S939 Upgrade advice needed

[mrbenn]

My current 3500+ is showing its age badly in vista, even with the 2gb of RAM installed, so have decided to go dual core.
However, I am on a budget and so want to take as smooth a path as possible, i.e stick with the socket 939 board (at least for now).
As i see it, my choices are as follows:

1: X2 3800+ (with view to overclocking?)
2: X2 4600+ (probably not much o'cing potential)
3: Opteron dual (clueless about the performance abilities of these)

Obviously a primary concern is comparative performance in Vista and compatibility with my existing mobo/ram setup

Any suggestions/advice would be very gratefully received

MrBenn

 

[calnen]

I'm in a similar situation and just ordered an Opteron 165. Dual core, with more Cache than the X2's and more overclocking headroom too. They're pretty cheap as well

 

[InsomniaCalls]

I went for the X2 3800+
Not received it yet but pretty sure it'll be a big improvement on my current A64 3000+.

 

[pumpman]

if you can grab a dual core opteron so much the better as apart from the dearer x2's they have 1mb cache but apart from that they will all work the same
not all will clock the same, ive had three and they would do 2.4, 2.6 and the one I have now does 2.8 on air @1.4v

 

[A[L]C]

are opterons dual core and standard 939 then?

 

[mrbenn]

Performance wise, how do the Opterons stack up at stock clocking to the X2 chips? Having looked around, they seem to be a little hard to find, only ones i can see so far are 170 and 175 ones, recommended? (and will work ok with my AN8?)

 

[gurusan]

well most 4400 x2's have been clocking pretty well.

Especially the 89w versions like the one i have

 

[Jleo]

are opterons dual core and standard 939 then?

There are

Single core Opteron

Dual core Opteron

Socket 939 dependant

Socket 940 dependant

Socket Am2 dependant


Opteron variations

 

[mrbenn]

Anyone any experience with the Asrock 4Core-Dual board? It would seem to be a halfway step towards a full new system, as I could use my existing RAM and gfx card. Obviously it is not the bees-knees of boards, but as a stepping stone towards C2D loveliness?

Edit:
Although it has only 2 SATA ports, and I have 4 SATA drives

 

[Jleo]

The Asrock board with Agp and DDr is a good enough board but the Fsb tops out at 300.

An E6400 with ddr400 topped out at 300 Fsb will give you E6600 (2400Mhz) speed.

This bench was done with the E6400 Asrock 775I65G Socket 775 and a single 512MB stick of DDR ram. My previous Amd X2 4400 @ 2600 and 2 X GIG DDR Pc4000 was taking 33secs

 

[Edinho]

Im on a 3700+ San Diego core. Ive not seen any slowdown in dual boot with xp/vista. If anything Vista is marginally quicker.

 

[El Jimben]

Performance wise, how do the Opterons stack up at stock clocking to the X2 chips? Having looked around, they seem to be a little hard to find, only ones i can see so far are 170 and 175 ones, recommended? (and will work ok with my AN8?)

The maximum overclock is generally higher and they tend to clock further on stock volts than the x2s although there are obviosuly exceptions to the rule! The 165, 170 and 175 have multipliers of 9,10 and 11 respecitvely so if you know that your mobo can't achieve a high FSB/HTT, go for one of the chips with the higher multi. That said, the 165 and 170 tend to be cheaper than the 175, 180 & 185 etc.

Your mobo should support any of those without any major issue although you might have to update the bios.

 

[mp260767]

Anyone any experience with the Asrock 4Core-Dual board? It would seem to be a halfway step towards a full new system, as I could use my existing RAM and gfx card. Obviously it is not the bees-knees of boards, but as a stepping stone towards C2D loveliness?

Edit:
Although it has only 2 SATA ports, and I have 4 SATA drives

it is a budget board and it shows in some areas, but hook it up with a 4300 and it will do nicely.