Sandy 3700 to Conroe

pabloB · 23 Oct 2006 at 21:36

Hey there,

I don't pretend to know too much about Conroe, I haven't researched it too much but have read a couple of threads here. I'm just wondering if people that have been upgrading their AMD systems to Conroe are happy with the results. Have you seen a boost in performance mainly in games? I get a bonus next month and was thinking of getting a new build going.

Prices seem to be really good for Conroe but off course there is the added expense of new Mobo, mem etc etc.

I'd love to hear from anyone that has upgraded in a similar manner to that that i'm thinking of going. Apologies if this subject has been done to death, had a little search and couldn't find too much but i'll as always be happily be proved wrong.

Cheers

nickinmarbella · 23 Oct 2006 at 22:47

pabloB said:
Hey there,

I don't pretend to know too much about Conroe, I haven't researched it too much but have read a couple of threads here. I'm just wondering if people that have been upgrading their AMD systems to Conroe are happy with the results. Have you seen a boost in performance mainly in games? I get a bonus next month and was thinking of getting a new build going.

Prices seem to be really good for Conroe but off course there is the added expense of new Mobo, mem etc etc.

I'd love to hear from anyone that has upgraded in a similar manner to that that i'm thinking of going. Apologies if this subject has been done to death, had a little search and couldn't find too much but i'll as always be happily be proved wrong.

Cheers

the difference is tremendous.....i have what i thought a very rapid sysstem, til i got mi conroe... stable at 3600 i couldnt get more than 2.6mgh from mi a64.. 29sec super pi, now 13 sec...

get a conroe...OC sell good ones too

trojan698 · 23 Oct 2006 at 23:10

Great improvement tbh, especially at high resolutions

oweneades · 23 Oct 2006 at 23:34

trojan698 said:
Great improvement tbh, especially at high resolutions

Surely at higher resolutions you will be GPU limited and so having a quicker cpu won't make much difference at all.

I know conroe can make quite a large difference when you are cpu limited but I am sure I have read that at resolutions of 1600x1200 and above (on single card pcs at least) the difference in performance between conroe and a decent X2 A64 is minimal.

easyrider · 23 Oct 2006 at 23:56

It doesn't hurt to have a faster cpu that will scale well in future games though.

And with the new gen cards coming they will need Data quickly.

We dont want the Cpu becoming the bottleneck

Duff-Man · 24 Oct 2006 at 00:40

I've had dozens of different CPUs going back to the 486 days, and I honestly think this is one of the biggest performance jumps I've seen. Hats off to intel this time round...

I had a opteron 146 @ 3Ghz and I went to an e6600. Running at 3.5Ghz stable and I have more than halved my super-pi time, and I see a quite surprising increase in gaming performance - I seem to get less framerate dips in places.

Big.Wayne · 24 Oct 2006 at 00:46

nickinmarbella said:
the difference is tremendous.....29sec super pi, now 13 sec...

that's a large chunk of change to shell out for a synthetic benchmark, sure if it makes you happy I won't knock it but outside in the real world away from the *hype* I would hardly refer to something like that as *tremendous*

I'm not convinced that dual-core has enough supporting software to make it a killer upgrade at this time, so to anyone who is still using a nice mono-core running at 2.5GHz+ I would say hang in there a while longer and to take the MASS Hype spreading about the web with a healthy dose of salt. .

As soon as something better/faster comes out it has a weird effect of making a perfectly good setup feel dated/sluggish. I think in part that is due to a large number of snobbish hardware enthusiasts refering to the existing tech as dated/dead-in-the-water/old-tech etc

joeyjojo · 24 Oct 2006 at 00:50

Not enough of a gain in games to make it worth it for me. The only sensible games benchmark on Tom's is this one:

http://tomshardware.co.uk/cpu/charts.html?modelx=33&model1=432&model2=487&chart=170

Fear at 1280x920. The best result would be going from stock sandy to E6600, giving you 23 fps. If you clocked your sandy to FX57 speeds and went to E6400 you'd get a measly 5 fps more.

Pi times are incredible, but games don't show such an increase.

Edit: what Big.Wayne said. I was typing at the time.

easyrider · 24 Oct 2006 at 01:01

Big.Wayne said:
As soon as something better/faster comes out it has a weird effect of making a perfectly good setup feel dated/sluggish. I think in part that is due to a large number of snobbish hardware enthusiasts refering to the existing tech as dated/dead-in-the-water/old-tech etc

Yup,

I thought my opty 170 @ 2.8ghz was fast until I built my latest conroe RIG.
Never mind my mates opty 146.

I can't bear using it,its so slow.

Yes conroe has made my old setup feel dated and sluggish.Once you have a nicely clocked conroe rig it becomes clear early on that what you had before was slower not just by a bit,by a lot.

And I dont mean Super PI times either.

When editing in premier (supports dual cores BTW) the speed gains that I have experienced make me so much more creative.

So much so that I have a 3 monitor setup as having mixers,timelines,FX etc..does not phase the creative juices by things being slugglish.

Its snappy quick and the rendering power is amazing.

I'm not a snobbish hardware enthusiast.But when a cpu that cost £130 when nicley clocked performs this outstanding, then there really is no excuse not getting one IMO.

AMD Athlon 64 3800+ 2.4GHz (Socket AM2) is £82 I mean for 38 quid more you get massive cpu power with core 2 duo.

Its a no brainer.

Kmodo · 24 Oct 2006 at 03:57

I went core2duo and I only use my PC for gaming... I wish I saved the cash for DX10!!! However core2duo is nice and was fun to OC, seen no performance gain in any games and I play nearly all FPS................. but battlefield 2... I reinstalled it out of curiousity and it now has zero loading lag (before when spawning and zooming around on buggy would judder alittle at start of game) and also I get into games at the speed of light and the frames now reach 80-100 99% of the time..its crazy!!! I never knew a new cpu could do that to bf2 i always thought capable gpu/cpu and ram is all it need for high frames. Trust I had never seen 99 and 100 fps for such long sustained periods of time ever and I always used to play this game I would say before totally maxed out at 1680 by 1050 i would get 40 to 80 and now I get 70 to 100, this is with identical GPU and same amount of ram (2gb).

(useless extra ... the game feels like its being owned by my pc lol I rememeber over a year back it being the other way round... if only fear combat had these frames

)

dark4orz · 24 Oct 2006 at 05:30

Right enough of the Bull**** !

Right Im not going to start worshipping conroe like some others do here, as a matter of fact Im not to keen on a Zionist intel processor, but they have the faster chip and best bang for buck at the moment, until AMD bring out another chip better then the conroe. From having a X2 4400, 4600, Opteron 165 & 4800. Three things I have found to be boost with conroe:

1 - It overclocks much better and faster then any AMD X2 Processor on the market with less volts.

2 - Video & Audio Encoding is where you see the noticable difference of having a 4mb cache

3 - A few extra frames for games but not a huge difference

So for gaming stick with what you got, for overclocking or encoding go for it !

ArchAnGeL · 24 Oct 2006 at 09:12

joeyjojo said:
Not enough of a gain in games to make it worth it for me. The only sensible games benchmark on Tom's is this one:

http://tomshardware.co.uk/cpu/charts.html?modelx=33&model1=432&model2=487&chart=170

Fear at 1280x920. The best result would be going from stock sandy to E6600, giving you 23 fps. If you clocked your sandy to FX57 speeds and went to E6400 you'd get a measly 5 fps more.

Pi times are incredible, but games don't show such an increase.

Edit: what Big.Wayne said. I was typing at the time.

But if you were overclocking your sandy to fx57 you would also want to be overclocking your E6400 so it would be more than 5 fps. You can see from that benchmark that the 6800 is much faster than the fx-57

Jabbs · 24 Oct 2006 at 10:27

Also remember a 6300@ 2.59 beats a fx62 seeing as most are getting over 3 gig on them its no real brainer is it, i don't understand the hostilites coming from people with AMD64's towards Core2, maybe its the fact amd has had its butt kicked for the time being

.

pabloB · 24 Oct 2006 at 11:36

Some interesting replies here! I should have mentioned that I game at 1900 x 1200. Having played a bit of Company of Heroes with all settings maxed out is does stutter a little every now and again. My GPU is a x1900xt, so I was wondering if I was CPU limited.

