it coming!

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## GentooBox

What a question...

I would take the Athlon system.

Thats cheap.

not that big of a diffrence in CPU speed.

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## t1deman

The main thing you get from the Intel route is a faster FSB, which is nice, but it's gonna make you RAM much more expensive, and you might not see the performance boost do to other bottlenecks.

I would suggest the AMD route, cheaper and same/better.  take the extra money and spend it elsewhere, maybe get good hard drives (a major bottleneck).

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## Lul2x

I never really thought of the Hard Drive as being a bottle neck, I guess I just never really thought about it, but that sure is something to think about. What do you recommend as far as hard drives and ratings go? what specs should i be looking for? Thank you

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## revresxunil

I know you want to hear about harddrives, but i have a little on memory.  Memory does make a difference... I got kingston hyperx pc3500 (which would max out at 433DDR).  I bought 2 of them and run them in dual channel at 333DDR at a timing of 2-2-2-5.

My dad has pc3200 running at 333DDR at 2-2-2-5.  

Hyperx is nice on the nf7-s board.  Otherwise there is corsair xms 2-3-3-6 memory that you can overclock to 2-2-2-5 without any voltage changes.  Prices for the hyperx and the 2-3-3-6 xms is pretty much the same.

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## firaX

well i got the asus xp board too and have experienced the bios to hang s7ometimes (weird isnt it?) and i could not successfully overclock my 2500+ to 3200+ speeds which almost all abit users do without problems :/

So i ll suggest bartonxp2500+ and abit (nforce2 rev2.0) 

you can easily get 3200+ speeds out of that combo (i m still trying on my asus mobo ,see other thread)

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## Lul2x

Well guys... I bought my first AMD! The 2500+ Barton. I also purchased an Abit NF7-S rev2. I saved almost $200CAD by doing so. I'm quit nervous and excited at the same time. I am still waiting for a lot of my parts to come in so I can get building, I can't wait to see how this puppy works. I'll be sure to keep you guys posted on how it's going and I will probably be asking a lot of questions about over-clocking and such. .

I guess my first question is about compound. Do you guys recommend using it? I've never used it before. I saw recall a place where there were instuctions on how to aply it and such so I will try and find that again.

I will also be over-clocking. My computer is going to be in the basement and in the summer it is about 70F and in the winter about 66F. Would you suggest I purchase a new heat sink and fan? Thanks again for all the help.

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## drekka

Hi, I have an Asus A7N8X deluxe with a 2700+. It's currently overclocked a bit to the 2800+ settings. The 2700's base speed is 2.167Ghz. I've had it up to 2.5Ghz although I had to up voltages and have all the fans on full. 

The main issues with doing this sort of overclocking is heat and noise. Although I could get boots at 2.5Ghz I'm not sure it was stable. I'm still playing with it. I'm also toying with the idea of water cooling the system to cut both the heat and noise issues. Purely for the fun of doing. If I was being practical I would just go buy a bigger chip.

The Asus has a range of overclocking options, but not the best. I have had a look at the Epox 8RDA+ (Ithink thats the right number) which my flatmate has and it looks a lot better in terms of overclocking. Epox almost always win on price and are often at the very top of overclocking and performance as well.

I have not been able to get my system to run faster that 200Mhz FSB, despite have OCZ EL PC3500 DDR installed and the Bios being able to go higher. The system just will not boot. I'm not sure if this is a mobo issue, or something else.

Hope this helps.

Derek.

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## Lul2x

Drekka, you might want to try forums at www.motherboards.org. They will help you a lot on this subject.

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## elzbal

 *Lul2x wrote:*   

> I never really thought of the Hard Drive as being a bottle neck, I guess I just never really thought about it, but that sure is something to think about. What do you recommend as far as hard drives and ratings go? what specs should i be looking for? Thank you

 

The hard drive is one of the biggest bottlenecks in the computer. First of all, ignore the 'fast' IDE/Serial ATA solutions - they aren't that much faster. The truth is that the drive heads do not pick the data off of the media fast enough to come close to saturating the IDE channel.

