Sorry Another New Spec

Gimlett

Gimlett

Gimlett

Associate
Joined
21 Dec 2007
Posts
3
Hello,

Ultra Extremes advice page is excellent and has answered many of the questions I've never dared to ask. There is one thing I'm unsure about however; My current processor is an AMD 64 3700, I want to go for a dual core chip and associated bits but looking at a lot of the CPUs ,it appears they only run at apx 2200 (for example), does this mean it would run a game slower on the one core than my current chip but still have the other core for another process or would it usitlise both cores to run the game faster or will it actually not really affect the game and the Graphics card is more important ?

Anyway my current spec is

AMD Athlon 64 3700+
Asus mobo (not sure exactly which paid about £100:00)
2 gig Ram
ATI X1800XT graphics card 256mb (can I possibly double up on the new system with this card and another ATI card)

Any upgrade suggestions much appreciated.

Thanks

Chris
 
Welcome to the forum :-)

Single core at 3000 Mhz vs. a dual core at 1500 Mhz is kind of the same. Whilst the dual core is likely to be faster regardless due to better and more up to date architecture, it's also faster because there's two threads of processing rather than just a single so games for instance don't have to wait for the CPU to process 1 thread before doing another, and instead can pass it off to the other core. This is the case with games that use more than 1 core, whilst in this day and age is quite a few.

AMD's upgrade route isn't as good as Intel's and frankly I'm not great when it comes to the Athlons and X2's as I've never bothered with them, so from that perspective I can't advise much on upgrades for your current system - just wanted to answer your question on the single core vs. dual core stuff :) Someone else should post soon enough with better AMD upgrade info!
 
Welcome to the forums. What is your budget here? That will determine your options more than anything else. The problem is that your system would benefit from more or less a full core upgrade because all parts have been superceded by newer technology.
 
Thanks Flibby that answers that one nicely.

Absolutely Semi Pro, I was toying with just upgrading the existing PC ie mobo CPU and RAM or maybe building a whole new rig from scratch. I wanted to do the former for inside £500:00. I guess if I go for a new machine then it'll be closer to a grand. Correct if I'm wrong but from what I have seen, it works out much cheaper to buy a ready made machine than to build one from scratch although I actually enjoy building a new PC as much as anything.

I'm mainly playing GT Legends and GTR2 which run perfectly well on my existing system. I do find that playing FPS shooters such as FEAR, things can slow down a bit during the more instense graphical scenes etc. I'm also planning to get on the net so will have to tolerate firewalls and virus software etc.
 
For £500 give or take I'd probably go with something like the parts below, it would give you a very decent base with some overclocking potential. If you wanted to build a whole base unit then you would need a hard drive and an optical drive, easily done for less than £100 more but at present you could probably re-use your existing parts.

Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £53.99
(£63.44) £53.99
(£63.44)
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) £24.99
(£29.36) £24.99
(£29.36)
OcUK GeForce 8800 GT 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £139.99
(£164.49) £139.99
(£164.49)
Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Case - EarthWatts 500W PSU £61.99
(£72.84) £61.99
(£72.84)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £136.99
(£160.96) £136.99
(£160.96)
Sub Total : £417.95
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £75.06
Total : £503.96

Building a machine can work out more expensive because a profit margin has to be inbuilt to every part sold rather than just at the end adding it to the whole machine. However it does give you exactly what you want and the difference in price tends to be less noticeable the closer to high end you get.
 
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