64 4000+ versus 64 X2 4200+ for gaming

[saguy]

I will not be upgrading my socket 939 system (see sig) for at least another year apart for my CPU. I only use my PC for gaming I do not multitask. I am seriously considering replacing my 64 3200 for a 64 4000 to last me another year. Whatever CPU I get I will be over clocking by at least 400 MHz.

I have been put off upgrading to dual core in that it will be more expensive and not worth it as I will most likely be undertaking a major upgrade in a year. The way I see it multi core has not brought much improvement to gaming. Even when games have stated that they support dual core the advantages have been minimal. The only reason newer dual core CPU's have improved game performance is due to evolutionary improved design and features and not because there are 2 cores.

Would I be better off with a 64 4000+ (£62) rather than a 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ (£105) considering the 4000 has a higher clock speed and more cache and is almost half the price?

I do not have much faith that games in the near future will fully optimize dual core.

 

[Will_3rd]

As you are single core presently, you could upgrade to an x2 4200+ but as most games are still single threaded the performance jump isn't that noticeable, outside of games it will beat single core CPUs on most tasks.

I've got 4000+ and it's great, very good performance when overclocked.

But Dual Core seems to be the future going by current trends.

 

[gt_junkie]

I had a 3700+ @ 2.6ghz for a year or so before upgrading to a 3800+ X2 @ 2.5ghz. The performance increase in games is basically 0% unless of course a game is optimised for dual core. So from that perspectave i couldn't really recommend it. However, doing multiple intensive tasks in windows has been great! It never slows down and is always willing to do more! If you'll be touching on anything like video editing or encoding of any kind you'll be more than happy!

Edit - sorry, didn't read your post fully! It's up to you but considering the price difference the 4000+ would be best for what you need. Another thing to consider would be a high clocking chip similar to what you have now. The Members Market occassionally has chips that will happilly do 2.6ghz plus for peanuts. I have a 3000+ in one of my other machines that happily did 2.6ghz on an ASRock board using the original cooler!

gt

 

[saguy]

As I have said I never multitask so for £60 the 64 4000+ looks like the way to go for the next year. The next logical question - will I see a noticeable performance boost over my existing 64 3200+ (clocked to 2340 MHz) to a 64 4000+ (clocked to 2800 MHz and more) plus the advantages of the larger cache. Or would I be better off just waiting for the next big upgrade in a year’s time. Until then this PC will have to try and cope with Crysis, Vanguard, Alan Wake and other new games to be released this year.

My 64 3200+ is one of the early ones and 2340 is the maximum stable overclock I can get on air.

 

[pegasus1]

Or would I be better off just waiting for the next big upgrade in a year’s time. .

Depends if your current CPU can run the games you want at the speeds you like, most modern games are GPU dependant.

 

[saguy]

Depends if your current CPU can run the games you want at the speeds you like, most modern games are GPU dependant.

I recall seeing benchmarks with my card using different CPU's and there was sometimes a fair performance increase from faster CPU so I suspect my CPU may be a slight bottleneck. I cannot remember which games they were using for the benchmark. I will try searching again for some benchmarks. I know games like EQ2 are CPU dependent and I am not sure about Vanguard.

 

[pegasus1]

I recall seeing benchmarks with my card using different CPU's and there was sometimes a fair performance increase from faster CPU so I suspect my CPU may be a slight bottleneck. I cannot remember which games they were using for the benchmark. I will try searching again for some benchmarks. I know games like EQ2 are CPU dependent and I am not sure about Vanguard.

Over at Toms, they use Rome Total War and LOMAC as two of their test Games, both are very CPU dependent. In LOMAC, my frame rate remains unchanged if i go from 2xAA/AF to 4 x AA and 16xAF.

 

[Tombo]

HL2 and all source games are very CPU dependant.

 

[~>Dg<~]

thing is what makes me mad and said loads of times already the games are catered for the majority .so when someone says oh you need this or this its mostly bs as they assess it across the whole range and a 4000 would b fine for a year at least if not more.no game needs that at mo and to be honest y peeps upgraing to high spec cards is beyond me as theres really no games for the new tech .by the time the new games are out like crysis your cards will be middle of the road.dont want to affend but nvidia make sure a game runs on the current lowest card of generation and dual cores arnt gunna be used for at least a year in games proper.flame time coming i can feel it.i do like these forums but they are a buisness tool after all.dont believe the hype.

