939 Upgrade woes

[Dkcode]

Posted this in someone elses thread but i have a feeling it wont get answered.

Anyway here are my 3 options:
Upgrade my 939 system to a Opteron 185 for £150 (Try and milk my 939 rig for another 6 months untill the new chips from AMD and Intel are out at decent prices)
Upgrade to Athlon X2 4200+ for £60
Upgrade my Motherboard, CPU & RAM to C2D E6420 or E6600 for just over £300 with the right motherboard.

My current spec is:
Athlon 3700+
Asus A8N SLI Premium
2GB Corsair XMS3200C2
Antec Neo 480W
Radeon X1800XT

Any suggestions on what i should do? My motherboard is a bit pants for overclocking so i do not want to depend on this too much. Also at some point in the next month or so i would like to upgrade my 20" widescreen monitor to a 24" or 26" and this will no doubt require a new video card to feed it if i want to play heavier games. Although the only game i play is Red Orchestra which is powered by the Unreal 2.5 engine so i may get away with my Radeon.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Since you've got 2GB of RAM and can upgrade the CPU for cheap, then I'd probably just stick with 939 until the next generation of processors.

If you don't plan on overclocking, then I wouldn't bother with the Opteron. Just go with the highest X2 you can find (4400+/4600+) and use the savings toward the video card and/or monitor.

 

[nullpointerus]

Just to give you a look at the C2D alternative:

E4400 $140
GA-P35-DS3R $130
2GB Ballistix PC2-6400 $100 (or less w/ MIR)
Artic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro $24

That's $400 for a predominantly CPU upgrade. You should be able to overclock that setup fairly well, but that's a gamble. Games just won't benefit that much from a C2D upgrade at this point unless you already have a high-end card that is being held back by your current setup--which you don't.

I'd say that BlueWeasel's advice is very sound. :thumbsup:

Go quad-core when you eventually upgrade to Core 2 setup, maybe a year or two down the road. 'Til then, an X2 should work fine.

 

[Dkcode]

Thanks for the advice. Overclockers do have a X2 4400+ for £105.74 which is £47 more expensive than the 4200+. £47 for an extra 512Kb of L2 cache is quite expensive. Would it be worth it?

 

[MarcVenice]

To bad you can't overclock, I just bought a x2 3800+ toledo core, this cpu will just do 2.6ghz from the stock 2ghz, at 1.35vcore, which is stock, using ac 64 pro, and I'm fairly sure it will be fine for at least another 1-2 years. Considering it costed me 80 euro's, I'd say thats a good upgrade. If you can buy a x2 4200, or 4400 for 60-70quid, then I'd say go for it. Squeezing an extra 10% out of it, using the asus AI booster for all I core, and you'll be just fine.

Any money saved could then, like Weasel suggested, be spend on a better videocard.

- And no, the 4400+ isn't worth it compared to the 4200.

 

[Cybercraig]

The 4200x2 is an excellent CPU. However, it runs the same speed as your 3700 San Diego. Your dual-core benefits in gaming are going to be zilch. Same with an Opteron. The SLI-Premium is stable way up over 250mhz so you have a great overclocking platform. I would get the 4200, clock it up to 2.6mhz, and call it a day.

 

[Rhoxed]

I have a 3800 x2 @ 2.77 doing me great till the new cores are out.

I would pick up the 4200 x2 OC to about 2.5/2.6 and wait till the new cores.

 

[f4phantom2500]

the extra cache isn't worth the extra money. going with the 4200 sounds like a really good option since it's so cheap. i also think you should just do that. even if you can't oc it, you won't lose anything because it's as fast as your 3700.

 

[Dkcode]

Thanks for the advice. Just slapped the money down on the 4200+

 

[HannibalX]

I did the FX-60 ugrade to my S939 box in March. It will keep me alive another two years. Great CPU and hits 3.0 GHz on air with no problems. I say go for the FX-60/Opty 185 if you can get one cheap like I did.

 

[firewolfsm]

I'm in the same boat, but decided to go for a P35 board and a Q6600 once I can get the G0 revision.

It's been almost two years since I got this setup anyways, time for an upgrade.

 

[MarcVenice]

Heh, you obviously are quite a demanding pc-user, considering what you have in your rig, and considering you have it for 2 years allready. Adding 1GB of ram to that rig might help quite a bit though

 

[ConstipatedVigilante]

I've had my rig below for 2 years now too and I'm in the same boat. I only want to upgrade my CPU for now, but I'm not sure whether to go with the Opteron 165 or 3800+ X2. Does the extra cache help much on an Athlon?

 

[bryanW1995]

no.

 

[MarcVenice]

Depends on the prices constipatedvigilante. If the x2 3800+ toledo is going for 80 bucks, and the opty for 100 bucks, I'd say opty, is the price difference bigger, then I'd say x2 3800+. Btw, if you're into gaming, you're better of with a new videocard, just a heads up.