Which CPU for value/speed and upgradeability???

[Cane1992]

I was leaning towards the AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+

Any thoughts?

Have to upgrade now that my old ABIT w/P4 2.8 died.

 

[SidVicious]

I sifted through a few of your old posts, you had 1GB of PC-4000 and a 9800, right ?

Here is a cheap upgrade you might be interested in since you seemed to be on a tight budget :

Asrock 775Dual-VSTA $56

E6300 $183
or
E6400 $227

This would allow you to keep both your memory and video card while having an upgrade path to PCIe and DDR2 as your budget allows it.

 

[AddictiveHerring]

If you are even mildy interested in overclockin, or have a friend who can help, an e63 or 64 (C2D) will kick your ass

my e6400 booted straight up to 3.2 g with a 1600 fsb paired with two Gig sticks of ddr II 800 perfect 1:1 16 second super pi 1.1 1million kicking even the X6800 right now. Barely even bumped the voltage, idles at a cool 28 on air. TT big Typhoon though.

 

[Cane1992]

Sid...

Some good stuff there thanks. Never heard of Asrock but the features and price looks sweet. I will consider...

 

[nategarst]

Sid...

Some good stuff there thanks. Never heard of Asrock but the features and price looks sweet. I will consider...

I have used one of their boards in the past(939 socket) and had no problems with it what so ever. Good price for the products and great upgrade paths for future purchases you may make.

 

[Doughbuy]

There have been some reviews on Asrock, its a spin-off of Asus, kinda like Thermalright and Thermaltake... but anyways, they make a good budget mobo. It'll work fine, probably not the best OC, but decent enough for the price.

 

[melarcky]

why do you guys Over clock your new C2D cpu's? are they not good enough? i mean what do you get extra from it when you Over Clock it? its understandable if you have a 2200+sempron and you need a little more power... i dont get it?

 

[AddictiveHerring]

An E6400 isn't that powerfull, I mean it is a great chip, but if you look at cpu benchmarks with that use games as benchmarks, you will see that an x6800 gets significantly more frames in some configurations. Because often times your cpu is actually bottlenecking your gpu. I chose to overclock for several reason, one of which is that overclocking my fsb to 400, allows me to uwse my DDR II 800 in 1:1 which eliminated that ram load slow down entirely in source games. Coincidentally overclocking the fsb increased the clock a lot. I could have dropped the multiplier, but since it actually is damaging nothing to run it faster, why not?

 

[melarcky]

yes but from what i am hearing now.. is the E6400 stock good? is it as good as a AM2 x2 3800+ stock?

 

[AddictiveHerring]

I think it might be better actually I could b ewrong however, but my poin is an x2 3800 would bottleneck my gpu