I want to upgrade my computer mainly for when I play Winamp. I have a 650 athlon k7 and winamp takes forever to load and when I do a search for a song in the media library the CPU load is at 100 percent makeing the search last a few seconds. I also can't use the fancy video effects because it's to much on the CPU. If I upgraded, would it make it any faster if I upgraded with Athlon 64 1.8 GHZ instead of an athlon XP 1.8 GHZ? I know that a RAID system would make if faster also, but I can't afford one of those.... instead I am focusing on less CPU drain with the IDE devices on top of Winamp running with out any lag. I recently built a computer for my boss which was an Athlon XP 1.8 Ghz and it still had a good amount of lag on it(at least to much for my taste). But since the Winamp software is 32 bit running on a 32 bit OS(Windows XP), would it of made any difference if it would of been Athlon 64 1.8 Ghz?

Thanks,
-Darin

I don't think you'll see much (if any) improvement since Windows XP is a 32 bit OS so it won't take advantage of a 64 bit processor. Microsoft says 64 bits windows will be arriving this year, but that's what they said last year and the year before that too.

So I'd go with the Athlon XP, I think.

The Athlon64 will be faster than the AthlonXP at the same frequency. Not because of the 64bits extensions, but because it is more efficient.

Athlon 64 also has the advantage of hypertransport, which I think just means there are separate busses out of the chip for memory and everything else. I think athlon xp (as well as p4) have 1 data bus coming out to a bridge chip that splits out memory, PCI, and AGP. I'm not positive on all the details, but thats the gist of what came from a google search on hypertransport.

For total 32 bit performance it is probably best to go with AMD's model rating rather than debating whether the same actual clock speed is better on a 64 than a athlon xp. That should, in a gross way, take all this into account.

I think it's really funny that this is about which high end processor is fast enough to run winamp.

edit: Don't forget what are often bigger performance limiters... make sure your drives are running with DMA if they can, and have enough memory. Also, if you are looking for graphic effects, avoid "integrated graphics" which use up some of your main memory and clog the memory bus with traffic that could be contained on a separate graphics card.

The Athlon64 will be quicker and will feel more responsive.

Although perhaps you should be thinking about using an audio player that doesn't place quite as much demand on the CPU if you really find Winamp that laggy.

You're confusing things.
Now, first, a Athlon64 2800+ will beat the pants off of a XP 2200+ (or 2500+, for that matter), plain and simple.
It has nothing to do with the 64-bit marketting, though.

RAID will not be faster at a decent cost.
RAID 0 will increase total bandwidth, but not seek time, and would be stupid for anyone with data they care even the slightest bit about.
RAID 1 adds no speed.
RAID 10 or 0+1 adds speed and redundancy, but needs 4 drives.
nVidia RAID or Matrix RAID will be balanced in redundancy and speed, but need two drives, still, and not transfer between PCs--so if the mobo dies, you'll need another of the same chipset to recover data. Ouch.
RAID 5 offers outstanding read speed, but slow as death writing.
Lastly, the CPU overhead of IDE devices is negligible.

Winamp loading takes forever if you have the modern skins enabled. Period. It takes too long on any machine w/o classic skins.

If the media library search eats CPU and RAM, the Athlon64 will eat anything else for breakfast when it comes to speed, save a Pentium-M.
If the media library search eats the HDD up, just using CPU due to coding issues, then a Raptor will do far more good than a new CPU, or [R]AID 0 (2xbandwidth != 0.5xlatency). Not using WInamp, I don't know your config, and I have never used a media library.

For visulizations, most newer visualizations need a decent video card, and are not terribly dependent on CPU power.

Clock for clock an Athlon64 is a little faster then a Barton core (or any previous core) Athlon XP. LIke a number of people have said, this is not due to the 64bit extensions (which will essentially only allow for greater amounts of RAM) btu due to architectural changes in the Athlon64. Despite the core elements of an Athlon64 and a Athlon XP processor being the same, efficiency has been increased.

HyperTransport is simply a way to connect the CPU to the North/South Bridge (or the single bridge on nForce based motherboards). It runs at 1000MHz on newer motherboards and 800MHz on older ones.

RAID5 is not particularly slow at writing provided that you use at least 4 drives (eight drives is really good!!) and you use a RAID controller that has a hardware parity calculator (usually via a RISC processor). Software RAID5 will be very slow.

K33lper: the 64-bit extensions do not allow for greater amounts of RAM than can currently be used (The E0 looks to be able to do 64GB at full speed, though), though will make more RAM use faster, and up to about 1TB native (40-bit, IIRC). The x86-64 stuff is largely about adding registers and managing them and other parts of the CPU a bit better. So there are real advantages at any amount of RAM.

RAID 5 is slower at writing than 10 or 0+1, no matter how it is done. It's not slow for non-DB use on SCSI, by any means (though is on ATA). More drive activity makes it take quite a bit longer. Great for cost-effective (and physical space, too) redundancy, though. Hardly useful for a home PC that needs an upgrade to use Winamp .

The only reason I can see to buy an Athlon XP is to save money.
The XP line is agressively being phased out.
If there is such a thing as futureproofing, socket 939 is clearly the way to go. You can always drop a faster chip in later when you have more money. Socket A is dead, long live AMD.

going "64 bit" can mean either 64 bit data paths or 64 bit memory addressing.. or both.
64 bit data is a natural next step from 32 as it is twice as much at a time.

