Upgrading P4 3.2c Northwood to Athlon64 3500+ ??

dannyaa

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I just read the P180 article from Sep19 on THG. The author mentions how he saw very little performance gain from a P4 3.0 northwood to an Athlon4000+

Yet looking at the CPU charts, I see scores of the 3500+ beating the 3.2c - but also Intel, as we know, winning in Audio/Video tasks.


I use my system equally for Video/Audio tasks (encoding, editing, etc.) and gaming. What do you think of switching from a P4 3.2c to an Athlon64 3500+ venice? Equal performance? is it worth it? ...etc.??




P4c 3.2Ghz NWood / ABIT AI7 / 1GB XMS-Pro DDR 3200 / BFG GF-6800GT 256mb / Antec 380W

A64 3000 Venice / Epox 9npa-U / 1GB HyperX DDR 3200 / XFX GF-6600GT 128mb / Antec 330W
 

pat

Expert
well, just ask yourself if your game are playing fast enough right now. You probably wont see a difference going from 125 FPS to 150FPS with the 3500+. For your video work, well, for some encoding task,like divx, the 3500+ should be faster. For mpeg2, the Intel will be faster. So? you gain on one, loose on the other, at the end of the day, it is an even match.

I say dont upgrade.

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silverpig

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It's not worth it to upgrade even though the AMD is the better cpu and will o/c to the moon and back. Save up for a while longer and then get a dual core.

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Crashman

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You'd be throwing money away on the upgrade, getting roughly zero gain. If you run multiple instances of your program, or multiple CPU-intensive programs simultaniously, dual core would provide a noticeable advantage.

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dannyaa

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Well my plan was to sell my old P4 components (AGP, s478, 380W psu) and to swap it for a better "platform" (A64 socket 939 w/PCI-E, SLI mobo, 550W psu, etc.) so the whole upgrade shouldn't cost nearly as much. I was wondering if moving to the 3500+ would give me OVERALL about equivalent performance to the 3.2c which was the goal - maybe with a little boost?

Or does this plan sound "don't-bother-ish" to ya?



P4c 3.2Ghz NWood / ABIT AI7 / 1GB XMS-Pro DDR 3200 / BFG GF-6800GT 256mb / Antec 380W

A64 3000 Venice / Epox 9npa-U / 1GB HyperX DDR 3200 / XFX GF-6600GT 128mb / Antec 330W
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
It sounds don't-bother-ish, sure, but you would get similar performance, with some improvements in areas you're not really looking for improvements in.

Oh, and heat, the Venice core 3200+ actually produces around 30W peak, the P4 3.2C is over twice that. So you could go with quieter cooling too.

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dannyaa

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Ya, basically I'm thinking if I can sell it allows me to upgrade my graphics card to a 7800GT and gives me an expandable platform (s939 for future dual core; pci-e). Also some more SATA ports (I only have 2), and I can get a better case/PSU...


P4c 3.2Ghz NWood / ABIT AI7 / 1GB XMS-Pro DDR 3200 / BFG GF-6800GT 256mb / Antec 380W

A64 3000 Venice / Epox 9npa-U / 1GB HyperX DDR 3200 / XFX GF-6600GT 128mb / Antec 330W