Hi All,I posted this in the main forum in error, so as a newbie to the forums - hopefully i've got it right this time !!I am about to retire my 4 year old Dell PIII 866Mhz and build myself a new box of tricks.My question is WHAT to go for ?AMD64 3200+ OR P4 3.0Ghz (they are both within my budget)I will put a 'Gig O Ram' in to the new machine, but will have to use my old Graphics Card which is a 128Mb Ti4200, which, to be fair has been great. This will all run with XP Pro.Your guidance is welcomed,Thanks in anticipation, and Happy Flyin...Eddy

Hello Eddy,I think either type of system would suit you well for FS2004. You might want to consider a much newer video card to go with it though. Not just any newer video card either. Anyway, believe me, you'd be a lot happier. If you are already thinking about FS2006 then I will say this. If the past has been prelude to the future, todays hardware will not run FS2006 in all it's glory. You'll probably be able to run, but you will have to be willing to run with lower settings on sliders. Things could change though. Perhaps Hyperthreading, or some newer video card of the future will allow FS2006 to be run on hardware of today. But as I said, if the past has been prolouge...As for the AMD 64 vs. Intel 32, check out what has been what I would call not a huge, but a little bit of a debate, in the thread I started titled 'My Precious!' if you want to. ;)Cheers,Jim

Hi, Eddy.I am working on a machine myself. From my research, it seems like the best "bang for the buck" chip for me right now is the AMD64 300+. The 300 has half the L2 cache of the 3200+, but it looks like gaming benchmarks are very close between the two. They run at the exact same clock speed, and the 300+ is quite a bit cheaper.For a motherboard, the AOpen AK86-L looks supremely stable at a great price.I am still trying to sort thorugh the mess of RAM options. What a mine field! I am trying to invest a little bit more on name-brand RAM with good timings, but it's pretty confusing and overwhelming.I would agree that it's fine to use your old video card for now, but only because I wouldn't recommend buying a new card at this time. We are on the cusp of some big stuff with the new card releases, with performance that is leaps and bounds over previous cards rather than just another iteritive improvement. Keep in mind, however, that your Ti4200 is probably going to be a real bottleneck in your system, so I would DEFINATELY plan on getting a modern card once things settle down in the industry.Good luck.

Except that AMD will always cause some troubles and P4 in 99% of the cases will not. So far I heard...I never liked AMD and never will like it. Rather spend more money for stability and quality.

"Except that AMD will always cause some troubles and P4 in 99% of the cases will not. So far I heard...I never liked AMD and never will like it. Rather spend more money for stability and quality."This has no substance of fact. Just because you don't like AMD, that means they are bad? I've been using AMD based systems for years and had no serious problems. They've been stable, fast, easily built and maintained, and the price has been, on the whole, a bit lower than comparable Intel systems.Both Intel and AMD make good products. It's a simple matter of choice.To the original poster... the AMD 64 based systems offer a bit more performance at this time. Of course, in the world of computing that could change next week. :-) Greg

"Except that AMD will always cause some troubles and P4 in 99% of the cases will not. So far I heard...I never liked AMD and never will like it. Rather spend more money for stability and quality."Any stabilty or quality issues are related more to the chipset paired with the cpu, than with the cpu itself.Kurt M

Im sorta in the same boat as you right now, not really sure what to do, I have it narrowed down to a P4 3.0GHZ w/ht Prescott (1MB L2 Cache) or the 64bit AMD 3200+, I really am not sure what to do right now, I think I am gonna be going with the Intel. But with some new AMD's supposed to be coming out soon (AMD FX53) in particular, I might just wait and see what they do.

I just built myself an AMD64 system, w/ a gig O ram and a nvidia 5700. My motherboard is a KV8-Max3 wich is about 2 grades higher than I originally intended on buying. The AMD 64 has turned out to be the best thing I've ever upgraded to. The motherboard has also turned out to be well worth the extra money I spent on it. I do regret not saving up the extra needed to get a Nvidia 5950, but my FS FPS are outstanding even compared to my room mates P4 2.8Also keep in mind the AMD64 is beating out P4s with Hyperthreading. and the software we are currently using is not using all of what the 64 has to offer. As programmers catch up things will be even better for AMD 64 users.

It is always good to go to the www.simhq.com site where they have benchmarks for different AMD and Intel systems for FS2002/4.It turns out AMD 64 3400+ runs neck in neck with P4 3.4 Gzh "Northwood". So it would all come down to the price differential where you account for MB, RAM, etc. Yes AMD 64 FX-53 is the fastest but I wonder if a 5% performance gain is worth all this extra $$$. Unfortunately top AMD systems no longer have price advantage over Intel as they used to.Michael J.

