that 1gb of memory wont do that much better than 512mb on a Athlon XP. Same thing goes with dual channel and an enormous video card. Dont get a geforce 6600gt and up unless you have a tanked p4 or strong Athlon 64!
Psht dude that's ridiculous. I just got 1gb of some good RAM from my 512mb of kingston, but I plan on overclocking that RAM.
I can guarantee you my XP at 2.5GHz and the RAM at say like 225MHz or DDR450 would outperform a lot of the AMD64's.
Those who say the XP's are outdated and the AMD64's are 'futureproof' and faster aren't fully educated in the power the XP's have to offer. I also plan on getting the 6600GT too and having an XP will in no way effect it.
Granted unless you're overclocking the XP then yeah you're better off with the 64, but if you know what you're doing you can still have a bomb ass machine.
3500+ 64 is what 2.2GHz right? Anyone have that with some Sandra benches at that speed?
The CPU arithmatic and multimedia test. a 2.5GHz XP should beat it in some aspects of the test and it's 100% guaranteed my RAM will beat out whatever RAM you have thanks to it being overclocked although yes the on board memory controller of the AMD64 helps out that system quite a bit.
Not only that, but overclocking really helps you to learn about the system and when I do go 64 it'll be overclocked you can rest assured of that.
Regarding 'future proof' thats just a nice little term for people to use to justify buying the latest and greatest. 64bit OS won't be out until a year or more....therefore the XP is still good in it's 32bit environment...again though I am mostly talking about OC'd XP's not stock as the highest XP stock is 2.2GHz on the 3200+ which clearly a 64 would dominate it.
My main point is, if you know what you're doing Socket A, and XP's are still power houses.
by the time a year goes by even if you had AMD64 chances are you'll be ready for a mobo and CPU upgrade, so why not go cheaper with socket A until the 64bit OS time comes.
And this whole AMD64s are better for gaming is just BS, if the XP is OC'd beyond the 64 then the XP will outperform it, the sandra tests I requested would somewhat adequately prove that.
If you are into OC'ing then XP is still good....even if you don't want to OC, it's still wise to save some money, get an XP, wait the year or so when you'd be ready to upgrade anyway and like AK said you could spend the extra cash you'd have on a 6800GT which is ready NOW unlike the 64's
There's my sandra arithmatic and multimedia score, although I believe that's on Sandra 2004 not the latest one
I want to see AMD64 benches of a 3500+ which is like 2.2GHz
Obviously once you start getting beyond the 3500+ then it'd easily beat an OC'd XP but very few people have those really expensive processors.
I'll have a RAM screenshot when I get my system all set up again