AMD 939 upgrade for kids budget gamer UPDATED

[GeezerMan]

I do like the freezer pro myself, though the AMD heatpipe cools better if you can run the fan up a bit.
I think the stock sempron fan is the same as the factory sends with the 3800+ X2, if he wants to run the 3800+ X2 at stock speeds.

 

[HomeAppraiser]

Ok, looks like I can add this ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 64 Pro CPU Fan and stay at $100 total. Thanks.

 

[HomeAppraiser]

Ordered Sunday, arrived Thursday, dropped it in this weekend. When I pulled off the Acer heatsink/fan the Sempron came out with it! Had to heat it with a hairdryer to pry them apart.

OK downloaded the AMD X2 patch, dropped the X2 3800+ in, reused the Acer HSF and started up. WindowsXP recognized new hardware and installed it. CPU-z shows both cores. Start up of the computer and programs are still long. Why am I not noticing any change in performance?

Added 2X256 PC3200 RAM to the existing 2X512, both dual channel 2.5 CAS and now the kids get decent frame rates on Spiderman 3.

$81 could have been better spent on more RAM. I am not impressed with dual-core. Am I missing something?

 

[Antikristuseke]

concidering that most programs arent yet multithreaded you wont notice a large improvement most of the time, but things are steadily moving towards that direction. Personaly since i do quite a bit of multitasking i love my opty 165 and most of the games i play are multithreaded.

 

[GeezerMan]

Video encoding will show a large increase in speed.

 

[Crassus]

Run the XP Task Manager in the background while gaming for a few minutes and check under the Performance tab if the 2nd core gets properly utilized.

Back from my MMORPG days I remember that WoW gave the 2nd core some nice workout, while EQII doesn't make use of it at all. Depending on that you'll either notice a speed increase, or you don't.

 

[betasub]

Originally posted by: HomeAppraiser
Start up of the computer and programs are still long. Why am I not noticing any change in performance?

Disk-intensive tasks (like boot-up) don't show much improvement with faster core(s) because the CPU is still waiting on disk access/transfer.

A newer, larger harddrive (or a Raptor) might give shorter boot/load times, depending on your current harddrive set-up, but it's hardly worth it for a budget gaming system.

 

[HomeAppraiser]

OK, running more tests, will check back in tonite.