System rebuild advise

[WooHoo2You]

Currently I am running:
Athlon 3200+ 64
2x512 ram

The mother board in my current rig tops out at a 3400+ and one gig of ram, I
am leaning toward getting a new Asus A8N-SLI modo, is the deluxe worth the
extra cash. (I mostly play 3d games on my PC)

What I would like to avoid is my new setup dead-ending in the near future,
like my crappy HP is doing. The processor I am looking at is a AMD 4000, or
the 3800. There is a 50 dollar difference in the two, is that too worth the
dough? From what I understand, it would be a waste to go dual-core with
mostly gaming in mind.

Why is the sky blue? How do birds fly? Where do rainbows end? And so on.

Any advice would be great.

--
WooHoo2You

"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we
didn't."
-Erica Jong

 

[Wes Newell]

Currently I am running:
Athlon 3200+ 64
2x512 ram

Which 3200+?
What board?
Most will overclock nicely.

The mother board in my current rig tops out at a 3400+ and one gig of
ram, I am leaning toward getting a new Asus A8N-SLI modo, is the deluxe
worth the extra cash. (I mostly play 3d games on my PC)

Tops out at 3400+? What does that mean?

What I would like to avoid is my new setup dead-ending in the near
future, like my crappy HP is doing.

You have an HP A64 system? What MB does it use? As for a dead end, they
are all dead end sooner or later. AMD has plans for a new socket for
sometime this year, the M2. It will support DDR2 ram. For S754, the top
cpu is the 3700+, but can be overclocked to equal close to a 4000+ with
the right CPU.

The processor I am looking at is a AMD 4000, or the 3800. There is a
50 dollar difference in the two, is that too worth the dough? From what
I understand, it would be a waste to go dual-core with mostly gaming in
mind.

If you're going to game, I'd go for the latestest core in the 3200-3400+
range and just overclock it up to or beyond what a regular 4000+ would run.

 

[Know Code]

For S754, the top
cpu is the 3700+, but can be overclocked to equal close to a 4000+ with
the right CPU.

Wes,

This caught my eye as I have a 3700+ in a S754 with 2x512Mb Crucial
(Micron) RAM on an Asus K8N MB (everything is running standard settings
right now). Just wondering what sort of settings are needed to bring it
up to the 4000+ range? Using OEM AMD HS/fan BTW.

Regards,

 

[nos1eep]

It is further alleged that on or about Sun, 08 Jan 2006 07:22:06 GMT,
in alt.comp.hardware.amd.x86-64, the queezy keyboard of "WooHoo2You"
<[email protected]> spewed the following:

|Currently I am running:
|Athlon 3200+ 64
|2x512 ram
|
|The mother board in my current rig tops out at a 3400+ and one gig of ram, I
|am leaning toward getting a new Asus A8N-SLI modo, is the deluxe worth the
|extra cash. (I mostly play 3d games on my PC)
|
|What I would like to avoid is my new setup dead-ending in the near future,
|like my crappy HP is doing. The processor I am looking at is a AMD 4000, or
|the 3800. There is a 50 dollar difference in the two, is that too worth the
|dough? From what I understand, it would be a waste to go dual-core with
|mostly gaming in mind.
|
|Why is the sky blue? How do birds fly? Where do rainbows end? And so on.
|
|Any advice would be great.

I use a socket 939 SLi board, Abit AN8 Fatal1ty. Upgrade potential for
any good 939 board has an extremely wide range. (A64, X2, FX and some
Opterons) The only limiting factor is money. When I first built this
system, 4 months ago, I installed a 3800+ x2 and a single 6600, 256 mb
pci xpress card. It played games smoothly, ran cold and is/was
perfectly stable. Shortly before Christmas I was asked to build an
identical system for a client. I sold him the box I had just built.
I put together another system using 4800+x2 and a couple of 6800gt
256mb cards. It runs about the same when gaming, graphics are more
fluid. Sweet. I still want an FX57 with a couple of 7800GT's, but at
$2500, I will wait a year.

