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3.2GHz Intel Vs. Athlon64 3200+ Battle Royal
Hello,
First off, Happy Halloween to all the Ghouls and Goblins out there. :-) The PCstats Newsletter has a bunch of exciting things in store for you this week, including a survey we'll tell you more about in a moment. As you already know, the AMD Athlon64 3200+ processor is still a wee bit hard to find, but it is also pretty hard to beat when it comes to the benchmarks. We took Intel's 3.2GHz Pentium 4 for a test drive recently and compared it to the little green machine from AMD... how did it stand up? Well, as they say on web, you'll have to see our review to find out!
Steadfast fans of the Athlon64 need a motherboard which is just as powerful as that little 64-bit chip. Gigabyte's first entry into the K8 world is called the GA-K8NNXP, and is based on nVidia's nForce3 150 chipset. The board packs in a long list of features for a good workstation platform, including lighting fast 800MB/s IEEE 1394B - or FireWire 2. This is the first and only motherboard we've seen in the PCstats labs to come equipped with both Firewire standards, and I'm sure it will catch on quickly with digital video enthusiasts.
It isn't often that we test out a full gaming system here, but when PCStats does, you can be assured that it's something to take note of. Enter Canada Computers: Ultimate Gaming Machine of 2003. PCstats Industry Insights
explores the murky world of 2004, a few mysterious items like
ATI's R423 GPU and PCI Express along the way. Also in this newsletter is our review of Kingmax PC3500 DDR433 RAM, and a look at a very important but often overlooked bit of kit; the UPS. Specifically, Belkin's Home Office 500VA UPS. PCstats Annual Reader Surveyis here, and it is something I hope you'll take a few moments to fill out. Rather than using ADware or other nasty things, when PCstats conducts a Demographic Survey we just ask you straight up. The information you fill out in this anonymous survey is bundled together and used to help PCstats find the most suitable advertising, and that helps to support PCstats.com and the Weekly PCstats.com Newsletter you receive in your mailbox.
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 |  With the "Prescott" core just around the
corner, with potentially the "Pentium 5" name attached, but not quite
ready to be released, there could be no better time to release the new
Intel Pentium 4 3.2C - a 3.2GHz microprocessor. The P4 3.2C, like the other
'C-class' processors, runs on a 800 MHz FSB Northword core.
Architecturally it's identical to the P4 3.0C
PCstats reviewed previously, and even the lowly P4 1.6A! The P4 3.2C is based on the new D1
revision of the Northwood core and the default voltage has been raised to
1.55V from 1.525V (C1 and 1.5V for the original B0). All Pentium 4 processors running on a 200 MHz
FSB have HyperThreading enabled (including the 2.4C, 2.6C and 2.8C) and as
we discussed earlier in our The Basics of HyperThreading: What is it? article, HyperThreading like has potential to revolutionize the way microprocessors function. Now, on with
the benchmarks! Continue -- Click
Here>>
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|  nVIDIA
were the first chipset manufacturer other than AMD to support the 64-bit
AMD Opteron processor. Titled the "Crush 8," or nForce3 when it was first
released, the chipset also promised to support the then forthcoming 64-bit
AMD desktop processors which would later be named the Athlon64 and
Athlon64 FX. Gigabyte's brand new
K8NNXP Athlon64 motherboard boasts an impressive list of features,
workstation-oriented addons, and performance stats that should make it a
crowd favorite among demanding users. The full-size ATX motherboard is
equipped with three DDR DIMM sockets that will support up to 3GB of PC3200
ECC/non-ECC memory. Standard equipment includes Serial ATA/Serial ATA
RAID, 8X AGP, IDE RAID, IEEE 1394 Firewire, IEEE 1394B Firewire
(800MB/s!!), 5.1 channel audio, dual BIOS, dual Ethernet (one
Gigabit, one 10/100) and of course Gigabyte's special dual power
supply. Continue -- Click
Here>>
 After a few weeks of talking back
and forth, Canada Computers sent us over their "Ultimate Gaming
Machine of 2003" for review... and I can tell you it's a real bad
boy.
