Dual Core Mainboard Quiestion

[Harkhof]

Hello,

I have a 4400+ X2 that I'm running on an MSI NEO plat 2 (MS-7025). Is this
cpu limited by this board? I'm about to upgrade my video card and, given
that I'm not a gamer (business apps, surfing, DVD, TV, photoshop, etc.), I'm
ok with AGP unless I would realize a significant performance increase by
switching to PCI-E.

Thanks, Hark

 

[dawg]

You'd probably see a decent boost with an Nforce4 mobo considering the MSI
is 2 generations behind. And, SLI would be avalable if you are a heavy
gamer.
Besides the SIS 755X chipset doesn't seem to offer much in the way of extras
or overclocking functions.

 

[Bob Knowlden]

I doubt that you'd see a major CPU performance increase by going from your
present nForce3 board to a newer nForce4 one.

I went from an AGP board (Asus A8V Deluxe, Via K8T800 Pro chipset) to an
nForce4 one (Asus A8N-SLI) mainly so I could switch to PCI-E graphics. There
may not be much point to that if you're not buying a high-end graphics card,
useful mainly for gaming.

On the other hand, the choice of graphics cards is much better in PCI-E. As
a respectable PCI-E mainboard can be had for less than $100 (in the US), I'm
inclined to recommend getting one.


Address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

 

[Bill]

I have a 4400+ X2 that I'm running on an MSI NEO plat 2 (MS-7025). Is this
cpu limited by this board? I'm about to upgrade my video card and, given
that I'm not a gamer (business apps, surfing, DVD, TV, photoshop, etc.), I'm
ok with AGP unless I would realize a significant performance increase by
switching to PCI-E.

Does it do what you want at the speed you want?

Gamers want performance, so they drive the upgrade market. But business
and casual users often don't need the latest/greatest stuff. Dual-core
may be an exception because they help with multitasking programs, but
you have to ask yourself - will a new motherboard offer a significant
performance boost?

I doubt it would. Perhaps you can spend the money on more RAM or hard
drive space?

 

[Larry Roberts]

You'd probably see a decent boost with an Nforce4 mobo considering the MSI
is 2 generations behind. And, SLI would be avalable if you are a heavy
gamer.
Besides the SIS 755X chipset doesn't seem to offer much in the way of extras
or overclocking functions.

He did say he's not a gamer, so I doubt SLI, and overclocking
would be of any use.

 

[Harkhof]

You'd probably see a decent boost with an Nforce4 mobo considering the MSI
is 2 generations behind. And, SLI would be avalable if you are a heavy
gamer.
Besides the SIS 755X chipset doesn't seem to offer much in the way of
extras
or overclocking functions.

Hi dawg. I don't have a SIS chipset, and were I to go that route, I
definitely would go w/nforce4, since my current nforce chipset has served me
well.

Thanks,
Hark

 

[Harkhof]

I doubt that you'd see a major CPU performance increase by going from your
present nForce3 board to a newer nForce4 one.

I went from an AGP board (Asus A8V Deluxe, Via K8T800 Pro chipset) to an
nForce4 one (Asus A8N-SLI) mainly so I could switch to PCI-E graphics.
There may not be much point to that if you're not buying a high-end
graphics card, useful mainly for gaming.

On the other hand, the choice of graphics cards is much better in PCI-E.
As a respectable PCI-E mainboard can be had for less than $100 (in the
US), I'm inclined to recommend getting one.

Mainly, I want to upgrade my aging AIW 9000 Pro. I've been threatening to
upgrade for well over a month now. Since even before I picked up the CPU.
I've just not been sure what direction to take. I've tried some different
cards, including stand alone tuners. I suppose the best card I've tried was
the AIW x800xt, but given that I don't play games (well, sometimes), that
seems to be a bit overkill. Unfortunately, the AIW cards are confined to the
higher end card like the AIW x800xt (at least highend for my needs). Not
that I want to go the low road. Is the video technology in PCI-E superior to
AGP (I may have to take this one to the ATI group...)? I've heard a little
about ATI's "Avivo" technology, but not quite sure what that's about and how
it improves video playback. And then there's the fact that "Avivo" is
available only in PCI-E.

