Do I need to upgrade?

[d3moliti0n]

Hey there

Well I have recently been given my parents PC as they no longer use it anymore so I carried out a few upgrades on it, I installed an extra gig of ram, a Radeon HD3850 256MB PCI-E GPU and a new 650w PSU. My question is, do I need to upgrade the CPU? The current CPU is an Athlon X64 3200+ (2.00GHz rated at 3.20GHz, 512KB cache, socket 939). If I do upgrade it was going to be to a dual core 3600+ which runs at 2.00GHz and has a 512KB cache aswell so will I see much difference and is it a needed upgrade? Also, I've heard that where my CPU says it is rated at 3.20GHz, thats what my CPU's speed is compared to a Pentium 4 as thats how the Athlon's work and thats what the '+' stands for after the numbers. Anyways, do you guys think I need to upgrade the CPU or not?

Thanks for your help and time.

 

[easyrider]

Yes a dual core would be a nice upgrade

 

[DAnDan]

I'm in pretty much the same situation as you, although moving to a Core 2 Duo soon, after having a look around the gains do seem to be very much worth it.

 

[cooljimy84]

yep i second that, dual core would be the way forward.

Even if you don't have games that can use both cores, it will still help with ever day things and load times....

I think...

 

[mOdO]

yeh, the core 2 route is my next upgrade too

 

[TheRedZealot]

You would need a new motherboard more than likely

 

[P373]

You would need a new motherboard more than likely

y? most 939 boards support dual core and the 3600x2 is avaliable for 939