Need a pentium to athlon conversion chart

[BaneNWN]

Hi guys as i posted in an earlier thread i will be building a new pc soon from scratch.I was looking at getting an athlon processor only problem is i dont know how fast a 3200+ athlon is compared to the pentium ghz.Does 3200+ athlon equal to a 3.2 pentium?? I would like to know as i dont wanna build some slow pc not knowing the actual speed of the processor i purchase thanks in advanced.

[Renzatic Gear]

Just to get straight to the point, any Athlon 64 is gonna be faster than any PIV despite the fact that they're clocked slower.

But, here's a big list showing the actual clockrate going along with the speed rating.

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/31605/

[BaneNWN]

Thanks for that renz i been looking for something like this all night lastnight lol.

I want to know now if socket 939 3200+ amd 64 ( 1600 fsb) is a decent processor??.Im assuming FSB is frontside bus which i have no clue really what this is.Will this proccessor coupled with an asus a8v delux and a radeon 9800 pro do the trick for me as far as today,s games are concerned?? I also already have 512 mb ram and 80 gb hd

[Renzatic Gear]

Yeah, that's a great processor...though the 9800 Pro is getting a tiny bit long in the tooth. You'd probably be better off going with one of the midline X800's or Geforce 6. They're about the same price but are better performers.

Keep in mind that the ram you have now might not work optimally in an Athlon 64 system...it could be slower specced ram than what you need. I'd go with PC3200 or PC4000 if you find the need to upgrade.

[Mochan]

Athlon 64 3200+ is among the top-off the line commercial CPUs at the moment, you're all good with that. While no longer the cream of the crop (that goes to the Athlon 64 FX I think, or whatever other new chip has come out) it is good enough, especially at its tasty price.

The board is good for it, and the video card, while no longer the best, is still good a year after its hay day.

What you'll want to look at is adding another 512MB to your RAM. Just be careful with your RAM type, while mixing RAM has never got me into a bad spot, most people say you should keep all your RAM same brand, same speed, same production batch even. Again, I've never had trouble mixing and matching different kinds of RAM but you might want to keep this in mind.

With that CPU/Mobo, a Radeon 9800 Pro and 1GB RAM, you'll be set for the rest of the year at least. The Radeon 9800 is starting to show its age though; make no mistake I love the card and it's what I have in my case at the moment, I but I think come next year it'll start chopping on the finer games if you try to run things all out. Still it's great bang for the buck right now and unless you feel like spending a $400 on a new GPU I'd go with that.

[BaneNWN]

Ya its kinda iffy on the graph card even know its an acceptable card right now will the price really make the differnece in the long haul?I dunno im not a market expert or anything but for the 1000 dollars i have i think ill stick with the radeon 9800 for now.

basically what i need is the proccesssor, motherboard,graph card,sound card and like another 512 ram. Maybe a monitor if i have enough left over so i have to cut corners somewhat.Im sure it will play games better then this crap thing im on now hehe.geforce mx-400 graph card im running now not to good lol

[Mochan]

Really, $1000 is a lot.

What do you need a sound card for? I admit I want one too but if you're on a budget I think it's the peripheral you should skip, unless your board only has stereo sound (which is unlikely in this day and age). This is coming from someone who is more audio-based than visual-based. The gains you will get from a $200 soundcard are really not worth it in my opinion over onboard 5.1. I haven't actually tried it on my rig and sound setup but I've listened to Audigy 2 cards elsewhere and the difference is vanilla more than anything important. Of course lots of factors came into play there (didn't get to hear it on my setup in comparison) but I don't find it to that big a deal, if you're on a budget.

Anyway, if you're going to cut corners, I'd leave the sound card and monitor upgrade for later. You'll almost certainly want another 512MB RAM, and you'll also definitely want to replace that MX400.

With $1000 budget, personally I would get that Athlon 64 and Mobo (should run you around $250-$300), another stick of 512MB (should go for like $60) and then splurge the rest on a good vid card ($400) like an X800 or something. That way you won't have to worry about upgrading until like 2007. You'd still have like $200 left to go buy a soundcard or monitor if you want.

