Should I move from Athlon XP 2.2Ghz to Athlon 64 2.4Ghz?

[ELicious]

I mainly play WoW nowadays running a crappy Geforce 6200. Athlon XP OCed to 2.2 Ghz (my memory won't let me crank up the FSB anymore w/o a divider) and 1 gig of ram. During 40 man raids my FPS drops noticably and it's affecting my player performance.

Should I jump on this deal?
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=40&threadid=1911516&enterthread=y

Would going to a 2.4Ghz Athlon 64 increase my FPS by a lot? If I figured correctly, the FSB of the athlon 64 will be 200, and I won't be able to OC because my memory is already running at 400 Mhz and that's it's limit.

I know it's not a video card problem because I borrowed a 7600GS and my FPS didn't seem to change at all. Should I just drop $100 on the 64 now until Conroe prices come down and we get more MB options?

 

[CCityInstaller]

If you have the $100, it would be a great upgrade. The A64 is much faster then the older XP's, even when clocked the same (ie, 2.2Ghz). You should be able to o/c the A3400 to 2.6Ghz-2.7Ghz, depending on your cooling choices. I would highly recommend the Artic Cooling Freezer Pro 64. It is a silent cooler that performs much better then the stock heatsink/fan. You can find a pretty good deal for under $22 shipped in Hot Deals. As far as running a divider on your memory, don't fear. Memory dividers don't have a significant impact on the performance of the A64, unlike the XP. I find it strange that you didn't see a FPS increase when going to a much better video card, but depending on your resolution I suppose you could be CPU limited.

 

[Maximilian]

The cpu isnt the problem. An AXP at 2.2 is roughly equivilent to a 3.0-3.2ghz P4C and they can still perform well in todays games. Its definately not the cpu. I dunno how much faster a 7600GS is than a 6200, but i think you shouldve seen some sort of increase as the 6200 is not a gaming card, the 7600GS although being far from the best should at least have a noticeable improvement.

 

[ELicious]

I didn't notice any improvement in FPS for WoW just changing the video card. I tried Prey before and after and the difference was night and day. Before I had to turn off all the graphics options and run at 800x600. Now I'm running at 1280x1024 with medium detail settings.

I think the issue with WoW is the amount of interface add-ons I use. Some of them probably aren't optimized, and thus take up a lot of CPU time. Also, this issue occurs mainly during 40 man raids, where we are all required to run CTRaid and KLHthreat meter. Both of them use an invisible chat channel to transfer data to the other members of the raid. So at all times during a 40 man raid, I have 39 other people sending me messages that my computer has to process.

It's not a graphics issue because I can be in town with 40, 50, 100 other players on my screen and my frame rates are playable (10-20), but during 40 man raids, I probably drop to 1-5 FPS during battles. Out of battle I'm fine again, but fat lot of good that does me.

I've already tried moving my Ventrilo over to a laptop, which does help some, but not enough. Having vent running on a laptop kinda sucks for me though. I can hear everyone talking, but if I wanna talk I have to take my hand off the keyboard and hit the push-to-talk key on my laptop.

 

[Dravic]

Originally posted by: ELicious
I didn't notice any improvement in FPS for WoW just changing the video card. I tried Prey before and after and the difference was night and day. Before I had to turn off all the graphics options and run at 800x600. Now I'm running at 1280x1024 with medium detail settings.

I think the issue with WoW is the amount of interface add-ons I use. Some of them probably aren't optimized, and thus take up a lot of CPU time. Also, this issue occurs mainly during 40 man raids, where we are all required to run CTRaid and KLHthreat meter. Both of them use an invisible chat channel to transfer data to the other members of the raid. So at all times during a 40 man raid, I have 39 other people sending me messages that my computer has to process.

It's not a graphics issue because I can be in town with 40, 50, 100 other players on my screen and my frame rates are playable (10-20), but during 40 man raids, I probably drop to 1-5 FPS during battles. Out of battle I'm fine again, but fat lot of good that does me.

I've already tried moving my Ventrilo over to a laptop, which does help some, but not enough. Having vent running on a laptop kinda sucks for me though. I can hear everyone talking, but if I wanna talk I have to take my hand off the keyboard and hit the push-to-talk key on my laptop.

wow is very CPU limited, your bringing that xp to its knees in big raids, i imagine you could crank up the resolution and eye candy now and get the same fps results with the better card

I have a dual core a64 3800+ at 2.7ghz and a 7800GT overclocked and i dont get more then 50-70fps. i imagine in a raid with all the addons on it would dip into the 20-30's in MC , but havent raided much yet with this config.

 

[dexvx]

Originally posted by: Soviet
The cpu isnt the problem. An AXP at 2.2 is roughly equivilent to a 3.0-3.2ghz P4C and they can still perform well in todays games. Its definately not the cpu. I dunno how much faster a 7600GS is than a 6200, but i think you shouldve seen some sort of increase as the 6200 is not a gaming card, the 7600GS although being far from the best should at least have a noticeable improvement.

LoL wtf? 2.2Ghz AXP is equal to a 3.2 P4-C?

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=1834

A stock 3200+ Barton can barely match a 2.6GHz p4-C. The difference will only get worse because theres more SSE2/SSE3 optimized stuff today.

Anyways, to the OP, I'd check out this:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=40&threadid=1924578&enterthread=y

Its more expensive, but a lot more powerful and it is compatible with existing hardware (although PSU might be an issue).

 

[mitaiwan82]

Originally posted by: CCityInstaller
If you have the $100, it would be a great upgrade.

but the OP's system runs on a Socket A motherboard, so unless he already has a Socket 754 board, then it'll definitely be more than $100.

 

[WobbleWobble]

Read Anand's WoW Performance Guide. An upgrade to a faster modern CPU is suprisingly beneficial. Too bad they didn't have a Pentium M or Core Solo/Duo to test with back then.

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: mitaiwan82

Originally posted by: CCityInstaller
If you have the $100, it would be a great upgrade.

but the OP's system runs on a Socket A motherboard, so unless he already has a Socket 754 board, then it'll definitely be more than $100.

The first link is for a $99 Athlon 64 with a free motherboard, so it's about $104 with shipping, so I guess you're techinically right.

 

[MrUniq]

at current prices you would benefit...I did the same thing. I moved from an XP 2700+ to a 3200+ 64 earlier this year and the difference was very noticeable in games and XP. And I paid for that BEFORE the AMD price drop...

 

[Parasitic]

I upgraded an older machine with a XP 1800+ to a XP Sempron 2600+ and have it oc'ed to 2.0GHz for $45.
To tell u the truth, I regret having done that instead of picking up the $99 combo from Newegg and starting off on a clean slate, but here I am too emotionally attached to the NF7-S.