I can help you decide? Do you wonder why nvidia and everyone is showing of the NV40 on AMD64 based systems??AMD 64 based systems still has it of course not as extreme as before. The FX 53 competes directly against the P 4 3.4 EE which is more expensive. however the P 4 3.2EE is quite equally priced to the A64 but then that can

im about a click away from buying a new computer systemcould someone please explain in plain english what the differences between the p4 3 gig chip and the new amd 64 3000+ chip is? i know the amd is 64 bit vs 32 bit, but its only rated at 2gig speed, does the 64 bit processing make up for the lack in chip speed?? this is what i dont get, thanksright now ive got an amd 64 3000+ in my cart from cyberpower.com and i just dont want to make a mistakethanksciao!Brian S

AMD operates at a slower clock speed than Intell. An AMD 2800 is roughly + to an Intell 2.8 gig or An AMD 3200 while its clock speed is about 2gig runs on par with a Intell 3.2 prosessor.Only the AMD 64 series is a 64 bit prosessor. an AMD 64 3200 clocks faster than an AMD Athlon 3200 wich runs near the same as a Intell 3.2 (some will argue faster some will argue slower but I think you got the point)

The reason AMD is clocked lower is because they perform more operations/clock then intel do.the AMD CPU:s have something they call quadspeed architecture. Thus an Intel CPU have to be clocked higher to deliver similar performance.Intels P 4 has some strong points in video encoding and such and AMD some strong point in games and such where memory latency is just about all that matters to put it roughly. Thus Intel has the Extreme edition where they do pretty much what AMD did with the BARTON just go one step further really with it

This is not even a contest for me. There is NOTHING wrong with AMD processors and there hasn't been since the Socket A Athlon models first started coming out 4 or 5 years ago. The original Slot A Athlons and the very first chipsets (the AMD 750 and the VIA KT133) had a few issues, but it ALL has been resolved for YEARS. Posts like Word Not Allowed's are obviously uninformed (much like the posts that claim ATI video cards still suck) and serve only to turn people away from CPUs that are innovative, well made, and less expensive than the Intel ones. Are you guys aware that Intel is actually licensing AMD64 technology to incorporate into their own 64bit desktop CPU that's isn't going to be out until mid to late 2005? It's AMD that's the innovator now, not Intel.As to the reason why AMD's chips are clocked slower, it's due the the fact that the architecture is different and AMD's CPU's can perform more instructions per clock cycle than the P4 can. Raw Ghz numbers mean absolutely nothing! The P4 gets spanked in almost every benchmark by A64's that are running a full Ghz "slower".Trust me on this recommendation - I sell these CPU's and boards at my job all day long on the weekends - get the following:If you have to buy right this second, getAMD Athlon 64 3000+Asus K8VSE Deluxe1GB PC3200 (2X512 identical sticks so you can upgrade to a dual channel mobo when they're availiable if you like)ATI Radeon 9800 Pro or XTThe 3000+ is a steal - it performs right up almost at the level of the faster ones and you can probably get a decent overclock out of it with good cooling.If you can wait until mid May get:AMD Athlon 64 3200 or 3400 Socket 939 versionASUS or ABIT Nvidia nForce 3 250 bases motherboard1GB PC3200 2X512Nvidia GeForce 6 6800 Ultra or ATI Radeon X800 XT, whichever ends up being faster... (my bet is on ATI)AMD is changing the pin format on the Athlon 64's over to Socket 939 which will give you a larger upgrade capability once they stop producing Socket 754.The new nForce 3 250 motherboards are awesome - reviews are just starting to come out now and it looks to be everything the nF3 150 should have been - the Socket 754 version should be availiable within the next couple weeks, with the 939 version coming soon. The new graphics cards will give FS9 a big boost too (as already confirmed with the 6800 in tests on HardOCP)Bottom line - Intel is stagnating - with AMD64, you're gonna get a boost out of your CPU as soon as WinXP 64 comes out, which is not going to happen with a P4. Go AMD.

What troubles with AMD are you considering? I had a Compaq, with AMD K6-2 (450MHz) for some four years, where I could run FS2002 satisfactorily and I never had problems. In June last year I assembled a machine with AMD XP2600+, I run FS9 since it was available, and I have no problems.In case you really have any objective evidence of problems with AMD, please let me know. Otherwise my next machine might very well be an AMD again!Regards,