for like the millionth timeeeee
WHY DE @$$ ALL THE AMD PEOPLE DOES EVER COMPARE IS A PRESCOTT TO A A64?
Why not a flikkin Northwood to a athlon xp???
Advances in technology such as? silicon on insulator (IBM), strained silicon(IBM), onboard memory controller? (ALPHA!) EM64?(AMD), hypertransport?(AMD) in the end, remember that you're a consumer and as a consumer shouldn't be bothered with the technology, but the result of the technology.
also - why bother comparing 2 aged nolonger produced lines? The northwood is scarce, and rising in price, ending it's run in popularity at 3.2. The athlonxp, went through a bit of a rebirth with the sempr0n, but it's also a dead end.
You're also comparing 2 older processors. Yes - the northwood was superior - ONLY IN THE END. When AMD started increasing the ratio of PR rating to chip speed (anyone who studies architecture would know CPI would RISE instead of drop putting that move from amd in the wrong...) then after 2500+/2.5GHz the northwood started to win out.
When i had to update one of my older machines, i looked at the prices of these chips. Buy the 2.4C - extremely hard to find these days, and equally expensive. Or athlon xp. I recommended the 2.4C for my previous roommate a couple years ago since that was the change over point imo, especially when looking at the overclocking power of those. When i updated my machine though, i went for an xp-m. Mobile chips are tested to run at stock frequencies (save the fsb) with a lower voltage, in other words - they'll run at stock voltage at a much higher frequency - cherry picked overclocking processor
I have my 2500+, running at 2.4GHz, on a 420MHz FSB. for $80us, it's a bit faster than my roommate's 2.4C at 3.36GHz.
Multitasking on the older xp wasn't very pleasant, but with the bump in fsb(400+) its ok. As for the hammer core - I'm running a 3400+ @ 2.7GHz. I can play guildwars, or for a more processor intensive game - c&c generals while watching family guy without worry. If you really wanna multitask though, dont bother with hyperthreading. It helps, but it handicaps certain competing threads at times - especially floating point intensive apps(older apps especially). If you're multitasking up the wazoo - go dual. couple of lower speed opterons, make an excellent system. Hell i've used dual celeron 400s and they ran everything quite smoothly (not gamewise, but multiple processor/memory intensive stuff).
Intel does have a good processor for gaming though - pentium-M. It's a stretched pentium 3 pipeline/short 4 weird thing. It was designed for power saving - if any stage in the pipeline was running faster than it needed to, they lowered the power to it to slow it down (hence the 30Watt tdp!) at 2.13GHz, I'd make a box that looks like 2 mac mini stacked, stick a comwell mini-itx board in there with agp, run a 1.7-1.8GHz chip for the lower cost, and presto - no more backache from byoc lan parties
