Steppings for 3800+ and 4400+ x2 ?

[Bushman5]

Ok well im currently running a 3000+ winchester and im either gonna buy a 3800 + x2 or a 4400+ x2.
My questions are: is the 3800+ and the 4400+ worth the upgrade prices. i do tons of gamming and listen to music.

2nd question: i love to OC so wat are the best steppings for the 3800+ an 4400+ so i can maby hit atleast 2.5ghz

3rd question should i get the 4400+ or the 3800+, my only worry is the oc ability of the 3800+, cause keep in mind i do alot of gaming so id like to have it to 2.6 ghz or higher so wat is the track record of both.

 

[Lord Banshee]

First it will not help your gaming nor playing music but your computer will feel faster as because while windows is doing one thing on one CPU you can do something else on the other and it just feels faster (if you ever used a Dual CPU before you know what i mean)

And so your multi tasking will not lag for the most part and if you a program or get a program in the future that is Multithreaded it will run 50-80% faster with clock for clock A64 vs A64X2. And you are helping Future proof your computer if you don't buy computer once a year. As soon most programs will be written for more than one CPU as Intel and AMD have stated in their future road maps SMP is the way.

i hear must X2 3800+ are able to do 2.4-2.5. But lets hear it from the guys with the X2

 

[Bushman5]

id say i upgrade eveyr year year and a half. i do multitask like when im playing games i play music so i tab in and out alot also to check msn ect ect ect. What i would love is to use dual monitors, dunno if ill have to wait, id luv to run msn on 1 monitor and cs:source on another, not sure if ill have to wait on my cross fire board and my 2 cards or if i can do it now but it would be nice.

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Originally posted by: Bushman5
id luv to run msn on 1 monitor and cs:source on another, not sure if ill have to wait on my cross fire board and my 2 cards or if i can do it now but it would be nice.

Spend a lot of time waiting for the round to end, eh?

 

[Duvie]

1) It wont help your gaming enough to be worth it as mentioned...If you want to multitask and game it will hjelp

2) to early to tell, but most seem to make it to 2.5ghz with some moderate vcore boost.

3) to early to tell as I have not seen enough 3800+ X2 reports from users to come up with a good interpretation of the state of those chips....


If budget is tight get the 3800+ and try your luck..You coudl get to 2.4ghz or even as high as 2.7ghz on air alone...I ahve seen it....If you have the money I would potentially get the chips with the added acche as games do show they have 5-7% increase in speed alone from 512kb of cache to 1mb of cache...Gaming is one of the only apps that really take advanatage of the added cache.

 

[Bushman5]

hmmm so wat would be good stepping for a 4400+. id really like to get 2.7 or 2.6 ghz

 

[entropy1982]

Originally posted by: Duvie
1) It wont help your gaming enough to be worth it as mentioned...If you want to multitask and game it will hjelp

2) to early to tell, but most seem to make it to 2.5ghz with some moderate vcore boost.

3) to early to tell as I have not seen enough 3800+ X2 reports from users to come up with a good interpretation of the state of those chips....


If budget is tight get the 3800+ and try your luck..You coudl get to 2.4ghz or even as high as 2.7ghz on air alone...I ahve seen it....If you have the money I would potentially get the chips with the added acche as games do show they have 5-7% increase in speed alone from 512kb of cache to 1mb of cache...Gaming is one of the only apps that really take advanatage of the added cache.

I would love to see something that shows that 5-7% increase everyone gives me a diff't answer on the cache thing .... wish i could get a consensus or benchmarks of 2 proc running at same speed with difft cache sizes

 

[Bona Fide]

Originally posted by: Bushman5
hmmm so wat would be good stepping for a 4400+. id really like to get 2.7 or 2.6 ghz

As Duvie said, there aren't enough results yet to say what a good/bad stepping is. I say try your luck. With the X2 line, you're guaranteed a 10% overclock at least. Anything more is a matter of luck. Getting 2.4GHz with the 4400+ should be a cinch, even on stock cooling. Getting higher than 2.6GHz is going to require high-end air or water.

 

[TankGuys]

I think it's kind of a tough call, but put it this way: The 3800+ is about $200 cheaper. So do you think the 4400+ will give you ~55% better performance over the 3800? If so, go that route. Though I doubt you'll see that kind of increase, so my gut says lean towards the 3800. Then again, I also favored the 4200 over the 4400 for similar reasoning, and I was in the minority on that one


Edit: And yes, I did read you're concerned with OCing, so I should rephrase and say "Can you get 55% higher OC's with the 4400. Just so you didn't think I didn't read the OP!

 

[Link]

I guess I'm lucky since my x2 3800+ is doing 2.63ghz on air with the Thermalright SI-97A. ~50C at max load.

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: entropy1982

Originally posted by: Duvie
1) It wont help your gaming enough to be worth it as mentioned...If you want to multitask and game it will hjelp

2) to early to tell, but most seem to make it to 2.5ghz with some moderate vcore boost.

3) to early to tell as I have not seen enough 3800+ X2 reports from users to come up with a good interpretation of the state of those chips....


If budget is tight get the 3800+ and try your luck..You coudl get to 2.4ghz or even as high as 2.7ghz on air alone...I ahve seen it....If you have the money I would potentially get the chips with the added acche as games do show they have 5-7% increase in speed alone from 512kb of cache to 1mb of cache...Gaming is one of the only apps that really take advanatage of the added cache.

