939 CPU upgrade question (FX-55)

[Quick1]

I won't be ditching my 939 m/b for at least another year and I'm looking for a cheap "dual core" upgrade. I?m currently running a FX-55@2.9. But, I don?t do as much gaming as I used to and I?m considering getting a Opt 165 and o/c-ing. Lately, I do a lot of DVD Audio and CD ripping while surfing or messing around with MP10. Assuming I can get the 165 to 2.4 or higher, would I see any drop off in games like BF2 OR HL2? Rig details listed below.

 

[Steaksauce]

I bet you can get the 165 to 2.6... but yeah, you'll have a slight drop off since those games, I believe, are single threaded applications.

 

[HannibalX]

The 185 is cheap and should hit 3.0GHz on air. My FX-60 which is the same chip has no problems @ 3.0 GHz on air - thats with the stock cooler!

 

[Quick1]

Steaksauce: Yeah...that's what I was afraid of. But I agree, 2.6 could easily be reached. The headroom on this chip is kinda' hard to believe.

Pale Rider: The 165 is $149, as opposed to $329 for the 185 at Newegg.

 

[HannibalX]

You get what you pay for so to speak.

 

[Quick1]

Pale Rider:"You get what you pay for so to speak." Understood.

So...if I'm able to get the 185 to my current clock speed(2.9), would I still see some drop off in "Gaming" performance, since it's a dual-core chip?

 

[MarcVenice]

no, why would you ? You will actually see a performance boost, coz even though most games are single threaded, 1 core can take care of whatever is running on the background including your OS, and the other can focus on your 'single' threaded game.

 

[Quick1]

Ok...so I guess I need to wait and get a 185 so I can get as close as possible to the clock speed I'm currently running (2.9). Therefore, I'll see no gaming slowdown and have the benefit of having a dual core. Right?

 

[f4phantom2500]

Originally posted by: Quick1
Ok...so I guess I need to wait and get a 185 so I can get as close as possible to the clock speed I'm currently running (2.9). Therefore, I'll see no gaming slowdown and have the benefit of having a dual core. Right?

correct. as previously stated, you might even notice a small increase as one core could be dedicated to that game and another to background processes. with a dual core opty at 2.9ghz, it would effectively be 2 of your fx-55 cores in 1 package, since they have the same amount of cache. note that it's not impossible to get a 165 to 2.9ghz, just not as likely as the 185. also since one core would be dedicated to background apps and the other to the game, you would probably not notice a difference between your fx and a dual core if the dual core were running at 2.7~2.8ghz. in fact, i think you'd be pretty hard pressed to notice the difference in games. in the ripping and multitasking department, however, you'd notice a huge difference. if i were you, i'd sell the fx and pick up a 165 that you know will clock high.

 

[Jeff7181]

I just bought the 3800+ for under $100 from newegg and it's running happily at 2.6 GHz on default voltage under an Athlon 64 3500+'s heatsink/fan.

 

[GeezerMan]

That's damn good to get a 3800+ X2 to run at 2.6GHz and use the plain HSF. I just got through setting up a 3800+ X2 at 2.6GHz using a AMD heatpipe HSF that came with a FX-60. I don't think we could get the temps in the normal range with the plain HSF. We did have a pretty hot room though. it pushes 80 degrees in there sometimes.
I highly recommend the Newegg 3800+ X2. Last time I looked, it was 89.00 shipped. The 3Dmark06 scores we got were right up there with my personal Opteron 165 clocked at 2.6GHz.

 

[kmmatney]

My 3800+ arrives tomorrow - they are now down to $80 shipped from NewEgg (with promo code). I'd be happy to reach 2.5 Ghz. This is going in the MB in my sig, which my wife will get. I'm going Core 2 Duo, with the cheapo Asrock board.

I certainly wouldn't pay the extra money for the Opty 185, just to get 300 more MHz. We are talking huge price difference!

