CPU Upgrade again

[Wayne35]

First a little bit about what I have and what I do.

I have a Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego core processor on a socket 939 MSI 7025
K8N Neo2 Platinum mobo. I do mostly routine stuff, no gaming and some image
and video editing. The video editing is CPU intensive (i.e. 100% of the
cpu). I have upgraded the MSI BIOS and it will support X2 and dual Opterons.

My system is pretty well maxed out but I'd like to keep it for another year
before moving to AM2 or 775.

I have tried overclocking in the past but I have usually just stuck with the
stock settings.

Will the performance increase of a Athlon 64 dual core or an Opteron dual
core be worth the cost and hassle of the upgrade? The Opterons have more L2
cache than the X2 but the X2 has 2000 HT vs. the Opteron 1000 HT. My
current processor has 1 MB L2 cache and 2000 HT. Newegg has the X2 4200+ and
several Opterons for $80 - $120 which is all I'm willing to spend to upgrade
this machine.

Finally, if I go with the X2 will my current stock cpu fan be adequate to
cool the X2 cpu with factory settings? The Newegg X2 is OEM but the Opterons
are retail.

TIA,

Wayne

 

[Ed]

First a little bit about what I have and what I do.

I have a Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego core processor on a socket 939 MSI 7025
K8N Neo2 Platinum mobo. I do mostly routine stuff, no gaming and some image
and video editing. The video editing is CPU intensive (i.e. 100% of the
cpu). I have upgraded the MSI BIOS and it will support X2 and dual Opterons.

My system is pretty well maxed out but I'd like to keep it for another year
before moving to AM2 or 775.

I have tried overclocking in the past but I have usually just stuck with the
stock settings.

Will the performance increase of a Athlon 64 dual core or an Opteron dual
core be worth the cost and hassle of the upgrade? The Opterons have more L2
cache than the X2 but the X2 has 2000 HT vs. the Opteron 1000 HT. My
current processor has 1 MB L2 cache and 2000 HT. Newegg has the X2 4200+ and
several Opterons for $80 - $120 which is all I'm willing to spend to upgrade
this machine.

Finally, if I go with the X2 will my current stock cpu fan be adequate to
cool the X2 cpu with factory settings? The Newegg X2 is OEM but the Opterons
are retail.

TIA,

Wayne

To find out if current CPU HS/fan is good enough for the X2 just compare
the wattage of the two CPUs on AMDs site here,
http://www.amdcompare.com/us-en/

For example I have s754 3200+ and a s939 X2 4200+, they are both rated
at 89W and they both came with the exact same HS/fan in the box.

A dual core at the same MHz as a single core will be around 2x faster in
multi-threaded apps like video encoding. You can run more demanding
single threaded apps as well without any waiting.

Make sure the motherboard supports the dual core CPU you want to buy,
and that the bios that it's running supports the CPU, you may need to
flash the board if its old.

BTW, those s939 chips are 1000 HT, its a 200MHz bus, HT multiplies that
by up to 5.

hth,
Ed