What CPU from an A64 3200 Winchester

[DaveyD]

As title really, I'm thinking of changing my CPU in the next couple of months, and I'm just wondering what the best course of action is.

Basically, I want to do two things, firstly, get another 2x 512MB sticks of RAM to give me a total of 2GB of RAM, but I think I'm right in saying the Winchester cores cannot support 4 sticks of RAM in dual channel mode, unless something has changed in BIOS updates, but I've not followed the scene since last year, so I'm not sure.

So getting me onto the other point, the CPU, I guess I've got two opions, I'm going to spend £80 on the new RAM, basically another pair of Corsair XMS sticks that I already have. On CPU, I'm thinking £120 at the most, but then I'm hoping to sell my 3200 Winchester for a few quid back.

So which should I go for, a 3500 Venice? 3700 San Diego? Or an Opteron? I probably will overclock it when I do get round to buying. Am I right in thinking the opterons are the better bang for buck CPUs at the moment?

Cheers,

Dave

 

[Zefan]

Opterons have had their prices pushed up recently so are no longer good value for money really. As for the ram, ditch your current ram and buy a 2X1gb kit, you, wont get dual channel otherwise. I'd go for an X2 (Speed depending on budget) and the 2GB GeIL Value kit.

:Edit: doh just read your budget, go for a single core 3700, just under £120.

Oh and as for core names, Venice is just Winchester with a couple of extra instructions which aid performance (Slightly) and San Diego are Venice's with 1mb cache.

 

[Dreadi]

go 3700 or opteron, they ar eboth still clocking well afaik

 

[Biggles 266]

Just to be pedantic, Venice was a new core designed from the beginning to be on a 90nm process and it has a few extra instructions, including SSE3. Clock for clock, it is measurably (although not noticably) faster than a Winchester.

The Winchester was just a Newcastle on a shrunken process, nothing else changed.

Since you can get an 3800 X2 for £190, that makes it only £70 more than a San Diego core 3700. So the money you get for your Winchester will just about make up the difference between the 3700 and the 3800 X2 - yet you'll have an extra core.

 

[ajgoodfellow]

Just to set the record straight, you can run four DIMMs in Dual Channel on *ANY* Socket 939 A64

If you're running a Venice or San Diego core then you'll need to run them at DDR400, 2T. If you're running an older core (Clawhammer, Winchester, Newcastle) then you're also limited to DDR333

 

[DaveyD]

Just to set the record straight, you can run four DIMMs in Dual Channel on *ANY* Socket 939 A64

If you're running a Venice or San Diego core then you'll need to run them at DDR400, 2T. If you're running an older core (Clawhammer, Winchester, Newcastle) then you're also limited to DDR333

That's what I thought, so there shouldn't be too much wrong with getting 2x more 512 sticks? As don't really want to bother getting 2x 1GB sticks really.

 

[ajgoodfellow]

Nope

You'll just loose some performance as the memory will have to run at DDR333

 

[cavemanoc]

What are you trying to achieve - a straight processor upgrade will do little but blow a £120 hole in your wallet. I thoroughly agree with the idea of flogging off your 2*512's and picking up a 2*1Gb kit - you'll see far more of an imporvement from that than from a new processor (and it should cost no more than £60 if you manage to sell on the old kit.

It *might* be worth going for a dual core - either X2 or ideally an Opti 165 - but it'll only really be an advantage if you are doing a lot of ripping or encoding type stuff.

As I asked in the beginning - what do you hope to achieve?

 

[DaveyD]

Well, I'd like the more memory, but after selling my old CPU, I'm hoping what I would upgrade to, if I did upgrade, wouldn't be a massive difference overall.

I think I'll wait a little while still though, as I wont be buying anything until July / August time I don't think.

Thanks for the replies anyway.

Nope

You'll just loose some performance as the memory will have to run at DDR333

I meant with the processor change.