Upgrade from San Diego 3700 to Opteron 165

[donjn]

I am starting to think my upgrade from a trusty Athlon 64 3700 San Diego core to an Optern dual core 165 was a bad idea. Even though I love Oblivion and I know it takes advantage of dual cores the 3700 is a beast.

Price wise, I am having to pay $150 for this upgrade, which will yield me very little, if anything in games and perhaps a very minor difference loading items in Oblivion. I dont really multitask much except for perhaps downloading pron while gaming occassionaly.

In fact, my 3700 runs at 2700Ghz and the best I could overclock the 165 looks to be around that, but it would be pushing it. I almost feel I should spend $50 instead on a nice cooler and get that 3700 as close to 3000Ghz as I can.

I just dont feel the price/performance ratio is going to be what I think. I know everything about futureproofing yourself for gaming but last I checked, my x1900xt with a San Diego 3700 should last me quite a while.

What do you think?

 

[Hauk]

I think you're right on. The 3700+ San Diego has an awesome price/performance ratio. The return on an upgrade to an opty 165 at this point is nill. Dual core may be better than sliced bread if multi-tasking. But for gaming with nothing running in the background, a 3700+ running @ 2.7 is sweet.

Save the cash. Buy an X2 when games really call for it. 2.7 is a nice safe speed for a 3700+ on air. Check out the Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 64. Quiet cooler for $25.-$30.00.

 

[Munky]

I also upgraded to an Opteron 165, and besides movie encoding I have not gotten any improvement in the tasks I do, like gaming and general everyday use. Even in multi-tasking I see no gains (by that I mean browsing the web and listening music while burning a CD, not running AV and encoding a movie while playing CS:S...). But I plan to keep it until AMD has something new after AM2, so in the long run it may prove itself worthwhile.

 

[Painman]

I just made the exact same "upgrade", and in my case I feel it was kind of impulsive and unnecessary. I wouldn't feel so bad if my chip could OC well, but I got a dog. The same voltage that will drive my Sandy @ 2.75 won't even get this 165 to prime 12 hours @ 2.5. I hope I can sell it w/o losing my shirt on it.

I suppose if I kept it a year then I'd see the benefits of dual core with multithreaded games, etc., but I'm not keeping a chip that's tied for last place out of all the A64 OCs I've done regardless.