I would love to see something that shows that 5-7% increase everyone gives me a diff't answer on the cache thing .... wish i could get a consensus or benchmarks of 2 proc running at same speed with difft cache sizes

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-venice_7.html
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-venice_9.html

Here is one...you are comiparing a 1mb 2.4ghz 4000+ clawhammer to the 3800+ 2.4ghz newcastle which has DC is sckt 939 but only has 512kb....the 4000+ even beat s the venice which has the E core revision but until you test a 4000+ with also E core revisions we dont know how much that helped...well partialy we do cause look at how the venice is beating up on the newcastle...the data is there if you analyse it...

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041221/cpu_charts-15.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041221/cpu_charts-13.html#opengl

again compare a 2.4ghz 3800+ DC 512kb L2 newcastle versus a 2.4ghz 4000+ DC 1mb clawhammer...both are sckt939....

now the question is how much better would E revision do against the venice in a san diego or perhaps a toldeo since games are not multithreaded we should be able to look at the performance of the 4800+.....

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2410&p=7

or here

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2005q3/athlon64-x2-3800/index.x?pg=4


If I could find a review of a san diego 3700+ versus a venice 3500+ that would help....


My above linke\s do shw the relationship between like architecture and differnec in cache size in games....

 

[entropy1982]

Originally posted by: Duvie

Originally posted by: entropy1982

Originally posted by: Duvie
1) It wont help your gaming enough to be worth it as mentioned...If you want to multitask and game it will hjelp

2) to early to tell, but most seem to make it to 2.5ghz with some moderate vcore boost.

3) to early to tell as I have not seen enough 3800+ X2 reports from users to come up with a good interpretation of the state of those chips....


If budget is tight get the 3800+ and try your luck..You coudl get to 2.4ghz or even as high as 2.7ghz on air alone...I ahve seen it....If you have the money I would potentially get the chips with the added acche as games do show they have 5-7% increase in speed alone from 512kb of cache to 1mb of cache...Gaming is one of the only apps that really take advanatage of the added cache.

I would love to see something that shows that 5-7% increase everyone gives me a diff't answer on the cache thing .... wish i could get a consensus or benchmarks of 2 proc running at same speed with difft cache sizes

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-venice_7.html
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-venice_9.html

Here is one...you are comiparing a 1mb 2.4ghz 4000+ clawhammer to the 3800+ 2.4ghz newcastle which has DC is sckt 939 but only has 512kb....the 4000+ even beat s the venice which has the E core revision but until you test a 4000+ with also E core revisions we dont know how much that helped...well partialy we do cause look at how the venice is beating up on the newcastle...the data is there if you analyse it...

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041221/cpu_charts-15.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041221/cpu_charts-13.html#opengl

again compare a 2.4ghz 3800+ DC 512kb L2 newcastle versus a 2.4ghz 4000+ DC 1mb clawhammer...both are sckt939....

now the question is how much better would E revision do against the venice in a san diego or perhaps a toldeo since games are not multithreaded we should be able to look at the performance of the 4800+.....

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2410&p=7

or here

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2005q3/athlon64-x2-3800/index.x?pg=4


If I could find a review of a san diego 3700+ versus a venice 3500+ that would help....


My above linke\s do shw the relationship between like architecture and differnec in cache size in games....

Cool, didn't expect such a detailed response.

Thanks

 

[Bushman5]

Originally posted by: Link
I guess I'm lucky since my x2 3800+ is doing 2.63ghz on air with the Thermalright SI-97A. ~50C at max load.

well how about you take off your fan and write down the steppings for us

 

[entropy1982]

bushman that is not atypical at all.... just get a nice cooler (xp90) or something which are so cheap nowatdays (why not) and a lot of ppl are getting 2.6 and up on the 3800s so u should be ok if u buy a 3800

 

[keitaro]

Just to add some blurb to the stepping...

The initial X2 batch has an E4 stepping which I am sure is being phased out now. I bought my X2 3800+ about mid-August. When it arrived I found that my CPU is E6 stepping. My guess is that if you're truly unlucky you'd end up with an E4 3800+. But I believe that's unlikely as of now.

As for overclocking, I have set via BIOS specifically to 1.40v as defined by the OPN spec. But SpeedFan seems to report it as 1.35-ish. I currently run at 2.4GHz and idle temps is at about 45C and under, depending on ambient room temps. On load, it sits about 55-ish. Specs are in sig.

Like Duvie mentioned, to hit 2.6-2.7GHz, you're likely going to need some vcore bumps. Personally and honestly, 2.4GHz is a nice round number to hit with a 3800+. Games are perfectly fine as it is if you couple it with a fast video card so I wouldn't worry too much about not having fast enough CPU.

 

[Bushman5]

well im refering to future proof cause i wont be upgrading for 2 years after this chunk of money

 

[Bushman5]

bump

 

[TankGuys]

Go with the 3800. The newest ones out are E6 stepping. There are currently 2 versions: One with the Toledo core, and one with the Manchester core. The jury is still out on which OC's better; each one could have big advantages going for it.

 

[Shenkoa]

I agree, its cheaper and capable of doing the same frequency.