Upgrading from Athlon 3200+ and 9800pro

County · 15 Mar 2006 at 15:24

hi all....

am looking at upgrading the above and was looking at the following....

CPU - 3700+ San Diego (Although i dont know what these opterons are about and could go for one of those) Approx £140-£150 spend

GPU - Was initially looking at the X850 series although in the weeks ive been saving up offers have been a plenty so am looking at the X1800 series Approx £150-£200 spend

Motherboard - need one to compliment the above....

RAM - same as above....

it will be on a 17" TFT at 1280x1024 and will be for games and a bit of encoding....

could anyone point me in the right direction....

cheers

Street · 15 Mar 2006 at 15:31

Have you considered dual core? Might be worth looking at getting a dual core CPU as more and more things are going to be making use of it now

You might be able to reuse your RAM as well... depends what sort it is though.

DaveBennett · 15 Mar 2006 at 17:32

For the CPU i would spent a extra £20 or so and get a AMD athlon Dual core 3800, worth the little extra for dual core.

County · 15 Mar 2006 at 20:58

thanks for the replies....

will the 3800+ x2 be as good as the 3700+ SD????....

and is the obvious choice the X1800 at this weeks special price????....

the RAM i have is generic....but would want 2GIG....

and what motherboard compliments this CPU and GPU????....

i have never overclocked but would give it a try....

cheers

DaveBennett · 15 Mar 2006 at 21:54

Im not a total comp expert but ill give my 10p.

Yes, the dual core will be faster, dual core is in theory two proccessors, very good for multi tasking and also very fast (i dont have it yet, getting it next week so ill let ya know what its like).

For the ram, get 2gb of crucial in my opion, if not GeiL.

Motherboard, asus, very good imho.

For a case, many favour the Lian-Li's or personally the Akassa Eclipse are nice. For what ure getting I wouldnt get a PSU that comes with a case, get a enermax or seasonic PSU.

Dave

County · 16 Mar 2006 at 11:02

so a dual core 3800+ will be better than a 3700+ SD????....

if i then get a X1800 the CPU will not be a bottleneck then????....

cheers

County · 16 Mar 2006 at 15:32

could anyone please point me in the right direction....

would like to order before weekend....

cheers

grahamjenks · 16 Mar 2006 at 15:59

The 3700 SD is gonna out perform the 3800 dual core - it has double the L2 cache and runs faster (2.2 ghz vs 2ghz)- so in a single application it will be quicker. However dual core is 2 processors running at 2ghz = but this isn't the same as 4ghz!

Its also 50 pound cheaper on OCUK - not the £20 stated above.

However if you want to multi task you'll be better with the dual core.

In terms of bottlenecking - they will both do this in some games - farcry/hl2 (at frame rates into the 100's where it won't matter) -but not others - it depends where the threshold between reality and techical bottlenecking comes.

BigDom · 16 Mar 2006 at 16:23

More and more applications are supporting Dual Core now and when they do they will outperform the SD. Applications which run just on one core won't of course BUT they can hog a single core and the OS and other fluff ( for example Teamspeak, browser, e:mail etc. ) will sit on the other core so the difference isn't as marked as it would appear on face value. I run dual core and love it, especially if for any reason I have to run two high CPU apps together.

The New MVP Asus Crossfire board looks like an excellent buy to compliment the setup with a X1800XT Graphics card and 2gig Geil ram.

That's ( apart from I've got the origonal MVP board ) what I'm running and it's great. One core often runs at full speed on some games but I don't get any impression it's bottlenecked at all. For example I can run on high graphics settings quite intensive missions on IL2 (which when you start throwing high numbers of aircraft into a mission can get bottlenecked with the CPU) very successfully. An Intensive mission for example is 40+ aircraft with flak of which 39 are AI controlled. ( Mission I just flew just fine had 28 fighters and 28 bombers - no problem at all ).

County · 16 Mar 2006 at 16:35

thank you as always for your advice....

i have never attempted any overclocking although would love to try although it has to be stable 110% as if stock whilst running games etc....

so with that in mind and my above posts....which motherboard to compliment any of the above suggestions (3700+ or 3800x2)....

would also a 3000+ be a major reduction in quality and cause a bottleneck....just its a few quid cheaper....

cheers

Energize · 16 Mar 2006 at 16:38

Hardly any games support dual core atm and the 3700 would be faster in the single core apps like most games so thats maybe something to think about considering they are £50 more.

BigDom · 16 Mar 2006 at 16:51

Energize said:
Hardly any games support dual core atm and the 3700 would be faster in the single core apps like most games so thats maybe something to think about considering they are £50 more.

It's increasing more and more though, for the future dual core is definatly the way to go. Plus of course the benefit I highlighted of CPU intensive apps not overwelming the PC.

ACESHIGH · 16 Mar 2006 at 22:47

Get either the 3700+ or X2 3800+ (preffered choice if have the extra cash & would like the CPU to be a longer term investment).

As for graphics go for the X1800XT 256MB or if have the extra cash the X1800XT 512MB (if you play at or above a res of 1280x 1024 & AA/Af).

For Mobo get either Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe Crossfire or
Abit AT8 ATI RD480 Crossfire depending on budget.

For ram Geil Value is pretty good.

County · 17 Mar 2006 at 10:50

ACESHIGH said:
Get either the 3700+ or X2 3800+ (preffered choice if have the extra cash & would like the CPU to be a longer term investment).

As for graphics go for the X1800XT 256MB or if have the extra cash the X1800XT 512MB (if you play at or above a res of 1280x 1024 & AA/Af).

For Mobo get either Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe Crossfire or
Abit AT8 ATI RD480 Crossfire depending on budget.

For ram Geil Value is pretty good.

thank you all again....

will these motherboards allow me to overclock slightly????....

cheers

marcus_667 · 17 Mar 2006 at 10:55

ive got a question for you this as always confused me, if i ran cs source and was running a virus scan would windows split the tasks to 2 cores ? or juts run it on the one as cs source isnt multithreaded is it ??

BigDom · 17 Mar 2006 at 11:25

marcus_667 said:
ive got a question for you this as always confused me, if i ran cs source and was running a virus scan would windows split the tasks to 2 cores ? or juts run it on the one as cs source isnt multithreaded is it ??

It should run them on seperate cores HOWEVER you will get an appreciable slow down still as a virus scan is Hard Disk instensive.

The Asus A8R32-MVP is reputed to be a nice clocker. The old one wasn't a bad clocker (despite what hard core clockers said about it ) and according to anandtech all the concerns have gone in the A8R32-MVP.

marcus_667 · 17 Mar 2006 at 11:33

ahh thats cool then

thanks mate and sorry for the threadjack . cant wait for my dual core

ACESHIGH · 17 Mar 2006 at 12:57

County said:
thank you all again....

will these motherboards allow me to overclock slightly????....

cheers

as answered above : yes