In terms of data access, consider the following:

* If you have a 1GHZ processor and PC100 memory (old, but easier to do the math with this), and you need to pick up some data and move it into the processor...

* If it is in CPU cache (size varies per processor), it takes 1 clock cycle to move it to a register or into the instruction queue (so the CPU can operate on it).

* If it is in the level 2 cache (some CPUs have this, some don't), it takes 2-5 cycles to move it into a register.

* If it is in memory, it may take 10-20 cycles to move the data into the register.

* If it is on the hard disk, it takes on the order of 100-200+ (maybe even more) cycles to move the data into a register. Ouch!

The 'waiting' cycles are just that - the CPU cannot do anything useful, so it waits. (Actually, some modern CPUs may go ahead and execute instructions that it does not have to wait on, but they cannot always do this.) Because the penalty is so high, when most modern OSs need to pick information off the disk they instead just make the request, switch to another process or task, and come back only after the data is ready from the disk.

Don't be too tempted to blindly get a faster drive, at least not without a bit of research first. The faster RPM drives pull data off of the media faster, but for a price (and not just in $$$). A lot of the 10,000 RPM and 7200 RPM drives have been breaking recently within the last couple of years - the high speed of the platters just wears out the mechanical components much faster, and it seems they aren't making them like they used to. 5400 RPM drives remain the most reliable, although they aren't necessarily 'snappy'. They may have fixed their problems recently... I just don't know. (Actually, I think most of the 7200 RPM drives are a bit more reliable now than a year ago... lots of folks complained.)

If you want 'faster' access, get a lot of extra memory for your system - Linux automatically uses extra memory as a disk buffer (along with other kinds of buffers/pipes). I have 768MB RAM (ok, maybe that's a bit much...), and I typically have 300+ MB used for a disk cache. I really notice the difference between the first access of a large file or a large set of small files (which must read from the disk), and subsequent accesses (which don't).

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## elzbal

By the way, for the record, I have a 7200 RPM drive.

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## Lul2x

Cool, thanks.  One think that I am not sure about is this quote:

 *Quote:*   

> I have 768MB RAM (ok, maybe that's a bit much...), and I typically have 300+ MB used for a disk cache.

 

Are you able to specify how much space you want to be used for disk cache or does it happen automatically? Thank you.

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## jerome187

or you can get a uSCSI160 card and 3 or 4 10k RPM drives and raid them together... it can be done under 150$

or you could do the same thing with uSCSI360 for a LOT more.

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## elzbal

 *Lul2x wrote:*   

> Cool, thanks.  One think that I am not sure about is this quote:
> 
>  *Quote:*   I have 768MB RAM (ok, maybe that's a bit much...), and I typically have 300+ MB used for a disk cache. 
> 
> Are you able to specify how much space you want to be used for disk cache or does it happen automatically? Thank you.

 

It happens automatically - I don't get to choose, but the Linux kernel tends to use a significant portion of otherwise unused memory for things like disk cache and other kinds of things that help speed up the environment. I've never had any complaints.

I'm not going to recommend that you get quite so much memory - you could be very happy with 256MB, and can do just fine with even less. However, if you have more, certain kinds of things (such as disk access) tend to be more efficient.

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## Lul2x

I was thinking of getting 512MB to start, maybe upgrade to 1GB when I gather some money:)

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## jerome187

how many ram slots are on your board?  consider getting smaller sticks (like 2 or 3 256MB) instead of one big one.  that is, if you have 3-4 ram slots.  it is usually a little more expensive this way (only by a few dollers really) but you'll get better proformance from 2 256MB chips than one 512MB chip.

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## Lul2x

I have 3 slots, thanks for the tip. I have an Abit NF7-S, it wouldn't matter if i had say, 2 256MB pieces and one 512MB pieces of the same type of ram would it?

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## jerome187

it might matter, i'm not sure.  make sure you read any special directions about the ram first, sometimes wth 3 slot bords the 2ed and 3ed slot and only take single-sided ram if you want to use both slot 2 and 3.  refer to your manual for details.

