XP3200+ at Tom's Hardware

[igalan]

Tom's Hardware is running an article about the newest XP3200+. It's worth reading if you are thinking about getting one. Nothing bad except the name itself, for it's performace XP2800+ would be a most accurate name....

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030513/index.html

[Sinkalip]

I realllllly want one!
But the new AMD's should be appearing shortly, around September, I think.
And it's really a shame about rambus.

[igalan]

Yeah, I'm impatient to see the Athlons64 out there . But anyway you need a true 64 bit OS and 64 bit apps to take advantage of it, which will take long. So I will probably uptate my current 32 bits proc. (XP2000+) for a faster XP (XP2600 probably, it's much cheaper than the XP2800 and it also has 166 MHz FSB).

[orb36O]

Longhorn may have a 64 bit version

[igalan]

I heard that too. There will be XP for Opteron and Athlon64. Very good news . There is already Linux 64 for Opteron ...

[Polariz]

Yeah a 64bit version of WinXP will be released around December/January while the Athlon64's are released in September. From the Opteron performance benchmarks so far though ive been unimpressed, I may have to stick with Intel and get the Prescott/Pentium 5 chip released later this year.

[igalan]

Originally posted by Polariz
From the Opteron performance benchmarks so far though ive been unimpressed, I may have to stick with Intel and get the Prescott/Pentium 5 chip released later this year.

That's because you have probably seen the Opteron running 32 bits software. It's not much faster with 32 bits software.

[Kungfucious]

whats the difference between 32 bit software and 64 bit? and in this day and age, can anyone notice any loading lag in software? i certainly cant, every program i run opens instantly and even after 2 weeks of uptime my machine runs as fresh as the day i turned it on! P4 + XP perfect partners

[igalan]

Originally posted by Kungfucious
whats the difference between 32 bit software and 64 bit? and in this day and age, can anyone notice any loading lag in software?

The differences are huge. It's not a matter of speed, it's an improved architecture that allows 64 bit computing. What this means is (just to mention a few things):

-Ability to do calculations with 64 bit wide numbers in a single cicle (more accurate calculations, precise rendering...)

-Extended address space (you can access a much wider addressing space)

-More and wider regiters (the software once optimized to use them, will benefit from increased performace)

Those are only a few of the advantages.

[Polariz]

The question that needs answering really is obviously what you want to do with your PC. 64bit is surely to have some improvement over 32bit in some situations but not in others. You were right Igalan the performance I had seen was 32bit WinXP benchmarks. The area where Opteron won was in the 64-bit Linux server programs. But who here uses their PC for that sort of stuff? We're all gamers or renderers; gamers arent likely to see much of an improvement in games, whereas renderers such as 3dMax are likely to see improvement.

Read this article and see what you think: http://www.overclockers.com/tips00198/

I think the advantages are going to be a long while away to be honest. 64bit (As far as i've read) gives an average of 20% increase in performance, not 100%. As in that Overclockers article, "In a sentence, it's sending a man to do a boy's job" and this will lead to degradation in performance. At the moment we don't need that sort of precision.

I at the end of the day, am like everyone else in deciding who gets my cash for a shiny new CPU. All ive seen so far is hype for the Athlon 64's and im starting to agree with places like overclockers.com who are pessimistic. The advantages of 64bit seem obvious, but are you really prepared to go out and buy the CPU, a new version of Windows, and then 64bit games so you can get an extra 20fps?

[Polariz]

I'll be the same as Igalan and update to a different chip first to let the technology mature a bit.