Ok i don't want to spring for a whole new system at the moment, i have a ecs kn1 extreme mobo with an athlon 64 3200+. i also have an x800xl video card but i want to wait until ati releases there new gpu's to see what to do. i also am running 2x512mb corsaid pc3200 ram so a gig total.
i want to go dual core and get a slightly faster cpu. its the first thing on the list especially seeing as how amd has abandoned a great socket that seemed to have so much life left, and stopped making 939 cpu's. i am leaning towards the X2 3800+ from newegg, mainly because i have heard they are great overclockers. so i thought i could get a little bit more bang for my buck. would this do for now? i will probably do one more gpu update on this computer, but i am not extreme, i always buy the best mid range card i can get for the money. i'm hoping that ati will have a better midrange with there new cards than the recently released ones from nvidia.
i would upgrade to am2 but some people think am2 sockets going to be short lived. but besides that the fact that i would have to buy a new mobo, cpu and ram is more than i want to commit to.
also i am not super informed how alot of these things work with dual core and games that aren't utilized to use it. so will a X2 3800+ be as fast or faster for gaming as my single core 3200+?
The X2 3800+ should suffice especially if you overclock it. Most games are more GPU limited therefore a mid range card will not be able to play all the latest games at high settings. But you probably already know that.
The X800XL is still a pretty decent card. I believe the 7600GT is overall just a bit faster. I think it also trades blows with the X1650XT, but the ultimately the X800XL is still the faster card.
If you are going to upgrade your GPU then you should look at the Radeon X19xx series and the GeForce 79xx series. Anything below those series is not worth the increment increase in performance, or decreased performance for the X1650XT.
also i am not super informed how alot of these things work with dual core and games that aren't utilized to use it. so will a X2 3800+ be as fast or faster for gaming as my single core 3200+?
It depends on if the game is programmed to take advantage of multi-threading and how efficient the coding is. For example, Doom 3 and Quake 4 will see about a 30% - 40% increase in performance when switching from a single to dual core of the same clockspeed. On the other hand Oblivion only sees at most a 10% increase.
For games that are not multi-threaded, you will not see much of an increase if the single and dual core CPU are of the same clockspeed.
the only reason i want to upgrade my gpu is because the x800 series cards didn't even support shader model 3, they only supported sm2. and now the newer cards from nvidia have sm4 i believe. besides that i have really loved my gpu and it runs almost every game i have thrown at it at a playable rate. just haven't gotten to turn hdr because of the lack of sm3.
Well, I don't know what card you intend to buy. If it is the 7600GT then you need to ask yourself if spending $100 - $120 is worth an approximate 10% increase in performance and SM3.
Like I stated before, it's best to upgrade to the X19xx or 79xx series. You know, bang for the buck.
well thats why i thought i would wait to see what kind of midrange cards ati comes out with in the next month or so. you can already get an nvidia 8600gt for $130 on newegg. which is supposed to be close to a 7600 i think but have support for things like the new sm. but i wasn't overly impressed by the midrange nvidia's myself, thats why i thought i would wait a couple months.
i think newegg has a saphire x1950 gt for around $150 for a 512mb version. might go with something like that if ati doesn't impress.
so you all think the cpu would be ok? no slowdowns with games that don't utilize dual core cpu's or any other problems that could pop up?
well thats why i thought i would wait to see what kind of midrange cards ati comes out with in the next month or so. you can already get an nvidia 8600gt for $130 on newegg. which is supposed to be close to a 7600 i think but have support for things like the new sm. but i wasn't overly impressed by the midrange nvidia's myself, thats why i thought i would wait a couple months.
i think newegg has a saphire x1950 gt for around $150 for a 512mb version. might go with something like that if ati doesn't impress.
so you all think the cpu would be ok? no slowdowns with games that don't utilize dual core cpu's or any other problems that could pop up?
I'm in a similar boat as you. I've been running a 939 system for almost 2 1/2 years and I'm itching to upgrade but can't bring myself to build a new machine yet. I started upgrading with RAM (now 2gb) and a 7900gs. I've just ordered an x2 3800+, which, while it's a step down per-core from my 4000+, I expect will perform better overall simply because I always have more than one thing running at a time. With prices being what they are, I'd say the upgrade from 3200+ to x2 3800+ is a no-brainer.
for ~$125 right now you can get an X1900GT or for ~$135 you can get an X1950GT both of which I hear overclock well. Those both will give you a good FPS boost in all games, support SM3 and are just the best for the price. Go with 3800 X2, but it won't really outperform your 3200+ in games until it's overclocked because it comes at the same speed and most games don't support dual core yet. If you want to save money just upgrade the video card first and OC your 3200+, they also OC pretty well.
