Dual-Core G5's vs Dual-Core Pentium and Athlon???

[kyeblue]

The Athlon 64 X2's are the fastest chips on the market..bar none. the X2 3800+(dual 2.0ghz 512K L2) have been known to own even the Pentium D 840's(dual 3.2ghz 1MB L2) while running stock in some benchmarks. The other 2 Pentium D's get decimated.

The great Advantage with the Athlon 64/ FX / Opteron series is the on-chip memory controller this is the X-factor in the CPU besides the short stage pipeline. The On-Chip Memory Controller lets is communicate the with the ram at very low latency via Hypertransport. So even when the L2 cache is cut in half the performance hit is minimal. 512k vs. 1MB L2 AMD 64's have a difference of 5-7% in most benchmarks.

Thanks for the great information. Any recommendation on where to buy a AMD Athlon 64X2 system? My budget is around $2500 and I need expandibity on RAM. I am looking for a PC to supplement my MACs. Thanks in advance.

 

[jaduffy108]

Jiggie2g, those links really dont prove anything, they are pretty much speculation and not real hard facts.

Have you ever considered a career in politics? Bush could use a guy like you on the EPA...regarding global warming, etc.

 

[jaduffy108]

Build your own...

Thanks for the great information. Any recommendation on where to buy a AMD Athlon 64X2 system? My budget is around $2500 and I need expandibity on RAM. I am looking for a PC to supplement my MACs. Thanks in advance.

I would suggest building your own. You will save a lot of $$...and...learn a LOT too....making you a valuable asset to the Apple community which is generally NOT very educated in the broader tech world. That said: from newegg.com or tigerdirect.com

Athlon64 X2 3800+ = $347
Asus A8N SLI = $133
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR400 memory = $253
GeForce 7800GTX = Starting at $459
160GB Seagate SATA HDD with NCQ = $91
OCZ Powerstream 520 Watt PSU = $139
Thermaltake case..$?..say really nice one: $200
Some DVD drive...$60

total: $1,682

Once you're up...do a little homework. Then you can overclock that X2 3800 to 2.4...safely...yes, you *can* go higher, but i wouldn't. Dualcore 2.4...sweet.

Want to buy prebuilt for games? Alienware.
For dcc, Boxxtech.

peace

 

[jiggie2g]

Thanks for the great information. Any recommendation on where to buy a AMD Athlon 64X2 system? My budget is around $2500 and I need expandibity on RAM. I am looking for a PC to supplement my MACs. Thanks in advance.

Here's a very Nice system for the Money that i saw on compusa.com

http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=332849&pfp=BROWSE

This is the Killer of the 2ghz DC PowerMac. It has Intergrated graphics but you can pick up a Mid-High Video card on newegg at a great price.

Or better yet if you're into DIY PC's you can just get componets on newegg. Athlon X2 3800+ chips are now in the $325 range.

 

[Mikael]

The reality is this. Intel has been around longer than AMD.

That is correct. Intel was founded in '68 and AMD in '69. Not much to talk about.

Also I dont know what the power consumption of a dual core AMD system is but as high as the intel's might be, I dont think its as bad as everyone makes it seem. My dual cpu box with 2 gigs ram, 3 scsi drives, x800xt-pe video, scsi controller, addon soundcard and two optical drives uses about 228 watts at idle and about 308w during Doom3 gameplay.

Well an equal performing Pentium-D outputs considerably more power than the X2. Here are some numbers from Lost Circuits:

Athlon64 X2 4800+ Load: 86W

Pentium4 840EE 3.2GHz Load: 147W

It's not as if the difference in power consumption is small. It's in fact large enough to make people rightfully shy away from it (or its lower clocked cousins). The fact that it generally performs worse than the competition is another reason to stay clear.

 

[jiggie2g]

Sorry bout the double post.

Wow you want to see something even more intersting , I actually put together a PC on newegg and where's what i got.

