So I have found myself thinking that my P4 Prescott 3.0 GHz really doesn't hack it anymore. That is, I can't play SupCom on it, and since it has turned into my favorite time-killing activity...
I'm planning on doing a bigger upgrade down the road - that means sometime next year. Nehalem sounds cool, and so does whatever-it's-called AMDs next thing after Agena. I'm a college student and rather poor, so I'm not planning on spending much money unless I need to, that is, unless I can get a lot of value out of my investment.
Currently I have a P4 3.0GHz Prescott, an ASUS P4P800-E DELUXE, 2 GB of Corsair DDR-400 (it can go to ~230 MHz until timings have to be seriously loosened), and a GeForce 7600 GT AGP 8x. This is housed in a black Antec medium-size case, I honestly couldn't tell you what model it is. Now: I want to get away with an upgrade that doesn't cost me much more than $100 (actually, the equivalent in SEK, I'm currently in Sweden). I have an offer to buy a Abit Fatal1ty an8 sli, socket 939, for $45 or so. I could get a budget AND refurbished S939 mobo for ~$30. Looking around I can find an Opteron 165 for $138 (although the specs say HT2000, which confuses me; I thought these only came with HT1000), a 4200+ X2 for $134, an Opteron 170 for $165, and an X2 3800+ for $153. Worth noting is that the two opterons come with a HSF; the two X2s are both lacking, IE. I'd have to get one at additional cost. I might be able to look around and shave a buck or two off of these prices, but not a significant amount. I've been looking around for over 2 hours just on CPUs.
The cheapest budget boards with an AGP slot are ~$40-$50, so they do command a price premium. I'd have to get a new PCIe card, presumably a budget variety.
To recoup some of the cost I'll be selling my processor, motherboard, and, depending on whether I end up getting an AGP or a PCIe motherboard, my graphics card. I should be able to sell the graphics card for ~$100, and since PCIe cards are cheaper I figure that might actually be a free upgrade. Since PCIe can also travel with me when I upgrade, I figure that I can afford to spend more money on the card.
So now it's down to your advice: How do these processors stack up against each other? I chose to investigate the S939 platform first, since the AMD procs generally seem to be cheaper in the low-end segment, and one has to go S939 for DDR support with AMD. The whole point of the scheme was to not have to replace the still-somewhat-decent RAM. Do you think I could find a cheaper and/or significantly better upgrade if I move to S775? How much of a performance boost will the aforementioned upgrades give me? Keep in mind that my P4 does OC to ~3500 MHz if I push it. I'm fully willing to overclock the living crap out of any parts that I end up getting, but since I won't be spending any money on after-market cooling the resulting performance gains may not be all that impressive.
Gentlemen, what are your thoughts?
I'm planning on doing a bigger upgrade down the road - that means sometime next year. Nehalem sounds cool, and so does whatever-it's-called AMDs next thing after Agena. I'm a college student and rather poor, so I'm not planning on spending much money unless I need to, that is, unless I can get a lot of value out of my investment.
Currently I have a P4 3.0GHz Prescott, an ASUS P4P800-E DELUXE, 2 GB of Corsair DDR-400 (it can go to ~230 MHz until timings have to be seriously loosened), and a GeForce 7600 GT AGP 8x. This is housed in a black Antec medium-size case, I honestly couldn't tell you what model it is. Now: I want to get away with an upgrade that doesn't cost me much more than $100 (actually, the equivalent in SEK, I'm currently in Sweden). I have an offer to buy a Abit Fatal1ty an8 sli, socket 939, for $45 or so. I could get a budget AND refurbished S939 mobo for ~$30. Looking around I can find an Opteron 165 for $138 (although the specs say HT2000, which confuses me; I thought these only came with HT1000), a 4200+ X2 for $134, an Opteron 170 for $165, and an X2 3800+ for $153. Worth noting is that the two opterons come with a HSF; the two X2s are both lacking, IE. I'd have to get one at additional cost. I might be able to look around and shave a buck or two off of these prices, but not a significant amount. I've been looking around for over 2 hours just on CPUs.
The cheapest budget boards with an AGP slot are ~$40-$50, so they do command a price premium. I'd have to get a new PCIe card, presumably a budget variety.
To recoup some of the cost I'll be selling my processor, motherboard, and, depending on whether I end up getting an AGP or a PCIe motherboard, my graphics card. I should be able to sell the graphics card for ~$100, and since PCIe cards are cheaper I figure that might actually be a free upgrade. Since PCIe can also travel with me when I upgrade, I figure that I can afford to spend more money on the card.
So now it's down to your advice: How do these processors stack up against each other? I chose to investigate the S939 platform first, since the AMD procs generally seem to be cheaper in the low-end segment, and one has to go S939 for DDR support with AMD. The whole point of the scheme was to not have to replace the still-somewhat-decent RAM. Do you think I could find a cheaper and/or significantly better upgrade if I move to S775? How much of a performance boost will the aforementioned upgrades give me? Keep in mind that my P4 does OC to ~3500 MHz if I push it. I'm fully willing to overclock the living crap out of any parts that I end up getting, but since I won't be spending any money on after-market cooling the resulting performance gains may not be all that impressive.
Gentlemen, what are your thoughts?
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