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Author Topic: need a little help choosing a cpu  (Read 2456 times)

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Layer01

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need a little help choosing a cpu
« on: January 12, 2005, 02:53:34 am »
just about to build my Mame PC, but i realised i know nothing of AMD CPU's anymore,  and now with all their new crazy names and number schemes i am lost.
just dont want to end up buying the AMD ULTRA GIGA  5000XP + SUPER only to find its a  100 mhz cpu lol 
;D

i want to get something mid ranged, but towards the higher end of the mid range. so that i can play 3D emu's like epsxe and chanckast when it works better etc... so if i were to get an intel i'd get a P4 2.8ghz (unless thats not enough for 3d emulators?? yet another area i'm a little lost in) so i guess whatever is the rough equivilant....not sure wether to get sempron (guessing its their cheap-ass cpu) or XP+  or their Athlon 64  ???

so suggest away  8)

SOAPboy

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Re: need a little help choosing a cpu
« Reply #1 on: January 12, 2005, 03:02:42 am »
2.8C in my main gaming rig.. more than enough for about everything.


Beeeph

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Re: need a little help choosing a cpu
« Reply #2 on: January 12, 2005, 03:04:14 am »
AMD sempron 2400+ and mobo from frys for $39.99...and it works great!

Layer01

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Re: need a little help choosing a cpu
« Reply #3 on: January 12, 2005, 03:25:44 am »
2.8C in my main gaming rig.. more than enough for about everything.



2.8C ? what does the C stand for? and what type of chip is it?

the sempron 2400+ what is that ghz wise? roughly

elvis

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Re: need a little help choosing a cpu
« Reply #4 on: January 12, 2005, 03:27:13 am »
What games do you want to play?  There are some games that you'll have absolutely no chance of playing any time on any cpu made in the next 2-3 years.  And there are others that will run fine on 1GHz or less.

Give us your top 10 wishlist.

elvis

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Re: need a little help choosing a cpu
« Reply #5 on: January 12, 2005, 03:30:02 am »
2.8C ? what does the C stand for? and what type of chip is it?

The "C" means it's an 800MHz FSB Northwood chip:

http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/processors/pentium4/

the sempron 2400+ what is that ghz wise? roughly

The Sempron 2400+ is a 1.667GHz part with 256KB of Level2 cache:

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_11599_11604,00.html

It's amazing what you'll find when you plug common questions into google! :)

Layer01

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Re: need a little help choosing a cpu
« Reply #6 on: January 12, 2005, 08:06:12 am »
shucks  :-[  :-X  sorry elvis my bad i should've given Google a go, it is the all knowing god of our time after all hehehe :angel:

But will the 1.66 ghz "amd style" be good enough, i seem to remember their 2400 and such numbers were supposed to be indicitive of their "if-they-were-intel" speed or some marketing tripe like that lol.

{EDIT}well as my last attempt at a reply was long winded and didnt say anything i'll try again:

i would like a CPU powerfull enough to be able to run what can be run atm in terms of 3d emulation , like in zinc, n64 emu's epsxe etc... (but not so powerful that its breaks the bank)
i have no list of games i am trying to get running i just want a cpu that will let me run the games that can run. in fact if any of you want to make recomendatons on what games i should be on the look out for that would be great, as i havent started really looking into that matter yet  :)
so a good mid range chip that will cover most bases...
« Last Edit: January 12, 2005, 08:17:19 am by Layer01 »

Flinkly

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Re: need a little help choosing a cpu
« Reply #7 on: January 12, 2005, 11:50:29 am »
i'm sorry to come off mean, but it sounds like you need someone to justify getting a nice chip.  go ahead and choose a number of dollars your willing to spend on the chip and then go find the best one for what you want to spend.  since i wanted the relative best for my cab, but also not to waste money, i went with a 2.8 p4 also since it's not the 1000 dollar top of the line, but aso not slow...

it's mostly up to you what you want, because like everyone has said, it depends on what you want to play, but some games you wont even be able to play for some time with the available technology.  just get the best you can and don't look back.

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Re: need a little help choosing a cpu
« Reply #8 on: January 12, 2005, 01:09:58 pm »
Semprons are AMDs low end chip.  I don't have a mathmatical equation or anything, but just know that you shoudln't use the "equivalent to Intel" with these chips.  ie. a sempron 2400+ will not quite be on par with a 2.4 Intel chip.  I've read only a little on them, but I DO believe they are "better" than Celerons, for what that's worth.

