Given a Pentium IV and an Athlon XP of roughly equal performance on a variety of standard benchmarks, does anyone know which architecture favors Microsoft Flight Simulator?

I am not sure but if you look at price, AMD rulles.In benchmarks XP2100+ showes close performance to Pi 2.4 and yet the price is less than half.I prefer AMD. When I switched from PIII800 to AMD Althon 1.2Ghz, the perfomance chnage was incredible.I've treid PIII1.2Ghz with same settings (just switched Mabo) and I wasn't able to put everything at MAX and get smooth perfomance.On AMD I can get 14fps even on KSFO with everythingt including ATC, AA, and all other settings to Max, but terreain mesh to 80%.On PIII1.2 I could get only 10FPS.

Well, the fact of the matter is the type of RAM you will be using. The outright performer is the P4 with the 850 chipset (now the 850E with a 533MHz FSB)and RDRAM (RAMBUS). The new Northwood P4 processors with the 850E and RDRAM 4200 will smoke anything from AMD at this point in time. You will have to wait a few months for manufacturers to ramp up production for this "new" platform. Right now ASUS makes a MB using an SiS chipset based on the Intel 850E (but it is not an Intel chipset)... I would stay away from SiS. Wait for the Intel 850E chipset on an ASUS or other MB. If you need a new PC right now, you still can't go wrong with a Northwood on an 850 with PC800 RDRAM, as this provided the needed internal bandwidth for apps like FS2k2. In the future you can replace the 850 MB with an 850E Mb, and start using 4200 RDRAM. Or just wait a month or so. This all comes at a premium price though. For less money, and slightly less performance go with an XP & DDR RAM. Be forewarned though, this platform is at the end of it's desigh cycle.I'm currently running an Intel "Northwood" P4 1.8A on an ASUS P4TE MB with the 850 chip set and 512MB RDRAM. My weak link is my video card (Matrox G550), but I get about 10 FPS at detailed airports with all sliders maxed and options "on". Steady 30FPS at altitude. I plan on upgrading to the Matrox G1000 when released, and my "on the ground" FPS should jump up nicely.Good luck in your choice...

Check out the specs on my two systems. While I admit that it's not quite fair to compare two different types of memory (PC133 vs. PC2700), the AMD system significantly outperforms the Intel system. In FS2K2 I saw a 50% increase in frame rate, which is the only quantitative measure I can provide. However, the overall quality is much better as well, since I often had texture patches that didn't even draw with the P4 system (those occassional grey patches on the scenery). Based on price considerations alone, I would go with AMD :-)

Go with Pentium Athlon can freez and if you are not computer friendly you can have some problems to solve the freezing problems.My friend had problems with AMD and I saw it .Now he is with pentium and no problemThe Choice is yourshttp://www.cuic.ca/seroka/lo14.jpg

I have a pentium and an Athlon. I see more freezes with the P4 than the Athlon ;). This is probably due to a combination of factors including OS and IRQ resources. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that have no problems with their AMD chips.

>Go with Pentium >Athlon can freez and if you are not computer friendly you >can have some problems to solve the freezing problems. >My friend had problems with AMD and I saw it .Now he is with >pentium and no problem >The Choice is yours If there's any one statement I hate hearing more than any others when it comes to computers it's this one. I'm not going to rag on you for saying this because anyone who would make this statement is definitely a layman when it comes to pc tech. Instead, I shall simply correct the above statement. AMD CPUs are not inherently less stable than their Intel counterparts. This is a myth and couldn't be more wrong. As far as your friend having problems with his computer that had an Athlon CPU, and then switching to a "Pentium" and having his problems resolved, he more than likely had an issue with his motherboard chipset and perhaps other components. The chances of there being something "wrong" with his CPU are slim to nil (if the computer turns on, loads the O.S., and runs apps, there's NOTHING wrong with the CPU that would cause instabilities/incompatibilities). Anyway, I'm done disspelling this myth for now...Max Cowgill

You know, this is weird. My P3 at 1120MHz with Radeon 64 VIVO does the same. 30 at altitude, 10 at the busy terminals. I have most sliders maxed, and i'm betting side by side they would be about the same. It's the evil AGP port! Kill the AGP port!Noel

