rec.autos.simulators

I'm looking to upgrade my old PII.  
For sims like GPL and N4 or N2003, how much difference would I see
between a 2.6 GHz and a 3.0 GHz?  Enough to justify the extra $200 for
the 3.0?

The hyperthreading can help, but not as much as making sure you have a good
vid card as well.  AT LEAST a GF4 Ti4200 or higher.  HT technology on Win2K
Pro or XP Pro can show some real world improvements

If you compare any PII to any modern chip you'll see a big improvement
all-round, and you'll be very happy with the 2.6. If you rarely upgrade I'd
suggest you go for the best *you can afford*. It'll probably need to last
you as long as your PII has, but personally I'd spend the $200 on a better
graphics card since they have a shorter useful life-span.

In the past 5 years or so I've upgraded the CPU three times, but I've had
seven graphics cards in that time. I only tend to upgrade when I need to.

Malc.

Go AMD and save a lot more.
--

Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim messages to quote only relevent text.
Check groups.google.com before asking a question.

Go for an AMD xp2800 runs at xp3400 all day long and then buy the top
graphic card, Ati 9800 Pro would make you a very happy man.

All for less than a 3Ghz Intel with mid range card and faster :)

AD

The difference is very small. Even for pure in-proc operations
that's only 15% difference, in reality overall performance will
often be limited by bottlenecks in other places. Anyway after
overclocking both will probably run about the same speed.

Alex.

Where you live perhaps AMD is cheaper spamtrap.  Where I live (silicon
valley) there is virtually no price difference between AMD and Intel.  If
you compare actual clock speed instead of AMD's "rated" speeds you can
really see what Im talking about.  Intel has an 800MHz FSB and is
Hyperthreaded.  I noticed quite a performance gain going from a 2.53gig
533fsb to a 2.6-800HT.  Of course you need a OS that supports multiple cpu's
(win2k winxp-pro).

AMD is falling behind intel in terms of price/performance ratios.  If youre
on a budget or high performance isnt a pre-requisite then maybe an AMD will
suit but intel has similar.

Mitch

The name is Andrew, as per the .sig.

Except that you *cannot* compare AMD and Intel on clock speeds. The
AMD XP processors are definitely faster than their Intel counterparts.
Intel Processors do start to outstrip the top end Athlon XP's which is
where AMD's naming convention breaks down a bit.

For the XP2500's-XP2800 are great performers and have far better
price/performance ratio.
--

Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim messages to quote only relevent text.
Check groups.google.com before asking a question.

The XP2500+ is a great CPU for the price, above that I'd go for a
P4-"C", probably a 2.4 since it performs about on par with a 2800+
according to most benchmarks, like these

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030521/index.html
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1834&p=1

and costs roughly the same according to Pricewatch, around 165-180
dollars, anything below that and I'd go AMD, but from there and up I'd
go Intel

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy
"goyl at nettx dot no"

http://www.theuspits.com

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--

says...

IMHO no.
Spend the $100-200 extra on a better graphics card, and overclock
your 2.6 to 3.0 :)

There, problem solved.

--
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
ICQ: 138579247