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Conroe or stick with what i have ?

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Joined
8 Nov 2003
Posts
2,093
Location
england
Hi Guys
thinking about go Conroe . but im not sure if i should stick with what i have for the moment .at present i am running
EPoX 9NPA-Ultra
X2 3800
GT 7600
2 GIG GeIL value ram
what do u guys think
 
depends on how strapped for cash you are? i mean i switched to whats in my sig from a 3700 @3ghz / dfi sli-dr / 2gig of g.skill! and tbh i haven't looked back at the upgrade!
 
Arguments for and against - I had an X2 3800 and was thinking AM2 or Conroe (been on AMD for some time previously) and went for Conroe. I figured that the whole DDR2 platform change was one of my reasons for upgrade, whilst I could still get some half-decent resale on the s939 stuff.

Performance in benchies is an awesome boost, and marked improvement at video transcoding....but not something I can put my finger on in everyday use - the X2 was pretty spritely anyway :)

My argument was 'cheapest time to upgrade' ....... ;) .... not sure that still holds true, but can probably get reasonable money for your current bits.....
 
Yup, i upgraded just as the conroe came out, mainly because my 939 would plumet in value. Saying that, the Duo 2 whipped my 939 rig by some great margain , so i was more than pleased , and got the DDR2 ram before it shot up in price ;)
 
well thats the way im thinking at the moment .sell my old stuff before its worth nothing .the only thing i would keep would be the GT7600.
 
so do you think i would notice much of a speed increase if i where to go over to Conroe in everyday windows stuff . i am thinking of selling off 1 GIG of the GeIL value ram as ram prices are very high at the moment .and i might get a good price for it now
 
humax said:
so do you think i would notice much of a speed increase if i where to go over to Conroe in everyday windows stuff . i am thinking of selling off 1 GIG of the GeIL value ram as ram prices are very high at the moment .and i might get a good price for it now


yes you would see a speed increase.

but surely windows isnt slow now????
 
TBH, I am not sure I can spot much of a difference in everyday Windows stuff - my X2 3800+ was running @ 2.5GHz for the most part, and such performance is way more than Windows needs anyways ;) Still, if you do more demanding things (encoding, .pdf work, editing video etc.) then I reckon the Conroe will start to pull ahead.....but there is a reasonable investment to consider.......

Thing is, and this is how I thought it out, you are going to upgrade sometime anyway, it's all about value and whether the cost, offset against what you can recoup, now is higher or lower than sometime in the future......cost of funds, and all that, to us Accountanty types :rolleyes:
 
Your current CPU will be fine m8. I recently upgraded from an 3800x2 to an e6600 conroe and yes things are a little 'snappier' but not worth the £500 upgrade imo. Don't get me wrong I aint complaining, lovin my current rig and the upgrade path for me was relatively cheap as I sold off my old kit at a reasonable price (hardly a loss tbh!) but someone looking to upgrade due to everyday windows tasks will notice little difference with a highly clocked x2 to a conroe tbh. Benchies say otherwise I know but I think you would be much better upgrading your graphics card, especially if your a gamer.
 
well i went from an Opty165 @ 2.6 to my Conroe at 3.5 & if i'm brutally honest, the difference is noticeable but not exactly worthwhile. it was a cheap upgrade from my point of view as i got good prices on my 165/DFI/GSKill. but in hindsight i actually don't think it was worth it. i only did it so as not to loose too much money on my S939 kit. ( i sold up before Conroes became available, hence the good prices i got ).
 
You got a descent setup at the moment, unless theres something your pc's not being able to do for u at the moment id stick with it. Whats the worst that could happen , prices in general will drop. ;)
 
For every day windows use there won't be much difference at all.

For games I would stick with what you have. The current crop of games aren't really cpu limited above 1024x768 on your graphics card(at highest settings) so it wouldn't make any difference. Games are still only using 1 core so when when the next crop of games start using 2 cores you may find that your second core will start to breath new life into your machines gaming performance.

Would def go for a GPU upgrade though if you want the best out of the next gen games but i would wait until DX10 cards comes out.

If you do a lot of video/audio encoding, really heavy photoshop work, complex 3d rendering or any other high intensity multi core cpu stuff then conroe is a great upgrade if you don't do any of this much I really wouldn't bother.

BTW: you have x800 listed in your sig not 7600gt
 
Last edited:
Sell your x 2 3800.

Why not....

I sold my opty well in time before the price drops.Two weeks before making my upgrade to conroe painless.

I got £240 for my opty 170 :D

Now its different.

Having said that after selling your cpu,mobo and ram a new E6300,DS3 and some nice Geil will not be that much after recouping some of the cost with selling your X2.

I say go for it

You won't belive how fast a little 6300 will be running at 3.4 ghz over your snail x 2 3800!
 
I went from an athlon 2500 (lol) to a 6300 and to be honest in basic Windows use from a fresh install there was almost no difference. I've got a feeling that a lot of people notice the 'difference' because they go from a bogged down year old install of windows which will be slow because its gathered loads of crap and clogging, data is splashed all over the harddrive, to a fresh install with the basics. Whenever my PC started to seem a little slow with the general stuff I simply formatted and installed from fresh and it'd be nice and snappy again.

Noticed a lot of difference in games though, but that could be because I have an extra GB of ram, and a 1900xt up from an x800xt.
 
Paramount said:
I Whenever my PC started to seem a little slow with the general stuff I simply formatted and installed from fresh and it'd be nice and snappy again.


Do you run any de-frag software? As previously I thought my machine was the victim of a rouge app, or Windows was just, well you know, knackered!

After installing some 'proper' de-fragging s/w all was well again.

Just a thought.
 
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