939 upgrade

[Shmalls]

I have a AMD X2 3800+ running with 4 Gb of Dual Channel DDR (yeah, DDR 1, kinda old school these days), I have an eVGA 7950 GT KO vid card, 10K HDD and I am looking at an upgrade to something nicer without emptying the bank account building a new machine. The windows Vista system performance analyzer thing (which of course is the new trusted performance benchmark ) shows my CPU as the bottle neck in the system (lowest score) So i was thinking I would just drop in a new proc, an AMD Opteron 185 Denmark 2.6GHz and ride the rainbow all the way to where the quad cores roam free.

what are your thoughts?
~David

 

[Arkaign]

Don't do it! Get a backup drive/blank DVDs, and patiently attempt to sell your system as is for a decent price. You may want to grab a cheap PCI-E card (7300GS?) and keep the 7950 for your next build, if you can't find a gamer willing to pay the extra $$ for the 7950.

Recommendation #1 : Overclock your current proc with a decent big air cooler, you'll make up most of the performance delta between you and that 185, and save the $239 for something nice. $239 will get you a nice 22" LCD! $239 will buy case after case of beer! And other cool stuff.

Recommendation #2 : Sell your current box, build for the future. Barcelona will be here eventually, and C2D/C2Q are ridiculously nice already.

 

[Tboy012]

i actually went from an 3700+ to a 4400+ and i noticed a big different from there.
I actually just got the opty 185 last week but doesnt seem to overclock as well as the 4400 but im trying to see what i can do

 

[bryanW1995]

you probably won't get much oc on a high end opteron skt 939. I fried my mobo going for 200 mhz! tried to rma to newegg but it was on the 8th day...my backup plan before finding out that I couldn't rma was a 3600+ brisbane, tforce 550, 2x1 gb ddr2 1066 crucial ballistix (already bought on newegg for 89.99 after mir) and leaving all rest the same. the brisbane should oc to almost exactly the same speed as the opteron, plus you get ddr2 that will last you a while. then you can start selling your old mobo/cpu/ram...

 

[aigomorla]

i would upgrade to either a AM2 platform or a C2D platform.

S939 isnt worth any price you need to pay to upgrade now.

A E6300 with mild overclock will spank any opty out there.

A E6600 with no overclock will spank a non overclocked opty 185

A E6600 @ 3.2ghz+ will spank all optys and the E6300 at same overclock.

A quadcore @ $266 will make AMD cry and go on there knees.



Penryn V8, my next build, will dominate the computer world for a year or so until neph comes out.


-Peace

 

[Rockinacoustic]

This would be a decent upgrade for $100. The stock coolers included are some of the best around. You should easily be able to hit ~2.6GHz on an overclock, so essentially your saving $140 to get the same performance as an Opty 185 .

Other than there's not much you can do for cheap.

 

[Cybercraig]

Not a bad idea. You will get better re-sale down the road with an Opty. I take it you can't clock yours much and you're stuck with PC3200 ram.

 

[MAX32]

i 'm agree with Arkaign. Wait man, this is not the time for upgading. Both AMD n Intel going 2 release monsters. If u got hurry;u will have to worry. My best recommedation is Arkaign's Recommendation #1.

 

[Shmalls]

I think I will just stick with whats I gots for now. Spend the money on 16, 12-packs of Corona
p.s. I would buy a new monitor, but i figure a 20.1 inch viewsonic and a dell 2407WFP both on ergotron arms should be enough real estate for now!

 

[Cybercraig]

Spend the money on 16, 12-packs of Corona


Great, then your money goes right in the toilet (eventually)! :laugh:

 

[Tboy012]

it would sound even better if you share that corona =p

 

[Shmalls]

I am going to wait until next summer to build a new rig, but then I will be like "oh do I get the intel Octocore or the AMD doudecacore, ahhh so many cores"

 

[SlowSpyder]

People always suggest not upgrading a socket 939 system, but you can get an Opteron 165 for $100 and overclock it pretty good (2.6ghz+ usually). With what you can sell your processor for, it's a pretty cheap upgrade. Even though you have DDR1, since you have 4GB of it, so I personally would probably hang on to it for a bit yet. Now, if you aren't into overclocking and want to buy an expensive 939 processor, that I would not do. Just my $.02