Just kidding........ I've owned Intel chips for YEARS....."freezing" has nothing to do with the chip and everything to do with the operating system. IMHO, AMD offers more for less, I have an AMD1900+ and I will never go back to Intel unless AMD gets greedy like Intel did and puts out a shabby chip, which is what the P4 was. Install Windows XP (clean, not overlay) and you will be surprised how good it runs. Over five months of me banging away at XP using FS2002 with a TON of addons all at the same time have 2-5 other windows open including at times playing music on RealPlayer, not ONCE has XP failed. Now, twice I think, buggy FS2002 addons caused 2 XP blue screens, but this was NOT XP's fault. The only problem I have had with XP and my AMD are it tends to make you vulnerable to virus attack, but guess what, Norton 2002/Zone Alarm, problem solved, you would have to use such protective products anyway..........CONCLUSION: AMD chip + Windows XP, the best there is right now.

>Given a Pentium IV and an Athlon XP of roughly equal >performance on a variety of standard benchmarks, does anyone >know which architecture favors Microsoft Flight Simulator? Theoretically it could go either way... Games such as MSFS favor a strong FPU(s) like those found in the Athlon but they also favor lots of bandwidth like the 533MHz FSB P4's have. Seeing as how FS2k2 is not optimized for the P4 and is more of a "traditional architecture" app, I would expect the Athlon to win out given a clockspeed difference of ~25% or less due to it's brute FPU strength. Anymore than that and the P4 should start beating the Athlon. In other words, today's fastest P4 2.53GHz *SHOULD* beat an AthlonXP @ 1.73GHz (2100+). Max Cowgill

If you take a look at this from a price to performance ratio, the AMD athlon platform will come out ahead (assuming you don't overclock). This is more noticeable at the very high end of each processor family, where intel is quite a bit more expensive. As far as which platform will perform better, I went to SimHQ and looked at a few reviews and found the latest intel PIV at 2.4GHz (choose the 2.4GHz instead of the 2.53GHz as you will see later in my quick analysis) it got 25 FPS at a 1024 X 768 resolution in FS2K2. The latest Athlon, a +2100 had 22 FPS at the same resolution. Now I am not sure what the methodologies for coming up with those numbers where, but I would assume they were the same. Also the video card used was different which should have minimal impact on the scores if no FSSA was used in the testing. Now a few observations from this, intel's latest and greatest is faster by 3 FPS, but the cost difference is huge. The cheapest cost on pricewatch for a PIV at 2.4GHz is $518 and a Athlon XP +2100 is $214. The price of the 2.53GHz isn't even posted yet but will be more than a 2.4GHz. Looking at the ram there is about a $9 difference for the same amount of ram. Is that extra cash worth a few frames more? That is up to you individually to decide. On a personal note I have an Athlon (Asus a7v133 with 1.4GHz TB)system as the price performance ratio is more important to me, being on a tight budget.Scott...

>Also the video card used was different which >should have minimal impact on the scores if no FSSA was used >in the testing. If indeed they did test with different video cards, why don't you think that would impact performance measurably? When benchmarking systems built on different platforms (i.e. P4 vs. Athlon) it is *EXTREMELY* important to try and keep all other componenents as similar as possible, if not the same. Heck, different drivers alone can cause a variance of more than 3 fps (let alone different hardware!). Max Cowgill

As you know FS2K2 is VERY CPU dependant, that is why I choose the wording of minimal in regards to the video card impact. The cards used were a geforce 3 and a geforce 4 TI4600. I seriously doubt the video card differences could amount to more than 1-2 FPS even with drivers that are diffent. Why I feel comfortable saying that is the recent difference between driver revisions are incremental not some massive gain in performance. The jist of my post is there is probably a small difference in performance, but is it worth the extra cash outlay for that difference.Scott..

Thank You Max...! This is very frustrating for all of us that this tyope erroneous information is propagated. My Intel P4 1.5 will freeze and lockup and 99.9% of the time I am to blame. I love the Intel chips....but I am currently building my AMD powered XP2100 and it will be a brute. I have used AMD products in the past with great success and I have used Intel products with equal success.It is the human that is usually the culprit just talk to our IS guy here at work!!!Regards and keep the truth coming!Tony

> This all comes at a premium price >though. For less money, and slightly less performance go >with an XP & DDR RAM. Be forewarned though, this platform is >at the end of it's desigh cycle. Good!! - I ALWAYS buy my computers when they are at the end of their design cycle. This way I get value for money, I get a design with all the bigs worked out and I still get a big incease in performance over what I already have.Barry