Recommend an A64 upgrade

Teasy

Teasy

Teasy

Associate
Joined
23 Oct 2003
Posts
229
My current system is:

Asus A7N8X-X Mobo
Athlon XP 3200+
1GB DDR400 ram
BFG Geforce 6800GS OC

I've decided that its finally time to move onto a new platform and Socket 939 seems to be the one to go with. I'm not going for cutting edge, just something noticably faster then what I currently have (I'll upgrade the CPU later if I need more power). Also I'd prefer to be able to keep my AGP graphics card for now (are there any good mobo's with both AGP and PCIE?) I'm looking to spend a few hundred pounds on the upgrade, though if I do have to upgrade the graphics card or anything else then I can spend more if needed. So basically I just want to know what motherboard and CPU I should be looking at.

Oh and finally some benchmarks would be nice. So if anyone can link me to something that compares a lot of the new and old AMD CPU's against each other I'd appreciate it.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the reply.

Is that motherboard good quality? Or would you suggest getting a PCI-E only board and a new graphics card?

The dual core Athlons look like the ones to go for yes. But am I right in thinking that in games and apps that only support a single core the A64 3800 X2 will perform around the same as a A64 3000+ Venice CPU? If so how wide spread is dual core support now and what is support looking like in future games?

Oh and also I heard that Football Manager 2006 supports dual cores, is this true and what kind of performance boost does it give?
 
Last edited:
Teasy said:
Thanks for the reply.

Oh and also I heard thar Football Manager 2006 supports dual cores, is this true and what kind of performance boost does it give?
Click to expand...


Why would you need a dual core chip when playing football manager games?
Do the newer ones have a lot of footy action clips?
 
Shootist said:
Why would you need a dual core chip when playing football manager games?
Do the newer ones have a lot of footy action clips?
Click to expand...

No but they use a lot of maths intensive processing to calculate everything that's going on in the game. Depending on how many leagues you pick to run at once the game has thousands of clubs to simulate (transfers, results, management decisions ect).
 
Last edited:
I checked out a review for the Asrock board you suggested Lee and it seems excellent. So I'm ready to order the Asrock 939 dual sata2 motherboard and Athlon64 X2 3800+ CPU.

Is there anything else I need? Will my ram be ok with this system? (two sticks of 512MB corsair DDR400), I'm looking to upgrade to 2GB. Also I currently have a 550w color-it Silent PSU, will this be ok?

Oh and P.S. does anyone know if my Akasa Carnival heatsink will work with the Athlon64 CPU? (I know the CPU will come with a heatsink but I'd prefer my carnival).

Thanks for the help :)
 
Last edited:
The asrock is a decent board, it is very stable and the only thing it doesn't have is good overclocking features. You can still get a decent overclock from it though.

That ram should work fine, I don't know about the psu as i've never heard of the make. I think it will be fine but i'm not sure.
Do you know how many amps the 12V rail has? It will tell you on the side of the psu.

Your akasa heatsink won't work as socket A and 939 are different sizes.
If you can get a OEM X2 3800+ and a Arctic Freezer 64 pro.
 
Teasy said:
The dual core Athlons look like the ones to go for yes. But am I right in thinking that in games and apps that only support a single core the A64 3800 X2 will perform around the same as a A64 3000+ Venice CPU? If so how wide spread is dual core support now and what is support looking like in future games?

Oh and also I heard that Football Manager 2006 supports dual cores, is this true and what kind of performance boost does it give?
Click to expand...
A X2 3800+ will perform the same as a 3200+ in single threaded apps/games.
There isn't a lot of dual core games yet, I think a lot of new games will be designed for dual core.
There are already a few games which run better on dual core. Quake 4 is 60% faster running on a dual core compared to a single core.

I don't think Football manager 2006 is designed for dual core.
 
For some strange reason I can't find an OEM 3800+ X2 for less then the retail version so I was just going to go for the retail one.

About Football Manager, it does have a "multithreading" option you can tick. Wether that's real dual core support I don't know, I'll find out I suppose :D

Thanks a lot for your help, looks like I know what to order now :)
 
Last edited:
Just installed the new motherboard and processor. Just one thing I need to check when I open Windows Task Manager should there be two seperate windows for CPU usage, because of the dual cores. Because I only see one..

EDIT: Never mind, its working :)
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom