MVxxxxx for ram? sounds generic or oem. Definitely get new ram if it crashes only a couple Mhz overclocked. DDR333 is cheap, but you can put ddr400 in place of it. Depends on what price is better. (supply and demand)
Most cpus have 200Mhz board bus, which is quad-pumped to 800MHz on a P4
Athlon 64 FX55 has 200Mhz 10-pumped. (thats right, 2000 Mhz FSB)
Amd vs Intel, one of the ultimate questions of all time.
Here's my opinion with some facts to back it up;
The athlonXP
The athlon XP is a hot running, low performing piece of crap. (today's standards)
Athlon 64 in Socket 939 is undoubtedly the FASTEST gaming Processor.
1. The 64's have the DDR memory controller on die, so the northbridge on a A64 board only controls the video slot and a few peripherals.
2. The A64 obviously supports 64bit computing, even though there is no official 64bit windows and very few programs that support it.
3. A64's have HTT (Hyper transport technology) which moves packets in and out of the system ram more efficiently. (Increases Bandwidth a little)
4. A64 Still uses a FCPGA (Flip-chip-pin-grid-array) which is capable of being inserted and removed many times.
5. A64 FX have unlocked multiplier, which you can adjust if your board supports it.
6. A64s overclock relatively poorly compared to their intel counterpart.
Intel Pentium4
The newest P4's are only available in the LGA(Land Grid Array) package with 775 pins.
(LGA775) The new 6xx series was just released which has x86-64 (a 64 bit extension)
1. The LGA 775 package has no pins on the processor, just contact pads, the pins are on the Motheboard. This type of socket is not very reliable as it is rated for only 20 cpu insertion/removal cycles. It seems to work fine if you don't mess with the CPU too much.
2. The new intel 925 series chipset supports DDR2-533 in dual channel mode. DDR2 is slightly faster than DDR1 and draws less power, therefore runs cooler.
3. Hyperthreading is a godsend, the best feature ever incorporated into a desktop processor. You can literally do 10 intense things at once without loading the proc too much. HT is visible as 2 logical cpus in task manager, and you can set which logical proc a program is running on (called setting the affinity)
4. P4s are super-overclockers (prescott especially) I've had my P4 520 2.8Ghz up to a whopping 4.06Ghz@20deg C with an air conditioner cooling the core. (stock Vcore!!!)
5. P4s have a "feature" called CPU or thermal throttling, which hurts performance. Thankfully, the better quality motherboards can disable it.
6. P4 is a multitasking master and therefore the fastest proc for business applications and possess the most raw horsepower money can buy.
7. P4 Whoops an A64 in Floating point calculations (video encoding, etc)
So Xwolf, you basically asked "which is better, AMD or Intel?" and you get a whole page of raw data.(no pun intended)
Which is better depends on your personal preference.
Here's a real world example;
I was at this lanparty (small one) and this guy was bragging his A64 FX-53 to high heaven. He called my P4 a piece of crap. "time for some fun" i thought.
He showed me raw framerates never before seen by my eyes, (Vsync off, of course)
I told him to load up doom 3 in the background and run UT2004 again. 60FPS, thats it!
His machine has a GIG of ram.
I decided to show him up.
I opened Doom3, Farcry, AVP2, Halo, Media Player, a couple others (random from the start menu) and started burning a cdrw.
I then turned off Vsync and loaded up UT2004. I played at a consistant 80FPS at 1600x1200 at max graphics with my trusty modded 9800.
I saw his jaw drop. I then told him I only have a 2.8Ghz with !512Mb! of single channel DDR, he almost died.
So you see, If you do only one thing at a time the athlon 64 will make you grin from ear to ear.
If you want to serve games and play others, while listening to your own music, and encode a video while youre doing it, A P4 wil make you do the Tim Allen power grunt because of the raw horsepower.
AMD vs Intel : a dispute only settled by personal preference.
I personally run a LGA775 Prescott 2.8GHz (520) CPU on an abit AS8. I chose this processor because of the Price vs Horsepower and I chose the board because of the overclocking. BTW Abit uGuru boards support Overclock on the fly (from in windows instantly) and on the fly Voltage changes. Also a Voltage monitor from the Volt god himself (there are over 10 different monitored voltages), the build quality is excellent.
I say this because I dropped the board twice, once on a wood floor, and once on concrete, which was a hard enough impact to knock off : The cpu fan, the NB fan , the bios chip, the Southbridge heatsink, the CPU and some jumpers. I put it all back together and it still works like new. (Using it right now)
I am a hardcore ATI, ABIT, Intel, Corsair, Samsung Fan
I will be upgrading soon. My next dream system
Thermaltake Kandalf Case
500w Ultra X-connect P/S -- already have
ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE motherboard
P4 630 64 bit 3.0 GHz
Radeon X800XL-- my next voltmod/overclock project (shooting for XT speeds)
1024MB Dual channel Corsair Xpert DDR2 667 (when it comes out)
Soundblaster Audigy X2 platinum
Thermaltake Bigwater L/C system times 2
2 dual layer Peltier coolers (over 600w total)
its only a 330W. it is a good one tho. Antec TruePower 330. like not some crummy no brand one. but still i might need a nother one then.