The point of all this is that there is a long upgrade path with socket
939 and it is only limited by budget. You can put together a nice
system using the lower end x2 and it will do what you want it to do.
Next year the latest and greatest x2's and Fx chips will be more
affordable as will the graphics cards. Buy the best board that you can
find, without regard for budget, and you will have a nice upgrade path
for a few years.

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

Currently I am running:
Athlon 3200+ 64
2x512 ram

The mother board in my current rig tops out at a 3400+ and one gig of ram, I
am leaning toward getting a new Asus A8N-SLI modo, is the deluxe worth the
extra cash. (I mostly play 3d games on my PC)

What I would like to avoid is my new setup dead-ending in the near future,
like my crappy HP is doing. The processor I am looking at is a AMD 4000, or
the 3800. There is a 50 dollar difference in the two, is that too worth the
dough? From what I understand, it would be a waste to go dual-core with
mostly gaming in mind.

Why is the sky blue? How do birds fly? Where do rainbows end? And so on.

Any advice would be great.

The gain you would get from your new system would be almost entirely from
the new graphics cards, a new CPU won't make that much difference. On
single threaded applications all you are going to see by going from a
3200+ to a 4000+ is 25% which isn't significant. On the other hand going
to SLI and a pair of high performance graphics cards will yield a huge
jump in performance. However a single Geforce 7800 SLI card is $470 so you
are looking at real money for a pair of them.

If you are planning on building a whole new system you should get a
dual core processor, my recommendation is the X2 4400+. There are already
a few games that are multithreaded and there will be a lot more in the
future. A dual core processor will serve your needs for a longer time than
any single core processor. On single threaded apps a 4400+ will be
slightly slower than a 4000+, but not noticeably so. On multithreaded apps
it will be nearly twice as fast.

 

[Cherokee]

Currently I am running:
Athlon 3200+ 64
2x512 ram

The mother board in my current rig tops out at a 3400+ and one gig of ram, I
am leaning toward getting a new Asus A8N-SLI modo, is the deluxe worth the
extra cash. (I mostly play 3d games on my PC)

What I would like to avoid is my new setup dead-ending in the near future,
like my crappy HP is doing. The processor I am looking at is a AMD 4000, or
the 3800. There is a 50 dollar difference in the two, is that too worth the
dough? From what I understand, it would be a waste to go dual-core with
mostly gaming in mind.

Why is the sky blue? How do birds fly? Where do rainbows end? And so on.

Any advice would be great.

--
WooHoo2You

"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we
didn't."
-Erica Jong

I've seen numerous complaints of the chipset fan on the A8N Deluxe model
failing,supposedly Asus fixed this in latter models.I'd make sure you're
getting a new revision of it,at least.I'd go for the 4000+ if you don't want
to go the dual core route.

 

[Wes Newell]

This caught my eye as I have a 3700+ in a S754 with 2x512Mb Crucial
(Micron) RAM on an Asus K8N MB (everything is running standard settings
right now). Just wondering what sort of settings are needed to bring it
up to the 4000+ range? Using OEM AMD HS/fan BTW.

Well, to be honest, it already is. They both run at the same clock speed,
2400MHz. They both have 1M L2 caches. The only difference is the 4000+ has
a dual memory controller. For some apps, that helps the 4000+, while in
others it will hender it because of the overhead. If you compare them here

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=244&model2=255&chart=70

you will find the 3700+ is faster in some apps, and the 4000+ is faster in
others, and they are about the same in some. If you want to overclock your
3700+ (or any CPU), you can start raising the FSB frequency past the
default 200MHz. How much past will work varies from one cpu to the next
depending on what you do. Since you already have the top end cpu of the
line, it probably won't overclock a lot, but you never know until you try.
Just remember that raising the FSB will also raise the ram bus frequency
and the HT frequency, so if either of the the 3 get too fast to work, then
nothing works. You can compensate both the HT and ram bus frequencies by
lowering the defaults.

