Final 939 upgrade

[chrisbrown]

Hello chaps, wouldn't mind a bit of advice on this.

I'm starting to multitask a lot more than i used to now and i can really see my pc starting to get bogged down, so i thought perhaps it was time to go dual-core. I know a c2d system would be the ideal way to go, but frankly i can't afford it, and i cant see myself doing a full upgrade for at least 2 years (at uni - skint).

I've recently got some tax back and with opteron 165s at ~£100 i'm pretty tempted. Current system is:

Athlon 3700 (stable at 2.9 but generally run at 2.5)
Asus A8N-E
Arctic Freezer 64
2Gb Corsair Value DDR
Sapphire x1800xt 256mb
Seagate 250Gb 7200.9
Hiper Type-R 480W

I don't game as much as i used to.

Firstly, do you reckon it's worth the upgrade?
And secondly would i have a problem with needing a high FSB with the 9x multiplier on my mobo? (opty 170 is about £25 more)

 

[m25]

Only make sure your motherboard overclocks to high HTT numbers because the 165 has a multi of only 9X; the 175 and up are much more comfortable to OC.

 

[ajfink]

The A8N-E is a good board. I own one in my 3500+ rig at home. Is that 2GB of RAM DDR400?

You can easily drop a 165 or 170 in there and OC it to 2.6 or 2.8 on stock air, it gets done all the time. Good luck.

 

[ethel]

1) Definitely worth the upgrade, as multicore just feels so much more better in Windows
2) You may hit the FSB limit before you hit the Opteron's limit, but it's touch and go. 165 and 170 are very similarly binned, so if you're lucky to get a good one, you can take the 170 much higher than the 165 - but if you're unlucky they will do about the same. Personally for £25 I'd go for it (and I've got a 165).