AthlonXP's are the AMD chip that best adhere to the "same as Intel" marketing ploy.  As a general idea, you could say a 2600+ would be roughly equivalent to a 2.6 P4.  This is just a general rule though, read some reviews when you need to choose between a few chips.

Athlon64 also uses the rule fairly well.  You can get the same rough idea of an Intel equivalent by looking at the numbers i.e. Athlon64 3000+ = 3.0 P4

In all honesty though, that's marketing and not a whole lot more.  Read reviews if you really wanna know if a 2400+ or a 2.4 P4 is faster for what you want.  Each chip excels and falls short in different areas.

BOTTOM LINE:  If you want to build a system on a budget... I'd go AthlonXP.  I have a 2500+ system in my house that runs any game in MAME besides those few that don't run well on anything.  It does N64 and everything below just fine.  I've run a few PSX games on it with litlte problems as well, but honestly, I've only played with ePSXe for a few hours.

If you want a bit more power, get an Athlon64.  I just built a 3000+ system and I am LOVING it.  it's great... faster than the 3.0 P4 i've used in the past by far IMHO.

Mid range CPUs:  AthlonXP   2500+ - 2800+
                            Athlon64   2800+ - 3200+


Hope that helps.
first off your and idiot

Man I love the internet, haha.

elvis

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Re: need a little help choosing a cpu
« Reply #9 on: January 12, 2005, 05:26:22 pm »
John IV (MAME32 author) and myself both maintain MAME benchmarking pages.  See my sig for my site (mostly older CPUs) and John's site is here:

http://www.classicgaming.com/mame32qa/bench.htm

He compares some newer higher-end CPUs there.  The P4's have a much longer instruction pipeline, and scale higher in raw clockspeed.  This makes them favour the newer and more complex games, especially those with 3D.  Where raw clockspeed isn't a concern (eg: older games, or drivers that have had time to mature and be optimised well over time), the Athlon64 will win out with its superior bandwidth. 

Neither of those statements are a hard and fast rule, however.  There are hundreds of unique drivers in MAME, and each one performs differently.  "Benchmarking" MAME is nearly impossible, simply because it's just a framework for emulation drivers of unique hardware, and as such you'd have to benchmark every single game to truly show what's going on.  That is a task I'm attempting to do with some MAME code hacking (removing warnings and whatnot) and some clever scripting, but free time isn't something I have a lot of these days. :)

Back on topic, I think Flinkly has given you the right advice.  Pick a budget first.  Give yourself the maximum amount of dollars you want to spend on an entire system.  From there, juggle the components around and see what you can build.  There will always be a faster CPU around the corner, and you can always spend just a few more dollars to get the next model up.  Set yourself a ceiling, and stick by it.

If 3D games really are your thing, look at PSX emulators, or something like zINC.  Playing 3D games in MAME currently is difficult without bleeding edge hardware.

And besides... who plays anything released after 1990 anyway?  ;)

elpresidente

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Re: need a little help choosing a cpu
« Reply #10 on: January 12, 2005, 07:29:50 pm »
If you're truely budget conscious I recommend the Celerons.  The Celerons now are the P4's of last year. I have a 2.4 celeron (400Mhz fsb - the new ones have 533 fsb). Bought it with budget in mind and haven't regretted it. I work for a computer service company and we sell alot of celerons. They are solid chips. They can run most 3d games. Doom3 is rough on it, but it runs fine at 640x480. Another reason I like the intel products is that they will not burn up on you. If you put this in a cabinet, how are you goning tell if the cpu fan goes out? With a p4 the pc will slow down, a celeron will shutdwon and an athlon will burn up. Plus you get a 3 year warranty on the intel chips.

Just my 2 cents worth.

elvis

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Re: need a little help choosing a cpu
« Reply #11 on: January 13, 2005, 04:32:59 am »
I wouldn't recommend Celerons nor Durons for MAME usage.  They have much lower L2 cache levels than their bigger brothers, which is something that MAME really doesn't like.

I whole-heartedly recommend sticking with AthlonXP or P4 chips.  Semprons aren't bad (they have the same cache as the old 1500+ AthlonXP chips), but aren't great either.

In code like emulation where similar instructions are being repeated over and over, L2 cache helps things move along very nicely.  Stripping that away will leave you with quite a bottleneck.

