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Best upgrade from 939 AMD 4200X2 2.2

Herojuana said:
Alright I suppose your right however I thought the DDr2 RAM would be significantly faster and if I went to AM2/775 I would go for a faster CPU anyway. I guess I will wait until the Quad cores come down in price and some, maybe in Q1 2008 get one then.

Thanks for the info guys
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What motherboard do you currently own? and what memory brand?
 
I've got a Asrock 939-DUAL SATA2 motherboard and using 2 x 1GB 3200 Crucial and 2 x 512MB some other random brand which I robbed from my Dad's pc. ;)
 
Upgrade when you see the need to tbh, if you feel that your current setup can't handle what you do then upgrade. If you don't want to overclock you'll still notice a performance boost from AM2 6000+ with DDR2 800 ram, plus you can upgrade to Phenom quad later.

Quad core is pretty much useless unless you game, video encode and photoshop at the same time as most apps don't utilise multicore very well. Otherwise a dual core chip at same clock speed is going to perform similarly to a quad (from the same generation of course).

As said your ram seems to be running a bit too slow for PC3200 ram.
 
As said your ram seems to be running a bit too slow for PC3200 ram.
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Yeah I think its the 2 x 512 sticks bringing it down to that, they must not be DDR400.

I had a little go at overclocking today and managed to get mine from 2.2GHz to 2.45Ghz with quite some ease. I did a test on it using Prime1995 (i think thats what it was) and it went up to about 53 degrees highest, is this safe?


As for my upgrade I'm thinking about the AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5000+ Black Edition 2.60GHz. If I wanted to overclock this to about 3Ghz, would this motherboard be sufficient? - MSI K9N Neo V3 nForce 560 (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 £46.99 inc VAT



Thanks again for your help and advice.
 
Herojuana said:
What would you suggest to be more bang for buck?
Do you mean a quad core rather than dual?
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On the budget there is very little to upgrade. You have a good system. As suggested save up more for something in the new year, or anything else, non PC, you want around Xmas time!
 
Herojuana said:
Yeah I think its the 2 x 512 sticks bringing it down to that, they must not be DDR400.

I had a little go at overclocking today and managed to get mine from 2.2GHz to 2.45Ghz with quite some ease. I did a test on it using Prime1995 (i think thats what it was) and it went up to about 53 degrees highest, is this safe?
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53C is perfectly safe, if you can manage to overclock to 2.6Ghz then it will perform similarly to the AM2 X2 black ed at 2.6Ghz, so you won't need to upgrade.

Herojuana said:
As for my upgrade I'm thinking about the AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5000+ Black Edition 2.60GHz. If I wanted to overclock this to about 3Ghz, would this motherboard be sufficient? - MSI K9N Neo V3 nForce 560 (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 £46.99 inc VAT
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Maybe, can't say for sure but if you really want to upgrade you can opt for a better mobo with X2 6000+ which you should be able to push a another 200-400Mhz, and go for the 2gb for Geil for now and get another set when you can afford.

But like I said if you can overclock your current set up to similar speed maybe you can delay the upgrade and get something later that offers bigger performance improvements.
 
Bang for buck. What I mean is his system still would run the latest things and upgrading would be a waste of money at present in my eyes. If it had been a new build fair enough but upgrading from what he has to a low end C2D.

The op would be better off saving abit more money and gettin a higher spec for what its worth as to upgrade to the lower spec would be stupid in my eyes.
 
To OP - How about the AM2CPU upgrade board for your motherboard? It can be had for about £20 and lets you use an AM2 cpu (ASROCK say it will not support phenoms though) and DDR2. Add the multiplier unlocked X2 5000+ Black Edition (Anything over X2 5200+ not yet supported in BIOS) and overclock away.

The question that remains is whether this will give a noticeable enough difference for you. What are you finding you are CPU limited in at the moment? There are still very few games that your current CPU will drag down into unplayable framerates. I'm sure a faster processor will help video editing etc but what is it in particular that you want to upgrade for?

If it was me, I'd hang on until you can get something you'll really see a difference in.
 
You're right on the whole there's nothing really that wrong with my setup.

Though I can sell my current mobo/cpu/ram to my dad for about £100+ i would guess.

This being the case I can probably afford to upgrade to
AM2 DDR2 motherboard with
AMD 64X2 Black 5000 @ 3.0Ghz and
4Gb of RAM running at 400Mhz (from 133 + 3Gb which is what I have now)

for about £100-120 on top of the £100. This is pretty good in my opinion.
Whilst my pc is capable of playing games it could do with some oomph since I started running vista64 gaming has slowed down a bit (although general desktop use seems very efficient). I play quake wars quite a lot and despite having just got a 8800GT 512 I get a fair amount of stutterring .
Aswell as this my motherboard isn't supported by Vista 64 and by this i mean the LAN drivers don't work. Currently I have to use cmd prompt everytime I logon to connect to the internet ("ipconfig/all / route delete 0.0.0.0 / ipconfig renew").

So all in all I think its worth upgrading for £100-120 assuming I can get £100 off my dad for what I've got.
 
Now that you did not mention that you were going to sell your old bits. If that's the case opt for a low-endish C2D system like what you had in the first place. I still don't think you will see an increase much to be honest but what the heck its your choice.
 
Alternative cheap and cheerful solution to your Vista 64 compatibility problem - PCI ethernet card.

Aside from that - I'm sure I'd seen someone get the 939Dual SATA2 working with onboard LAN in vista 64 bit with a driver from another board. Might have been in the official thread in motherboards.

Edit: possible simple solution to your game stuttering - dual boot with XP and use that.
 
If it's gaming that you're interested in then it's your GFX card that will make the biggest difference - for <£200 you could get an 8800GT that will make just about everything out there fly. What card have you got ATM and could you confirm that the Asrock is pci-e not agp?
 
If it's gaming that you're interested in then it's your GFX card that will make the biggest difference - for <£200 you could get an 8800GT that will make just about everything out there fly. What card have you got ATM and could you confirm that the Asrock is pci-e not agp?
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Yes mate I have an 8800GT 512mb which I recently bought and the Asrock is PCI-E.
 
In that case, given how fast 775 mobos come and go, I'd say save the cash until you start noticing a problem - your rig should last you nicely into next year - might be worth picking up a good Opti 165 and clocking it if you can find one that'll do 3Ghz for around £35 - but I certainly wouldn't spend more than that. Could get a nice screen for a little more?
 
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