Thanks,
Hark

 

[Harkhof]

Does it do what you want at the speed you want?

Well, I was expecting somewhat more out of this chip, at least multi-tasking
wise. I upgrade from a 3500+ in this same board. I was thinking perhaps it
might do better in a newer board. I also plan to, at some point, do a clean
install of XP, since I've changed the CPU, several HDs and tried out several
video cards (generally imaged back to the pre-video card install state, but
not in all cases).

Gamers want performance, so they drive the upgrade market. But business
and casual users often don't need the latest/greatest stuff. Dual-core
may be an exception because they help with multitasking programs, but
you have to ask yourself - will a new motherboard offer a significant
performance boost?

That's the $64,000 question. I do alot of multi-tasking, often cpu intensive
operations, thus the upgrade. But I do notice sometimes when doing something
such as encoding, merely moving a window around seems a little jerky. Even
though I may have had some other programs open, non-active, I really
expected better. The CPU utility from AMD's web site wasn't showing both
cores maxed out (although sometimes peaking). I did have cool 'n' quiet
enabled at the time (still do...).

I doubt it would. Perhaps you can spend the money on more RAM or hard
drive space?

Yes. I've just installed 3 250GB SATA drives (to replace 5 drives of various
sizes). I haven't put the 3rd drive in yet, as I plan to re-install xp on
that one (well, until I get more time, I plan to image my current xp install
to the new drive. I left my ATA IDE boot drive in the system). As far as the
RAM, I've already got 1GB. I suppose I could push it up to 2GB, but I'm not
sure that's really necessary. Also, remember, my purpose in considering the
upgrade is for the video card, probably an AIW. But I went into all that in
my response to Bob. And, although I don't want to take the low road, I also
want quality, performance and headroom for the future.

Thanks for any observations,
Hark

 

[Harkhof]

Whoops. I forgot to mention that I did receive a strange error message that
made me suspicious (it didn't look like a typical windows message and the
"details" of the message were garbage. A virus scan didn't pick anything up
(I'm very security concious and am behind a hardware firewall, plain text
email and news...). The below url shows a screen shot Iposted this earlier
to no response:

http://members.cox.net/kcrno/index.htm

Thanks,
Hark

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

Hello,

I have a 4400+ X2 that I'm running on an MSI NEO plat 2 (MS-7025). Is this
cpu limited by this board? I'm about to upgrade my video card and, given
that I'm not a gamer (business apps, surfing, DVD, TV, photoshop, etc.),
I'm ok with AGP unless I would realize a significant performance increase
by switching to PCI-E.

Thanks, Hark

There is 0 difference in performance between an Nforce3 board (the Neo2
which you have) and an Nforce 4 board (the Neo4). The only advantages of
the Nforce4 are PCI-E graphics which you don't need. The Nforce4 also has
SATA-II instead of SATA-I, but that makes very little difference because
there aren't any drives that are limited by the 150MByte/second bandwidth
of SATA-I. I have both boards, here are the results from hdparm:


MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum (SATA-I)
Timing cached reads: 3376 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1687.89 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 174 MB in 3.03 seconds = 57.38 MB/sec

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum (SATA-II)
Timing cached reads: 3584 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1791.89 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 200 MB in 3.02 seconds = 66.31 MB/sec

The difference here is due entirely to the drives, the Neo4 system has a
Seagate drive, the Neo2 has a Western Digital.

 

[Bill]

Well, I was expecting somewhat more out of this chip, at least multi-tasking
wise. I upgrade from a 3500+ in this same board. I was thinking perhaps it
might do better in a newer board. I also plan to, at some point, do a clean
install of XP, since I've changed the CPU, several HDs and tried out several
video cards (generally imaged back to the pre-video card install state, but
not in all cases).

