i would say the x1950pro would feel a bittleneck even with a 3gz p4, mainly because the p4 is very inefficent per clock, its great for folding or video encoding but for games.......its not so hot.
on the amd side, well a 1.6-1.8gz sempy64 can give simlar perf to most 478 3gz p4's but are normaly overclockable to 2.4+gz(depdns on how high the boards fsb can go), a 1.8-2gz athlon64 is more then a match for a 3gz p4(im just explaining whats ruffly equivlant) the 3000+ a64 is 1.8gz on socket 939 and am2 and 2gz on 754, but these chips can overclock on almost any board even ones with no vcore control, i managed 2.45gz on my foxconn board (sis chipset, no vcore or any volt controls infact) out of my 300+, bringing it to aprox 3700+ (3.7gz p4) performance.
got 2.65gz on my good 754 board out of the same chip.
p4 have a few good uses, data that needs streamed in a 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 type order can be delt with VERY well, but data thats not quite so leniar isnt their strong suit.
p4/pd do 6icp (instructions per clock)
a64/k8 chips do 9icp
also a64 dirrectly communicate with the ram, no northbrige so latancy is VERY LOW, this makes even low end chips far more capable then you would expect commiing from nutburst...p4/pd cores where celerons have VERY little cache and show huge perf hits from it.
and i feel your pain about trying to find pci-e boards for 478 now tryed that for a client a while back all our supplyers could offer where 2 MATX ecs via chipset boards.....ewwww
in the end we set the guy up with an asrock ati 1600 chipset board+3800+ singel core(theydidnt have any 3500+s left at any local supplyers and he didnt want to wait for newegg) and a x1900gt(HIS rev1 he got localy that acctualy unlocked, we stuck a vf900 on it) overclocked the 3800+ to 2.87gz(was stable at 2.9 but i backed it off alittle just incase) using his p4 cooler(got one of hose brackets from thermalrite that lets you use p4and a64 heatsinks on am2 boards) hes quite happy he was able to keep his ram(2.5gb ddr1-533) and got a better videocard, the funniest part, the board+cpu+videocooler came out to very close to the same price a top end agp card would have, ofcorse he payed more due to having us do the upgrade for him, but we gave him a disscount trade in on his p4 that cut the setup time charge in 1/2(hes lucky im as fast at upgrades as i am
)
hes emailed me 5 times with questions and to say how SHOCKED he is about how much faster his new system is then his 2.4c@3.2 because he had alwase been told that amd where slower then intel by his friends and relitives,but he was despret at the time and i guarnteed he would like what he got and if he didnt i would give him a p4 rig in trade.
he loves his new rig tho, when i jokingly asked in email if he was ready to trade me he acctualy thought i was seirous and went to great lingths to make it clear he was/is quite happy with the system and is now an amd fan(price for what he got board/chip was far cheaper then even a e6300 chip alone and games just as well)
blah, i talked to much.
agp is DEAD, i admited that when i did my last upgrade, everybody else needs to just accept it and move on, if you have to you can get a new amd690/695 based mobo and use that, the onboard gfx are 9700/9800 class for perf and overclock VERY well according to the reviews i have seen, one here a couple at other sites,(stocks like 400) 560-612 have been the max overclocks with normal passive chipset coolers, acctive i would guess would bring that up to mayb 650 range on a good board, bringing the onboard perf to a FAR better level.
and most of all, its matx chipset so its gonna be cheap to get a decent board, tforce690g
http://www.biostar.com.tw/t-series/products/socket AM2/TA690G AM2/product_details.php
decent looking board if the reviews of the chipsets onboard gfx are true, i just wonder if the onboard gfx will beable to work as a low end ppu when amd/ati bring out gpu as a ppu would be kool to me to beable to use the onboard for that even if the perf wasnt tops and i had to allocate 128-256mb system ram to it
