Last Upgrade for 939

[kiddagoat]

I am thinking about doing a last upgrade to my 939 system.

I am currently running:
Vista Ultimate
AMD +3700
2GB Kingston HyperX DDR400 (2-3-2-6)
80GB WD Caviar
2x 250GB Seagate
MSI Neo4-F
ASUS EN7600GT

What I am considering:
Opteron 175/180
Another 2GB Kingston HyperX DDR400
8800GTS/GTX (Depends how much I have left)
New Power Supply

Thoughts comments?? I am thinking 4GB RAM would be overkill because this is an everyday use machine and I mostly game with it. I am starting to do some video/multimedia.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

I went from a 3700 to a 185 opty, its nice, faster and no lags. Gaming wise, its better with a higher end gpu. Made my gaming a lil better, and other apps running with dual core doesnt slow it down. As for 4 gigs of ram, stick with 2 gigs, as this is all youll need, unless you run xp64 or vista64. The 32 bit versions can only address 3+ gigs anyways. 2 gigs is the sweet spot for xp. The GTS is a fine card, and of course the GTX will own anything you throw at it. Make sure you have a good psu to handle either one. Also, depending on res, youll want the GTS640 at 16x10 or higher. The reason I say 16x10 is that newer games will demand more from your gpu, currently the 320GTS handles most everything including up to 16x10 res, but a lil future proofing would be worth it IMO. Hope this advice saves you the coin for the GTX, its a screamer

 

[JamieMole]

If i were in your position i'd seriously consider upgrading to Windows XP Professional SP2. It seems to really boost your FPS on lower end cards from "crap" to kinda good.

 

[double_helix]

I upgraded from a AMD64 3000+ Winchester to an AMD Opteron 180, best upgrade decision I've made in a while! Definately an increase in performance and I can play music in the background while playing World of Warcraft or F.E.A.R with ease. Can't say for the RAM though, as I'm still using Windows XP Pro SP2 and not Vista Ultimate - not till at least SP1 comes out!

Anyways, I'm only running 2x512 Corsair valueSELECT RAM but thinking about going with a set of high performace 2x1024 G.Skill to get away from using the pagefile and for ease of overclocking in the future. Any other recommendations on DDR RAM for an Opteron would be appreciated!

 

[HA_ZEE]

Jaydeejohn said it right. Either the 175, 180 or 185 would be excellent choices for an upgrade. Do not bump your ram to 4 gig. Your system may not recognize all 4 gigabytes so it would be a waste of money.

Aslo to double_helix:
I would look for ram with tight timings (2-2-2-6 or close) as the 939 socket benefits from low ram latencies.

Here is an excellent choice:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227210

 

[Craxbax]

Seems that this is the 4th or 5th thread on this topic in the last 3 weeks. To the OP, everyone has given you good advice and the dual core upgrade will improve things all around. I think that my choice would be to go with the lowest cost s939 and OC it as far as possible rather than spend more on a deadend platform. Forget the additional RAM. Put that $ towards a high quality PSU and or even a GTX. Both of those could be used in a new system when you upgrade platforms. I upgraded from a 3700+ also. It was a nice improvement and more than adequate for anything I do. So with all the speculation over the new technology soon to be release; I feel your modest upgrade is a good choice for now.

 

[trinitron64]

i am in the sameeee position.

I am currently bumping up my memory from 512 x 2 OCZ Plat EL to 1GB x 2 OCZ Plat EL XTC.

I also found a great price on some dual core Optys.... but I can't seem to leave my 3700+ ... the OC is so damn sweet lol ... i fear that if I upgrade to an opty i will not have the same performance for single thread apps...

What do you have your 3700+ OC'd to?

 

[ZOldDude]

Grab an Optron and swap out your ram to DDR1-500 and OC.
All my 146's and the 148's I have delt with have no problems running a 50% OC on stock volts and never get hot with Themalright coolers.

939 is not dead just no new parts for it for the past 7 months.
I would rather have more 939's (Optrons not A64's) than the fastest DDR2 systems.

My 146's with G.Skill DDR1 ram best the fastest Corsair/OCZ DDR2 ram by as much as 1,000MBps in Read/Write/Copy tests.

Moving from DDR2 to DDR3 will show how bad DDR3 is in the same way.

For a PSU....I only use PC Power & Cooling nowdays.

 

[kiddagoat]

Thank you all for your replies, and btw, I am using Vista Ultimate x64. I was assuming that the 4GB would be overkill. I have read some posts on here and some have said that too much RAM is never a bad thing.

Again, thank you for your replies, this community has always been really helpful.

Update: I ordered the 175 today.... never purchased an aftermarket PSU before, what are some good ones?