CPU Upgrade suggestions ?

[johnmr531]

OK im planning on doing a MAJOR UPGRADE on my system and I would like here some peoples suggestions.

I have a:

Pentium 4 1.9 ghz (crappy willamete core)
512 MB (crapy) Rdram
Geforce 6800 gt running in an AGP 4x slot, upgraded from a radeon 8500.
Intel 850Gb motherboard

My plan is to get:

Athlon 64 3500+ socket 939
1-2 gb of DDR memory
Asus AV8 motherboard
Im keeping my geforce 6800 gt : )

My question is should i get DUAL CHANNEL DDR pc 3200? or regular DDR pc 3200? What benefit does DUAL channel have over regular DDR because from what I can see Dual Channel doesnt have that much benefit. So if anyone has any suggestions on this please tell me.
O and I dont plan on spending alot of money the processor is $350 MOBO is $140 and I would like to spend not much more then 600.

I dont plan on doing this upgrade until the end of the year.

 

[pat]

Dual channel on AMD systems is not that important. I'd rather go with a good socket 754 board and an athlon64 3400+. This cpu perform very good and the 3400+ is not very far from the 3500+.

This, with your current video card can get you enough performance for 2-3 years, and after that, new technology that will appear soon like PCIe,.. will have the time to mature and go down in price. Then you could upgrade again.

What about your HDD? What you saved in going with s754 could be spent on a faster, bigger. Having a fast CPU/video card worth nothing if they always have to wait for the HDD....

Peoples that say that socket 754 is a dead issue are wrong. They'll have enough power for years to come. But that's my opinion and YOUR cash...

So, I would get:
A64 3400+
1 gigs of RAM as 2 is not yet really usefull
A good Socket 754 mobo, but not ASUS. I'll got my Soltek k8an2e-gr soon ...you could check it <A HREF="http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/soltekK8AN2E-GR/index.html" target="_new">here</A>
Something like a Seagate 160Gigs SATA or whatever brand you prefer
And a good PSU, because that is going to draw some power.

-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!

 

[Spitfire_x86]

I recommend:

A64 3400+ (2.4 GHz, 512k L2 cache)
MSI K8N Neo Platinum
1 GB DDR400

------------
<A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86" target="_new">My Website</A>

<A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/myrig.html" target="_new">My Rig</A> & <A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/benchmark.html" target="_new">3DMark score</A>

 

[endyen]

Why not Asus? I just got the K8N-E Deluxe. Did I make a big mistake? Show me. As far as I can tell, it works great. I now have my newcastle 3200+ at 2.42, and it's only 40c, idle, 45c full load.

 

[coylter]

K8N-E look good but they are also expensive from what i remember....

An egg is realy only just liquid chicken.

 

[endyen]

$137. at newegg. Not cheep, but not too expensive. It has 8 drive raid and a second raid, firewire, 8X USB2 okay sound MCP supported Gb lan, etc.

 

[pat]

It is an overpriced board and sometime picky to setup. At newegg, the soltek is 99$ while the Asus is 137$. Sure the Asus has firewire, but how many of us need it? Ok,,it has 6 SATA headers... Does he really need 6 HDs? Oh..and 7.1 sound but... well it is still an onboard solution. It use the Silicon Image RAID controller which is slow while the Soltek use the Promise which served me well since on 2 boards for the last 3 and half years. I dont say that the Asus is a bad board. If yours is running, you'll be good, I guess. But I rather have a board with less stuff all used that one with lot of stuff waiting for being used. Firewire card can be found as low as 12-15$, if I eved need them. And if you are serious about sound, you may just get a good sound card with good speaker. I have 5.1 sound right now with only 2 speakers plugged...well, dont need more for now.

The guy did not post what will be salvaged from his other computer. He say that he want to spend 600$. In this case, he's better with a well balanced system that with just an expensive full featured mobo with crappy parts around...

Thatwhy I think that:
Mobo soltek 99$
HDD seagate 160Gb SATA 5y warranty 108$
CPU3400+ 287$
memory Corsair value 1 Gigs (2x512) 152$

All price from new egg...total 646$ ..yes, 46 $ over his bugget, but, with his current videocard, that will give him better overall performance than having the Asus mobo and having to cut some coorner to meet his budget. He could also go with the 3200+, which will save him another 72$, meaning that it will be 26$ below his 600$ budget...enough for the firewire card if he ever need it. Remember that he dont plan to upgrade before the end of the year, so price my go lower by the time. This is just my way of seeing things...But that sound good to me


-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!

 

[johnmr531]

OK well thanks for the posts, I have a thermaltake 420 watt PSU and an 80gb 7200 rpm hard drive and a sound blaster live sound card. Its ok to spend a little over 600 but i would like to stay in that range. I'll definatly check out your suggestions.
O and thats also y im partly waiting till the end of the year to upgrade so hopfully socket 939 processors and mobos will go down in price. My original plan was an asus sk8v athlon 64 3200+. but I figured if im gonna wait prices may fall. So we'll see.

Ok well im back before anybody else responded. But anyways I checked out the Soltek K8AN2E-GR NForce 3 250Gb, its not a bad board at all. Except Only 2 slots for Ram is very limited. Considering you need 1gb to be smooth now a days, so 2 512mb's would push the board to the limit. I would like to have 2gb's of ram so I dont ever have memory issues with this upgrade Or i can start with 2 512's on the asus board and if i have to upgrade somemore I would have 2 extra slots. But then again after 2-3 years i'll upgrade again, Cauze I'll need PCI E, and the next windows.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by johnmr531 on 09/05/04 07:34 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[pat]

Your PSU should be enough so you could consider to buy another 80 gigs hdd(same brand/model if possible) and RAID them to have just one big 160 gigs HDD. If the board you'll choose doesnt support RAID with PATA drives, then you could buy serial to parallel adaptor. They work well and not that expensive (on the soltek, you'll need only one by using the Promise controller, as there is 2 SATA and one PATA, so you can usethe PATA one with the SATA and the converter). As for your memory concern, well I do a lot of video editing with 1 gigs and I never feeled that I need more. With 512megs you are smooth, 1 gigs is plenty and 2 gigs is wasted money. in that case, faster HDD is better than RAM. Raid improve performance when having to work with big files, and swap file. I sometime work with 4-5 gigs mpeg2 files, and HDD speed is much more important. And I think that the memory controller slow down at 166 Mhz when more than 2 stick of RAM are used, but i'm no sure. I read something about that I dont remember where.

I choose to upgrade this way for now, because new technology will be available next year. And I rather have them to mature one year before going for it. That give me 2 years with this board. In 2 years, well, maybe PCIe will be really hot and DDR2 the way to go. And I wont have paid too much for and already outdated board, be it a socket 939 or 754.

-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!