Upgrading cheap... keep my AMD FX-60 (Socket 939)?

[WAZ]

So here's my current setup:

- AMD FX-60 (Dual core, 2.6 GHz)
- MSI nForce4 Motherboard (Socket 939, AGP)
- 2 GB RAM -- PC3200/DDR400
- Radeon X1950 Pro (AGP)

Of course, like anyone, I'd like to upgrade everything -- new mobo, processor, RAM, and video card -- but glancing through Newegg, unless I'm really missing something, it doesn't seem feasible budget-wise. I've only got a couple hundred total to spend.

So I was thinking, find a socket 939 board (except this one would be PCI Express) for ~$75, then get a new PCIx video card like this one... under $200 total.

But in the end it's only a video card upgrade (X1950 Pro --> GeForce 9800 GTX+), still using my skt 939 FX-60 and PC3200 RAM. Is this a worthwhile upgrade for my budget? Will I see enough improvement in games to be worth the money and rebuild time?

 

[jandlecack]

Originally posted by: WAZ
But in the end it's only a video card upgrade (X1950 Pro --> GeForce 9800 GTX+), still using my skt 939 FX-60 and PC3200 RAM. Is this a worthwhile upgrade for my budget? Will I see enough improvement in games to be worth the money and rebuild time?

Yes, but you wouldn't get anywhere near as much out of that card as you would with a more up to date build. If you're planning on upgrading everything in the near future (say end of this year) I'd suggest getting a slightly newer graphics card so you have something to rely on with your further upgrade. For example an HD4870 which should have fallen in price by now quite a lot. That will last you.

For reference; I upgraded a similar system from a BFG 7800GTX to my current card (8800GT) and it opened up quite a lot of new options. Was a 939 based X2 4200+ @ 2.7GHZ I believe. That said, I also had an E6600 running in another system that I used for media, encoding and the likes, until I switched to make it my main system, and the performance increase was significant in CPU-reliant games like Source engine-based titles. Crysis...not even with my i7 all that much. Need new videocard.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

You could probably get an Athlon X2 7750, motherboard, RAM, and something like an HD4770 or 4830 for around $250. Overall I'd say you get more performance out of this thing (especially if you overclock the 7750) than you will with your FX-60 + 9800GTX and you'll have a good upgrade path to get a Phenom II processor down the road.

Basically in other words: If you're going to change the motherboard, you might as well spend the money to get new RAM and CPU too because they are so cheap. I imagine you'll be able to sell that FX-60 for (at the very, very, very least) the price it would cost to additionally get the RAM and CPU. And you could probably sell the X1950 Pro and probably pay for the processor itself.

 

[Rifter]

I would wait and spend 300 and replace board ram CPU and card, and that card you linked to was overpriced,if you look hard you can get a 4850 they have been spotted for $85. i would save up 300 and get this if you want to order from the egg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?ItemList=Combo.190737
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820145241
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814102822

Thats: $273

There is no point in sticking with S939, yeah the combo deal i linked to will give you about the same CPU power you have now but you can upgrade to a CPU 3 times faster than it on the same board later. You will have twice the ram and its faster ram, and a better GPU. Then in a year or 2 you can drop in a Phenom II quad core and replace the GPU with a DX 11 card. You will have no upgrade path at all if you stick with S939.


Edited for failed spelling

 

[cusideabelincoln]

^That setup is nice as is the combo deal. But you might as well go with DDR2-1066 RAM since it's the same price as 800. Oh and the Athlon 7850 is by far more powerful than the FX-60 and has more overclocking headroom.

 

[lopri]

Do you know you can sell that FX-60 for $$$, which might be enough to cover almost all the expenses for a brand-new system?

CPU (E5200 or X2 7750): $60~$70 -> easy overclock to 3.0 GHz or above
Memory (2x2GB): $40
Motherboard (P45 or 790X/790GX): $100~$130
Video card (GTX 260 or HD 4870): $160~$170 (or you can save $50 bucks here by opting for GTS 250 or HD 4850, but like jandlecack says above that $50 will have the single most important impact on gaming, so it'll be a worthwhile investment, be it short-term or long-term)

Last time I saw, an FX-60 was going for $300-ish on eBay. Just FYI.

 

[Rifter]

I was going to add 1066 ram but the performance diff is not noticable even from most benchmarks i have seen let alone real world. And you can run your ram at 800 even if you have a CPU that supports 1066. He seems on a budget so i wanted to suggest something to save every penny. He really should sell that CPU on ebay though i mean i just got $150 for a friggen Socket A 3200+ a few weeks ago , im sure he could make $200+

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: lopri
Do you know you can sell that FX-60 for $$$, which might be enough to cover almost all the expenses for a brand-new system?
.....
Last time I saw, an FX-60 was going for $300-ish on eBay. Just FYI.

