DualCore Quick Rundown please!

[mojojoejo]

Hey guys and gals,

basically my system is currently as such:

3500 Venice Core 939
2x512 Crucial Ballistix 3500 stuff
Gigabyte K8N NF4 Sli Pro mobo

and I'm pretty disappointed by the performance, mainly as I'm used to a P4 and the HT goodness that it provided. Since I'm about to get a load more spending money I'm looking at swapping out my CPU and possibly my memory.

Reason for memory swapout: if I use all 4 banks I get a significant performance drop going from 1T to 2T do I not? Can someone elaborate on this one a tiny bit maybe?

Also for the CPU upgrade, I'm thinking of either getting an X2, but not sure which one. Logically I'd want something like a 4400 as it's got the 1 meg cache on it, but will this make a lot of difference as oposed to a lesser one with less cache? I do a fair ammount of stuff, from gaming, photoshop work, web design, and I like leaving my PC to crunch stuff for distributed computing - but I've never Overclocked anything and frankly don't want to tempt fate.

So, if anyone could help make some suggestions as to what CPU I should be looking at, and any good memory advice would also be appreciated.

There is a slim possibility that I'll get a new mobo as well, but mainly because it's a bit "dodgy".

Cheers for lookin

 

[mojojoejo]

lol - leave this alone for a day and look at this threadjack!

What is the main point in chosing an opteron over an x2 if you don't want to clock it - or is it just that with clocking you can get a much better deal as the initial outlay is lower than what the performance you can generate?

[edit] It occurs to me I wasn't overly clear on this one - what I think I mean is what is the best all round dual core chip I can be looking at which will perform well with my 7800GT that I don't have to overclock to get the best out of.[/edit]

 

[mojojoejo]

Considering that he said he wasn't going to overclock that is why I think the 4400 is a good idea

Cheers mush!