Pentium or Athlon

which processor should i choose for my home pc. Athlon is much cheaper as compared to Pentium with almost same speed.

if pentium then what are its advantages
if athlon then what are its advantages.?

Now then... if a guy named DigitalError responds to this post, take no notice, please. He has his facts all wrong. No offense m8, but you need to study a little harder into hardware analysis.

Anyway...

Pentium 4's:

Pentium 4's have had a technology called HT (Hyper Threading) for many months, although the main chunk of hardware was disabled to the domestic market. Intel now feel's HT can be fully released to the public. Although Pentium's are known for the v.high pricing, you do get a good processor for your money. I sell both AMD & Intel, and see no reason to compare the two at the moment. The real disadvantage to owning a P4, is when Intel change the speed next, they will also be changing the slot too, which means new motherboard & possibly new PSU and memory (depends if your existing MB uses SD-Ram or DDR or RD-Ram)

AMD's:

AMD use Quantispeed architecure, which basically means a 1733Mhz processor will do the same amount of work as a 2100Mhz. Quantispeed allows the CPU to do more work per data clock cycle than it's rival counter-part.. That's why AMD XP 2100's are not advertised as AMD XP 2100Mhz. They are as quick as a 2100Mhz, but legally they cannot state it.

AMD has promised to stick to the same slot for as many years as possible, while still releasing top notch CPU's to boot. Because the AMD's run at a lower Mhz, it means less heat, which inturn means better cooling, reliability & lastability. AMD will never be beaten on price, although many people like to boast they have a P4. Just grin and pretend your impressed, you know the real story. :D

If you require any further assistance, please feel free to contact me.

Hope that helps you.

Regards,

Paul.

Hey,

I personally would go for an AMD everytime. Although in my opinion P4 is generally faster it's not noticable and you could make up the difference with more ram and/or better graphics card with the money you save from buying an AMD over a P4.

The HyperThreading technology isn't of much use at the moment and from reviews I've read it's actually slower with it turned on in many office and 2d apps; while in games it's about the same. The only applications which there will be a noticable increase for are ones which are optimised for dual processors.

Basically I think it's down to personal preference.

David

The HyperThreading can be useful if you run multiple programs at once, which most users do. TomsHardware has this video of a head to head matchup of a computer with HT vs a computer without. Pretty nice. However, you will pay a heavy price for the HT processor and I think for most people it isn't worth it at this point. I'd go with an Athlon because of the performance/price ratio. My only other suggestion is get good RAM. It makes more of a difference than a lot of people realize. Look for some with CL 2 from anyone such as Corsair, Mushkin, etc.

well guys thanks for your advice. But i dont know much about hyperthreading could you please explain me what is hyperthreading.

HyperThreading is where one processor is treated as two basically. It's been in pentiums for a while but they only just let it be switched on.

http://www.intel.com/technology/hyperthread/ gives you a rough idea although it'll be biased towards how much benefit it gives.

Dave

the benefits of HT depend a lot on which programs you're running. If i'm using a FP intensive app (say mathematica doing eigenvalue calculations) and a ALU intensive all (excel under "normal" use), then i will see a pretty good boost from HT, since the cpu and utilize the ALU and FPU for two threads in one cycle.

if i run two FP intensive or two ALU intensive apps at the same time, liekly there will be a slowdown due to conflicts with the registers and such.

-C