Buy a $500 FX-53?

[joshuawinslow]

I am looking to upgrade in the near future, but want some advice:

I have recently come across an offer from a gamer who won an Athlon FX-53 at E3 during an America's Army tournament. He tried to sell it on ebay, but got strung along and now is offering it to me for:

$500

I have looked around, and found that the FX-53 is the king of processors. It is not Socket 939, but the Socket 940 performs comparably well.

Now many have warned me that I will be using an architecture (940) that will not be upgradeable like the 939 will be. However, when it comes time in three years to upgrade, I doubt that I will be looking to purchase a 939 processor.

With how powerful the FX-53 is, it will probably be right in the middle of road of all of the future 939 processors. Therefore it would only be a minimal gain to buy a slightly faster 939 processor in 2006 or 2007. I'll probably want whatever is the newest technology then.

What advice would you give me in buying this processor? The one problem is that the processor does not come with any kind of warranty, so if it burns out I'm screwed.

 

[etp777]

boards and ram aren't cheap. Make sure you do the math first to see if it's worth it.

 

[joshuawinslow]

I found a SK8N board for $100 refurbished from Newegg.

I already have 1 gig of twinX Corsair XMS PC-3200 ram (latency 2-3-3-6).

These should be enough to handle the power of the FX-53 right?

So the total package will be $600 for me since I already own the memory.

 

[etp777]

Gotta be registered ECC ram, according to my memory and listing on Newegg.

 

[davemar14]

Correct. You need ECC memory. The new Socket 939 baords don't require ECC memory.

 

[o1die]

Newegg has a refurb socket 939 for $448 in stock. But the boards are pretty expensive, and some dealers are already out of stock.

 

[addiarmadar]

Hmm Id just wait till the dust settles with the PCI express mobos and are released. Should not be long...

Mobile Barton 2500+ @ 2420mhz 11x220 1.7v
Asus A7N8X Dlx 440 FSB
1gb Geil GD pc3500 Dual Channel (2-3-3-6)
Segata 80gb SATA 8.5ms seek
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro to XT(420/730)

 

[joshuawinslow]

In reply to the ECC comment:

are you sure that the XMS Corsair PC-3200 ram isn't gonna be the right stuff? What do I need to check to make sure? Even if it isn't the perfect ram, won't the performance difference be miniscule anyway?

In response to the PCI Express comment:

I am planning to keep my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro AGP however, so that doesn't really allow me to wait around for the PCI Express stuff. Plus I need to upgrade before returning to school, and even if PCI Express makes it out before Sept (which it won't), it will be astronomically priced and hard to get.

 

[endyen]

The perf dif between ECC an non-ECC on a socket 940 is massive. The thing wont run at all with non-ECC

 

[scottchen]

No the socket940 REQUIRES ECC Registered ram, other types of ram CANNOT be used!

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[Zeekfu]

just pencil in eec on the label to the memory and you will be fine. The computer will be fooled by the writing.


:>)

 

[addiarmadar]

Well cant really give a ye or ne on that. I will notice the difference of ecc and non ecc but if you are going to a higher ram then you would not know the difference. Just letting you that socket 939 chips do not require ecc ram.

Mobile Barton 2500+ @ 2420mhz 11x220 1.7v
Asus A7N8X Dlx 440 FSB
1gb Geil GD pc3500 Dual Channel (2-3-3-6)
Segata 80gb SATA 8.5ms seek
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro to XT(420/730)