On 12 Sep 2004 19:08:38 -0700, (No spam)
wrote:

Hello everyone. I am looking to buy a new desktop PC. I currently have
a Compaq Pentium 3 733 MHz desktop and a Dell 2.0 GHz Celeron laptop.

I have always been a fan of Intel... mainly because when I got into
computers there was no AMD. My first IBM based PC was an 8088 with
640k RAM and a 21 megabyte hard drive.

Believe it or not, AMD was around at that time to. AMD first got the
contract to make x86 chips as a second source for Intel as part of
IBM's agreement to use the 8088 on the original PC.

The first time I had any knowledge of an AMD product was around 1996.
Because (and I might be remembering this incorrect ...) but as I
remember a good friend of mine had a K5 processor and I remember he
had all kinds of problems with Windows 95. MANY MANY more Windows 95
problems than I had on my 80486 SX 25... Or did I have the Packard
Hell Pentium (Classic) 100 MHz by then... Lol... I don't remember.

Computer problems are almost never caused by the processor, but rather
by all the accompanied hardware. The problem that AMD (and Cyrix) ran
into was that their processors were cheaper than Intel's chips and
tended to be used alongside cheap components. Take a piece of ****
power supply, motherboard, video card, etc. and you will have
problems, no matter what processor you use.

The K5 exasperated this issue by being, umm.. somewhat of a weak
design. It was one of AMD's first attempts at doing a ground-up
redesign of the processor (most previous chips had been strongly based
on, or often direct copies of, Intel's designs). The design itself
wasn't so bad, though a bit late. However when combined with the
terrible manufacturing problems that AMD had at that time it ended up
being WAY late to market and underperforming. The chip ended up only
having about a 1 year lifespan before the MUCH more successful K6 came
out.

So as time went on I always stuck with Intel. I went from P classic to
PMMX to PIII to the latest which is the Celeron laptop.

Now I am looking to buy a new desktop and I am looking for the best
new technology. I am very interested in 64 bit technology. I know
Intel has had Itanium and Itanium II but as I understand it those are
not for consumers.

You can safely ignore the Itanium line, it's definitely NOT what
you're going to be looking for. First off, it's not software
compatible with existing applications, requiring emulation to run all
your current code. What's probably more important though is that
you'll have a heck of a time finding an Itanium system for less than
$20,000.

So I want the "straight poop" about the AMD 64 FX models. And is there
any new AMD 64 FX chip coming in the fourth quarter 2004?

Yup, the FX 55. This chip will fit into the relatively new Socket 939
and is basically identical to the Athlon64 FX 53.

Of course, you probably don't want an Athlon64 FX unless you've got
more money than is good for you. The regular Athlon64 line is nearly
identical but selling for much more reasonable prices. An Athlon64
3500+ sells for about $375 and offers better than 90% of the
performance of the $850 Athlon64 FX 53. The only difference is that
the latter comes with a bit more cache (1MB vs. 512KB) and higher
clock speeds (2.4GHz vs. 2.2GHz).

So, sticking to the Athlon64 line of processors, you get a few
options. First off you've got two basic platforms, Socket 754 and
Socket 939. The primary difference been that the older Socket 754 has
only a single channel to memory while the newer Socket 939 has a pair
of memory channels (ie you add memory in pairs, much like you probably
did back on your old Pentium 100). Having twice as much memory
bandwidth results in more performance. For comparison, AMD sells a
2.2GHz processor with 512KB of L2 cache in a Socket 754 format as an
"Athlon64 3200+", while they rate an identical processor in Socket 939
as an "Athlon64 3500+".

One thing you may have noticed is that AMD is not using clock speeds
here, but rather model numbers. This is something that Intel has just
started doing as well, and it makes a reasonable among of sense since
clock speed is a VERY limited measure of performance. Things like the
memory subsystem and cache can have a noticeable effect on performance
even within a single line of processors, while the internal
architecture of the chip can have a HUGE effect when compared to
another chip. AMD's model numbers suggest a rough equivalent to
Intel's P4 line of processors, ie an Athlon64 3200+ will perform about
on-par with Intel's P4 3.2GHz processor (generally speaking AMD is
actually a bit conservative with their ratings and they are usually
faster than the "equivalent" Intel processors).