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Re: need a little help choosing a cpu
« Reply #12 on: January 13, 2005, 06:57:50 am »
If you get your hands on a P4 2.8c and a suitable motherboard you can overclock it BIGTIME and get an excellent price/performance ratio. Make sure it's the 'c' model (northwood) as the newer 'prescott' cores run too hot for decent overclocks with stock coolers.

My studio box currently double as a mame machine, it's overclocked to 3.5GHz and runs stable with standard memory and cooler. If you want to go with this option, check out theoverclockers.com.au forum. They're extremely helpful and theres loads of info on a good cpu/mobo combination for cheap overclocks.

Dexter

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Re: need a little help choosing a cpu
« Reply #13 on: January 13, 2005, 07:09:58 am »
I just purchased a motherboard/AMD Duron 1.6 ghz combo from Outpost.com for $39 and it plays everything up to the Midway games like Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam full speed with no dropped frames.  So yes an AMD Duron will perform well with MAME as long as you're not planning on running the latest CHD's.

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Re: need a little help choosing a cpu
« Reply #14 on: January 13, 2005, 07:25:34 am »
If you get your hands on a P4 2.8c and a suitable motherboard you can overclock it BIGTIME and get an excellent price/performance ratio. Make sure it's the 'c' model (northwood) as the newer 'prescott' cores run too hot for decent overclocks with stock coolers.

My studio box currently double as a mame machine, it's overclocked to 3.5GHz and runs stable with standard memory and cooler. If you want to go with this option, check out theoverclockers.com.au forum. They're extremely helpful and theres loads of info on a good cpu/mobo combination for cheap overclocks.

Dexter

id go ahead and have to say

DONT bother overclocking it..


Why you ask? because, the guy had to ask about which one to buy, this leads me to beleive its not in his best interest to start jacking with fsb settings..

elvis

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Re: need a little help choosing a cpu
« Reply #15 on: January 13, 2005, 07:26:42 am »
I just purchased a motherboard/AMD Duron 1.6 ghz combo from Outpost.com for $39 and it plays everything up to the Midway games like Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam full speed with no dropped frames.  So yes an AMD Duron will perform well with MAME as long as you're not planning on running the latest CHD's.

Try a few of the STV games and it'll struggle.  Ditto for some of the Psikyo games.  Compare that to a AthlonXP 2000+ which is almost the same clockspeed as a duron 1.6 but with 4 times the cache, and it'll perform 50% better in the above.  With modern processors, more L2 cache is a god-send.

However for under $50, that's steal.  And again, not bad if newer games aren't your thing.

Dexter

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Re: need a little help choosing a cpu
« Reply #16 on: January 13, 2005, 07:39:34 am »
id go ahead and have to say

DONT bother overclocking it..


Why you ask? because, the guy had to ask about which one to buy, this leads me to beleive its not in his best interest to start jacking with fsb settings..


Thats why I pointed him to the overclockers board. I was a noob to overclocking but one of the members gave me step by step instructions. It is worth pointing out though, that unless you need an increase in speed for a particular app or game, then just run at stock speed. My machine only gets overclocked if I'm working on a track thats loading up the CPU heavily.

Must say, a P4 2.8c overclocked is still one hell of a CPU for the price

Layer01

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Re: need a little help choosing a cpu
« Reply #17 on: January 13, 2005, 08:29:13 am »
thanks for the replies guys, and just in time, this saturday is the computer fair here so hopefully armed with a better knowledge of what mame will and wont like in cpu's i hope to pick up my mobo and cpu.  ;D

as for overclocking well i think i'll pass, simply because i havnt the time to toy arround learning the ins and outs, its funny i'm sounding older by the minute, a few years ago i was lapping up all the info i could get on pc's in regards to 3D animation, so if i were to go out and build a workstation now i wouldnt think twice, but now when it comes to emulation i just cant be stuffed reading countless reviews and digging through sites trying to find nuggets of info anymore (the whole time thing). so i cant say this enough, thank you for saving me some time and getting my AMD knowledge back on track  ;D ;D ;D ;D

oh and Flinkly your not comeing off mean at all, in fact i apreciate your honesty, what you say is true, but even though i cant give you exact justifications on what cpu speed i need and why, i know i need it (sorta hard to explain without getting long winded)....lol but time will tell  ;)

so cheers guys  8)