Venice or San Diego?

CAJ05 · 25 Jul 2006 at 20:39

I'm looking to get a new processor next week and I've been looking at getting an A64 3700+ San diego or an A64 3800+ Venice. which of these is the better one, I know the 3700+ is slower but its got 1Mb of Cache, is this important for speed in games? I'm also getting the asrock dual sata 2 mobo

Cheers.

Mr Mister · 25 Jul 2006 at 20:44

id go for the 3700 because you can overclock to increase clock speed but you cant add cache. Alternatively you could spend a bit extra and order one of the 3800x2 dual core cpus. This would not be quite as fast in single core applications at stock speed but would be much better in multi threaded applications and at multitasking.

CAJ05 · 25 Jul 2006 at 20:45

Cool but what does the cache actually do?

Indy500 · 25 Jul 2006 at 20:46

CAJ05 said:
Cool but what does the cache actually do?

Reduces need for memory access, tends to affect things like gaming, rendering, archiving.

CAJ05 · 25 Jul 2006 at 20:48

ok cheers i'll get the 3700+ then

Mr Mister · 25 Jul 2006 at 20:50

for an extra £26 you could go dual core.

dale1uk · 26 Jul 2006 at 09:36

For an extra £2 over the retail 3700sd you could get an oem 4000sd that has a 12x multi over the 11x on the 3700 so should help clock that a bit higher.

Jay_t · 26 Jul 2006 at 11:24

dale1uk said:
For an extra £2 over the retail 3700sd you could get an oem 4000sd that has a 12x multi over the 11x on the 3700 so should help clock that a bit higher.

Don't do that, some of the 4000's on sale here are clawhammer cores, not sandiegos.

Go for the 3800 X2 or the 3700 SD

Cyber-Mav · 26 Jul 2006 at 11:31

go x2. its best option now.

cobxx · 26 Jul 2006 at 11:55

Cyber-Mav said:
go x2. its best option now.

If you can get hold of one that is. Place an order now if you're considering, gibbo's doing the best he can but they're still selling at the speed of light

Cyber-Mav · 26 Jul 2006 at 11:59

i seen online retailers which have the x2 3800 in stock selling it at £110 inc vat. so it is a very easy cpu to get a hold of but your wasting time by not ordering it.

gam3r · 26 Jul 2006 at 12:12

If you can't get the X2 3800, get the San Diego over the Venice (1MB L2 Cache is better than the venice 512kb).

manveruppd · 26 Jul 2006 at 12:46

Why are you all advising him to go X2? He said he wants it for gaming, and most games at present are single-threaded, so UNLESS he has a large number of background applications running while he's gaming a higher-clocked single-core would surely be better, wouldn't it?

dale1uk · 26 Jul 2006 at 14:02

Jay_t said:
Don't do that, some of the 4000's on sale here are clawhammer cores, not sandiegos.

If that is the case ocuk are falsely advertising them as they state san diego on the site, so if it is no good you could send it back and demand your money back.

manveruppd said:
Why are you all advising him to go X2? He said he wants it for gaming, and most games at present are single-threaded, so UNLESS he has a large number of background applications running while he's gaming a higher-clocked single-core would surely be better, wouldn't it?

Got to agree with that, i'm also under the impression that a well clocked single core cpu would be better than a clocked 3800 in games :confused:

Would be nice to see some benchmarks to say for sure either way

Jay_t · 26 Jul 2006 at 14:15

If that is the case ocuk are falsely advertising them as they state san diego on the site, so if it is no good you could send it back and demand your money back.[

Oem ones state "san diego" at the moment, but the retail ones don't.

krooton · 26 Jul 2006 at 15:53

Jay_t said:
Oem ones state "san diego" at the moment, but the retail ones don't.

Oh no! I got a retail, how much worse is the CH to the SD?

Jay_t · 26 Jul 2006 at 15:59

krooton said:
Oh no! I got a retail, how much worse is the CH to the SD?

It has a lower quality memory controller, it doesn't have sse3 optimisations, its not built on the 0.9nm silicon & hence needs more juice & won't normally o/c as far.

If you are running at stock you won't really notice any difference unless you are trying to run 4 sticks of ram.

krooton · 26 Jul 2006 at 16:52

Jay_t said:
It has a lower quality memory controller, it doesn't have sse3 optimisations, its not built on the 0.9nm silicon & hence needs more juice & won't normally o/c as far.

If you are running at stock you won't really notice any difference unless you are trying to run 4 sticks of ram.

Curse my impulse buy and curse OCUK for the deal of the week

I didn't even want retail, OEM is fine, guess this was their way of clearing stock that the fundis wouldn't buy *sigh*

krooton · 26 Jul 2006 at 16:56

Is there a possibility of my retail being SD?

I can tell without checking the stepping right?

Gah, will have to dismantle, and I only put her all back together again on Monday

Crilly · 26 Jul 2006 at 17:03

krooton said:
Is there a possibility of my retail being SD?

I can tell without checking the stepping right?

Gah, will have to dismantle, and I only put her all back together again on Monday

possible yes. CPU-Z will tell you what version it is.