Processors for Rome

**Nelson** · 09-03-2004, 04:09

Originally Posted by Kagetora

I want a high one that will last many years without upgrade.

Son, you want The Holy Grail.

Alas, that CPU may never appear.

**USMCNJ** · 09-03-2004, 04:18

look into the PCI express motherboards. and see if they are for you first. (in my opinion these motherboards will become more common in the future)

as far as CPU i would go (and did last week) with pentium 4 3.0 Ghz ht technology 800 bus.

i would tell you how it runs, but my hard drive has not come in (and will not come in for another week).

**Red Harvest** · 09-03-2004, 07:12

Well of course PCI Express will become more common in the future. It is designed to replace AGP and Intel is the sponsor. So saying it is likely to become more common in the future is like saying you will be older on your next birthday.

As for right now, I don't trust any early implementation of a new standard. Better to await the 2nd wave (revisions where they fix the problems.) Rather than say it is not unusual to suspect there will be bugs with early systems, I say it is almost certain there will be problems for ealry adopters. That's just the way new tech works. You never want to be in the first wave during an invasion beachhead operation. (My WWII US Marine relatives who stormed the Japanese islands would agree on that.

One was glad he was in the 3rd wave, the first two waves were wiped out, he was "only" badly wounded and sent back to the States.)

PCI Express offers few benefits in the near future, because AGP bandwidth is not utilized that heavily anyway (it is notoriously slow--so software vendors don't utilize it any more than they must.) Think of it as converting an *under-utilized* divided four lane road into an eight lane freeway. Sure, it has more capacity, but how often will it be used?

If you find something that is tested with the graphics card you want, and it works flawlessly in all reviews with that combo, then go for it.

**Kagetora** · 09-03-2004, 08:11

"Red Harvest" I don't suppose you know of any sites that have reports on these tests by any chance?

Anyway, I'll post the specs and opyions to see what you all think later.

**Aymar de Bois Mauri** · 09-04-2004, 16:13

Originally Posted by Kagetora

"Red Harvest" I don't suppose you know of any sites that have reports on these tests by any chance?

Try these sites, they test thouroughly in every situation:

Tom's Hardware Guide

Anandtech

Firing Squad

**Dead Moroz** · 09-03-2004, 08:18

I'm upgrading my computer too (because of RTW

). The game run perfect on my old 1,7GH CPU with new GeForce 5700 256Mb and 1GB DDR.

But I have problem with motherboard. When I install all on my new GigaByte GA-8IG1000 RTW works incorrectly (for example, there is no grass; and I think some other features of full game will be lost). This MB have chipset Intel 865G with onboard VGA. And I suspect that this onboard VGA cause problems with the game. Because everything works correctly when I install all other stuff on other MB. So I gonna change this board to another one without onboard VGA. Kagetora, I recommend you to get MB without onboard video.

About Intel and AMD. I know that Pentium works better with graphic applications (Photoshop, etc.). Therefore I think it should be better for games.

**USMCNJ** · 09-03-2004, 08:28

Red Harvest thanks for your reply.
I was kicking my self after i baught all new parts for a new pc and i found out that the PCI express was moving in.

**Brighdaasa** · 09-03-2004, 10:49

I recently read a review of amd 64 bit processors and comparisons to Intel P4 and P4EE (I believe it was on Anandtech, but can't find it atm). The AMD Athlon64 3000+ offers a lot of bang for your buck, and Asus K8N Neo Platinum is supposed to be a kick-ass mobo. Since you're planning to keep the processor for a while you may even see the first 64-bit applications before you discard the cpu.