I have a 3500+ Venice core and due to the recent price drops I am looking to upgrade to a 939 x2,

I cannot decide if I am better off going for an x2 3800+ or paying either £35 more for an x2 4200+ or another £70 for a 4600+ when in real terms the only difference is 200Mhz and 400Mhz (or 10% more and 20% more)

I am not really interested in overclocking it, I am not a praticularly big game player either.

Bit like the question should I upgrade my old SB Live! for something newer when I probably will not really notice any difference.

It depends on what power you require/can afford then... Since they are all the same chips, just 200MHz seperates each version... also they can all be overclocked fairly easily from 2.4GHz to 2.6GHz... then performance would be roughly equal...

I wanted the fastest speed, combined with a reasonable overclock for stablity so I got an Opteron 175, the X2-4400 equivlant... and overclock from 2.2GHz to 2.6GHz and use the 11x multiplier and a 5xHT of 1200MHz

I had expected the Opteron to overclock better than the X2 and maybe it does... but 2.70GHz is a wall which I cannot cross even when using 1.55 volts. 2.67GHz is not stable 24/7, but 2.64 is.

I went from a socket 754 3700+ (2.4GHz) to a 939 3500+ similar to yours but a clawhammer. I had too high of hopes about dual channel but I also went from 1MB L2 cache on the 3700 to 512KB as you surely know. The slowdown was very noticable.

OK, enough background. I upgraded that 3500+ to an Opteron 175, effectively an X2 4400. Smoother? Yes indeed. But not really faster. Still running at 2.2GHz but back to 1MB L2 cache per core. Short story long, these procs scale very well. If you upgrade from your 3500 to the 4600, you will see a very noticable performance improvement. So much so that I've an X2 4800 on order since the price cuts (to replace an X2 3800, not my Opty) and am very anxious to receive, install and enjoy some real speed

Yeah, the 3800+ will probably give you the multitasking advantages of dual-core, and still satisfy you powerwise, although it will likely be slower in your current games, but a lot will depend on your graphics card also. But, if you find that your 3500+ is a little low on processing power, than you might want to grab a higher end x2...maybe a 4600+. I would stick with the SB unless you're really into music, and or high-end gaming. GL

Have you OCed it?;It can reach 2.6-2.7 GHz even with air cooling while it's not that easy with dual cores because each core reacts slightly different, never drop a CPU without having squeezed it well.
You boost your performance and in the meantime you can accumulate some +money and get a better upgrade... Not to mention your heart going mad as you increase the FSB

I have tried a little I could not get it stable above 2.4Ghz even dropping the htt and memory dividers. for another reason I replaced my Jeantech 480PSU for a Hiper R580 and yes its now pretty stable at 2.6Ghz,

Thanks to everyone who replied, I have decided to give the 3800+ x2 a whirl, I will try it at the default 2Ghz if I find it sluggish I amy attempt to overclock.

Regards

Jim

Ok, my 3800+ arrived today allong with an Asrock 939sli-esata2 (didnt go with the 939sli32-esata2 as I dont need all the other features that it provides) the old board was removed (939dual sata2) and the new board installed in a matter of minutes, hardest part was cleaning off and replacing the thermal paste from my Freezer pro 64.

XP didnt seem to notice much in the board change, just installed latest amd driver and it is picking up both cores.

As I suspected there seems to be no difference from my old 3500+.

i have just had a quick attempt at an over clock sitting happily at 2.4Ghz Everest even shows it to be a 4600+

Again thanks for averyone that replied