Upgrading CPU, advice?

[Steve Watford]

I have a pritty good motherboard right now (socket AM2) and currently my system is powerful, but the cpu is holding it back, i am thinking of going dualcore AMD. If anyone had any suggestions, i am willing to spend ~ 100£ on a good dual core. Im not very sure about overclocking, but if you guys have overclocked a good dualcore to stable speeds on air, possibly the retail cooler, but if going after market, the total cost will still have to be ~100£. So if anyone has any good advice of buying a dualcore AMD socket am2, please tell

 

[Rokusho]

Well, what do you have at the moment, what graphic card / memory / current cpu are you running?

 

[Steve Watford]

x1600 pro
msi k9n diamond
g.skill 2gb ram ddr2
amd64 3000+

/edit

Im also a gamer, so put that into your spec equation

 

[Tetras]

Think it'd be pointless tbh, what is holding you back there is the graphics card, only a mild overclock on the 3000+ and it'd keep up with most cards enough you won't have any particular CPU troubles.

 

[Steve Watford]

overclocking my cpu is a disaster, i tried it once nad i got to about +.05ghz then it doesn't even boot into windows, and if it does, for about 30 seconds then BSOD.

 

[easyrider]

A dual core won't improve things TBH

Ok you will see an increase in multi tasking etc..but not in games much

The only option for you is a x2 3800 @ 2.ghz

This unless overclocked is a slowish cpu by todays standards.
And that x1600 is not helping matters either if gaming.

 

[Tetras]

Imo a 7600 GT (assuming PCI-E motherboard) would be better for less than £100 than the dual core, gaming performance wise. 64 3000+ should be ok with that even at stock.