.... I'm somewhat confused about Athlon "model numbers" and their actual speeds. It seems P4s are easy enough - They have 3.0 / 3.2 etc which is the clock speed.

Yet I have an Athlon XP2200+ which I first thought (before researching) would be a 2200mhz machine.... Nope, its 1.86. Likewise the higher/lower you go, the same thing applies.

But then I remember someone saying that its clock speed might be 1.86ghz, but it has the equivalent speed & power of a P4 2.2 ghz....? Which to me says a 1.86ghz athlon would fold as fast as a p4 2.2 ghz.

Someone "in the know" please enlighten me. Especially as Athlon AMD64 fast single core processors would seem good value if they run at the equivalent of 3700 and upwards like they would appear to.

But then I remember someone saying that its clock speed might be 1.86ghz, but it has the equivalent speed & power of a P4 2.2 ghz....?

That's the idea...

Which to me says a 1.86ghz athlon would fold as fast as a p4 2.2 ghz.

Not necessarily - it depends what the benchmark for saying an Athlon 2200+ runs at the same speed as a P4 2.2 is...you might find that folding uses operations which are actually faster on the P4 than on the Athlon...

Rob.

i have an Athlon 2200 as well but it only seems to run at 1.6ghz

depends on the bus speed and other things as to what speed the core actually runs at.

P4's and athlons are better at different things and if a program is written with a P4 in mind then it will run loads better on one rather than on an athlon

Sure its not an Athlon 2000? In system information it says mine is an xp2200+ at 1.86ghz. Not sure if its been overclocked or not though? Mike (KLB) said earlier his 2000 was running at 1.6ghz, or 1.67, can't remember..

I wonder what the program writers of the folding program aimed it at then?

my mistake its a sempron 2200+ running 1.51ghz:rofl:

Aha.

For example, £150 buys you a 3.2ghz P4 chip on Ebuyer, or a Athlon 64 3700.... The 3700 obviously isn't a 3.7ghz processor, yet does it have any equivalency to its 3.2 intel cousin? were that cousin pushing 3.7ghz? So, with £150 burning a hole in my pocket for my new tower.... Do I choose the Athlon over the Pentium?

They use a performance related (PR) figure as clock speeds are less relevant than they used to be for the vast mjority of apps / games.

My AMD 64 4000+ runs a standard clock speed of 2.4ghz but I have it clocked @ 2.65 ghz.

I also have a P4 3.2ghz (prescott), I am a bit of an AMD fan so have a slight bios, but on benchmarks the AMD comprehensivley spanks the Pentium all over the shop apart from when ripping dvd's. So the point is that the AMD 64 is performance related to be as good if not better than a 4.0ghz cpu and it proves it in benchmarks against a true 3.2ghz cpu .... if that makes sense.

I would buy the Athlon, but only because in my experience they run cooler, faster than the equivalent intel desktop cpu's, go for the 64 and you can then dabble with XP64 which I dual boot my games rig with and it runs pretty well now there is more driver support. One thing to bear in mind Jason is that my benchmarks, and the vast majority of other benchmarks are for games, I have no idea how an AMD64 stacks up with a pentium for folding, other than since I joined the folding clan, my AMD has processed 8 WU's my P4 has processed 2 WU's, both have the same RAM (2GB) both have the same graphics cards, and are on similar mainboards (MSI Platinums) and have 60% of the CPU dedicated to folding.

Cheers

Fluff'

The Athlon 2000+ should run at 1667mhz. Mine doesn't though, mine runs at 1250mhz, why? I don't know. It seems to like that speed so I'll leave it alone.

At the moment, its tempting to get the 3700 athlon chip and shove that up to 2.4ghz, which souns OK to me. Just need to figure out the other components needed now. No point getting a super processor if the board can't cope....

At the moment, its tempting to get the 3700 athlon chip and shove that up to 2.4ghz, which souns OK to me. Just need to figure out the other components needed now. No point getting a super processor if the board can't cope....

MSI Neo2 platinum with Nforce 3 ultra chipset can be found for

...I am a bit of an AMD fan so have a slight bios...

Brilliant; was that a pun or a typo?

My athlon 64 4000 has a faster folding rate than my P4 3.0, despite having a slower clock speed.

I have in the real world found the AMD chips to be faster the the P4 equivalent. That said the Pentium-M is suppossed to be good at number crunching.

I vote for the Athlon. I've just got a new one, 3200+ 64bit and it's cracking - although it claims only to be 2ghz. As has been said, it to do with the way it works. I personally like to think of it as being that the AMD is more 'efficient' than the Pentium.

The Athlon 2000+ should run at 1667mhz. Mine doesn't though, mine runs at 1250mhz, why? I don't know. It seems to like that speed so I'll leave it alone.

Because you have the bus speed set to 100mhz instead of 133.

Change this in the BIOS

Brilliant; was that a pun or a typo?

Bugger I meant bias ..... honest guv

.... I'm somewhat confused about Athlon "model numbers" and their actual speeds. It seems P4s are easy enough - They have 3.0 / 3.2 etc which is the clock speed.

Yet I have an Athlon XP2200+ which I first thought (before researching) would be a 2200mhz machine.... Nope' date=' its 1.86. Likewise the higher/lower you go, the same thing applies.