You have to remember that there's a lot more to a computer than just the
processor. A dual-core can help with multitasking, but the rest of the
system is the same. You need to upgrade memory, video, and chipset in
order to see a noticeable increase in performance.

That's the $64,000 question. I do alot of multi-tasking, often cpu intensive
operations, thus the upgrade. But I do notice sometimes when doing something
such as encoding, merely moving a window around seems a little jerky. Even
though I may have had some other programs open, non-active, I really
expected better. The CPU utility from AMD's web site wasn't showing both
cores maxed out (although sometimes peaking). I did have cool 'n' quiet
enabled at the time (still do...).

I bought a dual-core because I multitask a lot as well, but I didn't
expect the CPU to completely eliminate performance bottlenecks.

You need to find out where the bottlenecks are before you can make a big
improvement. For me, the biggest performance issue is hard drive speed.
That's why I run a RAID 0 setup with two drives.

If video bandwidth is your bottleneck, then getting a PCI-express board
with a good video card may help. Depends on the apps you run though.

 

[Bill]

Whoops. I forgot to mention that I did receive a strange error message that
made me suspicious (it didn't look like a typical windows message and the
"details" of the message were garbage. A virus scan didn't pick anything up
(I'm very security concious and am behind a hardware firewall, plain text
email and news...). The below url shows a screen shot Iposted this earlier
to no response:

http://members.cox.net/kcrno/index.htm

I saw that and I don't think it looks like a proper error report window.
I don't stay on top of all the virus stuff out there either because I
too have a fairly secure network and viruses are not much of an issue.

 

[Harkhof]

You have to remember that there's a lot more to a computer than just the
processor. A dual-core can help with multitasking, but the rest of the
system is the same. You need to upgrade memory, video, and chipset in
order to see a noticeable increase in performance.

Yes, I agree. However, it was the multi tasking I was referring to.

I bought a dual-core because I multitask a lot as well, but I didn't
expect the CPU to completely eliminate performance bottlenecks.

You need to find out where the bottlenecks are before you can make a big
improvement. For me, the biggest performance issue is hard drive speed.
That's why I run a RAID 0 setup with two drives.

I don't believe RAID is a necessity in my case. A RAM upgrade may help,
although I have 1 GB of corsair RAM now.

If video bandwidth is your bottleneck, then getting a PCI-express board
with a good video card may help. Depends on the apps you run though.

I just finished installing the AIW X800XT yesterday, and it seems to have
helped some of my issues, although I've had 2 BSODs relating to the new card
(while coming out of hibernation). I'll be investigating that when I have
time and possibly trying the Omega drivers.

Thanks,
Hark

 

[Harkhof]

I saw that and I don't think it looks like a proper error report window.
I don't stay on top of all the virus stuff out there either because I
too have a fairly secure network and viruses are not much of an issue.

Yes, this message didn't look right to me either, thus my concerns. Also, my
Avast AV was not running as it usually is, which is what made me suspect a
virus, trojan or worm. Restoring a previous image seems to have solved the
problem.

Thanks for your input,
Hark

 

[Harkhof]

There is 0 difference in performance between an Nforce3 board (the Neo2
which you have) and an Nforce 4 board (the Neo4). The only advantages of
the Nforce4 are PCI-E graphics which you don't need. The Nforce4 also has
SATA-II instead of SATA-I, but that makes very little difference because
there aren't any drives that are limited by the 150MByte/second bandwidth
of SATA-I. I have both boards, here are the results from hdparm:


MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum (SATA-I)
Timing cached reads: 3376 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1687.89 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 174 MB in 3.03 seconds = 57.38 MB/sec

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum (SATA-II)
Timing cached reads: 3584 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1791.89 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 200 MB in 3.02 seconds = 66.31 MB/sec

The difference here is due entirely to the drives, the Neo4 system has a
Seagate drive, the Neo2 has a Western Digital.

Thanks, General. Exactly what I needed to know. I went with the AIW x800xt,
staying with the NEO2.

Hark