Athlon X2 3800+ $327
DFI nForce 4 Ultra Infinity $95.99
1GB(512x2)DDR 3200 Corsair Value Select $79.67
XFX Geforce 6600 256MB DDR $102
Hitachi 250GB SATA II 3.0Gb/s HD $103
NEC ND-3540A 16x DVD-+RW 8x DVD-+R DL $39.98
Antec P180 Case w/3x 120mm fans $115.99
Antec Smartpower 2.0 PSU 500watt Dual Rail $68.99

So Far $932.62 for Hardware ...now on to software.

M$ Windows XP PRO SP2 OEM $134.95
M$ Works Suite 2005 OEM $ 69.95
Adobe Photoshop Elements + Premiere Elements 2.0 $134.95
ZoneAlarm Pro $34.95
Trend Micro PC Cillin 2005 Anti-Virus $34.99

Software Total is $409.79

Hardware $932.62 + Software $409.79 + $34.99 shipping = $1,386.11

The Price of the DC 2.0ghz PM in similar configuration is $2224

So Apple is selling you OSX + iLife for only $835.89 extra... what a bargin .

I'd take that extra $835.89 and buy me a Dell 2405 fpw

Please note that I added a very high quality case in the Antec P-180 and a High power PSU in the SmartPower 2.0, I could have added just an Antec Sonata 2 with it's bundled 400w PSU at $110 ,but I wanted this to be as fair as possible.

Also lets be realistic about a few things who pays for Windows these days , people pass those cracked CD's around like they were AOL discs. Another reason why windos will continue to dominate.

There is so much freeware that I wouldn't pay for any software on PC example.

Open Office , Firefox , Thunderbird , DVD Shrink+ DVD Decryptor , AVG Anti-Virus , ZoneAlarm Firewall , iTunes , Picasa 2 , Konfabulator 2 , M$ Spyware, Spybot just to name a few....I use all of these and have saved a ton.

 

[jaduffy108]

jiggie...

It Amazes me how many so called loyal mac fan have suddenly flip floped into Intel Fanboys almost over night ,I remember a time if some one came here braging about Intel they would get Flamed and Crucified.

Now since the Almighty Steve'O managed to shaft himself after tryin to low ball IBM on CPU pricing then come up with a foney let me save face excuse like "Intel's are more Power efficient". It's good they told him to take a walk.

Suddenly Apple jumps on the Sinking ship that is Intel and fanbois have multiplied like Gremlins. Please people in the last 8 months alone how many time has intel revised thier road map just to try and match AMD. Now they are trying to Implement HTT in thier own systems ...talk about pathetic. that company has so many Internal problems it's almost Legendary...the Enginnering Dept. and Marketing Dept. have a fued that is only rivaled by Sony's Electronics Division vs. Sony's Music Division.

How do u think Intel got to this point in the 1st place ,

Intel Exec: We need more ghz to promote these CPU's
Intel Engineer : Well if we keep ramping up speed at this rate our cpu's will have to be designed less efficiently.

Intel Exec:I don't care we want more speed , we want 4ghz nowwwwwwwwwww.
Intel Engineer : Ok but I have to warn you , eventually these chips are going to hit a wall and overheat too much.

Intel Exec: Screw that we'll worry about it later , you guys can fix it. We just want to sell more chips.
Intel Engineer : (shakes his head in disbelief).....Okay don't say I didn't warn you.

TOOOO many Apple fans are cult members. No matter the question or task at hand...just repeat....OSX...OSX...OSX.... Better than windows...better than windows....better than windows. Through therapy...and watching friend's pc's smoke my Mac on Maya rendering...i broke free.
I'm a big fan of "Steve" in many ways, but..i think you nailed it. Consistent Apple partnership failures...and Stevie boy is the common denominator. hmmm. Things that make you go...hmmmm. His arrogance is a problem imo.

Oh..and thanks for the good laugh too. I sincerely hope Intel's Conroe/merom lives up to the hype. It will be great for OSX x86 and inspire AMD to keep on kickin a$$.

peace

 

[jaduffy108]

nice system...