 

[Sel]

thing is what makes me mad and said loads of times already the games are catered for the majority .so when someone says oh you need this or this its mostly bs as they assess it across the whole range and a 4000 would b fine for a year at least if not more.no game needs that at mo and to be honest y peeps upgraing to high spec cards is beyond me as theres really no games for the new tech .by the time the new games are out like crysis your cards will be middle of the road.dont want to affend but nvidia make sure a game runs on the current lowest card of generation and dual cores arnt gunna be used for at least a year in games proper.flame time coming i can feel it.i do like these forums but they are a buisness tool after all.dont believe the hype.

I sort of agree with you atleast about dual cores not going to be used in games properly for a year(I hope it will be sooner).
I do have a 2x4800 with one core gathering dust however I,m thinking of an upgrade in a few months because some of the new stuff requires more CPU performance than I can get out of my 2x4800.
I know the games will play ok but I do want to crank up the graphics and because the games I like to play tend to be sims they seem to be CPU limited and the only fix for this is a faster CPU.

 

[pegasus1]

thing is what makes me mad and said loads of times already the games are catered for the majority .so when someone says oh you need this or this its mostly bs as they assess it across the whole range and a 4000 would b fine for a year at least if not more.no game needs that at mo and to be honest y peeps upgraing to high spec cards is beyond me as theres really no games for the new tech .by the time the new games are out like crysis your cards will be middle of the road.dont want to affend but nvidia make sure a game runs on the current lowest card of generation and dual cores arnt gunna be used for at least a year in games proper.flame time coming i can feel it.i do like these forums but they are a buisness tool after all.dont believe the hype.

Dual core isnt needed for gaming and as said a lot on these forums, a fast single core is as good as a fast dual core (and cheaper), But (and its a very large butt) the fastest gaming cpu's are from Intel and they just happen to be dual core.
Thats for gaming, if you use any multi core optimised software then dual core is faster.

 

[saguy]

Out of interest is the 360 using both cores or are the games still single threaded.

 

[Phil2008]

Its like a few months ago, ppl were telling me I should upgrade my Claw Hammer FX55 cpu @2.79 cos it was ****. I was going to upgrade untill you guys said theres plenty of life in it yet and it will take a 8800gtx or R60 card easy.

 

[Sean_UK]

Went from 4000+ to 4800+ here on my AGP set up, well worth it just for the much improved multi-tasking in my opinion; which improved to a level i didnt even expect to see. People told me i'd see no diff with fps with games, sorry but that was a load of rubbish. All games i own which were retail released last year through present day have each gained anything from 6 to 15fps, dependant on game of course. The only games ive seen no fps diff are the older ones from 2004 or further back. Not huge diff granted, however better than the 'zero' i was informed to expect. Allthough if you use the pc for web browsing/playing games; then buy/stick with 4000+ and save your cash for a future build as previously suggested here.

 

[Kaiju]

There is no doubting dual core will improve the unzipping of files, video encoding and multi-tasking to a certain extent over single core, but as with the general notion so far, if you are predominantly looking for FPS improvements, a graphics card is the best way to go.

As for me personally, i'm going to stick with my trusty air cooled, single core 3700+ @ 2.8GHz, 2 gigs of OCZ's low-latency extended bandwidth RAM and 7900 GTO @ GTX speeds for at least another year.

I've toyed with the idea of upgrading to Conroe (as well as Vista off topic), but there is absolutely no point as i'm more than happy with my current systems performance and not one hiccup in the last two years with XP Pro SP2.

It seems all this reading of how great Conroe is has somehow made my system feel old and outdated, which of course is absolute BS. As aforementioned above, "don't believe the hype."

 

[Skeme]

As for me personally, i'm going to stick with my trusty air cooled, single core 3700+ @ 2.8GHz, 2 gigs of OCZ's low-latency extended bandwidth RAM and 7900 GTO @ GTX speeds for at least another year.

I've toyed with the idea of upgrading to Conroe (as well as Vista off topic), but there is absolutely no point as i'm more than happy with my current systems performance and not one hiccup in the last two years with XP Pro SP2.

It seems all this reading of how great Conroe is has somehow made my system feel old and outdated, which of course is absolute BS. As aforementioned above, "don't believe the hype."

This is pretty much the conclusion i've come to also particularly the last bit. Im gonna stick with my cpu/mobo/ram and plough some cash into a gfx upgrade in a few months time.