CPU Swap

[dconron]

I currently own a system with an Athlon 64 3500 CPU, 7800GS AGP video card and 3GB of ram. I'm having trouble playing some games I own and I believe it is due to processor and nothing else. My simple queston is, Can I replace my CPU and not have to reinstall everything else? I specifically don't want to reinstall my operating sytem. Window XP, by the way!

 

[CaptRobertApril]

I currently own a system with an Athlon 64 3500 CPU, 7800GS AGP video card and 3GB of ram. I'm having trouble playing some games I own and I believe it is due to processor and nothing else. My simple queston is, Can I replace my CPU and not have to reinstall everything else? I specifically don't want to reinstall my operating sytem. Window XP, by the way!

You should be able to easily swap out the CPU for another of the same socket. Do you have 754? 939? AM2? Now I know that Win XP has this weird ID that it does with the MB which makes swapping HDs a total pain, but as far as I know a CPU swap shouldn't trigger that. Gurus correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[dconron]

Sorry! I didn't mention in my original post. The CPU I have now is a 939 and I would be replacing it with a 939. I have an Abit AV8 mobo. I was just thinking with 939 CPU prices as low as they are, I could get another 6 mos. or so on this system. I'm going to build a Core2, DirectX 10, Windows Vista machine but I want to wait till the bugs are worked out by other, impatient people!

 

[CompuTronix]

Captain Bob is correct. It's a simple chip swap, but you'll have to attend to a few minor software details afterword. It's been a few months since I've done this. Befroe you proceed, there may be a new point-n-click-shortcut for the alphabet soup below, so check out the following link to our friends over at XtremeSystems:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=81429

(1) Download and install amdcpusetup.exe

(2) Download and install WinXPdualcorehotfix.exe

(3) Edit your Bootini file as follows:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer

(4) Edit your Registry as follows:

1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager, New, then click Key.
2. Type Throttle for the new key name.
3. Right-click Throttle, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
4. Type PerfEnablePackageIdle for the value name.
5. Right-click PerfEnablePackageIdle, and then click Modify.
6. In the Value data box, type 1. Make sure that Hexadecimal is selected in the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, and then click OK.

Hope this helps. Good luck and enjoy your new CPU!

 

[jitpublisher]

What 939 socket CPU do you plan to buy? I am asking because your 3500 is no slouch, and I am afraid that you may be somewhat dissappointed in your upgrade. If you are concerned about gaming only, have you checked to make sure of things like no Spyware or too many background programs running? I went from an A64 3200 to a 4600X2, and to tell the absolute truth, not much difference for games. A little, but not much.

If you have lots of background services and programs running, a dual core processor will give you a more noticable improvement.
If your games are already running in a pretty clean environment, then not so much of an improvement will be noticed.

It may be well worth your time to hang onto that cash now, and save it for your future upgrade that will get you what you really want. Have you tried overclocking your 3500, even slightly to see if it makes any noticable difference in the games you are talking about?

If you do go for the upgrade, it's a simple drop-in to change a processor.
No big deal or problems for Windows. You will need to download the AMD dual core optimizer from the AMD website. That is USUALLY all you need to get things up and running smoothly.

 

[TabrisDarkPeace]

The GeForce 7800GS AGP varient is no where near the performance of a 7900 GT / GTX, or 9750 GT card.

We are talking almost half the performance at some resolutions + render settings (FSAA, etc).

Even a 7800 GT isn't considered 'all that fantastic'.

What games are slow, when are they slow, and what resolution + settings do you use ?

My money is on GeForce 7800 GS (AGP varient), and perhaps main-board chipset selection and/or configuration as a whole.

 

[dconron]

I tend to keep a minimal amount of programs running when I'm gaming. I recently got hooked on TitanQuest and that's when my probs started. I have all drivers and BIOS up to date, by the way. I get a lot of freezing/stuttering and I noticed my processor usage diplay (Logitech G15 keyboard} says 100% CPU usage at the same time. The ram usage never gets above 30%. I know it's probably not the best monitoring device, but it does correspond exactly with the problems. I'm not enthusiastic about OC'ing.

 

[halcyon]

Captain Bob is correct. It's a simple chip swap, but you'll have to attend to a few minor software details afterword. It's been a few months since I've done this. Befroe you proceed, there may be a new point-n-click-shortcut for the alphabet soup below, so check out the following link to our friends over at XtremeSystems:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=81429

(1) Download and install amdcpusetup.exe

(2) Download and install WinXPdualcorehotfix.exe

(3) Edit your Bootini file as follows:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer

(4) Edit your Registry as follows:

1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager, New, then click Key.
2. Type Throttle for the new key name.
3. Right-click Throttle, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
4. Type PerfEnablePackageIdle for the value name.
5. Right-click PerfEnablePackageIdle, and then click Modify.
6. In the Value data box, type 1. Make sure that Hexadecimal is selected in the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, and then click OK.

Hope this helps. Good luck and enjoy your new CPU!

