To wait for Athlon or not to wait?

[Buuri]

I just have to get rid of my K6-2 soon and was wondering these 2 options: Dual-Celly or Single-Athlon?

The overall price will be the same, when keeping in mind that I have to buy a new mobo for both of them. I was thinking of using those PPGA->Slot1 Powerleap adapters for Cellys (dual feature with no jumpers even!), and a Asus P2B-D.

What do you think? It's a hard choise since the performance and price will be about the same.


B

[Helevitia]

Buuri,

I'm not sure what K6-2 you have but I have a 400 and I will probably slap one more chip into it, probably a K6-3 550? Hopefully they will make one Then at that time I will decide whether or not to go Intel or AMD. Something to think about anyway. It's kinda like the G400 Max thing, do you go for Intel dual celery now or wait for a bigger better chip that is just a dream for now

Dave

[motub]

Buuri--

#1. Not that there's anything wrong with a dual-celery box (I'll be building a single-celery soon myself)---but on what basis do you think that the $/perf will be anything like on a par with the Athlon?? I know I don't keep up with dual-celeron system benches, but still--did I miss something?

#2. It's not going to be that much longer anyway, as I hear. There's about 5 dealers posting prices on Pricewatch already. AFAIK, the Athlons are expected to hit the streets in September, and even if (like me) you don't have approx. $700USD right now for just the CPU and mobo (not to mention $200 for the G400, and another $200 for the DTT2500 speakers), that's a plannable upgrade, as I see it.

A full-bore upgrade I can afford by Halloween or Christmas only justifies a minimal upgrade now (don't know why you're getting rid of your K6-2, but I can't stand anymore of this SS7 crap, not for another 3-5 months). So (like I said on the 'why is SS7 so bad?' thread), I found a cheap DFI BX board, I'll get a Celery and another case, split my memory (if I keep both the SS7 and Celery systems up and running)...gods know I've got enough spare parts to fill the gaps...maybe it'll delay my full Athlon rig a month, but it'll tide me over with something cheap (about $200USD) but more decent.

I don't quite see why you don't do something like that instead. And as for my opinion as to which should be your full-tilt upgrade (if you don't know), see my sig...

------------------
Holly
Who put her V2 in her roomie's PC, because her own Soyo 5EMA, K6-2 333 not o/c, 256MB PC100 , Millennium G200 8MB SGRAM, Win98 finally works plenty good enough...'til she's saved the $$ for the G400/Athlon rig, anyway... [drool, pant, drool... ]









[This message has been edited by motub (edited 07-28-99).]

[Buuri]

I figured it [#1] this way:

I wached those Celly bencahmarks that in Winbench 488 Celly gave the same as 433 P3.
Now if dual Celly would be, say 1.5 times one in normal use that would be faster than any P3 which is Athlon class.

Where did I go wrong?

(it's not like Athlon would be so fast that no dual-Intel would easily catch it)


B

[This message has been edited by Buuri (edited 07-28-99).]

[motub]

I dunno, I'll have to check it out to actually speak about feature sets and the like but just on the face of it, I have a hard time believing that a couple-years-old pair of $60 chips (taking my beloved Celery 366 as an example)--even overclocked--can really outperform a "next-gen" (or semi-next-gen) chip costing 10 times as much....

Again, I'm not saying that you won't love it to pieces, but if it performs that well, it shouldn't be so cheap...and if it is that cheap, it can't perform that well--this is the computer hardware industry we're talking about, isn't it?

----------------------
Holly

[This message has been edited by motub (edited 07-28-99).]

[Jammrock]

Burri,

Dual Celery systems are useless unless you run a good SMP OS (i.e. a multi-threaded OS with dual prossecor support). This means that you must run Windows NT 4.0, Linux, BeOS or Windows 2K. NT 4, Linux and BeOS do not have great game support so that leaves you with Win2K. Win2K is still in beta and it is a pain in the butt to get some hardware to work right on that *&#(% OS and getting games to run right is sometimes even harder.

Now for my opinion on what you should do. Buy a cheap Celery system and overclock it. You can get 300's-400's for under $100US and an excellent OC board for about $100US. Slap in your old RAM (assuming you have SDRAM) and other components and run it until later this year. Around November, Athlon chips and motherboards should be readily available. Grab one of those and whatever other peripherals you want and run a high speed Athlon system. Take you old stuff and sell it off or use it as a second computer.

Buying an Athlon right now should be reserved for the rich and/or insane. Prices are through the roof and hardly anyone has an Athlon to test on if you have hardware or software troubles. This means that buying a cheap Celery system now and a good Athlon system later can save a lot of time, money and energy. Plus, a single athlon will smoke a dual celery anyday (Firingsquad already tested it, the Athlon even beat a dual PIII system). Just my opinion Buuri.