But then I remember someone saying that its clock speed might be 1.86ghz, but it has the equivalent speed & power of a P4 2.2 ghz....? Which to me says a 1.86ghz athlon would fold as fast as a p4 2.2 ghz.

Someone "in the know" please enlighten me. Especially as Athlon AMD64 fast single core processors would seem good value if they run at the equivalent of 3700 and upwards like they would appear to. [/quote']

Hi

I had an XP2200 that was overclocked to 2.13 GHz with totoal stability (and a big fan). The benchmarking and performance of the chips is really irrelevant in current machines. If you increase a processor performance by 10% on the latest crop of P4 or Athlon chips, you would in all probability not notice the difference.

Also, I just built an AMD Sempron 64 bit 3000 based Shuttle PC for the missus. It runs a RAW file conversion in exactly the same time as my Athlon 3000 does. The numbers are the same, however the rest of the architecture is very different. Hers has 400MHz RAM, mine 333MHz. Hers runs double width data bus (64 Bit), mine is 32 bit. The board and other components and the OS often make more differnce than the chip in the middle. Incidentally, the Shuttle is really an excellent PC package, small, good thermal management, very quiet (easily living room acceptable) and with on board RAID / SATA controller, built in card reader and good intructions for the less experienced builder. I reckon it is the best PC I have seen in a long time.

Think about the slowest bit, the hard drive. I genrally fit the fastest I can find, or go RAID (drive striping to double up on transfer speed). This makes a huge difference if you handle large files a lot.

For performance related stuff, try this sites processor reviews:

http://www.anandtech.com/

Chris

Soooo, whats that setting in BIOS you can use to tweak the speed a little? BUS thing isn't it? or something like that? I might push my 2200+ up to somewhere around 2.0gig, just to help a little bit.

double post. damn I.E decided to play up.

Jason,

Approach over clocking with care...it's easy to make things go pop or burn up.

Stronglty suggest you go very slowly or experiment on cheaper lap boards / athlon t-birds. etc...

Memory speed is or was king, god knows now on the 64bit amd stuff...I'm still in PIV land with 4200 memory and a cooked North bridge :(

Strangely, my findings with AMD vs Intel seem to differ from what you lot have experienced...

I used to have an AMD 366MHz laptop with 160MB RAM that was only as quick as my parents at-the-time Pentium 133MHz desktop with 48MB RAM... aways thought that a bit odd!!

I now have an AMD Athlon XP 2700+ cpu linked with 1280MB RAM and 128MB ATI Radeon 9800SE graphics... and it can only cope with games running at the same graphics settings as my old P3 800MHz with 512MB RAM 16MB graphics...

...although, it does load Windows quicker!!!

All in all, I've been disapointed with the AMD's that I have bought... quick at office apps generally, but once you load them up, i.e. by playing a game, and they don't do too well!!

Soooo, whats that setting in BIOS you can use to tweak the speed a little? BUS thing isn't it? or something like that? I might push my 2200+ up to somewhere around 2.0gig, just to help a little bit.

oooh it aint as simple as that. First the Athlon needs to be "unlocked" by connecting bridges on the top of the cpu mounting substrate. The FSB and memory have to be speeded up by the same amount to get any advantage. Also, the heat in the core and the RAM goes up, so to counter this, the voltage genreally needs a tweak up as well. Just how far you can push it depends partly on how much heat you can get away from the system, so a big CPU fan in a case that has auxilliary fans as well, or like the one I built, ducting running from the back of the case to the CPU H/S fan to give it room temp air.

Of course it might work and it might not, you may fry your RAM or CPU or something on the motherboard. Also, for every 5 deg C increase in temperature of a processor or memeory, you approximately half its life. Only do it on a spare machine. Is is worth it? Well if you are a hardcore gamer, you may just about be able to tell the difference, but for everyday use, you would find it almost impossible to tell. As A rule of thumb, I replace a computer with a faster one when I either sell the old one, or increase processor speed by at least 1.5. I went from 2200 to 3000 and in all honesty, the differences in everyday computing are not that great.

Linux based 64 bit is where I am going next. Friends of mine run Linux and the performance of a Athlon 1700 under Linux is often better that of a 3000 under Winblows. Now that is a more worthwhile upgrade.

Chris

So I think I may need some Linux instructions with this Athlon 3500+ I'm getting then. Seems silly to have all that power if the O.S slows it down so much.

Any linux pointers?

So I think I may need some Linux instructions with this Athlon 3500+ I'm getting then. Seems silly to have all that power if the O.S slows it down so much.

Any linux pointers?

Nah not yet, I am still diong the research myself. The key is to get hardware compatible with the Linux issue you want to use. I am probably going for Suse Professional.

I have downloaded it from the Novell site (for free, imagine that from Microsoft!) and just have to get round to trying it.

Chris

Nah not yet' date=' I am still diong the research myself. The key is to get hardware compatible with the Linux issue you want to use. I am probably going for Suse Professional.

I have downloaded it from the Novell site (for free, imagine that from Microsoft!) and just have to get round to trying it.

Chris[/quote']

XP Pro 64 is still available for free from Microsoft, ok it's a trial version but it's free and works well.

I have it on my XP64 laptop and have zero issues with hardware and app's compatability. Lot's of vendor support for it now, and it's growing daily. It worked so well on the lappy I ended up getting rid of the dual boot and use only xp 64 now.

Fluff'