Maximum PC

At the moment I have a 3.2E on a Asus board. Now I was thinking that I would put the 3.2E on a new board and put an old celeron on my current board. However my love for Intel has slowed, and I think I might go AMD.
Firstly, am I wasting my cash? I do mainly graphic work, but do enjoy gaming.
Secondly, what would a match for my 3.2E, and how much would it cost?

Finally, I have got about $400-$500 to spend, but would not use this if I went the Intel road, and could put the cash into other PC options.

Thanks

I almost switched to using a P4 3.0 from an XP 2600+. Then I built 2 Athlon 64's and fell in love with AMD all over again. I have a 2.8 P4 in my laptop and the 3200 walks all over it in folding. Not sure on real world apps tho. I dont see any difference in my games between the 2.8 P4 and the 3200+, both seem to run them the same.

I would say save a few bucks, build a nice Athlon 64 setup with a gig of RAM and youd be happy.

To be honest, AMD64s kick in gaming and Intel kicks in Graphic Design (I assume you mean 3D). 3D rendering programs optimize Intel's Hypterthreading, and games bottleneck at RAM comunication. AMD64 has faster RAM access (due to the integrated memory controller) and Intel can run multiple threads.

I say... wait a bit, save up a bit and get a Dual-Opteron setup with NUMA support. If Graphic Design makes you money, get a computer that can keep up with you and increases your efficiency and in the end, you computer will pay itself off in no time and your profit will go up. If it is just a hobby, well then you decide. With Graphic Work, nearly any computer can do it, just some of them will make you wait forever. And also, 1GB may not be enough... 2GB or even 4GB will do you good if you are serious in 3D rendering.

If you are talking about Photoshop... 1GB is good and I don't know if even Dual-Opteron will be worth the extra seconds it saves you on a filter.

Arquero

I do most of my work in Illustrator and PS. I'm working on an advertising portfolio, so the graphic in not to hard on the PC.

Would a AMD64 3500, or 3800 be a good match for a 3.2E, in most apps?

Yes, one of those would do just fine. You will also have the option of OC'ing those procs. I also second Ricksickle's thoughts.

I think a good math for a 3.2 P4 would be a 3200+ Athlon 64.

Of course, really, there should be a 3400+ which would be a little more appropriate.

One of the best things you can do to save money is overclock. I have seen the 3000+ Athlon 64 go all the way to 2.7Ghz. Right now, an FX55 is only 2.6Ghz.


Basically, you could potentially outpace a 3800+ with a 3000+ if you are handy. Or at least, you could outpace the 3500+.

What you have to remember though is that just because the 3000+ will overclock by over 800mhz, doens't mean a 3500+ or a 3800+ will.

In fact, the 3800+ will overclock the least because it is still on the 130nm process, whereas the 3000+ is on the 90nm process.

There are overclocked Athlon 64's that are getting over 50% improvements in folding times vs. my 2500+ Barton a 2.3Ghz.

Dan O.

If it was me, I would go with the 3000+ or 3200+. It will do everything you want it to, plus save you a little cash. I like the OCing benefits, I think thats going to be my route on my next build.

Well I'm not a big fan of OC'ing, so I think my plan is to get a 3800. Man it's exciting just thinking about it, 64 bit will be sweet and I'll be really happy when windows comes out with a real 64 bit version.

I have seen the latest stuff from Intel, looks like 64 bit, but from some performance benchmarks out there, AMD kicks ass again.

I really never thought that I would go AMD, have been Intel for a while now.

Looking at MB's out there at the moment, I might even go SLI. Is it really a 50% performance gain, or should I just get a ultra board?