Athlons - need some advice if poss
 

My Current System is starting to Feel a tad slow, Athlon 2600 Thoroughbred 1 GIG ram and Radeon 9660XT (256Meg ram). Now Ive asked around and everybody but everybody says the same thing - Go Socket 939...

The probelm with this is Price vs Perfomance and this is where I am struggling to work out which route to go tbh..

Athlon 3700 running at 2.4ghz with 1 Meg Cache Socket 754 = £175
Socket 754 Motherboard with AGP - Lets say £50-60

Reason behind that is basically I can use all the bits from my Exsisting PC and it would work, just a lot faster and the least amount of money.

Athlon 3800 running at 2.4 Ghz but ONLY 512K Cache = £255
Socket 939 Motherboard PCI EXpress = £90
New Power Supply (required for S939 so I hear) = £50
New Gfx card GeForce 6600 for example = £100
Might as well then buy a case and Ram and make a whole new system

You can see my thoughts, first option is a Lot cheaper, yer the 9600XT is not as good as GeForce 6600 for example but I have no problems running the games I play in 1280x1024 which is by chance the max res i can do anyhow.

I understand 754=Single ram and 939= Dual ram plus faster bus etc.

Basically - from the above, will I really see a vast difference between the two with my eye balls??

Re: Athlons - need some advice if poss
 

firsly they do a 3700 in soc 939 with san diego core
secondly you can buy 939 boards with agp slots and perhaps upgrade again later
AFAIK there is no need to replace psu,all boards ive seen cater for old psu these of course will phaze out over time
Yes the cpus are more expensive but your getting a more future proof ( if ever anything in pcs are) product


.

One thing I will say though is a 2600 isnt that slow maybe if you tried a format and reinstall this may speed things up a surprising amount

Re: Athlons - need some advice if poss
 

I think you've hit the nail on the head - if you don't need 'bleeding edge' why pay top whack.

I'm perfectly happy with my S754 A64 3000 (1Gb, 9800Pro) - no lag in HL2, MOH or BF2 at 1280x1024. I know I have some CPU headroom and can get faster GPU and more RAM, but tbh I don't need it.

Re: Athlons - need some advice if poss
 

Unless you an avid gamer or do heavy photoshop work your pc is fine give it a format and see :)

Re: Athlons - need some advice if poss
 

After a lot of Searching and checking - It seems the chips to go for is Dual Core Athlons, this means Socket 939 then. I think Ill leave it for a little while, see what happens with the prices.

Re: Athlons - need some advice if poss
 

My 3500+ amd64 sckt 939 cpu goes pretty quick (mines the winchester core)


if benchmarks can be belived they beat a 3.5ghz p4 in most games.

Re: Athlons - need some advice if poss
 

Seconded. Your pc should be still fairly zippy. How long since you did a reinstall?

Re: Athlons - need some advice if poss
 

For benefit of others I use this spec.

amd xp 2200+
1 gig ddr ram
120 gig sata hd
120 gig pata hd
60 pata hd (all 3 maxtor)
dvdrw liteon 832s burner
ati radeon 9600 pro.

Not exactly cutting edge but runs Windows XP PRO SP2 fine and I multitask heavily, maxthon (approx 30 tabs) opera (approx 70 tabs) securecrt (7 sessions) 4 ftp clients, 2 mirc clients, ms outlook, total commander, few notepads open, nvidia mixer, winamp, command prompt and a bunch of stuff in systray :)

Re: Athlons - need some advice if poss
 

What your not telling us is you have to go out shopping spend £100 on shoes for the Mrs,then come home and watch the final apps finish what there doing:LOL:

Re: Athlons - need some advice if poss
 

Speed of my System?? From Pressing me Button to been able to use Windows = 11 Seconds. Convert a XVID to DVD (as a example) 2.5 Hours. SOunds fine Im sure but I cannot run Windows 64 Bit (to see what all the fuss is about) and Of course XP2600 TB is Behind due to not hvaing a Big Cache (256K). The Buget I am trying to aim for (bits only) is about £500 Max really, we can elimate from that:

Screen (already have 19" TFT)
HD - As I have enough of these lying around
I have various Power Supply's but I read the Socket 939 Requires a 4 Pin connection or something?? Probably means buying another.