So... where does this leave us? Well as far as the whole 64-bit thing
goes, there's not that much to say at the moment. Microsoft, as
usual, is taking forever to get their operating system to market.
WinXP 64-bit for AMD64 (aka "x86-64", or "X64" in Microsoft-speak or
"EM64T" according to Intel, all the same thing, just different names)
has been delayed about 17 times already and probably won't actually be
available until Spring of next year. In Linux land, there has been
pretty solid support for AMD64 for at least a year now and basically
all distributions support it fairly well now.

What does a 64-bit operating system buy you? Well, beyond the
bragging rights at geek gatherings, it allows for two keep points.
First it allows you to properly access more than ~2GB of memory.
32-bit CPUs max out at addressing 4GB of memory, but due to a variety
of limitations, in practice things quickly get really ugly as soon as
you go beyond about 2GB. Even using more than 1GB of physical memory
starts requiring some hacks to work right on 32-bit chips. On the
other hand, a 64-bit chip can properly address MANY terabytes of
memory, good enough for a few years at least!

The second thing that 64-bit x86 buys you is a bit of performance.
Despite popular belief, 64-bit code is usually SLOWER than 32-bit code
if all else were equal (twice as much data to be tossed around in
memory pointers, requires twice as much cache space and memory
bandwidth), however in the case of AMD64 all is not equal. AMD took a
good look at the x86 instruction set and did some very smart tweaks to
it. They streamlined a few operations and, most importantly, doubled
the number of integer registers. The result is that with AMD64, AMD
managed to actually increase performance by about 5% on average when
going from 32-bit to 64-bit. Some applications might be a bit slower,
and a few applications could be a LOT faster in 64-bit code, but
generally you're looking at about a 5% performance improvement on
64-bit code. Note much, but hey, it's free!

Also can anyone explain the Intel roadmap for a consumer 64 bit CPU?

Actually that's a good question, even Intel doesn't seem to know what
their roadmap for consumer 64-bit CPUs is!

About the only thing that is known so far is that Intel's Xeon
processors (x86 server chips) have copied the AMD64 instruction set
(Intel calls it "EM64T", but it's really AMD64). The latest and
greatest desktop Pentium4 chips also support EM64T in hardware,
however Intel has decided that consumers aren't ready for this and has
disabled this feature. In theory Intel could start selling 64-bit
desktop chips tomorrow, but thus far they have shown no interest in
doing so.

Any thoughts on the best place to order custom built High performance
PCs? I can't stand the newer all integrated systems. I do not want
integrated Graphics, sound, NIC, ect.

Integrated NICs are pretty much standard and, honestly, there's no
good reason to get a PCI NIC these days. In many situations add-in
NIC cards actually offer LESS performance than integrated ones since
integrated ones have a direct path to the chipset while add-in NICs
have to go over the (comparatively slow) PCI bus. Even integrated
sound can be quite reasonable, and given that about the only add-in
sound cards you can buy are Creative Labs trash, many people stick to
the integrated sound.

Graphics is a slightly different game. Integrated graphics have
improved TERMENDOUSLY over the past 5 years, and for 2D stuff they are
every bit as good as an add-in card, but for 3D games they are still
quite weak. Most PCs targeting business users stick with integrated
graphics for good reason, for business type uses they are just as good
and a lot cheaper. If you're main purpose is to play games though,
get a decent add-in card.

I was looking at Alienware. Are there other sites as well? I have to
say those Alienware systems always look damn cool.

I think you'll find that most of us in these newsgroups tend to build
our own systems from parts, so we're probably not the best people to
ask. However, if you like Alienware systems you might also want to
check out www.voodoopc.com, nice stuff, though not cheap. HPaq also
sells some Athlon64 based systems in both their HP Pavilion and Compaq
Presario lines, though the quality of such systems might leave a bit
to be desired.

You can also get some "barebones" systems from most computer stores
and add in whatever components you like. Most stores even have an
option to have them build the system for you, installing the hardware
and OS for a small cost. Shuttle has made a bit of a name for
themselves selling small form factor barebones systems, fitting some
pretty high-end components into very small enclosures. Others have
followed, including some doing full-sized barebones systems. The only
trick with these systems is that you need to know a bit more about
what components you want.


Wewf... hope that wasn't too wordy for you!

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca