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Athlon XP-M 2800+ vs. what-ever ??

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DennisHS

Junior Member
Hey.. I'm thinking about expanding my other computer to make it my primary game pc.

I've taken a look at Athlon XP-M 2800+ since it's unlocked and has 512kb L2 cache, but the FSB is only 266MHz.

Would it be sane to choose that over the Barton 2800+ (333MHz / 256kb L1) or Sempron 3000+ (512kb L2 / 333 MHz)?

It's going to be paired with ATI R5x0 in the future..

Or should I just plea bankruptcy and get AMD64? 😉

Any thoughts will be appreciated.
 
if your planning on getting an r5x0, do you really want to invest in an agp card?

the a64's are better in gaming by a large margin

of the choices, the xp-m is the best

you raise the fsb to 200

mine did 2.1@200@1.5 volts, stock is 16x133=2128@1.65 (desktop runs it higher)

but you need a board that will unlock it

if you don't have the motherboard yet, you should be looking at going to socket 939

 
drop like $150 on a 3000+ Venice, $100 or so on a 939 board, and you are done

All in all you will be spending about $50-100 more to get the A64 which is 64bit to the XP-Ms 32, has a quid pumped FSB to the XP-Ms double, and you get PCI-e to the XP-Ms AGP

Cliffs:
Get the A64
 
Originally posted by: DennisHS
Hey.. I'm thinking about expanding my other computer to make it my primary game pc.

I've taken a look at Athlon XP-M 2800+ since it's unlocked and has 512kb L2 cache, but the FSB is only 266MHz.

Would it be sane to choose that over the Barton 2800+ (333MHz / 256kb L1) or Sempron 3000+ (512kb L2 / 333 MHz)?

It's going to be paired with ATI R5x0 in the future..

Or should I just plea bankruptcy and get AMD64? 😉

Any thoughts will be appreciated.
Click to expand...

Choose the mobile. It's spec's just read FSB 266mhz cuz it's intended for lappies that run slower to use less battery power and generate less heat.

It's actually the same CPU as any other Barton, just hand picked as a piece of prime silicon so it can run stably on lower voltage for a lappie (less heat, more battery life..)

You don't mention the mobo, just make sure it offers CPU multi adjustments. Very Important!

You might wanna re-think which mobile you buy. Seems they all OC to about the same, so if there's any 2400, or 2600's that are cheaper may be worth getting them. I haven't researched them in a while, being I bought mine sometime ago. It's an IQYHA stepping, known for great OC's.

Lastly, I personally don't see any reason to switch to an a64 yet. I play FPS games and "CPU bottlenecking" is basically BS. It'll happen at lower resolution, not high (so who cares?). It's all about the gfx card man. 😎

Fern
 
Thanks guys.

I did a little more digging. In an article on FiringSquad ( http://firingsquad.com/hardware/athlon_64_geforce_7800_gtx_scaling ) they said something like :

"If you?re not careful however and pair the 7800 GTX with a slower processor, all that power can go to waste. This is because the processor isn?t fast enough to keep up with the graphics card. An analogy we?ve used in the past is putting 14? tires on a Ferrari."

and

"Based on our testing, the sweet spot kicks in somewhere around the A64 3500+ range. Our numbers with Half-Life 2 show this most dramatically. In addition, the HL2 1024x768 results also show that the 7800 GTX benefits from the 1MB L2 cache of the 4000+ and FX processors. The scaling results on page three corroborate these findings as well, as the 7800 GTX?s performance jumps profoundly at 2.2GHz. This is probably the clock speed you should shoot for if you?re in the market for a new processor but don?t want to drain your bank account in the process; or if you can?t afford a new chip, it?s definitely the speed you should go for when overclocking."

It's the 7800GTX, but maybe the same goes for R5x0..

Based on the article I did some 'virtual shopping', and this is what I came up with: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium ('cause of all the features), AMD64 3700+ (based on the new memory handeling, 1mb L2 etc.). I'll be using the memory I already have: 1x256 PC3200, 1x256 PC2700 and 1x512PC2700.. All Samsung.

So if the Farrari thing holds water, maybe that's the setup I'll be getting. It's hell of a lot more expensive, but apparently very well worth it.

Should I spend the xtra dime?
 
Originally posted by: DennisHS
Hey.. I'm thinking about expanding my other computer to make it my primary game pc.

I've taken a look at Athlon XP-M 2800+ since it's unlocked and has 512kb L2 cache, but the FSB is only 266MHz.

Would it be sane to choose that over the Barton 2800+ (333MHz / 256kb L1) or Sempron 3000+ (512kb L2 / 333 MHz)?

It's going to be paired with ATI R5x0 in the future..

Or should I just plea bankruptcy and get AMD64? 😉

Any thoughts will be appreciated.
Click to expand...

Go for the one with the 512KB cache, the FSB on the 266mhz should easily hit over 200mhz with overclocking. Not sure if xp-m or sempron would be better.

Also, R5x0 may not have AGP versions.

My XP-M 2600+ with a 266FSB runs at ~2350mhz with 205mhz FSB at around 1.625V to 1.65V. After that, it really starts jumping in volts needed to go faster, plus power leakage becomes a serious problem.

If you don't already have an nforce2 board that's good at overclocking and what not, I'd say go for socket 754 sempron, the cpu will cost about the same and overclock better, run cooler, and perform better.

Also, Bartons aren't really fast enough to keep a stable 60 fps in all games. No matter the video settings, I generally don't get past 50 fps in CS:Source, and plenty of other games frequently drop under 60 fps.
 
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