3700+ or 3800+?

I would go with the 3700.

3700+, and if you can afford it, a $60 hsf

ur gonna see this alot, and theres a reason why its so, but if ur even considering ocing, look into the opteron over the x2.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that the interactive charts actually show the 3800+ Venice consistantly outperforming the 3700+ San Diego. I've always found it a fallacy that having double the cache means a 200MHz equivalent boost. It does boost performance, but only in specific cases. A real 200MHz increase in clock speed gives a more consistant increase across the board. It's always been my opinion that the doubled cache should be marketed as giving a 100MHz overall boost making the 2.2GHz San Diego the 3600+. Of course, with that type of marketing people wouldn't be so inclined to get a San Diego over a higher clocked Venice.

Regardless, if you don't plan on overclocking then the 3800+ would be faster if you can afford the difference. However, if you are overclocking the 3700+ would be the better choice since you can easily make up the clock speed difference yet still have the benefit of the larger cache.

Hey for 14 bucks go for this,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103562

Heat sink fan this,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6835185125

Out if these two You should go for a 3700+ 2.2GHz because it has a 1MB L2 cache and the San Diego core which is the same core as the FX57 and for gaming it is only 10 or less FPS slower.

The 3800 2.4GHz only has 512KB L2 cache


Also consider the AMD Opteron 148 San Diego 2.2GHz 1MB Cache which is a very good CPU and the same price as the 3700 and OC's better. If i was you i would go for this one. It also has 939 socket

Beware of the Dual Core Jump! I now use mine with the Affinity setting set to just a single CPU. Nice! (I just want to play TWR)

What some customers and PC builders have found is that single core applications have major problems with Dual Core set ups. This is massively manifested in lagging frames, even though the user has the best components and graphics card possible.

I like AMD - that's why I bought AMD. The Intel dual core offering is not clearly as well though out. But the main problem from all of this is the OS itself. XP seems to take dual core on the face of it, but when you get performance degradation due to lack of dual core support, its a tad disappointing!!!

Heres one MS article:

http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?id=896256

Thanks for all the input guys. Especially you jonno because your post was big and easy to read

if you are talking about the 3800 X2 then go with that if your not OCing.cause it performs nice for the price and is future proof for those games that are going to run in dual core