New workstation suggestions needed

[zephyon]

Hey guys,
I am planning buy a new workstation but I have a few questions about the hardware configurations.

The first system I'm considering is a P4 1.5ghz 1g PC800 rdram with a wildcat 5110.

The other is a Dual P3 1ghz 1g pc800 rdram with Fire GL 2/3?

Which one do you guys think is the better one? Are there any performance different between the Fire GL 2 and 3 besides the dual monitor config.? What about the Fire GL 4?
AMD boards don't support AGPro so Athlons are not my choice.
I really appreciate your suggestions.
Starck

[wtyler]

Yes athlons support AGP Pro... they had wildcats running in amd boxes at siggraph last year. my self built athlon has agp pro.

Either way I'd hold off on the P4. intel is releasing a new p4 class soon with a new slot/socket design... if you go p4 wait until the ddr sdram support comes out.

Rambus is a dead duck.... you'll waste your money on it. Even intell annouced they are moving away from rambus later this year.

[zephyon]

Thanks Oblagon, so I should go for athlons? I have never used any AMDs before, but I've heard a lot incompatiblity issues? What about a 1.2ghz athlon and 1ghz ddr ram with a wildcat 5110? What kind of configuration will be the best for 3D animation?
Thanks for your time.

[mnhan32]

I'm going to jump in here w/ a few words

Athlons are really nice...I have one at home that works well. I also have a dual processor system which works better for my needs. My dual machine serves as an animation, video, office, and personal workstation machine so I do a lot of things at the same time so dual processors make it work quite nice. If you are going to be concentrating on just doing a few things on it then an Athlon is real nice. I've never had any incompatability problems w/ them yet.

FYI: If you go for the PIV - Intel is doing two cuts on the chip prices b/c they didn't sell to well yet. One was over the weekend and I believe the next is in two weeks so you might want to wait and watch those prices.

Hope that helps

[lapdog100]

If you go with an Athlon, be careful about DDR memory. IMHO your better off getting high quality PC133 memory and tweaking the memory performance. DDR doesn't seem worth the price yet and the 266 chipsets have been disappointing. I went through this debate myself very recently. I went with a dual PIII 1ghz, 1gig Ram (Crucial CL2 PC133) and a Fire GL2. I've been very happy with the system. As always, YMMV.

Hope this helps,
Paul

[jandrew]

If you go for a Dual PIII, skip the Rambus.. same deal as DDR with the Athlons (for now)

Sean

[titof2]

DDR for athlons really doesnt cost much more and there is a speed increase, there are just several things yuo need to make sure of.
1: get an amd 760 based motherboard
2: get pc2100 ddr from crucial.com (115$ for 256mb pc2100, pc133 cas2 is only 7$ cheaper so price is really not a factor)
3: since you are getting a 760 based motherboard which supports a 266mhz fsb make sure you get an athlon that has a 266fsb that will help performance even more.

for the motherboard i would reccomend the asus a7m266 has agp pro as well.

the downside of ddr is most boards only have 2 slots, and i am not sure of any 512 pc2100 modules exist so you would be limmited to 512mb of ram and that may not cut it for you.

I was waiting for the amd 760mp chipset to come out and it never did so i got dual 933 intels with pc133 its very nice but i am waiting for dual 1.5 amds, i would stay away from the p4 rdram is expensive and the performace of amd chips sdram or ddr are better if you want to stay on the single proc route.
nick

[lovedoctor]

NICK..........do you regret getting the dual set up....???? I've heard that there is not that much performance gain......what do you think from your personal experience???

[knucks922]

If your application is multi-threaded go with a dual PIII and a Wildcat 5110. If you're willing to wait then hold out for the dual P4...the Wildcats are optimized for them.
My 2.3 cents

Jerry

[jandrew]

DDR is still almost twice the price of SDRAM in Canada...multiply by 63% for the US$ value..

$135 256MB PC133 133MHz SDRAM 168pin DIMM (Micron/Infineon)
$385 512MB PC133 133MHz SDRAM 168pin DIMM (Registered)
$245 256MB PC2100 266Mhz 184pin DDR

When PC3200 (is that the right number?) supporting motherboards (300MHz) hit the market, DDR will much improved over its current incarnation. The other uncertainty is the stability of boards - look at the results of the KT266 chipset. Mind you, it looks like Via is getting a lot of unstable-mobo flack lately, with that KT133A flaw..
Sean

[zephyon]

Thank you guys, for all your valuable suggestions.
I am waiting to see the price of Pentium 4 since I've heard they're gonna have a dramatic price drop within this month. I've also checked that RDRAM is way cheaper now, so I might go for the rdram p4 setup. Really a dilemma, lotsa people telling me P4 is a no go......well anyways, really appreciate all your help
Starck

[jandrew]

Pentium 1.7GHz chip is listing at something like $300-$350 when it hits the street - pretty amazing, but of course you spend all the extra cash on having a large sum of RIMMs.. remember the pairs rules again.. you can't just buy one 256 and one 128...

Please buy one, so you can benchmark and tell us about your experiences to compare to the rest of the cpu's running for people on this board!

Sean