 

[Know Code]

Well, to be honest, it already is. They both run at the same clock speed,
2400MHz. They both have 1M L2 caches. The only difference is the 4000+ has
a dual memory controller. For some apps, that helps the 4000+, while in
others it will hender it because of the overhead. If you compare them here

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=244&model2=255&chart=70

you will find the 3700+ is faster in some apps, and the 4000+ is faster in
others, and they are about the same in some. If you want to overclock your
3700+ (or any CPU), you can start raising the FSB frequency past the
default 200MHz. How much past will work varies from one cpu to the next
depending on what you do. Since you already have the top end cpu of the
line, it probably won't overclock a lot, but you never know until you try.
Just remember that raising the FSB will also raise the ram bus frequency
and the HT frequency, so if either of the the 3 get too fast to work, then
nothing works. You can compensate both the HT and ram bus frequencies by
lowering the defaults.

WOW. Looking at those charts I don't think I really need to be messing
around with overclocking it. The 3700+ seems to be on a par with the P4
3.4GHz EE in most tests which all my Intel loving friends rave about
(I'm trying to convert them and this will help!).

As for the performance in WinRAR... the 3700+ even just beats out the X2
4800+! Not sure why as the X2 runs effectively 2 x 3700+ cores looking
at the spec... maybe the extra overhead of trying to multithread in what
must be non-threaded software?

One thing I did notice... these tests were done on NF4 boards. Mine is
an NF3 250 board (Asus K8N after my MSI K8N Neo Platinum died!). Would
that be affecting the overall performance? Not sure what additions the
NF4 chipsets have over the NF3 when it comes to speed matters.

Even though I don't need to be messing with it, I might just try
cranking it up a couple of MHz at a time to see where it craps out I
know it's stable at the moment at stock speed as it runs BOINC 24/7 at
100% load!

--

 

[John Weiss]

The mother board in my current rig tops out at a 3400+ and one gig of ram, I
am leaning toward getting a new Asus A8N-SLI modo, is the deluxe worth the
extra cash. (I mostly play 3d games on my PC)

What I would like to avoid is my new setup dead-ending in the near future,
like my crappy HP is doing. The processor I am looking at is a AMD 4000, or
the 3800. There is a 50 dollar difference in the two, is that too worth the
dough? From what I understand, it would be a waste to go dual-core with
mostly gaming in mind.

If you play games, you have to spend real $$ to get your fix. Buy a Socket 939
MoBo that will take the FX57 (90 nm technology), and put something cheaper in it
for now if you need to. Then you can spend even more $$ on the hoity-toity GFX
cards you'll "need" to get things to blow up in 3D living color...

The bonus is that it will keep the house warm in the winter!

 

[WooHoo2You]

I've seen numerous complaints of the chipset fan on the A8N Deluxe model
failing,supposedly Asus fixed this in latter models.I'd make sure you're
getting a new revision of it,at least.I'd go for the 4000+ if you don't
want
to go the dual core route.

I wanted to go dual-core, however most of the reps in stores keep telling me
that it will hurt me in gaming. The Athlon 3800+ X2 is the same price
online as the Athlon 4000+.

 

[WooHoo2You]

I use a socket 939 SLi board, Abit AN8 Fatal1ty. Upgrade potential for
any good 939 board has an extremely wide range. (A64, X2, FX and some
Opterons) The only limiting factor is money. When I first built this
system, 4 months ago, I installed a 3800+ x2 and a single 6600, 256 mb
pci xpress card. It played games smoothly, ran cold and is/was
perfectly stable. Shortly before Christmas I was asked to build an
identical system for a client. I sold him the box I had just built.
I put together another system using 4800+x2 and a couple of 6800gt
256mb cards. It runs about the same when gaming, graphics are more
fluid. Sweet. I still want an FX57 with a couple of 7800GT's, but at
$2500, I will wait a year.

The point of all this is that there is a long upgrade path with socket
939 and it is only limited by budget. You can put together a nice
system using the lower end x2 and it will do what you want it to do.
Next year the latest and greatest x2's and Fx chips will be more
affordable as will the graphics cards. Buy the best board that you can
find, without regard for budget, and you will have a nice upgrade path
for a few years.

My HP is a 754 Socket mobo / processor allowing only two sticks of 512 ram,
and a seeming dead CPU line. While searching online for a better setup, the
fastest thing I could find was a 3700+. That is why I feel the need to
upgrade my motherboard. If I upgrade one, I am forced to upgrade the other.
Should I go for something more modest like a 3500+? According to the link
to tomshardware.com that Wes Newell posted, both my processor and the 4000+
run along the same lines. So it is even worth the upgrade?