You can get a Asrock Core 2 Duo Motherboard with AGP + DDR, and an E4300 motherboard cpu for $59 + $121 = $180. You can use your DDR, and should be able to overclock it to at least 2.6 Ghz, which would be faster than the Opty 185, for less money. This is the route I'm taking, except I went for the E4400, which should hopefully allow me to overclock to 3.0 Ghz on the ASRock board.

 

[Munky]

If you plan to keep this mobo for another year, then a dual core upgrade may give it extra life, but I don't remember my single core ever struggling with ripping CD's while surfing the net and listening to mp3's. That kind of light multitasking would easily be handled by a single core cpu. As for gaming, some games like HL2 scale well with cpu power, but they run so fast on modern HW that you'll hardly notice if you drop from 110fps to 90fps. The majority of games, though, stress the video card more than anything else, and those are the type of games where you usually don't ever reach past 100fps on any system at high settings. These include games like Oblivion, Stalker, and many newest titles. In that case your performance would be limited by your video card, and the drop in cpu clocks from 2.9 to 2.6 would not make any difference.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Up until Monday I was running an opty 175 on an abit fatal1ty an8 mb. The best that I ever did with it was increase the bus and got her up to 2.5ghz and it was stable there. I jsut messed around for a couple of hours then put her back to stock. My e6400 is still faster than it was especially if I oc just a little bit using the msi windows utility.

 

[Quick1]

f4phantom2500: Good info! :thumbsup:

munky: ?That kind of light multitasking would easily be handled by a single core cpu.? Hmm?that?s what I used to think also.

But I?m actually ripping DVD audio files to WAV format while also converting & sending WMA files to my MP3. I?m often listening to files in MP10 and surfing while doing all this. I used to think a FX-55@2.9 could easily handle all this but I?ve been experiencing slow downs. So I checked the CPU usage in Task Mgr and it?s often constantly pegged at 95-100%. The surfing has little to no effect. It?s the first two processes mentioned that seem to bog my pc down slightly. PC is still responsive, just a bit sluggish.

kmmatney: Let us know how well your 3800+ o/c's.

 

[Quick1]

I was reading some of the feedback on the 3800+ at Newegg and read this.

"Cons: Only down side was having to do an in-place upgrade of xp to get it to work properly with the second core."

Someone please enlighten me.

 

[m1ldslide1]

I don't know what an "in-place upgrade" is, but to go from a single-core to a dual-core you have to install an AMD optimizer and an MS Hotfix. Both are easy and there are a bunch of guides on how to do it. Painless.

 

[f4phantom2500]

Originally posted by: Quick1
I was reading some of the feedback on the 3800+ at Newegg and read this.

"Cons: Only down side was having to do an in-place upgrade of xp to get it to work properly with the second core."

Someone please enlighten me.

Sometimes u have to like, set up Windows for dual core processors when you go from single core to dual core; a lot of people say that the best way to do it is to reinstall Windows when you install the dual core processor. I dunno the specifics, but I didn't have any problems going from my A64 3500 to my X2 3800. You might have to install a driver or something (I think I did), but unless you're really unlucky you shouldn't have to reinstall Windows or anything...although some people say you should >_>...

 

[Quick1]

"You might have to install a driver or something (I think I did), but unless you're really unlucky you shouldn't have to reinstall Windows or anything...although some people say you should >_>..."

Wow, I'm glad I asked...had no idea. :Q

I'd hate to have to do a fresh OS install, just to upgrade my cpu.

 

[Quick1]

Is this type of high CPU usage normal? (SEE BELOW)


munky: ?That kind of light multitasking would easily be handled by a single core cpu.?

Quick1: "But I?m actually ripping DVD audio files to WAV format while also converting & sending WMA files to my MP3. I?m often listening to files in MP10 and surfing while doing all this. I used to think a FX-55@2.9 could easily handle all this but I?ve been experiencing slow downs. So I checked the CPU usage in Task Mgr and it?s often constantly pegged at 95-100%. The surfing has little to no effect. It?s the first two processes mentioned that seem to bog my pc down slightly. PC is still responsive, just a bit sluggish."