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## revresxunil

if you want to run in dual channel mode, get 2 identical chips.

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## hackerError

 *Quote:*   

> I have 768MB RAM (ok, maybe that's a bit much...), and I typically have 300+ MB used for a disk cache.

 

damn, I have 1536MB RAM... is that a bit much?

on the upper hand, I have never seen my swap space used, ever...

I guess everyone already answered your origonal question, but for the reccord I'm running dual AMD processors (@2000+ speed) and they are working well.

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## elzbal

 *hackerError wrote:*   

>  *Quote:*   I have 768MB RAM (ok, maybe that's a bit much...), and I typically have 300+ MB used for a disk cache. 
> 
> damn, I have 1536MB RAM... is that a bit much?
> 
> on the upper hand, I have never seen my swap space used, ever...
> ...

 

Well, I don't think it's too much... I just wanted to fall short of making a blanket recommendation.

I'm not sure I've ever really used much more than 512MB (except in the case of the occational runaway memory leak...)

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## Vanquirius

 *Lul2x wrote:*   

> I guess my first question is about compound. Do you guys recommend using it? I've never used it before. I saw recall a place where there were instuctions on how to aply it and such so I will try and find that again.

 

I've used different types of compounds (tape, paste), and I can't say anything did better than ArticSilver. It can be a little messy the first time you're applying it, but it pays back a lot (~5 Celsius). 

60-70F sounds pretty good for an overclocking room ambient temperature (Canada rules), but still it is better to be safe than sorry - apply some sort of compound, even a cheap one.

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## ben_h

Just on the RAM issue, I thought I'd cat /dev/brain:

I'm running a P4 1.8; started off with 256MB of RAM and after a while, bought a 512MB stick, bringing it to 768MB in total.

-- I notice a HUGE difference running 768MB of ram, especially when I'm in X, and running KDE and gtk based apps at the same time for example. Having two complete toolkits loaded, and a whole lot of apps as well, used to really fill up 256MB quickly.

Actually, just this morning, I was editing a huge wave file to put on CD (I'm transferring some old tapes to CD for mum  :Smile: ) and all 768MB was stuffed with audio cacheage. So there you have it -- if you do audio work, get lots of ram  :Very Happy: 

-- I'm using a 256MB stick in slot 1 and a 512MB in slot 3; slot 2 is empty. Bit of a random configuration, but my system has been utterly rock-solid since I got it about 9 months ago. My two sticks have identical speed ratings/timings (they're both PC2700), but they're different brands (iirc, one's Kingmax and one's Kingston).

Also, all this might go to hell if I overclocked, which I don't. So that I can't comment on  :Smile: 

-- as for Linux's disk cache, it'll use as much ram as it can, completely filling it if possible. But it's not a problem, because it's using space that would otherwise be idle, and as soon as an app wants some more memory it'll give up cache immediately. The performance hit for this is negligible, and possibly even nonexistent (I don't know what's involved in erasing/replacing data in memory -- it might be possible to just write straight over the top. Who knows  :Smile: )

-- I think there was something else I was going to say, but I forgot. I'll edit later if I remember   :Wink: 

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## Lul2x

Why are two 256MB stick of RAM faster than one 512MB stick?

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## jerome187

2 words, Dual DDR.

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## _Corvus

I chose the ASUS..

I have RMA'd one board and the returned one was in french.. Was given another to try and it worked fine.. so far.

first board was PCB version 1.04 and 1002 BIOS.  The new one is 2.00 board with 1005 BIOS.

I went with:

 ASUS A7N8X Deluxe - PCB ver 2.00 - BIOS ver 1005

 2800+ (currently @ 2.08Ghz w/ FSB @ 200MHz)

 1Gig RAM -  Corsair XMS512-3500 (as paired TwinX)

 ATI Radeon 9700 Pro

 Western Digital 120 Gig HD (2 -  one XP Pro,  other Gentoo (soon) )

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