Jammrock

------------------
PIII 540 (120 MHz x 4.5 - 540), 256 MB PC133 SDRAM, ASUS P3B-F, Winblows 98 SuckyEdition, 18 GB WD Expert HDD, Encore 6x DVD w/ Dxr3 decoder, (TEMPORARY!!!) Voodoo 3 2000 @ 175 MHz which will be replaced by a Matrox G400 MAX, Sound Blaster Live! full retail, MAG DX715T 17

[Buuri]

Thanks for your opinion, Jammrock

I was aware of that OS thing so enough of that.
You had a point, but can anyone really tell when will Athlon be affordable? My nighmare is that if I went with Celly now, that would be tomorrow.

B

[This message has been edited by Buuri (edited 07-28-99).]

[Jammrock]

When the Camino comes out in November, AMD will be forced to drop prices to compete with the new high speed PIII's (the integrated high speed L2 cache is supposed to make them go pretty damn fast, but not necessarily faster than the Athlons). Motherboard manufactures will have good boards out by then,hopefully, and software/hardware makers should have good support for Athlons by then (plus a lot of bugs ironed out). Around November is when I plan on building an Athlon system, funds permitting.

Buying a Celeron system now would be just fine. You won't be running Quake 3 at 120 fps, but oh well. My little brother is running a Celeron 450 and a TNT card and it is just fine. I don't see any troubles with having a Celeron system until Athlons come down in price.

Jammrock

------------------
PIII 540 (120 MHz x 4.5 - 540), 256 MB PC133 SDRAM, ASUS P3B-F, Winblows 98 SuckyEdition, 18 GB WD Expert HDD, Encore 6x DVD w/ Dxr3 decoder, (TEMPORARY!!!) Voodoo 3 2000 @ 175 MHz which will be replaced by a Matrox G400 MAX, Sound Blaster Live! full retail, MAG DX715T 17

[Steve C]

Hey guys/gals, though you lot may be interested in <A HREF="http://www.theregister.co.uk/990728-000021.html" target="_blank">this</A>

August 10th for the Athlon? Cool

Cheers,
Steve

[This message has been edited by Steve C (edited 07-28-99).]

[lifeguard407]

Going from a single prcessor to a dual processor will not give you much of an improvement in speed, 5-20% approximately. Single or dual celerons will give you enough power to last you a while; trust me you don't need games running at 75fps, 60 is enough for me, especially when comparing the prices of the Athlon to a celeron, a $400 difference ISN'T worth 15fps, plus you probably will have to wait a while until AMD can make enough cpu's.

I think you should get a celeron 400mhz and overclock it to 5??mhz, it'll be screaming fast and extremely cheap. I don't see how Intel makes money off of these things.

[Buuri]

lifeguard407,

I don't think you are right there. Your 5-20% is quite pessimistic.
Some time ago I read a review of this 6xP2 server. While P2 itself supports only 4-way system they had to use some proprietary techniques to make it work so.
In that magazines bencmarks the raw calculation speed in that 6-way beast was 4 times one P2. So if you take it linearly down, 2-way would then offer 4/3 of one CPU.
Also if you think that they indeed were using some weird methods to make it work, you might end up in a conclusion that the ratio probably is somewhat better for 2-way. Which would then be around 40-50%.


B

[merchant2]

i might be wrong here but dosen't the software also have to support dual cpus ?

i mean os and what ever your running on it ?

and also untill you use up all processor power the os don't even use the second cpu?

i might be wrong but i seem to remember reading something on this back when the idea of dual celron system's came out. (witch was why i didn't build one. (i hate nt4))


------------------
i don't know what im going to bitch about now that the avp patch is out.
p2 350 at 450, 196 meg pc100,10gig hard drive,5xdvd cl drive, xitel p. storm sound, 32meg g400 dualhead, acs 400 altec lansing speakers+yamaha rear, ch throttle, ch force fx, ch pedeals, hp laserjet 4, epson 400 color, ctx vl950 main mag dx17t secondary monitors
other systems k6-2 350 and k6 200.

[Chris H]

Merchant2,
Yes the OS must support multi-processors. But this will give you NO increase in speed on its own (on Windows NT). The application must be multi-threaded. If this is done correctly it will use both processors at the same time, it will not 'use up one' then move on to the next. The actual speed increase using two processors will vary depending upon how well the application has been coded.

[merchant2]

so dual cpu for gameing will ultimitly give no benifits buuri. go for single celly now and single atalon or copermine later you will end up better off money and speed wise. i dont really see gameing companys writeing games for dual cpu's and if they do they probiblywill do it badly.

------------------
i don't know what im going to bitch about now that the avp patch is out.
p2 350 at 450, 196 meg pc100,10gig hard drive,5xdvd cl drive, xitel p. storm sound, 32meg g400 dualhead, acs 400 altec lansing speakers+yamaha rear, ch throttle, ch force fx, ch pedeals, hp laserjet 4, epson 400 color, ctx vl950 main mag dx17t secondary monitors
other systems k6-2 350 and k6 200.

[Buuri]

Unreal and Q3A use more than 1 CPU if available and they work just fine.

Also the application has to be multi-threaded, BUT if you have 2 apps running they will however run on different CPU's. That is because NT can do that and it has nothing to do with apps supporting it.

B