Defected to the Darkside

[Tahir2]

No I am not talking about the .net 15 min wonder Andy Glew..

I am talking about me of course (yea I got an ego too).... I have defected to the darkside that is Intel. Have been running AMD based systems since 1999 I believe and now back to Intel and the Pentium IV.

Here goes why.
I have an AthlonXP and it kicks major ass.. but the cooling system is so noisy I cannot leave it on all night. Also its not the fastest per se at DIVX encoding which I dabble in from time to time.

I was going to upgrade to the later Thoroughbreds or Barton in a few months but an interesting proposition came and I had to take it.

There is this mate I have and he has another mate.. ow this 2nd mate is absolutely nuts. He buys the latest technology all the time and then sells it a few weeks later at amazing prices (most of the time).

And he gave me an offer I could not refuse... a Pentium IV 2.0AGHz + an Abit BD7II. I snapped it up of course and my impressions so far?

First had to get XP to run stably.. as I just reinstalled over an old copy (me lazy). That done two things I notice the most different.

1) HDD performance is MUCH better!
2) 3dMark scores are lower but in the games that matter to me it is MUCH faster than my AthlonXP @ 1900 (oc'ed).

Example. Morrowind doesnt play like a dawg anymore.
Example. Grand Prix 4 was averaging 15 fps with all details on with my AthlonXP 1600@1900. On the PIV 2.0AGHz (not overclocked yet) it ran at... 37 fps.

Yea thats over a 100% improvement in a game taht DOES matter to me.

Now why is it so much faster? I don't and don't care too much ATM.

Gonna run some DIVX encoding later to see if that is notably faster too..


Oh and by the way i am selling my PIV 2.0AGHz on aBay UK:

My Pentium IV for sale @ eBay UK [/url]

 

[BenM]

Why does your P4 sale say "socket A"?

Why are you selling it if it is faster for what you do?

 

[Tahir2]

It says Socket A?
Oh bugger messed that up!

And no its not too fast.. always more speed!!!

I am selling it because I would prefer a 533MHz PIV rather than a 400MHz PIV. That's all .... oh and the fact that I got it for a good price. Thought I would make a little profit if possible.

No one interested though it seems! Ack!

 

[Tahir2]

d/post

 

[Tahir2]

More speed is always good..

Reason for sale is I want a PIV B variant rather than the A variant I have ..

 

[Nite_Hawk]

Hi Misae,

I don't really look at it as the darkside/lightside so much as just nice that things are a bit more balanced right now. I like having AMD around to keep intel in check, and really the price/performance of the athlon is still quite good. Having said that, I'm really not sure what my next chip will end up being, but I'm not going to feel guilty either way, as both of them have done both good and bad things. (I like how intel is working on linux stuff quite a bit).

A bit off topic, but Morrowind is rather... interesting. My friend's 2.4GHz P4 only manages to pull 20fps min in balmora witha ti4600, while my athlon 1700+ with a ti200 does about 10min. That's twice as fast, but still pretty poor over all. I think the game could probably be a lot faster if they did some engine optimizations, but unfortunately it's the netimmersion engine, so I don't know that they can.

Nite_Hawk

 

[Nite_Hawk]

edit: repeate message deleted

 

[Tahir2]

Hey Nite_Hawk

Sold my PIV already through eBay UK.

That was very fast I dont know what to do next. Shall I get another PIV or sell my Abit BD7-II too and get a higher clocked AthlonXP?

Decisions, decisions... naturally I could just save the money and get something nice for my wife's birthday in a couple of weeks..

 

[Randell]

533mhz PIV and 1066 Ram shoudl see you alright.

 

[Randell]

533mhz PIV and 1066 Ram should see you alright witj an 128meg GPU.