CPU upgrade

[marythemoose]

Hey, I'm thinking about upgrading my CPU, currently got AMD Athlon64 3700 San Diego OEM, the motherboard is ASUS A8N32-SLi DLX 939.
Looking at what's available though, and i may well be getting totally the wrong idea here :) but because it's a 939 socket, does that severely limit what processor i can have?

Any advice would be wicked, cheers

robbie

[Micky007]

yea it means you can only have
Athlon 64 CPUs
or
Athlon 64 X2 CPUs

:(

[mac124]

The only limitations really are wht you can find. Whilst the 939 platform is still fairly viable it has now been discontinued so stocks of cpus will be getting short, if any retailers stock anything at all now.

Aria still show stocks of the X2 3800 but if you wish to keep the pc for any reasonable length of time i would seriously consider something more powerful something like a X2 4400 or opteron 175. Which means you should probably look on auction sites.

[marythemoose]

hmm. bugger. i see this on aria: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ 2.20GHz (939) OEM; do you reckon that's worth getting, or is it not much better than what I've got?
ta for the reply btw :)

robbie

[PeterStoba]

Slightly better, i'd recommend a new motherboard and CPU

[mac124]

Well iirc the 3700 runs at either 2.2 or 2.4ghz so that cpu will be running around the same speed BUT its dual core, so in effect it will be double the power of your current cpu, assumung the software can use both cores. Having said that you should still see benefits as windows will dump alot of processes onto one core whilst you are using the second for playing games or whatever.

The X2 4400 on Arias website is out of stock and i would seriously doubt they will be getting any more in.

[mac124]

Slightly better, i'd recommend a new motherboard and CPU


He'd need a new mobo / cpu AND memeory as 939 runs on ddr all new stuff is ddr2

[PeterStoba]

He'd need a new mobo / cpu AND memeory as 939 runs on ddr all new stuff is ddr2

You could technially still use DDR but it'd be better to get DDR2 or 3


Well iirc the 3700 runs at either 2.2 or 2.4ghz so that cpu will be running around the same speed BUT its dual core, so in effect it will be double the power of your current cpu, assumung the software can use both cores. Having said that you should still see benefits as windows will dump alot of processes onto one core whilst you are using the second for playing games or whatever.

I thought dual core was 20-25% more performance and quad core was 45-50% more

[Micky007]

If i was you id just get a new Motherboard and CPU, but get a Intel Socket Motherboard because then you will be fine as you will be able to have any Intel CPU in your PC as long as you pick a good motherboard, (id say no less than £50)

[marythemoose]

i appreciate all the info peeps :) i can't spend too much on this any time soon, i'll have a think about whether to just try and find a slightly better cpu or go the whole hog and replace the motherboard/memory, graphics card's getting a bit tired too :)
thanks again

robbie

[mac124]

You could technially still use DDR but it'd be better to get DDR2 or 3

Maybe but i hate those mobo's that use ddr and ddr2 they tend to be ***, putting it politely.


I thought dual core was 20-25% more performance and quad core was 45-50% more

As i said alot depends on the software but even if the application doesn't utilise both cores you will still see a slight improvement as processes are shifted to one core and the app has a core to itself.

This should give some idea http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/cpu-charts-2007,review-2351-20.html

[misty]

You could technially still use DDR but it'd be better to get DDR2 or 3



I thought dual core was 20-25% more performance and quad core was 45-50% more

you can only use multi core processors if the application supports it, thats their ultimate limitation at the moment. They will come into their own though during 2008