Best CPU

[ErMaC]

DW, good to see you set these young whippersnappers straight on how CPUs really work, I looked back in the thread and was just shaking my head.

However, as much as I like AMD as a company and I like the Athlon design philosophy over the P4's, I still bought a P4 this summer, t oreplace my 3 year old dual P3 machine. I've refused to buy an Athlon for all this time, and I still recommend Intel machines to anyone who's in the market to buy one. Unfortunately for AMD, the reason I do so isn't directly their fault.

I can't speak for nForce2 boards, because I have very little experience with them, but from my experiences over the last four years since the Athlon came out, their chipsets SUCK. They're unstable, flakey, have incompatability issues, and usually don't have as many features as their Intel counterparts (the glaring exception being the 820 chipset/RDRAM fiasco). Over the last two years two of my three roommates have built Athlon systems, only to run into crashing problems, IRQ conflicts (between onboard components, no less), and compatability problems. One's already moved back over to Intel, the other just this week finally gave up and I suspect will be buying an Intel system soon.

The problem here lies not necessarily with AMD, but with the chipset manufacturers that make Athlon chipsets - VIA, SiS, and to some extent nVidia, although they have historically played such a minor role. The only VIA board I've ever been truly happy with was my VP6, which still gave me stability issues every now and then. SiS chipsets have been historically poor performers, and while recently they've made up for that somewhat I've still never been happy with their stability. Plus the fact that most SiS boards fall into the "budget" category, and you can see my reluctance to buy one.

Intel, by contrast, has, with only one exception, always made excellent chipsets. The BX chipset was godlike for a good year and a half, holding its own against VIA's newer P3 chipsets for quite a long time. The 845 chipset lasted a similar length of time, and now the 865 and 875 chipsets are performing really well, well enough I decided to get an 865 board for myself (got an Abit IS7 and I'm very happy with it).
The best thing is my new computer just doesn't crash. I've maybe had it reboot 3 times on my that I can count in the last 4 months that I've had the machine. That's more than I can say for any Athlon motherboard I've ever used.

So now I'm running a 2.4GHz P4 clock to around 2.6-something, with the super quiet Zalman cooler, a superquiet case w/bigass low RPM fan, and the loudest thing in my case is the hard drives - and I couldn't be happier.

For the hardcore computer builder, AMD might be the right choice. You may find the right board, the right RAM, and get a really nice overclock, all for less than you could with a comparably Intel system. But I've outgrown all that by this point I think. My new computer was built on a completely different design philosophy. I built my old computer to be FAST, to get the most FPS in Quake2, the fastest encoding speed in DivX, and the most expandability. My new computer is about being quiet, cool, and stable. The fires of youth flickering out, I suppose. I've traded in my sportster for a nice dependable Honda or something.

So to anyone who doesn't want to deal with the challenge of Athlon Motherboards, I recommend Intel, despite performance and marketing reasons.

[anime-dragon]

u said that the motheboard for AMD are not good (well not stable), but the one i decided to get got good reviews, MSI K7N2 Delta ILSR, they say this mobo is pretty good, it supports up to 3200+ with 400FSB, what so u think of that?

[Pwolf]

Ermac, thats pretty much why i bought my P4. I knew it would work when i needed it to, and since i was (and still am) new to building computers, it seemed to be the better choice. I actually i had to go through 3 motherboards until i got the right one. the first two used SiS chipsets which the first mobo shorted off the case and eventually fried itself... the second wasn't compatable with my video card and had some performance issues of it's own. finally i am using this Gigabyte mbo with an intel chipset. no problems what so ever. no crashes, no nothing. I also worked for intel while they were testing their 845G chipsets. it wsa just amazing at the time.

I need to change majors and go for comp science now, hehe all the talk is very interesting and it would be nice to actually put in some good useful information into this thread.

Dragon, i think the best thing to do is build the computer and see what happens, some people have problems, others don't. I always run into problems when working on computers. you just have to learn how to fix them and make em work. if you need help, then just jump on this forum and ask some questions. one of us with the answer will be able ot help good luck.

[anime-dragon]

the reason why i ask so many question is because i dont want to blew my investment cuz im POOR and probably cant afford to fry thing up.

[Pwolf]

well you probably wont fry anything unless you make a careless mistake. i'm not even sure why my mobo fried. i was just testing it outside of the case on it's antistatic bag and pop... i was very carfully also, so that just boggled my mind. the thing i've learn, building a computer can be very expensive... i don't want to discourage but if you really don't feel comfortable building it yourself cuase of the money and fear of screwing up, buy a prebuilt one. but if you are new to it, it's a great learning experiance, and i've learned a lot from building this computer, even though i've spent a lot of money and time getting it to work (mostly from the bad motherboards).


Pwolf

[anime-dragon]

ya it is good experiance, that is why i want to build it myself, and i really hope the every thing go well

[jonmartensen]

well you probably wont fry anything unless you make a careless mistake. i'm not even sure why my mobo fried. i was just testing it outside of the case on it's antistatic bag and pop... i was very carfully also, so that just boggled my mind. the thing i've learn, building a computer can be very expensive... i don't want to discourage but if you really don't feel comfortable building it yourself cuase of the money and fear of screwing up, buy a prebuilt one. but if you are new to it, it's a great learning experiance, and i've learned a lot from building this computer, even though i've spent a lot of money and time getting it to work (mostly from the bad motherboards).


Pwolf

Anti-static bags conduct electric charge. You probably bridged some circuits when you were testing the board outside of the case. I highly recomend you not apply power to anything that is not properly mounted and grounded. Also be sure you are grounded (or at least discharch yourself on the case) when you build you computer.

[Pwolf]

Yea, thats one the thing's i learned when building my comp... hehe i'll never do that again



Pwolf

[madmag9999]

ok well since u guys seem to know so much about this i have sorta a big problem and maybe someone can help. i got my mobo and cpu and ram and everything i need to build my comp and i put it all togeather and then when i turn it on the screen is just blank. the vid card works couse i tested it on my other comp. the thing is getting power couse the fans spin and so does the hd and cd roms and stuff. the cpu is in correctly becouse i made sure i knew what i was doing when i put it in i even watched the movies on the amd site. the ram is in the correct slot and is in all the way. the only thing i can think of is the ram stick is bad or maybe the mobo itself has some issues. so what do u guys think?

[Pwolf]

well that was the problem i was having with my first mobo. i thought it was the ram at first. but then aftre testing it outside of the case, it worked fine. i talked to a tech from ASUS and he sad the case could be shorting. umm it could be the motherboard. or maybe not. lets see what others have to see, i am not very confident that is the problem worst case (i hope).. return the mobo and get a different one.


Pwolf