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Ditching my 939 set-up for no good reason

FoxEye

FoxEye

FoxEye

Caporegime
Joined
17 Feb 2006
Posts
29,263
Location
Cornwall
Except that I've upgraded my gfx card, and promised my old 7800gt to my brother. Only he has AGP not pci-e. I said if he wanted to give me £50 or so I'd give him my

3800x2
a8n-e mobo
my 3gig DDR-3200
(and the 7800)

Now, the new gfx card I bought is a 8800GT 512 (although I have a GTS 512 on order too).

I'd like to know what the best CPU to complement that card is. Will have to be cheap, so probably something 2nd hand.

Also I don't think I'll go quad at this time. Too expensive + not essential for games yet I hear.

P.S. If my 3800x2 is still good enough in your opinion, I have a Opty 146 lying around. Could buy a cheap 939 mobo for the bro, and give him the 146 with the 7800...

But I'm guessing in most people's opinion it would be a waste to pair a 8800GT g92 with a 3800x2?

Help me out here!
 
Well i had an Opty 165 (dual core) at 2.95GHz with a 8800GTS 512 and it worked fine and as long as the opty was above 2.5GHz the card wasnt held back....or so i thought.

Just got a E8500 and at stock the card is performing about 20-30% better in cod4. The Opty was definately holding the card back.

It all depends what your budget is really. X2 chips go for silly money on ebay and even on here they hold their price well. Gave up looking for one when my opty died so went for the full upgrade instead and glad i did.

In between i had an opty 146 at 2.9Ghz with the 8800gts and trust me it wasnt pretty :(
 
I would go for a cheap Intel rig either 2nd hand or new.

Socket 939 stuff is quite expensive now even 2nd hand and for £50 your brother is getting a good deal as as the altogether on that well known auction site you could have got £75-£100.

Bargain new Intel stuff is the E5200 for bang for buck plus a cheap p31 mobo and some cheap ddr2 ram and you won't look back.

I went from a 3Ghz 4200+ x2 setup with a 8800GTS 512 to a q6600 at 3.4Ghz and my framerates in crysis went up 12 fps from 28 to 40 so it does make a big difference.
 
Did the E5200 just come out? I'm seeing that at £60 new.

I was hoping that the £50 from my brother would cover the CPU + mobo, 2nd hand. Memory is cheap as chips atm so I'm not concerned too much about that. And the gfx card is obviously coming out of my own pocket.

The gfx card was going to be my only upgrade at this time, but I'm basically forced into upgrading the lot so I can pass on my old one to the little bro. And yes, I know he's getting a good deal :p Normally I give it to him f.o.c., but this time we're both on tight budgets instead of just him :p
 
uvmain said:
good luck with that :/
Click to expand...

OK then.

What's realistic for an C2D+mobo on the 2nd hand market? I'm not after top-of-the-range, but it should be at least as good as my 3800x2.

I was under the impression that any C2D is better than the AMD part, so that last criteria shouldn't be too hard to satisfy.
 
Well a E2180 will cost you £30 2nd hand and would still be a good step up especially if you overclock it.

A p35 775 mobo will set you back around £30 2nd hand. 2Gb of ddr2 memory maybe for £15 to £20 so you are still looking at £75 to £80 i'm afraid but probably still cheaper than buying a 2nd hand 939 setup again.

Just noticed you can access MM so there are/have been a few on there for sale recently. Also look out for b grade bargains on ocuk especially mobo if you can live with just the bare board.

This isn't bad but would still advise spending more to get a p35 board

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...5G Micro ATX (LGA775) PCI-Express Motherboard

£23.49
 
Last edited:
Much framerate increase from the E2180 over the 3800x2 with the 8800GT?

Assuming it hits 3ghz or so.
 
Change of plan. What I'll do is spend the £50 on the E5200, which just leaves me needing a mobo that can support a 3.5ghz overclock, and 3gig DDR2.

Hopefully I can find that in the MM...
 
The e2180 is well worth buying but only if it's for a good few £ less than the e5200. Mine has been running at 3.2ghz for about a year and cost £50-something. Bargain. I sometimes think about upgrading it but i'm yet to find a comparison of an e2**0 at 3ghz+ against another s775 chip that makes me want to spend £100+. I'll probably go quad at point in the future. Far-cry 2 on quad sounds interesting and apparently GTA4 recommended spec is quad-core.
 
So is it only very recent boards that support the e5200 then?

Also read somewhere that not many boards will let you go past 320 FSB with a 5200.

And someone else mentioned that you need a board which lets you control tRD too... confusing!
 
FoxEye said:
So is it only very recent boards that support the e5200 then?

Also read somewhere that not many boards will let you go past 320 FSB with a 5200.

And someone else mentioned that you need a board which lets you control tRD too... confusing!
Click to expand...

That mobo is a 945 chipset and some of the early ones didn't have the voltage requirements for C2D

A 965 mobo will work with a 5200 no problem with a latest bios.
 
Good decision and you won't regret it.

There's a ASUS P5B-E which you should get for £40 for sale atm.
 
Greebo said:
Good decision and you won't regret it.

There's a ASUS P5B-E which you should get for £40 for sale atm.
Click to expand...

Can get a new p31 m-atx board for £40 new, so why is that 965 p5b-e a good deal at £40 used?

I'm guessing perhaps the quality of the board > the chipset it uses?
 
Yeah Asus makes good boards but if you hunt around you ought to find a p35 board for similar money which would be your best bet tbh.
 
Made a post on the o/c section of the forums. I'm still not fully understanding how you can get equal bandwidth (CPU:RAM) with this chip, on anything less than a 1:2 divider.

I had no idea whether to post it here or there :p After all, the whole site is about overclocking, right? But it has its own special forum :p
 
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