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Anyone still gaming with a 939 cpu? :p

FoxEye

FoxEye

FoxEye

Caporegime
Joined
17 Feb 2006
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So atm I'm chugging along with my Athlon X2 3800+. Last year I stuck an 8800gt in it, and saw a nice upgrade (from my 7800gt).

Now I'm considering sticking a GTX260 in there, and hoping for a nice boost from that upgrade too.

Anway, realistically, for someone who doesn't do video encoding, or CAD or folding, is there any reason not to stick with the 939? I'm thinking of course of game performance :p

If I did switch, budget would only stretch to something like an Athlon II X2 anyhow, so am I missing much?
 
What games are you playing? I used to play TF2 and L4D at 1280x1024 but upgraded a year ago to spec in sig, fps used to drop during fire fights, which is when you need the speed. I saw a massive improvement, fps rarely drops below the required 60fps for my LCD. Except in Crysis, but who cares about that etc ;) (seriously, I played WARHEAD the other day and I completed it in 6 hours and frankly I want those 6 hours of my life back)
 
You lose some fps but on the whole the CPU is fine :), really depends what res you use tbh
Anything up to 1680x1050 didnt seem to make any significant difference for me
 
i think ull find a major bottleneck from that CPU with a 260.
I moved from a 4200+ X2 to i5 and considering I had my GTX280 in my old rig moving to i5 felt like I had a new graphics card aswell, the bottleneck I must have had from my X2 was unreal.
Games inc assassins creed were unplayable on a gtx280!
 
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I use to have a 3800x2 with 2Gb of ddr and a 260gtx, games like GTA4 and crysis on high/ultra high were unplayable.

Replaced with phenomll955 and 4gigs of ddr3 and a new motherboard, everything is now how I expect things to play. a lot better.
 
Chronictank said:
You lose some fps but on the whole the CPU is fine :), really depends what res you use tbh
Anything up to 1680x1050 didnt seem to make any significant difference for me
Click to expand...

Well I don't give a hoot about Crysis :p Wolfenstein was perfectly playable, but Dragon Age chugged a fair bit. Even after dropping the rez to 1280x800 (native is 1680x), where there was a lot of stuff going on things started to jerk badly.

I don't give a hoot about Dragon Age either (bad game imho :p), but it seemed to me to be a sign of things to come...

I'm just not sure if going dual core to (more modern) dual core is really a worthwhile plan. Perhaps I could stretch to an X3, but I'm not putting down the kind of money I'd need for an i5 :p
 
sold my old rig for 120 quid (probably could have got more) i5/mobo/ram 300 quid
so at around 180 quid for the jump to i5 was nothing.
 
It'll be about 50/50 with new games whether that cpu will be fast enough of not. Certainly, some of the potential of the 260 would be wasted.

It's very much worth going to a new dual core. If you look at something like :

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-249-AM&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=1328

or even

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-251-AM&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=803

they're about 1ghz faster than the 3800 X2, plus they're faster clock for clock, so they are quicker than the equivelant speed of the old architecture.
The Athlon II X3 435 which OCUK sadly don't sell is also fantastic value.

Pair with a cheap motherboard such as :
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-214-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1483
and you're away.
 
stulid said:
It's not just crysis, any modern game will probably chug along with a 3800x2.
Click to expand...

Nah not really i quite happily play modern games like L4D2, TF2 on my Athlon 64 3500+. The load times arent brilliant but they get their eventually and once they are up it tends to be smooth :D

Socket 939 for life baby! (well not literally)
 
shmacks said:
Nah not really i quite happily play modern games like L4D2, TF2 on my Athlon 64 3500+. The load times arent brilliant but they get their eventually and once they are up it tends to be smooth :D

Socket 939 for life baby! (well not literally)
Click to expand...

Both those games are based on the source engine, which came out with halflife2 in the era of ati9800pro.

They are so far from being modern its not even funny, a pentium4 can cope with it.
 
FoxEye said:
So atm I'm chugging along with my Athlon X2 3800+. Last year I stuck an 8800gt in it, and saw a nice upgrade (from my 7800gt).

Now I'm considering sticking a GTX260 in there, and hoping for a nice boost from that upgrade too.

Anway, realistically, for someone who doesn't do video encoding, or CAD or folding, is there any reason not to stick with the 939? I'm thinking of course of game performance :p

If I did switch, budget would only stretch to something like an Athlon II X2 anyhow, so am I missing much?
Click to expand...


just be careful as i bought a 5770 and it's not compatible with the socket 939 n force chipset so i've now oredered a new phenom 2 rig.
so just do a lot of google, what mobo you have

the best upgrade i saw was having a 4870 but like i say check your mobo is compatible
 
shmacks said:
Nah not really i quite happily play modern games like L4D2, TF2 on my Athlon 64 3500+. The load times arent brilliant but they get their eventually and once they are up it tends to be smooth :D

Socket 939 for life baby! (well not literally)
Click to expand...

you say that until you buy a 5770 lol
 
Recently moved from an x2 4800 939 to a Q8200, and it's definitely made a difference. I don't have a bad word to say about the 939 though, it was a cracking chip. I'm not sure how much of a boost you will get from upgrading the graphics card again - I was on an 8800GT, and moving to the Q8200 I noticed a performance increase in games, suggesting there's at least a partial bottleneck with a 939 chip on an 8800GT, with a much faster chip that you currently have.
 
stulid said:
I use to have a 3800x2 with 2Gb of ddr and a 260gtx, games like GTA4 and crysis on high/ultra high were unplayable.

Replaced with phenomll955 and 4gigs of ddr3 and a new motherboard, everything is now how I expect things to play. a lot better.
Click to expand...

thats your system as i used to play crysis on high on my rig when i had my 4870 and it ran fine only limited the AA because the card was 512mb
 
stulid said:
Both those games are based on the source engine, which came out with halflife2 in the era of ati9800pro.

They are so far from being modern its not even funny, a pentium4 can cope with it.
Click to expand...

Oh right ignore me then! :(

Thanks for the heads up on 5770 issue jimmy, that must have been crap to deal with. My plan is to upgrade sometime in the near future so it will be a whole new build. Wouldnt want to disgrace any 57xx+ with an athlon 64, it would be blasphemy.
 
My 939 system is only a secondary machine for if I have some multiplayer games going on. 3800x2 @2600mhz It still plays well with just about everything. Currently running 2x1950pro and 256mb vmem certinatly shows its bottlenecks at times but nothing runs really badly. Machine will get my current 3870 when I upgrade main machine and it will be crisis capable again ;)

Has 4gb installed but vista/win7 64 can only access 2818. Only WinXP 64 can acess all 4gb. This seems quite common when reading up on 939 board issues. Also known to have issues with ati 5 series cards and is running on ati cfx1600 chipset (Asus A8R-MVP)
 
shmacks said:
Oh right ignore me then! :(

Thanks for the heads up on 5770 issue jimmy, that must have been crap to deal with. My plan is to upgrade sometime in the near future so it will be a whole new build. Wouldnt want to disgrace any 57xx+ with an athlon 64, it would be blasphemy.
Click to expand...

tell u the truth the only reason i got a 5770 is because my 4870 went fubar.
i like this 3800+ @2.5ghz only thing it really struggles with in the things i do is photoshop X2

new rig is coming next week and this is going on the popular auction site as 939 stuff fetches a pretty penny at the mo :D
 
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