PCStats tends to focus on the
individual hardware components a lot because that is what most of our
readers tell us they look for when upgrading. But, every now and then we
like to break loose, and relax with a full system review. With that in
mind, it was quite a pleasure to test out this little silver rig which
came fully equipped with all the
bells, whistles,
and bright neon lights that you could ever want. It also helped
that it is was one of the fastest machines on the market too. Canada
Computers built the system around an Intel Pentium 4 3.2 C processor on
Intel's own D875PBZ "Bonanza" motherboard, backed up by 1GB of OCZ's EL
PC3500 DDR memory and an nVIDIA
GeForceFX 5900 Ultra
reference videocard. That's not all,
the system also packs in an SB Audigy 2 Platinum sound card, two 80GB
Seagate Serial ATA HDD's (in RAID-0) and a Sony DRU-510A DVD+/-RW
drive! Continue -- Click
Here>>
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i865PE/i875P Special Tweak Tip | |
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In an earlier TechTip we talked about the importance of CAS Latency to overall AMD system performance. From the response I receiced, many people saw a significant boost from running their memory at CAS Latency at 2 instead of 2.5 or 3. With the new Intel i865PE/i875P based motherboards there's now a new "big memory tweak".
When your computer first POSTs go into your BIOS (you may have to hit the DEL, F1, F2, F12 key). From there find the Advanced Chipset Features tab (if you have it, else you're out of luck for this tip) and find the RAS to CAS Delay. Make sure it's running the at 2/2T, and after that's done save and exit. With an i865PE/i875P based system, assuming the setting takes, you should notice a small performance gain in 2D applications but a significant gain in 3D apps (I'm talking 700+ 3DMarks, 10-20 fps more in Q3)! Please note that you have to have high quality
memory in order to run this setting. If you find that your system becomes unstable after applying this tweak, simply change the RAS to CAS Delay back to default.
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 As a computer tech, I have seen almost every
possible computer problem that's known, and a few that must have come from
outer space! I diagnosed everything from bad IDE ribbon cables to memory
with bad bits, but the problem I see most often are blown and dead power
supplies. Everyone should use an Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) whenever
possible. It can extend the life of your PC, and save you from countless
headaches. For example, about two months ago when the
big North American power outage hit, I lost a full days worth of work because I have bad saving
habits... Today we're going to be testing out Belkin's newest Home Office
Series of UPS's, specifically the 500VW/300W model. Continue -- Click
Here>>
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 The KingMAX name may not be as immediately
familiar with enthusiasts as that of other memory manufacturers, but that
doesn't mean it is a brand which should be overlooked. As it stands, Kingmax have a small and
growing fan base. This, largely because they charged into the market with
their unique TinyBGA memory a year ago, at a time when TSOP-II DRAM was
still the default standard. The 512MB PC3500 Kingmax module uses DRAM
which is labeled as "KingMAX KDL388P4EA-46." By SPD it's rated to run at
217 MHz with 2.5-4-4-8 timings, with a voltage of just 2.5V. The DRAM have
what I assume - many DRAMs are no longer stating their exact speed - are
4.6ns ratings, as that fits just right into the formula for the
theoretical maximum speed of the
DRAM. Continue -- Click
Here>>
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PCstats Issue
No.109
Circulation: 259,930
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| Industry Insights |
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Last week, I provided you with a bit of insight on possible hardware choices in 2005. It's an ever-changing landscape, difficult to pin down, but a fair bit of "asking around" went into my predictions and though I might not be on the dot, I'm confident that they're in the ballpark.
The graphics market will undoubtedly be very
different in 2005 than it is today. For one, we'll be ushering in
PCI Express and waving goodbye to the venerable AGP interface, at
least on the high-end. ATI's R420 is, of course, expected to be the first PCI Express adapter from the Canadian firm and NV40 will be its primary competition.
I recently had the opportunity to sit down
with an industry insider being courted by both companies. Though he
believes it is too early to tell who'll have the faster product, he
seemed fairly certain that ATI's offering will be available first. He also spoke of a model name I hadn't heard of before: ATI's R423. Purportedly, it's the enthusiast version of the R420 chip. I also promised a bit about networking. Well, there's
a very good chance that both the 802.16a and Ultra Wideband
standards will be ready to roll by 2005. In other words, wireless
broadband will be a distinct possibility! |
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| Written By |
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Editor-in-Chief
. M. Page
Weekly Tips
. C. Sun
I.I. Columnist
. C. Angelini |
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