From Hardocp, may help with your decision
On the Intel platform you need at least a 3.2 GHz to overcome CPU
bottlenecking in games. If you have anything slower than 3.2GHz, your CPU
may be holding back the performance of your video card. We saw absolutely no
benefit to the faster Front Side Bus of the Pentium 4 3.4 EE in games. For
all intents and purposes you will get the same gameplay experience out of a
3.4 EE as you will a 3.2 D.
The AMD Athlon 64 processors provide a slightly better gaming experience
than the Intel Pentium 4 and Pentium series processors. We found that
sometimes even the AMD Athlon 64 3800+ will bottleneck your video card. In
most of our gameplay testing though, the AMD Athlon 64 3800+ did not
bottleneck our video cards at all allowing our GPUs to reach their full
potential. There were literally no real gameplay advantages between an
Athlon FX-60 and Athlon X2 4800+ in our testing.
We have to give a nudge in the direction of the AMD AthlonT 64 line of
processors in real-world gaming. The AMD AthlonT 64 series of processors are
likely to provide the more serious gamer with a better experience.
Obviously the differences we have seen here are not as exaggerated as those
you might see elsewhere using canned and synthetic benchmarks. In fact
real-world gaming shows a different story than will be told by benchmarks
alone and that is exactly why we use real-world gameplay in our evaluations.
Yes, both Intel and AMD make good processors for playing 3D games, and don't
let anyone else tell you otherwise. We have also done incredible amounts of
gaming on OEM systems that are powered by both Intel and AMD CPUs in our [H]
Consumer desktop system evaluations that will show you both Intel and AMD
are good for gaming.
For our readers that don't live and die by whether or not they got in 4
hours on a Counter Strike Source server after work, and simply want solid
gaming action on a newer mid or high end video card, an AMD Athlon 64
running at 2.0GHz or Intel Pentium at 3GHz will likely meet your needs. Be
aware that as your Intel CPUs start dropping below 3GHz and your AMD CPUs
below 2GHz, you are likely going to see it negatively impact your system's
gaming ability depending on your video card.
For our died-in-the-wool gamers that are spending a few hundred dollars or
more on your high end video cards, make sure your AMD Athlon 64 processors
are at least 2.4GHz in processor speed, and your Intel processors clock in
at least at the 3.2GHz mark. If you let your CPUs fall below these levels,
odds are that you are not using your GPU to its fullest ability.
--
GA-K8NSC-939 nForce3, A64 3500+, Stock Cooler IdleTemp 28 C
2 Gb Dual Channel PC3200 OCZ Platinum 2-3-2-5 CL2.5
ATI All-in-Wonder 9600XT, Viewsonic A91f 19in
PATA WD 80+120 Gb HD 8mb buffers
Pioneer 110D+Liteon 1693S Dual Layer burner
Logitech MX 310 Optical Mouse
Microsoft Sidewinder Precision 2 Joystick
Microsoft ergonomic keyboard
Thermaltake Midtower with noname 350 Watt PSU
Cheap computer speakers with Sennheiser HD 477 Headphones
3DMark 05 Free Scores- Overall 1815, Cpu 4535
Max Performance Graphic Settings, 1024X768
Games I'm Playing- Battlezone II, IL-2 Sturmovick Series
Empire Earth 2, Need For Speed: Underground
2,
Civ IV
"creAtive oBscura" <> wrote in message
news: ups.com...
> I'm trying to help a friend figure out the best system for him and
> right now its hard to decide if we should go with a system that I can
> build for him from newegg.com or this HP from amazon.com
>
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...Fencoding=UTF8
>
> The HP for $719 + S/H which is about $32 :
> AMD Athlon 64 3800+ processor
> 250 GB hard drive
> 1 GB of RAM
> LightScribe multi-format DVD/CD burner with dual-layer support
> 9-in-1 memory card reader
> ATI Radeon XPress 200 video card with up to 128 MB of shared video RAM
> Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
> Mouse/Keyboard
>
> The system from newegg.com $772.85 + S/H which is about $55 :
> Microsoft Windows XP Home
> AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
> Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3250823AS 250GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard
> Drive
> 1 GB of RAM
> LightScribe multi-format DVD/CD burner with dual-layer support
> 52-in-1 USB 2.0 Internal Card Reader
> 430W Power Supply
> Geforce 6200TC supporting 256MB
> Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Motherboard
>
> I kinda prefer the XP Home vs the MCE just because we don't need it.
> Any input on what you think would be the better idea would be
> appreciated, thanks.
>
> JSV
>
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