Processor vs video card (not in general)

Which is better?

Total Votes:

[ 0 ]

This poll closed on March 22, 2005.
No longer accepting new votes.

[MasterStrife]

i am gonna buy a new laptop, i have two choices, a Pentium4(2.8GHz) with a Radeon 9000(128 mb) and a Athlon64(2.4GHz) with a GeForce4 Go(64mb)...

i know that the second choice has lower specs but the Athlon has 64 bits so it makes it faster than the P4... i like to have a A64 with the Athlon but they dont have any laptop compatible with each other...

which do you recomend? the better processor or the better videocard? i will be using this for internet, MS word, exel, etc. and games(the newest ones)...

please help me out here...

[Twistex]

If you're going for gaming, I wouldn't get either laptop, personally. I'd go for one that's pushing a newer chipset on the videocards.

But, since those are your choices and you don't have any further information on the video chipsets, I'd snag the p4. The extra ram will come in handy for texturing.

[Sargentwhitey]

I'll agree with Twisty here, although I'm AMD SUPERFANBOI #1 razz I'd go for the P4 with the Radeon 9000 (and no this has nothing to do with my ATi Fanboyism either wink )

[Amdkillsintel]

I say the AMD is better

[Midnight Jester]

Amdkillsintel

I say the AMD is better

well, thats just because you don't know what you are talking about.

[Tweong]

I would also have to agree with Twist in saying get neither. But out of those two choices, the P4. Why? The video card is better and you said you will want to play the newest games so...

[Zio the Black Magician]

Emi Ayanami

Amdkillsintel

I say the AMD is better

well, thats just because you don't know what you are talking about.

Huh? I thought you were an AMD fan, Emi.

Anyway, I have an AMD64 laptop and it seems to run games quite well. That new Half-Life part 2 game runs pretty smoothly on it, I haven't noticed any slowdown or crashing. Then again, I play games about as often as Marlon Brando does pilates, so who am I to talk?

Anyway, AMD has a more efficient chip architecture and most programmers swear by an AMD chip's number-crunching potential. I won't lie-I like AMD because I dislike the Intel/Microsoft partnership, but since I got my AMD64 box, I have also noticed legitimate performance benefits over Pentium chips (and I use a P4 at work).

As for video cards, I'm really sorry, but I can't advise you too much there. My only insight into that is a pseudo-political one: N-vidia supports Linux while ATI does not. Naturally I'd go for an N-vidia card. Have you tried checking Tom's Hardware? They usually have pretty detailed reviews.

[Alelissa]

beond a 1GHz Processor, it nolonger matters which is better, because it nolonger becomes the bottleneck in such a system.

now the GF4 series is a good series, but it's older, and everyone knows the 9x series was a winner.

but in saying that, the 9000 is the slowest of the 9x range, and if the GF4 happens to be a Ti, then the GF4 will beat the 9000 in everything(by a healthy margen) except AA and filtering, where is will crash harder and preform worse than the already substandard FX does compared to the 9000.


so if you want large res(like your laptop typically does) then the GF4 may just be better.

if you want a lower res but all your AA and filtering, then the 9000 will be faster at that (but still slow)

[[Broken Hope]]

Alelissa

beond a 1GHz Processor, it nolonger matters which is better, because it nolonger becomes the bottleneck in such a system.

now the GF4 series is a good series, but it's older, and everyone knows the 9x series was a winner.

but in saying that, the 9000 is the slowest of the 9x range, and if the GF4 happens to be a Ti, then the GF4 will beat the 9000 in everything(by a healthy margen) except AA and filtering, where is will crash harder and preform worse than the already substandard FX does compared to the 9000.


so if you want large res(like your laptop typically does) then the GF4 may just be better.

if you want a lower res but all your AA and filtering, then the 9000 will be faster at that (but still slow)

The 9000 is a crippled 8500, it uses super sample AA and only bilinear anisotropic filtering.

If anything the Geforce 4 would have better quality, since it uses multi sample AA and trilinear anisotropic filtering. The only downside with the Geforce is the fact it only has 64MB of ram.

[Alelissa]

i didnt mention quality, i just said it'd be faster, much faster when using said options.

and yes i know it's a crippled 8500.

personally i'd take a Ti, as i prefer a higher resolution rather than AA and filtering, unless i can have both.

plus being a laptop, it's preferred to run your LCD at it's default res.

and without using the AA and filtering, you more than half your mem requirements

[[Broken Hope]]

Alelissa

i didnt mention quality, i just said it'd be faster, much faster when using said options.

and yes i know it's a crippled 8500.

personally i'd take a Ti, as i prefer a higher resolution rather than AA and filtering, unless i can have both.

plus being a laptop, it's preferred to run your LCD at it's default res.

and without using the AA and filtering, you more than half your mem requirements

super sampling is much slower than multi sampling, besides, the 9000 isn't much faster, in fact it's much slower than the geforce 4

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/200207181/radeon9000-08.html

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/200207181/radeon9000-10.html#fsaa

[Josef Meixner]

Alelissa

i didnt mention quality, i just said it'd be faster, much faster when using said options.

and yes i know it's a crippled 8500.

personally i'd take a Ti, as i prefer a higher resolution rather than AA and filtering, unless i can have both.

plus being a laptop, it's preferred to run your LCD at it's default res.

and without using the AA and filtering, you more than half your mem requirements

As I don't know it, how does that apply to the laptop series. I always thought, that they switch off quite some components and under clock the chips. So the balance between the chips might be different.

But I would also go for the P4, because for the intended use the 64 bit will be worthless. I don't think, that the 64MB against the 128MB really are a big problem, as most games probably never even fill the 64MB.

[Twistex]

Yeah, the radeon is slower than teh geforce. I'd still go with it. One, adressing 64/128Mb of ram onbaord for video, I'd hedge my bets with 128Mb being more capable to handle texturing. I'm traditionally an AMD fan, but I've been hearing about heat issues with the a64 and laptops. However, I still wouldn't buy either laptop for gaming. Sure, they're fast proc wise, but that's still not addressing the fact that he's DX9 crippled, and since he plans on playing the (newest) games, that's going to be a factor.

[Darkphantom]

Hahah I actually Have the AMD 64 laptop that has those excat specs. Geforce go5700

and a friend of mine has the P4 version with the Radeon 9100

In terms of performance there is nary a diffrence between them.

His runs ALOT hotter. put out more than the radiator next to us did.
and mine missed a frame or so whitch was barly noticable every 30 secs or so (whitch might be due to my piss poor driver update skills) and that was the worst of the lag. I didn't see anything majorly noitcable on his but I wasn't paying attention.

The game we were playing was prince of persia sands of time. sadly I didn't get round to taking offical benchmarks but next time I will watch this space ^^

if anyone can recommend an arbitary neutral benchmark tool That would be helpful

[[Broken Hope]]

Darkphantom

Hahah I actually Have the AMD 64 laptop that has those excat specs. Geforce go5700

and a friend of mine has the P4 version with the Radeon 9100

In terms of performance there is nary a diffrence between them.

His runs ALOT hotter. put out more than the radiator next to us did.
and mine missed a frame or so whitch was barly noticable every 30 secs or so (whitch might be due to my piss poor driver update skills) and that was the worst of the lag. I didn't see anything majorly noitcable on his but I wasn't paying attention.

The game we were playing was prince of persia sands of time. sadly I didn't get round to taking offical benchmarks but next time I will watch this space ^^

if anyone can recommend an arbitary neutral benchmark tool That would be helpful

3Dmark2001 is a good overall system benchmark.