AMD screwed socket 939 users by not providing a decent upgrade chip. The 3800+ x2 939 is crap. Where are the 6000+ 939 chips? If you upgrade to AM2, you are going to get screwed again, because the upcoming AM2 chips will need a motherboard that has different voltage settings. So I would stay away from AMD untill they smarten up.
As an alternative, I of course recommend Core 2 Duo for a CPU, but this motherboard below will make your decision to switch to Intel much easier.
Here it is:
This board can use both DDR or DDR2 memory, so you do not have to chuck the old memory. It does AGP and PCIe for maximum flexability. This board can use from a $30 celeron to the latest quad core CPU's, so you got lots of choices. It can even do a modest overclock, though it is by no means an extreme overclocking motherboard. Damn good for $60, with ample upgrade potential! I got one, and I love it!
As for the CPU's, you can get a e4300 as low as $114.50, though I recommend the $168.00 E6320 because of the plentiful 4 meg cache. The 4 meg cache is really nice when you have slower memory in the system, though in reality, DDR400 is only a little slower than DDR2.
So for about $175, the solution I am suggesting will ass kick anything AMD has right now, save the 6000+. And that is with the worst Core2Duo. The E6320 will clean the clock off anything AMD, and there are still better Core 2 Duo chips to choose from! As a bonus, you get to continue to use your perfectly good memory, and you have sweet upgrade potential. So why would you stick with AMD considering the horrid solutions they are offering right now?
AMD screwed socket 939 users by not providing a decent upgrade chip. The 3800+ x2 939 is crap. Where are the 6000+ 939 chips? If you upgrade to AM2, you are going to get screwed again, because the upcoming AM2 chips will need a motherboard that has different voltage settings. So I would stay away from AMD untill they smarten up.
As an alternative, I of course recommend Core 2 Duo for a CPU, but this motherboard below will make your decision to switch to Intel much easier.
Here it is:
This board can use both DDR or DDR2 memory, so you do not have to chuck the old memory. It does AGP and PCIe for maximum flexability. This board can use from a $30 celeron to the latest quad core CPU's, so you got lots of choices. It can even do a modest overclock, though it is by no means an extreme overclocking motherboard. Damn good for $60, with ample upgrade potential! I got one, and I love it!
As for the CPU's, you can get a e4300 as low as $114.50, though I recommend the $168.00 E6320 because of the plentiful 4 meg cache. The 4 meg cache is really nice when you have slower memory in the system, though in reality, DDR400 is only a little slower than DDR2.
So for about $175, the solution I am suggesting will ass kick anything AMD has right now, save the 6000+. And that is with the worst Core2Duo. The E6320 will clean the clock off anything AMD, and there are still better Core 2 Duo chips to choose from! As a bonus, you get to continue to use your perfectly good memory, and you have sweet upgrade potential. So why would you stick with AMD considering the horrid solutions they are offering right now?
intel has screwed the intel users much more since lga 775 was released, try and run a core 2 duo in a board from when 939 came out and tell me what happends? oh wait it wont run it, there have been so many different chips for 775 its not funny amd support the socekt very well by letting you run dual core chips in the early 939 boards unlike intel which you had to buy a new board with the same socket just to run a dual core
You are in the same position as what I was... I've got all the bells and whistles in my current pc, just the cpu was getting a bit tardy, had a huge issue getting hold of a cpu, and settled for an opty 175... I think while you're at it, get the best 939 cpu you can afford at the moment, the rest of the kit will still be able to handle for a while, and you could just replace the gfx at a later stage and maybe whack some extra ram in your pc...
One problem I have about that board is the speed of the x16 PCI-E slot. I've seen a board on Asus with the same chipset and specs and suddenly I found out that the x16 PCI-E slot actually only ran at x4. Now this is very important as there are articles that point out that x16 does have a performance boost over lower pci-e speeds.
Also I do think that the 3800 x2 is not a piece of crap. It is a 'viable,' 'cheap' and quick way to get a bit of a performance boost and dual-core given the op's situation. What you are suggesting is that the OP nearly buy a new set-up. The 3800 x2 I believe would be an adequate hold-off processor, unless of course if you need a ton of speed.