 

[WooHoo2You]

I should have made myself more clear. I am using a HP a642n

Which 3200+?
What board?
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?cc=us&docname=c00209865&lc=en


You have an HP A64 system? What MB does it use? As for a dead end, they
are all dead end sooner or later. AMD has plans for a new socket for
sometime this year, the M2. It will support DDR2 ram. For S754, the top
cpu is the 3700+, but can be overclocked to equal close to a 4000+ with
the right CPU.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...&cc=us&dlc=en&docname=c00064822#c00064822_doc

If you're going to game, I'd go for the latestest core in the 3200-3400+
range and just overclock it up to or beyond what a regular 4000+ would
run.

You are going over my head please explain.

 

[VanShania]

The only reason some store would tell you that dual core is not the way to
go is probably they want you to buy their old stock of single core cpus so
they can then go out and buy dual core processors to sell. Multi core cpus
are the future.

 

[nos1eep]

It is further alleged that on or about Sun, 08 Jan 2006 20:23:27 GMT,
in alt.comp.hardware.amd.x86-64, the queezy keyboard of "WooHoo2You"
<[email protected]> spewed the following:

|
||> I use a socket 939 SLi board, Abit AN8 Fatal1ty. Upgrade potential for
|> any good 939 board has an extremely wide range. (A64, X2, FX and some
|> Opterons) The only limiting factor is money. When I first built this
|> system, 4 months ago, I installed a 3800+ x2 and a single 6600, 256 mb
|> pci xpress card. It played games smoothly, ran cold and is/was
|> perfectly stable. Shortly before Christmas I was asked to build an
|> identical system for a client. I sold him the box I had just built.
|> I put together another system using 4800+x2 and a couple of 6800gt
|> 256mb cards. It runs about the same when gaming, graphics are more
|> fluid. Sweet. I still want an FX57 with a couple of 7800GT's, but at
|> $2500, I will wait a year.
|>
|> The point of all this is that there is a long upgrade path with socket
|> 939 and it is only limited by budget. You can put together a nice
|> system using the lower end x2 and it will do what you want it to do.
|> Next year the latest and greatest x2's and Fx chips will be more
|> affordable as will the graphics cards. Buy the best board that you can
|> find, without regard for budget, and you will have a nice upgrade path
|> for a few years.
|
|My HP is a 754 Socket mobo / processor allowing only two sticks of 512 ram,
|and a seeming dead CPU line. While searching online for a better setup, the
|fastest thing I could find was a 3700+. That is why I feel the need to
|upgrade my motherboard. If I upgrade one, I am forced to upgrade the other.
|Should I go for something more modest like a 3500+? According to the link
|to tomshardware.com that Wes Newell posted, both my processor and the 4000+
|run along the same lines. So it is even worth the upgrade?

Get the killer 939 board with an nForce4 chipset and whatever
processor that will fit it. The 3500 is fast and is more than
adequate. Your real game performance boost will be SLi graphics.

 

[Bill]

That's old news and nothing to worry about - I recently bought the Asus
A8N-E board and it has the newer chipset fan. It's much more reliable
and very quiet - I can't hear it over the CPU fan at all.

I wanted to go dual-core, however most of the reps in stores keep telling me
that it will hurt me in gaming. The Athlon 3800+ X2 is the same price
online as the Athlon 4000+.

While it's true that most games are currently single-threaded and going
with the fastest single processor might be the best option today, that's
all going to change in the coming months.

For instance, Quake4 already has a beta version of an update patch
that's available which is multi-threaded, and it makes a marked
improvement. Other game companies are also working on patches.

With the hard push from both Intel and AMD to bring dual-core processors
into the mainstream market (big price drops), we'll start to see a lot
more companies building computers with dual-cores. And with the
dual-core hardware comes the games and applications written to take
advantage of the processors.