64 bit address, from a necessity point of view, is more of a stretch since each extra bit gives you twice as much addressable memory. Historically various processor families did not jump straight from 16 to 32. Intel dallied at 20 and motorola at 24. The honkingest computer I've used could fit all its memory (~750 GB) into 40 bits of address.

Anyhow, my athlon 64's manual says its still limited to 2 GB. I don't know if that's a limitation of the motherboard and using legacy PC memory modules.

Yeah...probably something to do with having four sockets to support, when the originally planned on three.
This is often flawed, as the money saved on s754 gets you better performance right now, and it is somewhat rare to upgrade CPUs and not go for a new mobo, except maybe if you're a corporate goon, or if the performance in various media encoding apps is a big issue, in which case the dual-channel RAM really does help out. This could especially be true with PCI-E coming out now.
Mine is still kicking (and screaming, and clawing) , and I'm using a slot A PC right now. Go price/performance of Athlons.

DonP: the limit is about the cores and slots.
Core, chipset, and motherboard. The first ones out wouldn't do more than 1 at full speed, though many well-known MBs let you tell it otherwise, and it usually worked (but of course AMD won't be supporting "usually"). The current ones handle 2, sometimes 3 (only 2 for the s939, as consumer boards don't come w/ more than 4 slots--2 per channel). The limit in space has to do with motherboard BIOSes and something with the physical DIMMs and the density of the chips. Beyond the basics of it, it's over my head, except to say that the consumer boards only do up 1GB modules, and server ones up 2GB (though it should soon be 4GB).

Now if only Intel would start giving us Pentium-M based desktop CPUs and compete a bit, this stuff could get cheaper for us...

Ah, so I was wrong.

Anyone had any problems with compatibility and stability in 32 bit mode? Or do they just run as well as the XPs?

Just out of interest, we have an Athlon 64 3400+ running 64-bit Fedora Core 2 here and did a few benchmarks comparing it with a P4 2.8 GHz with HT. I used the Intel 8 compiler to compile in 32 bit mode and switched on SSE2 using -xW (but didn't use -march=pentium4 since that would probably favour the P4). The Athlon 64 was only very slightly faster than the P4 but not substantially.

My post may have been too short and taken too literally.
I still run an Athlon XP 1700+ and 2500+ Barton. They are quite lively and perform well.
For someone buying new, I would not recommend anything less than socket 754, or 969 with PCI-Express, if at all possible.
While the P4 may not currently hold the bulk of the performance crowns, it is still a solid chip. My only beef with Intel is their pricing.
If price is the key point, a Barton core and Nforce2 chipset will satisfy many. I would not recommend this for a gaming system.

Price isn't so bad on the P4s now (not compared to s939, that is), but the heat is, and will only get worse until a Pentium-M derivative comes to mainstream desktops.

QuantumKnot: it won't be faster at everything. There are many things (though compiling is the antithesis of this--I can only get GCC for benchmarks, though) for which raw clock speed, aided by HT, will gove a performance boost. While video encoding has now been designed around the P4, it took that crown before that, and would likely maintain it w/o optomizations. Also, the P4 isn't bad...just not as good for the money or power (or RAM cost, if going for PCI-E), and this time AMD and the chipset makers got things right the first time around, unlike with slot-A and socket-A. The 9+ month delay on the Hammer didn't end up too bad in that light.

One benefit of the AMD64 (and XP SP2) is that there is an option to switch off program execution in data memory, as used by all viruses / XP exploits that use a buffer overrun.

The newer P4s have that too. But i agree that - even with Intel's unrivaled chipset stability - an A64 is more reasonable at the moment, primarily because of power consumption and cooling factors. I would never buy an Athlon XP nowadays, except for an absolute low-budget machine.

>, primarily because of power consumption and cooling factors.

Indeed - amd have some thing called 'cool N quiet' which halves the CPU clock and lowers the CPU voltage when the CPU is not being loaded (sits at around 28 degrees). I have just built up a system with passive cooled PSU, passive cooled CPU heatsink (is 0.5 Kg!) you cannot tell the system is on sitting 1 metre away.

I upgraded from an T-Bird 650 Slot A 320MB PC100 system to an Asus A8V SE Deluxe (Socket 754)+ A64 2800+ 512MB DDR4000 after Christmas.

It's much snapper and fb2k track listing when doing random just pops up instantly, (my 650 would list the tracks quickly, but you could see the delay in formating each track entry).

I haven't had any problems running it in 32-bit mode. The one thing I like best about it is how amazingly cool is it. Right now my cpu is 38C and my case temp is 39C, (I have 3 7200rpm hds, cd-rw, dvd+/-rw). The room temp is about 37C.
The Asus board has a feature called Q-Fan, which when I tried it, it basicly turns off your cpu fan until it hits 50C.

The built-in Analog Devices/SoundMAX 5.1 sound card is passably ok, it pops and breaks a little bit anytime a program queries it. Looking at each of the fb2k output plugin property pages for example. But the overall sound quality is ok, it does sound much better in games vs. my old SB AWE64 ISA (I'll miss you ).

Ripping CDs at 28x to FLAC is sort of cool.

What the... where do you live, Death Valley?

Opps, I think my F to C conversion was off there, it was about 90F in my room. It's closed up with my computer so it gets a bit hot. Outside the temp was about 60-70F so it _should_ have been much cooler.

BTW Our weather here is wacky. Monday we had low of 26F, today we had a high of 75F, Saturdays low is supposed to be 54F, and then Monday it's back down to 25F.

Hmm...we've been swinging between 50F and... right now it is about -14F.
If my A64 *were* to run hot, there is a quick fix called the window.