I have a s939 3500+ at the moment, and have been looking to upgrade the proc. The problem is, I can OC my current cpu only to 2.31Ghz from the bios (because Gigabyte, as a company, should be destroyed).
I've been looking at the x2 3800+, but $80 for a slower proc just doesn't sit right with me somehow. Yea, there's another core, but it would still be a 200mhz (likely) decrease in speed. The other option is the x2 4200 for $125, but that's for the same speed proc I have now. Doesn't really seem worth it.
Though I'd love to upgrade, I'll probably just impulsively buy a C2d system one of these days and turn my old rig into an HTPC.
Though it sucks to have to replace the mobo and ram to upgrade the CPU, it almost seems stupid to buy Socket 939 for $80/125 and get worse or the same performance when a 4300 system (P965 Platinum = 120, 2x 1 gig of ram = appx. 100-110, and e4300 = 114.50) would cost 344.50 and with overclocking could offer much greater performance.
The only thing stopping me at the moment is the WAF. In reality, my rig performs fine. Its just the urge to upgrade.
I'd like to get some other opinions on this.
Does dual core (at the same or slower speeds) improve the computing experience, and if so, by how much? (I primarily play games, but also encode and do other things as well)
Would the real world benefits of upgrading to a C2D setup be worth it?
I still love my socket 939 X2 3800+ that I built last year. This has been my last build becasue I'm getting maried later this year and I don't have the cash for a Core Duo system, so I'm making the old gal last as long as I can.
I've upgraded to 2 gigs of Ram from the original 1 gig, and i've changed out the video card a couple of times, now running a 7600 GT.
The heftiest game I run nowadays is Oblivion, with several mods and the Shivering Isles expansion (with the patch -- don't forget the patch or you'll be sorry!).
Even with the added ram and the more-than-decent video card, frame rates were not what I wanted with video settings maxed out. Turning down bloom and other features helped a lot.
But in all honesty, I'm more about game play than pretty pictures. So I mostly play at medium settings and with this setup there's never any stutter, lag or artifacts on the screen at all.
Some games coming out later this year or early next year might be too much for this kind of system, we'll see. My next game purchase will be Bethesda's Fallout 3 -- which is something I've been wanting to play for many years. Since it's based on the Oblivion engine I'm hoping the hardware requirements will be similar and I'll be able to wander the post nuclear holocaust of the Eastern United States as easily as I was able to explore Tamriel.
see from my perspective the cpu's are faster than most need right now. you might slightly bottlekneck your gpu if you have a state of the art one, but if you use anything from an 8800gts or under it seems from what i have heard that you don't lose very much. i don't see the point though. amd will be moving to the am3 socket i belive in the pretty near future, memory will be moving to dd3, and a new faster version of pci express will be coming out that can handle more power in the slot so that you won't possibly have to use extra power connectors for a while with the video cards.
i don't think much of this is happening this year, but it is happening around quarter 1 next year i believe, though i could be wrong. so i don't want to dish out a bunch of money on a system that could be outdated in less than a year, just doesn't make that much sense to me.
My experience was upgrading from a 3000+ to the X2 3800+. So that was a 200 mhz bump UP in speed in addition to the second core.
Short answer to your question. You'll probably be disappointed in moving to a slower dual core if gaming is your main intererest.
The 3800+ overclocks reasonably well though. I had mine at 2.4 ghz just fine on an MSI board, but that forced me to run he Zalman cooler at a higher speed, which made a little more noise (still pretty quiet, but louder than at stock speeds). So I put mine back at stock and just emphasized the video card and ram.
The second core on my system hardly gets any use because I don't do much encoding or file sharing. However, it definitely makes for a more robust system. I've got the antivirus, two adware and spyware checkers and Norton GoBack running in the background. I also use an internet chatting feature often. I can run Skype and Yahoo IM at the same time and pull up my Firefox browser and there's no hang ups or lag or anything like there was (slightly) with the single core.
So, yeah, the dual core makes the system more responsive -- but it won't make your games run faster.
You really can't find the higher clocked 939 cpus anymore, just over priced on ebay. When i finally had the $$ for a major upgrade, the 4800 dried up. Not enough cash for an FX60, i grabbed one of the last 4600s on the Egg. The FX60 sold out everywhere after that. Now the 4400 is a hard find. All thats left are 3800 Toledos.
Opterons are still out there!!
You can find a 2.4ghz opty for $260 or so i think, almost the same as the 4800.
