Athlon 64 or Athlon x2

[invisi0n]

just looking for a bit of advice to help me make a decision as to what to do with my current system

im looking to upgrade my current a64 3000+ winchester core 939 chip. would i be better going for the:

AMD Athlon 64 4000+ San Diego. from here: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Socket_939.html

or

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+. from here: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Socket_939_X2.html

how much performance boost would the x2 chip give, and would the x2 chip be supported by my Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe which currently has the latest BIOS revision.

also, what ram would you chose to accompany either of these new chips bearing in mind my motherboard only supports DDR400.

my main use for the machine is going to be gaming, unreal tournament 2007 in paticular. I am planning on putting a HIS x1900GT gfx card into the machine at a later date.

And as for my existing cpu and ram... is my A64 3000+ Winchester core likely to sell well? And what about my 2x512 Adata Vitesta DDR 500 Ram (which I am now aware is the wrong type of RAM for my motherboard.

Also can anyone reccommend the best place to purchase the components I plan to upgrade, within the uk?

thanks in advance from dan

 

[adairusmc]

At stock speeds, single threaded apps will run quicker on the 4000+, but multitasking as well as anything that is optimized for dual core will run much better on the X2.

If it were me, I would get the X2. You can always overclock it (if thats your thing) a little to get it at least on par with 4000+ in terms of single threaded performance. I have no idea as to how well your current RAM and CPU would sell though. Since you plan to keep that existing Asus motherboard, I would go with Crucial or Corsair memory myself. I have the premium version (heatpipe) of the same motherboard, and my plain PC3200 crucial runs great, and overclocks well. Yes, the X2 is supported by that motherboard, I am running a 4800+ in mine right now.

 

[MDE]

I'd get an X2 3800+ and overclock it if you're comfortable with that, otherwise the 4200+. UT2007 is actually supposed to be multi-threaded so the dual core CPU won't be a waste.

 

[invisi0n]

thanks for the speedy replys. I also noticed that some of the athlon 64s singe and dual cores have 1 meg of level cache how important is this? does it make that much difference in games?

adair: do you have your ram and cpu fsb running 1:1 at the moment?

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: invisi0n
thanks for the speedy replys. I also noticed that some of the athlon 64s singe and dual cores have 1 meg of level cache how important is this? does it make that much difference in games?

The difference is very small at best. Likely you won't even notice the difference. If you did some benchmarks for CPU intensive tasks it may show a boost from the larger cache assuming the application doesn't use dual cores.

 

[adairusmc]

Originally posted by: invisi0n
thanks for the speedy replys. I also noticed that some of the athlon 64s singe and dual cores have 1 meg of level cache how important is this? does it make that much difference in games?

adair: do you have your ram and cpu fsb running 1:1 at the moment?

Yes I do.

 

[knightc2]

Originally posted by: adairusmc
At stock speeds, single threaded apps will run quicker on the 4000+, but multitasking as well as anything that is optimized for dual core will run much better on the X2.

If it were me, I would get the X2. You can always overclock it (if thats your thing) a little to get it at least on par with 4000+ in terms of single threaded performance. I have no idea as to how well your current RAM and CPU would sell though. Since you plan to keep that existing Asus motherboard, I would go with Crucial or Corsair memory myself. I have the premium version (heatpipe) of the same motherboard, and my plain PC3200 crucial runs great, and overclocks well. Yes, the X2 is supported by that motherboard, I am running a 4800+ in mine right now.

You can also overclock the 4000 single core so it would be faster than the X2 in single threaded applications. If you are only doing gaming I would go for the single core and OC it. If money is not a factor and you do any multitasking or want to plan for the future go with the X2 although in single threaded operations it will be a little slower than the 4000.

 

[invisi0n]

how well do the a64 4000's do as regards overclocking them? (single cores)

adair did the asus overclock it no problem, it insists my current ram modules are both ddr400 despite them infact being ddr500. or maybe it just doesnt like my paticular brand of modules?

 

[knightc2]

Check out the user comments at Newegg.
After rereading the prices on the links you provided it looks like the X2 is only ~$10 more. That would make the decision a little harder at least for me. Either way you are getting a good processor. I still think the single core would be faster for games at least until more of them are written to use dual cores.

 

[adairusmc]

Originally posted by: invisi0n
how well do the a64 4000's do as regards overclocking them? (single cores)

adair did the asus overclock it no problem, it insists my current ram modules are both ddr400 despite them infact being ddr500. or maybe it just doesnt like my paticular brand of modules?

They are at DDR400 because the CPU is running at stock speed, which only works with DDR400. The DDR500 means it is rated to run at higher speed, and gives you more headroom to overclock.

The Asus overclocks my 4800+ on stock voltage, with no problems at all (72 hours of dual instances of Prime95, 100% stable)


Before I bought this processor, I had a 4000+ San Diego chip in this machine, and I had it overclocked to 2.604, 100% stable. I never tried clocking it higher than that though, so I do not know what it was capable of.