I've been using several apps that take advantage of dual-core processors
or hyper-threading for quite a while, but my older P4 couldn't use them
to full advantage. After helping a friend build a new AMD 64x2 3800+ and
seeing it in action, I went out and built one myself a couple of days
later - I was THAT impressed.

I'll admit I was planning an upgrade this spring to something faster,
but I wasn't even thinking about dual-core processors until just a week
ago when I started checking hardware and prices. After seeing how well
they run, I couldn't resist the upgrade.



Besides, the video card is what really makes a gaming machine. The frame
rate with a Geforce 7800 card on an x2 3800+ or a single 4000+ is going
to be fairly close. And if the game is multi-threaded, the dual-core
will likely match the faster single core.

And if gaming is the main purpose, then you're going to want an SLI
board so you can use dual video cards for even higher frame rates.

Something to consider - if you upgrade to a new CPU every few months to
stay with the fastest processors, then the fastest processor today is
the way to go. But if you're like most people and you upgrade every 1-2
years, then buying a dual-core today would be the better option.

 

[Wes Newell]

My HP is a 754 Socket mobo / processor allowing only two sticks of 512 ram,
and a seeming dead CPU line. While searching online for a better setup, the
fastest thing I could find was a 3700+. That is why I feel the need to
upgrade my motherboard. If I upgrade one, I am forced to upgrade the other.
Should I go for something more modest like a 3500+? According to the link
to tomshardware.com that Wes Newell posted, both my processor and the 4000+
run along the same lines. So it is even worth the upgrade?

I'd double check the ram size you can use. The memory controller is in the
cpu, and I don't know any board that won't take at least 1gig ram per
slot. you need to find out what board you have. A think HP used to use
Asus boards. I wouldn't upgrade just to get a 4000+. The 300 points they
gave it fro the dual memory controller over the 3700+ just wasn't
waranted IMO.

 

[Wes Newell]

I should have made myself more clear. I am using a HP a642n


http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?cc=us&docname=c00209865&lc=en

OK, it's an old Assu K8N with the NF3-150 chipset. The 3700+ should still
work in it. But I'd just overclock the cpu you have, if possible in bios.
Next time, don't buy an HP. Buy generic.

You are going over my head please explain.

Multiplier x FSB = CPU clockspeed. Either look back in this group or
search for overclocking.

 

[John Weiss]

My HP is a 754 Socket mobo / processor allowing only two sticks of 512 ram,
and a seeming dead CPU line. While searching online for a better setup, the
fastest thing I could find was a 3700+. That is why I feel the need to upgrade
my motherboard. If I upgrade one, I am forced to upgrade the other. Should I
go for something more modest like a 3500+?

It all depends on what you "need" for performance and upgradability...

For systems that are available NOW, socket 939 is MUCH preferable to S754. With
the right MoBo you can go FX or X2 in the future if you don't want to go there
now. With S754 you probably have little to look forward to in the future.

Set your budget and price your options.

 

[gold fingers]

I like ATI chipsets over the overly advertised nvidia SLI chipets. Get
the Abit AT8 with the new ATI Radeon 200 Crossfire setup. If your not a
real big gamer, then you can use the mirror card in the one PCI-E x16
and one vidio card in the other PCI-E x16 slot. Abit provides the
mirror card with the mainboard purchase!!! The Abit AT8 is on the Abit
Web Site, but will not be on the retail .com market until some time
this month. Oh ya, get at least an AMD Athlon 64 4000+, 4.2 Ghz CPU.
You will need at least a 4.2 Ghz CPU for the new Windows VISTA
operating system w/Aeroglass, if you decide to get it when it is
available late this year.
Later, Gold Fingers

 

[WooHoo2You]

The only reason some store would tell you that dual core is not the way to
go is probably they want you to buy their old stock of single core cpus so
they can then go out and buy dual core processors to sell. Multi core cpus
are the future.

How far in the future is what I am worried about. I online game a lot, the
reason I wanted to go dual-core originally is the fact that you always have
applications running in the background whether you like it or not. However,
I do realize most games do not take advantage of dual-core cpu's right now.
So is it worth the wait for prices to drop? With the money I could put in a
dual-core, I could put in more RAM with a surefire result. I just want to
make the right decision.