3700sd to x2 4400 (939) worth it???

[dale1uk]

Hi all, I'm thinking of selling my Sandy and going dual core. I only used to use my pc for gaming and the 3700 does everything I ask of it in that department, however I'm starting to encode quite a few dvds, and not being able to use the comp whist doing that is starting to get to me. I know that there'll be loads of people about to say NOOO go C2D, but I'm not looking to sell my board and ram, and then have to do a full fresh install, I just want a straight swap - cpu 4 cpu.
So, what will a clocked 4400 be like in games compared to my 3700, which is at 2.8gig?? Also what kind of clocks do the 4400's reach?? I know every chip is different but just after an average. At the end of the day will the upgrade be worth it for what I want it to do - game and encode??

Again no sugestions to go C2D, I know the performance jump over the amd's is huge, but money is tight (i know I could sell my kit to fund it) and like I said before, I dont want to do a full rebuild.

Many thanks.

 

[Biggles 266]

My 3800 X2 reached 2.6 GHz with no extra volts or anything. Most X2s will reach 2.5 GHz or more. Some will go to nearly 3 GHz. YMMV.

As for the performance increase, if you have an X2 clocked slower then the 3700, then everything that runs in a single thread will be slower. Lots of games at the moment make little or no use of dual cores and will be a touch slower. But anything that is aware and can make use of the extra core will be faster, and of course the computer will be far more responsive when doing intensive background tasks.

Worth it? Yes, although given the money they go for, a 4400 X2 might be a touch pricey.

 

[Ronaldo]

i havent compared but i got similar setup as you and from what i'v read i think u will get less fps on most games as your cpu is running same as [email protected]


but some one who has gone from single to dual core can advise better.



ps what vcore does ** SD need to run @ 2.8? and is ** ram on divider?

 

[dale1uk]

ps what vcore does ** SD need to run @ 2.8? and is ** ram on divider?

Takes 1.56v to get the sandy 100% stable at 2.8gig, and thats with the ram on a 333 divider.


Back to the original question, looking on the cpu charts on Tomshardware, selecting my cpu as a fx57 ([email protected]) and the 4400 as a fx60 ([email protected]), then the results go either way, all the games are either better, or at the worst, the same using the dual core over the sandy, however a few apps work better with the single core. Then again they will be single core apps and that will leave me a second core to do other things with.
Looks like an upgrade is on the cards.