[Mochan]

Oh that reminds me, just how old was your last PC? You will probably need to get some other peripherals to support your new rig. Check your power supply, I'd say at least a 400W PSU for the new rig, preferably more. And check your CPU cooler combo, you might need a better one. And just in case, maybe your case isn't the right form factor, I don't know. So that extra $200 will still be put to good use.

[BaneNWN]

Dont towers come with power supplies already attached?? I do need a new tower to want more hand room to work with when upgrading.I suppose i could hold out on a sound card and monitor for now.I was thinking of a geforce 6800 for like 300 i think 400-450 alil high for me right now.The computer i have now i built like 3 yrs ago maybe alil longer even and i have a geforce 3 ti-200 card in the one im pulling the parts out of.I was also thinking of buying a tower with motherboard,cpu and memory in it and thats it.I dunno though i got alil time to think.I just want something that will run doom 3 and halflife 2 at a decent fps with fairly high settings.

Plus im sick of running ut 2004 at 800-600 res with all settings on low lol.Thanks for your help guys.If you happen to run into any decent partially built towers that are decent price and decent parts please lemme know thanks.

[Mochan]

If it's a 3 year old PC you should already have an ATX form factor PC so the parts should fit. The PSU is probably just 300W though. Chances are you will want to buy a new PSU.

Towers do come with PSUs but the wattage varies so be sure to check how much power the PSU comes with. Most people prefer getting branded PSUs because they are more reliable; trust me do not skimp on this. My last PC got fried because the stock PSU blew, and it ended up blasting my Mobo to smithereens. Good thing I was able to salvage my Athlon CPU, the RAM, and Ti4200 but my harddisk was also a casualty.

As for prices, I usually just take a look at Pricegrabber or Pricewatch or something so see what things are going for in the US. I don't actually buy there, I buy at local shops here but I look up things there just to see the dollar equivalents (useful in seeing how much we're getting ripped off here, or so I can post estimate prices in topics like these).

That said, check this tower I saw at Pricewatch.com:
http://www.xtechnology.com//scr/xtcat.dll/prw?Item=zx-amd64&Opt=PW

Look for it in Pricewatch under Barebones:
"X Technology - AMD Athlon 64 3200"

Looks like a decent setup. NForce 3 Mobo, Athlon 64 3200+ and a case with 400W PSU for $250. It's a tower model. I personally want to get small form factor but you mentioned you wanted a tower for more space.

BTW, I didn't check the actual FPS (dunno how to enable, didn't bother) but my current rig runs Doom 3 at a very decent FPS at 1024x768 at 2x AA. It's very playable. My rig:

Athlon XP 2200+ (overclocked to 2.0 Ghz)
1GB DDR PC 2700
Asus A7V8X Board (KT400 Via Chipset)
Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB

As you can see, I have a very modest setup by today's standards. The most expensive thing on there is the Radeon (actually it alone costs about as much as the other three components listed lol) but it runs Doom 3 really well. I haven't tried HL2 yet but I'm sure it'll run even better since I believe HL2 is a lot easier to run than Doom 3.

The PC specs I recommended to you above will more than run those two games at max detail.

[Mochan]

Oh wait, my bad, I don't even have DDR PC 2700 memory. I only have PC2100 (which is a bit slower).

[BaneNWN]

I went out bought a nice tower today for 45$.I also bought a 450 watt power supply seperate for 50$.The nice thing though is the tower i bought came with a 300 watt power supply so they took that out and installed my 450 watt power supply and knocked off half the price of the 450 watt, because i let them have the stock 300 watt so i got a nice tower plus a 450 watt PS for $ 72.Tommorow im buying me a new desk and in another 2 weeks ill buy the rest of the componets.

Im going to tryen get the geforce 6800 256 mb graphics card.From what you are telling me Mochan sounds like ill beable to play doom 3 and HL 2 with no problems thanks:)