So Apple is selling you OSX + iLife for only $835.89 extra... what a bargin .

>>>LOL

I'd take that extra $835.89 and buy me a Dell 2405 fpw

>>>yep. I love mine.

 

[jiggie2g]

So Apple is selling you OSX + iLife for only $835.89 extra... what a bargin .

>>>LOL

I'd take that extra $835.89 and buy me a Dell 2405 fpw

>>>yep. I love mine.

Oh i didn't buy that system , i just put it together in another tread and wanted to show it to kyeblue as a reference to work on. I have my Imperial G5 Destroyer spec's on my Signature.

I want that freakin Dell 2405 fpw sooooo bad i am envious ....


Oh by the way if anyone wants a test of just how powerful the X2's are take this into accout
I decided to run a multi-task test yesterday this is what i ran.

Firefox with 2 multi tabbed windows open
Thunderbird
AVG anti virus
Zonealarm Pro
Konfabulator w/ 3 widgets
Trillian
MS Anti Spyware
iTunes 6..playing audio + visualizer
Real player ..playing video
Quicktime 7..playing video
WMP 10 ...playing video
DVD Shrink....Encoding


all this on at full speed and everything was smooth...I was very impressed . this would have killed my Venice Athlon 64 3000+

 

[RatVega]

If you try to look at this reasonably, pretty much everyone has a hot machine these days...

I don't play games, so for me there's only one meaningful benchmark:
What will transcode MPEG-2 fastest while maintaining the ability to run Final Cut Studio in an OS X environment?

Everything else is just specs...

BTW, how are those other systems in floating point? The new Quad cranks 76.6 GigaFlops...

 

[contoursvt]

Hey here is something I was trying a few months back and since I was impressed with it, I took a screenshot.

I was playing doom3 in a window at 1024x768 on high detail, while listening to some mp3's while encoding two DVD's at the same time from my two DVD burners. All this while maintaining 60+ FPS in Doom3 and using less than 45% cpu usage. Not bad

http://powerthings.com/pics/stresstest2.jpg

 

[jiggie2g]

Hey here is something I was trying a few months back and since I was impressed with it, I took a screenshot.

I was playing doom3 in a window at 1024x768 on high detail, while listening to some mp3's while encoding two DVD's at the same time from my two DVD burners. All this while maintaining 60+ FPS in Doom3 and using less than 45% cpu usage. Not bad

http://powerthings.com/pics/stresstest2.jpg

Call me foolish for not knowing this , but I didn't think you could use 2 optical drives at once. Especially for something at stressful as encoding.

Hey contoursvt are u using a Pentium D or X2 and what Model/Clock ..post ur Rig.

Also what DVD encoding app were u using.

 

[Mikael]

BTW, how are those other systems in floating point? The new Quad cranks 76.6 GigaFlops...

Completing nearly 8 floating point operations per clock cycle? It sounds awfully high, but I'm no expert on these things. I don't think that the Opteron would come close, though. It would also probably depend on the program used to measure this. I know that SiSoft Sandra provides a means of measuring this. An Athlon64 X2 4800+ (2.4GHz) is reported to have 10GFlops of floating point power. Extrapolation would yield a result of ~21GFlops for a system with four cores running at 2.5GHz.

EDIT: Might add that I don't care much for the throwing around of gflop values. There are a lot of factors to consider.

EDIT2: Also, an advantage that large [over the Opteron/A64] would shine through in actual apps. If the tests weren't made to be misleading, that is.

 

[contoursvt]

I'm running a pair of 3Ghz Xeons with 2 gig DDR400 RAM. Essentially should be the same as a 3Ghz dual core intel (but the higher model that has Hyperthreading since the Xeons include hyperthreading).

As for the optical drives. You can use two at the same time if you've got them on seperate chains. I dont run IDE drives so I can afford to give each drive its own IDE port. I run 15k 36gig SCSI drives (3 of them).