The overclocks on Conroe seem fantastic and surely a Conroe at 3.5ghx is going to slam my Sandy at 2.7ghz any day in games. I'm assuming that the current mobo's supporting the Conroe socket will be around for some time yet - as I don't really want to have to get another mobo 6 months down the line again.

Looks like I need to get my research hat on lol!!!

marms · 24 Oct 2006 at 13:13

pabloB said:
I'm assuming that the current mobo's supporting the Conroe socket will be around for some time yet - as I don't really want to have to get another mobo 6 months down the line again.

The Core2 processors from Q2 2007 will need new motherboards to support the E6650, E6750 and E6850 as well as the next gen native quad core processors.

joeyjojo · 24 Oct 2006 at 14:26

Jabbs said:
i don't understand the hostilites coming from people with AMD64's towards Core2

No hostilities here mate, the entire pc community believes conroe is the bomb

Whether it's the gaming bomb is the question

Kmodo · 24 Oct 2006 at 15:00

dark4orz said:
Right enough of the Bull**** !

Right Im not going to start worshipping conroe like some others do here, as a matter of fact Im not to keen on a Zionist intel processor, but they have the faster chip and best bang for buck at the moment, until AMD bring out another chip better then the conroe. From having a X2 4400, 4600, Opteron 165 & 4800. Three things I have found to be boost with conroe:

1 - It overclocks much better and faster then any AMD X2 Processor on the market with less volts.

2 - Video & Audio Encoding is where you see the noticable difference of having a 4mb cache

3 - A few extra frames for games but not a huge difference

So for gaming stick with what you got, for overclocking or encoding go for it !

another guy who only reads his own posts :rolleyes:

FACT me and 1 other guy was the only ones talking gaming increases with conroe the other guy said it would improve a little and I said not at all so where is the bull???

I even went as far as to say 'I wish I saved the cash for DX10!!!'

I said I had seen NO performance gain in ANY games EXCEPT battlefield 2 which I seen a noticeable increase, and sites will back me up on this as nowadays its CPU limited due most gpu's being more than capable!!!!!!

AND I also had a 3700 sandiego at 2.8ghz and a opty 170 at 2.8ghz then I moved to conroe all that time i had the same amount of ram and kept an identical GPU making my point 100% valid!!!

Kmodo · 24 Oct 2006 at 15:17

ALSO that guy has a single core rig and if he is looking to upgrade and then he will be going dual core, so a core2duo overclocked to 3.6ghz plus would be a far better investment than a clock for clock slower amd x2 reaching lower clocks prob 2.8ghz.

I am looking at my core2duo rig as a speedy machine paying off in the very near future ready for gaming with DIRECTX10 being safe in the knowledge I will NOT be CPU limited.

dark4orz · 24 Oct 2006 at 17:26

deadkomodo said:
another guy who only reads his own posts

FACT me and 1 other guy was the only ones talking gaming increases with conroe the other guy said it would improve a little and I said not at all so where is the bull???

I even went as far as to say 'I wish I saved the cash for DX10!!!'

I said I had seen NO performance gain in ANY games EXCEPT battlefield 2 which I seen a noticeable increase, and sites will back me up on this as nowadays its CPU limited due most gpu's being more than capable!!!!!!

AND I also had a 3700 sandiego at 2.8ghz and a opty 170 at 2.8ghz then I moved to conroe all that time i had the same amount of ram and kept an identical GPU making my point 100% valid!!!

Sorry, that remark was a bit strong, no offence to anyone, this was me expressing me own opinion, I don't see the justification of buying a better cpu, just to increase my frame rate in 1 or 2 games. In encoding and clocking yes, but the other no. I was just trying to make clear concise points, but people do worship their conroes

pabloB · 24 Oct 2006 at 17:44

Must say I'm intrigued that not much would appear to be gained from shelling out on a Conroe set up. I know I'm only looking at the numbers, i.e a Conroe running at say 3.2ghz. I would have thought this would have slammed my Sandy at 2.7ghz as to me the Conroe is running faster. The Sandy must be one hell of a good chip in terms of gaming ,if there's not going to be much difference in FPS. My decision is one based purely on how my games play as that's really all I use my PC for, aside from Office for Work. Looks like it would pay me to wait a bit. Although there does seem to be some satisfied customers who have made the change..... Jeeez I dunno what to do lol

Would people agree?