Socket 939 - DDR2 or DDR 3 Ram

[dcsmax]

I have a socket 939 mobo with AMD 3500+ cpu.

As costs are considerably higher in South Africa I was thinking of upgrading the cpu to a AMD 64 X2. The cpu is also a socket 939 as I gather but is DDR2.

Would I gain any performance by upgrading to the new 64 X 2 cpu but still keeping my old ddr3 ram as oposed to going the ddr2 route? (for ddr2 I would have to upgrade the mobo, and that is out of my budget. Might as well just upgrade everything in that case.)

Any info / advice would be much appreciated. Please don not just teel me to upgrade. At a exchange rate of 11 ZAR to 1 USD this is out of the question.

I need to know the technical pros and cons regarding my possible upgrade.

 

[jimmysmitty]

No S939 CPUs were DDR2. All S939 CPUs were DDR.

The newer Athlon X2s are DDR2 and AM2 socket not 939. There are some S939 Athlon X2s but are still DDR not DDR2 or DDR3. In fact AMD does not have DDR3 until they release AM3 next year.

But upgrading from a Athlon 64 3500 (I am assuming you have a singel core) to a Athlon 64 X2 will benefit you. It will be a bit faster since it has 2 cores compared to one.

 

[o1die]

Amd doesn't have any cpus for ddr3 yet. And socket 939 is ddr only, not ddr2. I would save some more and upgrade to Intel core2 duo. My asrock board has both ddr2 and ddr3 slots.

 

[dcsmax]

Sorry.

YEs, my mobo has ddr ram.

Obviously the faster would be of benefit, but would the non- ddr2 ram (ie ddr ram) not create a bottle neck and therefore nullify any previous gains?

 

[jimmysmitty]

No it wont. The change from DDR to DDR2 for AMD had no gains in performance since the S939 CPUs have a IMC which utilizes the bandwidth very well already.

In fact I think the biggest gains from the switch to DDR2 was about 2% in synthetic benchmarks only. In real world there was no gains.

So to answer it, no DDR will no negate any performance gains by switching just the CPU to a A64 X2.

 

[dcsmax]

Thanks jimmysmitty. Much appreciated.

 

[antiacid]

I ran with an xp 3200+ @3500+ for about a year before getting an x2 4200+ (2.2ghz at 2.4ghz with close to stock voltage). The performance gain is large. I upgraded about 2 years ago and the x2 costed 200$ back then. I'm pretty sure you can find an x2 4200+ s939 for 170$ including shipping nowadays.

here's a pricewatch list:
http://www2.pricewatch.com/cpu/athlon_x2_4200.htm

and the cheapest one available:
http://www.pcprogress.com/product.asp?m1=pw&pid=AMDA64X2-4200CUBOX

For that price though, You're almost better going for a mid-priced C2D and get a new mobo/ram. It'd set you back about 450$ but you'd have quite a lot more to work with. Think about it

 

[jitpublisher]

If anyone can find a socket 939 X2 for sale they are going to be pretty lucky, unless you go for a used one on eBay or something.
I saw that Tiger Direct still has a 2.4Ghz Socket 939 Opteron on their site.
THAT would be the thing to get if you were in the market for a 939 X2.
The Opteron is binned much higher, and will overclock better that an alike X2. If you want to upgrade that s-939 board, no doubt get this if you can order from Tiger, if not look for one in your area.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1649954

 

[TechnologyCoordinator]

I've got my 2.2 ghz S939 Opteron 175 overclocked to 2.51ghz currently on stock air with a minimal voltage increase (and that's not the ceiling, it's just where I wussed out at).

And as the others have said, DDR is your only S939 option. I've got three gigs of RAM in my system. I'm done doing upgrades to my S939 beast (unless those upgrades could go into a new system, such as a GPU). A S939 dual core is still halfway decent, but any modern dual or quad core, AMD or Intel could put my CPU to shame.

 

[maximiza]

I assume the 3500 is a clawhammer core. I had one too then upgraqded to a 4000 san diego core which was a vast improvement. My current is an Opteron 185 whch is almost the max out for the socket. All socket 939 are DDR memory and have a max of 2 cores only. If you have ddr3 ram around I would start thinking of investing in a whole new socket. 993 Sockets are a dead end now.

 

[blackwidow_rsa]

He will be lucky to find a 939 in RSA

 

[Candew]

I have an ASUS A8N-E motherboard. In an effort to ring out as much performance as I could from this aging hardware, I recently upgraded it from an X2 3800+ to the Opteron 180 from Tigerdirect. (2.0 to 2.4 GHz, 512 MB cache to 2 MB cache).

Unfortunately, you really don't have many CPU upgrade options left at this point. I thought myself lucky that I could still find a s939 chip for sale. Grab it while you can.

 

[rodney_ws]

I'm not trying to be a jerk about this, but based on the OP's original question (and the level of experience that implies) I think the OP needs to be very careful when making any hardware purchases.

Perhaps if we were given a budget and the intent of the upgrade, some more concrete ideas would be offered up.

 

[iggybeans]

What type of Socket939 motherboard do you have? Do you know the manufacturer's name, the model, or the chipset it's based on?

 

[dcsmax]

Blackwidow_rsa: I see youre from Cape Town in RSA. Dont know where you get youre info from but I can still find numerous s939 boards locally.

Iggybeans: I have the Asus A8n5X s939 mobo and the AMD Athlon 64 3500+ CPU with the Venice core.

I started the thread as I wanted to know what my budget upgrade options would be. As opposed to a replace all (and Very costly approach).

I had a look at the opteron cpu. Locally I can source an Opteron 150 but at an astronomical cost. 2 536 ZAR (approx. 230 USD). Thats half the cost of a complete upgrade (ram, mobo and cpu)