Now we are planning on getting a new motherboard along with a (much freakin better one than we have now) chipset, and I would like to hear about your guys's opinions and suggestions, Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon processors are the ones we've been lookin at so far and they seem fairly similar, but i have heard arguments about one bein slightly better than the other, so without further ado, post away. :p
I don't really know to much about hardware, but I'd go with the Athlon. I believe they are less expensive.
If your planning on doing anything else besides gaming, get a P4. :D
Meh, either one will do it for ya.
What it breaks down to is the money. Pentiums are more expensive. Granted, you can also get more power out of a pentium as well, but when Athalons (if you get a high powered one) have a pretty good kick. It's up to you, but I personally prefer Pentium.
Pentiums are better, AMD is cheaper. Let's just say that I went for the pentium, but that's my choise.
The AMD thunderbird is cheaper than the Pentium equivalent, and for pure gaming purposes out performs pentium chips that run upto 0.5Ghz faster than the thunderbird.
Of course Intel has the advantage of being compatible with virtually all the hardware out there, and when floating point processing considerations are removed (i.e. for multi-tasking programming, running DVD software) the Pentium performs better.
Check official computer game magazine sites for more indepth reviews and analysis...
as with all computer hardware the uses to which you intend to put it dictate the hardware you should buy.
I personally got a 1.4 Ghz Thunderbird with a decent motherboard and 128 DDR RAM (since upgraded to 256) a 40GB hard drive, a GeForce 2 64 Mb, an EAX 5.1 sound card and an ATX tower case for just shy of 600 pounds from NovaTech over a year ago. If you're comfortable fiddling with motherboard jumpers and so on, ordering online is the way to go to make cutting edge tech. affordable.
Hope that helped.
Good point raised by RoyalGuard: like with all hardware issues, what you want to use it for is the final and most important consideration. Since I'm not only a gamer, I really prefer the Pentium chips. But if you are mostly into FPS's, you'll propably be more interested in raw processing speed.
on average, AMD tends to be faster, and more efficiantly built (but not as stable) than pentiums, but Pentium currently has a faster chipset. (i.e. an athlon xp 1800 is really a 1.53ghz (i think) but it compares to a Pentium 2.0ghz). The problem I found with AMD was it got really hot, so we bought another fan, but all my games kept freezing which sucked. We brought it back and got a pentium 1.5.
And yes AMDs chipsets tend to be much cheaper.
If you want to clock it, AMD's has a tendency to, well, suck. I mean, with a bit of overclocking, your pentiumIII will be faster than an AMD in the same price class, and to my experience, just about as hot (if proper care is taken). On the other hand, the AMD will be hot as hell, and will often malfunction.
hmm, odd, I have never had any heat trouble with my Athlon, never had crashes for anything except my DVD viewer (and that's more due to memory issues than anything else).
Also I have a friend who overclocks his Athlon 1.6Ghz to somewhere in the 2.5Ghz region with a nitrogen cooling unit (cost him 250 quid to set up, as he's a computer technician!) He has no problems, and a machine that runs JK2 at 110FPS at 1024*768 32-Bit colour with full effects. I believe he listens to winAmp at the same time.
and yes I hate him...
Hey great info guys but now i have to ask, what is the difference between a celeron and a pentium? I have seen the celeron go as high as 1.8 ghz.
(IMO) go with athlon. dont know why and cant support my choice but ive personally have used athlon for a long time now.:D
celeron is a budget chip, which has a little less prestanda, but is a heapload cheaper. A good buy if you do not necessarily need to have cutting edge technology. Or if you don't afford it.
a celeron has less cache in its memory I think... and they don't make them as high either.