This past Tuesday (Dec. 5th) I upgraded from s939 Athlon 64 3200+ to an FX-55 (on an Asus A8N-SLi Premium), just a CPU swap, and didn't have to do anything to the OS for all to appear to be working as prescribed. Yes, obviously I wouldn't need the dualcore hotfix but I don't know if the other steps you've outlined apply either. The overclock I had previously (Asus' AI @ 10% OC) just rolled over to the new processor (now @ 2.86Ghz).

From your quoted post I'm wondering if the steps you've provided are truly necessary or if I'm missing out on some performance stability because I did not take the steps you've outlined above. Clarification may be useful to the OP as well. Thanks.

 

[dconron]

CompuTronix, Are you satisfied with your performance gain?

 

[CaptRobertApril]

Excellent info in this thread. This almost merits a Sticky!

 

[CompuTronix]

As I said, it's been several months since I did my first 939 dual core upgrade, but at the time, I followed through those four steps. As I recall, they were recommended to correct some hesitation issues, for stability, and proper core integration with the OS. Just so you have first hand information, have a look at the XtremeSystems link. As JITPublisher mentioined, perhaps all that's needed is the AMD Dual Core Optimizer, but I know the steps I outlined worked perfectly.

Hope this helps you out.

 

[halcyon]

Thanks. Its good info you've given us! I'm keeping this info for if I replace the FX-55 with an FX-60.

 

[CompuTronix]

CompuTronix, Are you satisfied with your performance gain?

dconron, I'm not sure to what your refering, as I no longer have my AMD rig. When I initially upgraded from an OC'd XP2500, to a 939 X2 3800 OC'd to 2.7Ghz, I had followed through the steps I outlined at that time. Of course, the performance increase was very pleasing.

The next upgrade was a dual core Opteron 170 OC'd to 3.0Ghz (200Mhz faster than an FX-62). As tweaked as that AMD rig was, I couldn't be more delighted with the performance gain that upgrading to my present rig yielded. It's a huge difference. Check out the following THG article:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/08/02/thg_tuning_test/

That article really puts things into perspective.

Hope this helps to answer your questions.

 

[Kurz]

Are you sure you are getting all the background programs?
Under task manager should be a list of services, more than 35 is bloated.
Trust me I used to get hickups when playing BF2, when I cleaned out my services down to 32 from 50ish no more hickups.

Make sure you only disable services that link to a exe different from your OS folder.

Here is a nice guide.
http://www.tweakxp.com/article37051.aspx

*ADVANCED*
A more advanced guide to disable OS services you dont need.
http://www.tweakxp.com/article37057.aspx

A person did a through job of listing which services to keep and which services you can disable
http://forum.tweaks.com/forum/Topic188962-7-1.aspx

 

[CompuTronix]

Not to get off task, but Halcyon, how do you like your Xeon? My computer exists to run Flight Simulator X, which is heavily CPU bound, so I need all the horsepower I can get, because FPS scales with CPU clock. I'm very curious about the Xeon 3070 as a vehicle to reach an OC of 4.0Ghz (400 x 10). What are your thoughts on these C2D Xeons?

 

[halcyon]

Well, I've only had the Xeon up for 5 days but so far so good. It encodes WAV to AAC a lot faster than the Pent D 840 it replaced. ...in iTunes the encoding jumped from 21X to 37X...quite a noticable difference.

 

[Bache]

I currently own a system with an Athlon 64 3500 CPU, 7800GS AGP video card and 3GB of ram. I'm having trouble playing some games I own and I believe it is due to processor and nothing else. My simple queston is, Can I replace my CPU and not have to reinstall everything else? I specifically don't want to reinstall my operating sytem. Window XP, by the way!

Previously all I have done is replace the CPU and nothing else.

It should automatically be recognised.

 

[CompuTronix]

The AMD dual core CPU's being recognized is not a problem. The concerns were in regards to optimization for "hesitation" problems. The Intel dual core CPU's don't require any software tweaking. As noted above, please check out the following link:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=81429

 

[RyanMicah]

Dcon, the system you have should run just about any game just fine. Try a reinstall of windows, and skip the anti-virus software. It's a load of crap. Instead, just be careful about what emails you open. I read somewhere that you can't get viruses from just looking at an email, but clicking links and opening files can give you trouble. To be safe, just don't open anything you don't know. And steer clear of porn sites and chat programs on your gaming computer. Use the old one for that. =)

 

[CaptRobertApril]

And steer clear of porn sites and chat programs on your gaming computer. Use the old one for that. =)

Ah, wiser words were never spoken. :lol: You should always have a separate pr0n PC. With an external HD. And always take the HD with you when you leave the house! :twisted:

 

[dobby]

sounds to me your better off with a new mother board and processors, you dont want to be upgrading into old technology thier going to scrap, ie 939, your better off getting a new mother board while your at it, i reccomend a core 2 duo with a cheapish foxconn motherboard, the cheap e6300 will do the trick fine