Just poindering if S754 + 3700 would be the answer (much much cheaper) or Wait and Wait until they start putting these prices down on S939 chips..

Re: Athlons - need some advice if poss
 

Haha well, the system runs pretty well but the key to that is ram, I have 140meg free ram at the moment, it tends to get very low if I burn a dvd or something so if I had 512 meg ram it would be a lot slower with all the disk swapping.

Opera tends to bog the system down a bit cpu wise, so usually on the rare occasion I need to play a game or something then I will close opera. But the rest normally stay open I also rarely reboot the pc usually only for windows update or driver updates.

Re: Athlons - need some advice if poss
 

See this is the thing, if you go with S754 you'll have to pay for a new motherboard along with the processor when you upgrade, but, by the time you upgrade you might find S939 is then redundant so if you'd gone with 939 then you'd STILL need to change the motherboard. What I can tell you is that the 3700 is an amazing processor, clawhammer core, 1mb cache, runs beautifully.

Re: Athlons - need some advice if poss
 

You see your right, people say buy S939 as its newer and more Future Proof but all I am doing is Jumping from my Current Athlon to a newer one and then wont be rushing out and buying a Athlon Dual Core 4800 in a months time. By time I Upgrade again (years maybe?) we may well have Tripple core and god knows what else. I would hate to spend £500 on a "latest" system only to then find it not much better in real life running then the 3700 for example. The Less I Spend on CPU + Motherboard - the more I have left over to stick in a Faster Gfx Card such as 6800 for example. I'll leave it for a week or so, see what happens with the Prices and then do some Online Shopping I think..

Re: Athlons - need some advice if poss
 

I though AMD were already planning to change sockets again...

"Socket S" and another one, if I recall

Re: Athlons - need some advice if poss
 

How about a compromise, what about the s939 3500 venice core same price as the 3700 but running cooler and with less voltage,so same price dual channel memory and enough left over for the faster gfx maybe

Re: Athlons - need some advice if poss
 

i'd 2nd that. Went from a 3400Clawhammer on 754 to 3800Venice s939.The difference evn from that was amazing.

Re: Athlons - need some advice if poss
 

Well I have took the Plunge and Opted for a Athlon 3700 S939 running at 2.2Ghz with 1 Meg Cache, a X600 Pro Card (PCI-Express), 1 GIG ram and so forth. Before somebody says WTF Radeon X600 Pro - I was out shopping and a Pre-Built machine (first one I have ever bought Pre-Built) Price wise matched what I would pay if I had bought parts. The benefit of this route is the shops allowed me to rip the machine apart so I could look at what was inside to make sure it was decent stuff rather than Some Cheap junk as they normally chuck in there. It comes with a 3 year Warrenty as well (Standard) should any problems arise.

A Mate of mine did go the Self build route Via E-Buyer off my Recommandation (no, i never recommended E-Buyer lol) and of the pparts he bought so far, One stick of Ram already dead and Motherboard dead also. He also went S754 Route (as he bought AGP NVidia 6600) to boot running a S754 A3700. It was a good opitunity to test the two side by side and I can say the difference is def Visable. For Testing we did a serious of Games and apps to see the difference.

Now In theory my GFX Card is worse yes? Yet it could ramp up the Res and features better than his and keep the framerate no problems - this I could not understand at all. Only thing that comes to mind is its not a X600 even though it says it is...wierd

Re: Athlons - need some advice if poss
 

I have a 3400 Newcastle (half the L2 cache of the clawhammer) in my other machine, runs at 2.6ghz on air and pretty much blows any comparable 939 (including my 3500) processor away.

http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc?id=25346