There recently was a thread that covered some of this same territory.  You
can find it in the PCBuild mail list's archive,
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?A2=ind0405&L=pcbuild&P=R3578 .  The
thread goes on to cover the Athlon XP Mobiles, in particular, but it starts
out with more general comments about the different processors.

I'm not sure that there is a big advantage for the Athlon 64 over the
Pentium 4 when it comes to top end game systems.  They both seem to have
their strength and weaknesses, and the costs are pretty similar as well.
For a first time DIY project, the maturity of the Pentium chipsets and
processor have a lot going for them.

The Athlon 64 has been a bit in search of a motherboard that delivers
everything that it is capable of.  It looks like the new Nforce 250 chipsets
may be your best bet, if you are interested in overclocking the Athlon 64
(locked AGP/PCI bus and the capacity to run FSB speeds - or whatever you
call them with this processor - at speeds well beyond 200 MHz).
http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=2004
http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=2009
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=2036&p=1

Since both the Athlon 64 and the Pentium 4 have locked multipliers, using
memory that can be run at speeds up in the DDR 500 range will be necessary
for overclocking (you want to keep the frontside bus and the memory bus at
the same speed for best performance).

You might want to start out looking at some of the Anandtech system guides
as a good place to start.  They've been doing a pretty good job of keeping
these current, lately.  Take a look at their High-End, Mid-Range, and
Overclocking System Guides to see if this helps you narrow things down to
what sounds right for you.  I'd be happy to try to answer follow up
questions, but what you are asking about covers a lot of territory, so maybe
these guides will be a good place to start.
http://www.anandtech.com/guides/index.html

John Sproule

----- Original Message -----
From: "Adam Favre" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2004 3:30 AM
Subject: [PCBUILD] AMD Advice For Noob Building First Project PC


> Greetings all.  I am delving into the world of "build your own" pc's.  I
have been looking at processors at Newegg.com.  Since my focus is gaming, my
understanding is that AMD may be the way to go.
>
> My question: Should I go Athlon 64 or some other route?  This will be a
project machine that I will be jacking around with alot.  I want to try
overclocking.  I want to play games.  I want the frame rates to be decent to
smoking on new and newer games (Far Cry, UT 2004, Doom 3).

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