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Worth upgrade from 3200 Winny to 3700 San Diego?

RichDuffy

RichDuffy

RichDuffy

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Joined
8 Jun 2004
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381
Current system as in sig. Graphics card obviously not top of the range but suffices for now. I will eventually want to upgrade the graphics to a top card, probably around Christmas or shortly thereafter.

What I want to know is, should I upgrade my 3200 (currently running at 2100MHz) to a 3700 San Diego, or wait for socket AM2 and do a full upgrade toward the end of the year? Thing is, from what I can make out, none of the single-core AM2 processors will have 1MB L2 cache. Will this make a significant difference? (Or am I wrong on that detail?)

Any help/advice appreciated.
 
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Whilst i agree going dual core is probably a better longer term prospect, getting the 3700+ is definitely a good move. They overclock very well & should give you a good boost in performance.
 
mc_bob said:
Just clock your 3200 higher.
You can easily hit 2.4 - 2.5. I think mine can go higher but Im not sure
OC in sig.

MC_Bob
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I would go for a bit more juice too rather than buying another CPU. The 3700+ is a great chip but not really worth doing unless your currently cpu limited
 
bbreezeuk said:
yep deffinatly worth it
p.s i wouldnt spend extra on dual core not very good overclockers. 3700s go up to 3ghz
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I completely DISagree. In fact, the 3800+'s are extremely good clockers. They seem to out do most Toledo cores comfortably.

AS to the OP, I made the exact same upgrade and it was well worth it. However, I would say 3800+ X2 now.
 
Thanks for all the replies. Oh dear, that's a lot of conflicting opinions... so a few further questions:

1) Assuming my next upgrade is from 3200 Winchester to say, 3800 X2, will I be in any way CPU-limited if I then get a top-notch card like a 7900GTX?

2) What sort of cooling will I need to clock my current 3200 to 2.4GHz? I'm on the stock cooler at the moment.

3) Are people generally agreed that the 1MB L2 cache on a 3700 does not give it much of an edge over a 512KB cache CPU?

Many thanks guys...
 
RichDuffy said:
Thanks for all the replies. Oh dear, that's a lot of conflicting opinions... so a few further questions:

1) Assuming my next upgrade is from 3200 Winchester to say, 3800 X2, will I be in any way CPU-limited if I then get a top-notch card like a 7900GTX?

2) What sort of cooling will I need to clock my current 3200 to 2.4GHz? I'm on the stock cooler at the moment.

3) Are people generally agreed that the 1MB L2 cache on a 3700 does not give it much of an edge over a 512KB cache CPU?

Many thanks guys...
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1) CPU-limitations are the norm these days :p. However, all nV drivers are now multithreaded and show about a 15% performance gain over single cores.
2)Something decent like a thermalright XP90C, SI-120 etc - these will allow you the best clocks. The freezer 64 Pro is a cheap alternative.
3)They say the 512KB cache difference = 200mhz clock speed. So the 3700+ will perform like a 2.4ghz 512KB cache processor. However, when you have 2 cores, everything is faster as windows is completely multithreaded. You can clock the 3800+ to at least 2.4ghz I'd say and this would be a fast computer.
 
Thanks. I'll stick with what I've got for now then, and crank up the clocks a bit. When it eventually comes time to upgrade to a dual-core then I'll make sure I've got a few extra pennies tucked away and go for the best I can.

Glad the extra cache doesn't make such a huge difference - saves me grabbing one now when I don't really need it.
 
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