Thoughts about a CPU

[ebeattie]

Ya know its funny how a few simple upgrade desires turn into a full fleged upgrade. See my sig for details. As it stands I have a 4000+ San Diego running stock at 2.4 ghtz. for my rigs next incarnation, would it be best to overclock the CPU to perhaps 2.6 or 2.8 ghtz or splurge and get a Toledo core? My computer is gaming only with the addition of web surfing. This one always has and always will.

It is not a school/work/gaming rig, I am keeping it for full on gaming. When I get my video card (EVGA 7950 GX2), I will be ocing up to 630mhtz core and 1.45 ghtz mem. According to gamepc.com, the overclocked EVGA ran stable, quiet and had a whopping 98% performance of TWO 7900GTX's in SLI. All that coming from one card, and I have got to spend some time thinking about a possible bottleneck on my CPU. Graphix card data

That in mind, would I have ANY benifit for a dual core Athlon? Can the two cores be put to work on the same program, or are they still separate tasked cores? I havent kept tabs in the CPU world much, basically because Ive been so happy with my San Diego.

Or would I be ok just opgrading to a faster clock San Diego, like an FX-55 or FX-57? From everything I can tell, the 55 and 57 are nothing more than stock higher clocked versions of my cpu. Could I just oc my CPU and have the exact same performance specs that the FX's have?

Any help or input would be much appreciated.

 

[YoungGun21]

Dual Core would be better considering you don't get the slowest one out there...just go for atleast a 4400 X2 or higher and OC it as much as you can. That will be a nice upgrade while keeping all the rest of your parts.

 

[ebeattie]

True, but I dont need the multi tasking ability. Is an upgrade to a single core FX worth it? Or will overclocking be the same as getting a single FX? Im not sure what I wold have to do, wheter I can just increase the FSB, or if I need to change multipliers and up voltage ect. Im VERY new to CPU overclocking and some help is much appreciated!

 

[harpoon84]

Only a few games are multithreaded at this stage - Oblivion, Call of Duty 2 and Quake 4 off the top of my head. FEAR is multithreaded as well apparently but it's so GPU limited it doesn't matter in the end. COD2 only has minimal gains too because it is pretty GPU dependant as well, so really only Oblivion and Q4 will see potentially 'noticeable' differences between SC and DC.

I'm sure more games will be multithreaded in future, but at this point in time, short of going DC, you have pretty much 'maxed out' your S939 system.

 

[hennethannun]

No need for dual core on a gaming rig atm (especially a 4000+ gaming rig).

OC the 4000+ up to FX 57 speeds and enjoy the gaming! truly multi-threaded games aren't do out until Crysis (and maybe UT 2007?) but even then you will have more than enough power to enjoy them at VERY high resolutions since most games are GPU bound anyway.

also, your 7950 GX2 isn't REALLY one card. it is two 78900GTXs glued together, with all the SLI bridging built in.

EDIT:

to respond in more deatil to your specific questions:

Your 4000+ is basically an FX-53 with the multiplier locked at 12. you can increase the FSB and get an effective speed of 2.6 or 2.8 (if you are lucky), but your multiplier will never get higher than 12 (whereas the FX 55 and 57 have 13 and 14 respectively at stock, and they can be set in BIOS to whatever you desire). But yes, with a decent amount of luck and a good heatsink, you should be able to OC your processor to FX-57 speeds.

Yes, there would be some benefits to an X2 processor when multi-tasking or alt-tabbing out of RAM intensive programs. and some programs like Photoshop are already coded to take advantage of multiple cores, but 99% of current games, and 90% of games coming out in the next year will be single-threaded, and internet browsing while listening to music doesn't really count as multi-tasking with fast system like yours.

save your money and stick it out with this machine for a year or two and you can upgrade to a K8L or Core 2 Quad