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

 

[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.

 

[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.