He really should sell that CPU on ebay though i mean i just got $150 for a friggen Socket A 3200+ a few weeks ago , im sure he could make $200+

Stuff like this is why I would never make a good salesman. I keep overestimating the intelligence of people. "They'll never pay $150 for a processor that is slower than a $40 processor on Newegg"... oh yes they will.

You could probably get an Athlon X2 7750

The X2 Kuma processors are about as good as the E6xxx processors, which is nice-ish, but for an extra $30 he could get a quad core. X2 7750 for $60 vs X4 9600 for $90. One solution is as good as the other, but I think the old phenoms are worth looking at. Kuma and Agena are basically the same processor, but you get 4 slow cores instead of 2 fast cores.

For reference:
AMD X2 compared to Intel E5xxx series
AMD X4 compared to Intel Q6xxx series

edit:
It's hard to get a good comparison between X2 and X4 but it looks like some Linux guy did it. X2 Kuma compared to X4 Agena when doing non-gaming things. Overall, for applications that do not use multithreading, the X2 destroys the X4. For multitasking and highly threaded applications, the X4 is better.

 

[Rifter]

If you are going to spend any money on anything over a kuma go all the way to a PH II 720BE, the Phenom I's are weak.

 

[WAZ]

Thanks guys, this is why I love this place.

I hadn't done a lot of research or digging, but my glancing through Newegg was based more on a "get me by for now" sort of mindset than a future-ready one. I also didn't realize I could get a processor that cheap... and that (holy nuts!) even though that quad-core X4 9600 is $89, people are consistently paying $200-250 for an FX-60. Given, it is a great processor that has served me well, but wow... Maybe it's because it's rare, just like certain AGP cards are way more expensive than faster PCIx cards.

Anyway, it looks like selling off my old parts and putting them toward new stuff is the way to go. $300+ can get me:

- X2 7850 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?Item=N82E16819103678)
- Gigabyte Mobo (http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?Item=N82E16813128376)
- HIS HD 4850 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?Item=N82E16814161244)
- 4 GB of 1066 RAM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?Item=N82E16820231166)

That's $350 shipped... $320 after MIR's. Minus the $200 to $300 I should be able to get for my processor and RAM, at the very least, and I may well come out having spent very little, if anything at all.

Ability to persuade wife... rising...

 

[hans007]

fx 60 is worth a lot on ebay. you can easily get $200+ for it. most higher end dual core 939s are worth decent money , so if you have a 4600+ or 4800+ or opteron 180/185 its pretty foolish to keep the cpu, unless you really are lazy.

 

[WAZ]

I also have an FX-55 (also s939), though it has one broken pin that keeps DIMM slots 2 & 4 from reading, so you can only use DIMMs 1 & 3.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Rifterut
If you are going to spend any money on anything over a kuma go all the way to a PH II 720BE, the Phenom I's are weak.

It's hard to say this is absolutely the correct way to go. The 720 is a great processor, but it comes at a cost. It's $140 compared to $60 for an X2 or $90 for an X4. If we go up another $50 step, we get to the 940 black which is another great processor.

It's hard to say when to stop spending money. Most of AMD's processors seem to be priced in such a way that they're all close to being equal value for what you pay, but how much you pay is up to you. This isn't one of those cases where there is one magical CPU that flat out destroys all of the others in every way.

It's also about time we stop saying the Phenom 1 sucks. It sucked a year ago because the price was stupid, not because the processor was bad. Now that the price is reasonable, it's actually worth considering. Refer to some recent Anandtech benchmarks. The single or double threaded performance of the Phenom X4 is just a step behind Intel's E7xxx series, and so is the price. When we start talking about multithreading, the Phenom X4 is actually pretty good for a $90 processor, link. The only real downside is that it's too damn hot.

 

[RiDE]

Originally posted by: WAZ
I also have an FX-55 (also s939), though it has one broken pin that keeps DIMM slots 2 & 4 from reading, so you can only use DIMMs 1 & 3.

Those don't sell that well, thanks to the fact that they were being sold for $80-90 when the socket was being phased out. I have one too. The FX-57 can fetch a pretty good price, but nothing like the FX-60.

 

[richierich1212]

Wow a quick check of ebay and a FX-60 sold yesterday for $300! nm that's for a new one.

Used ones go for $200+ as previously mentioned...sorry to get your hopes up even higher lmao.

 

[Rifter]

I have seen the benchmarks and i have also used both systems for a few months each. My GF bought a 9650 6 months ago, i used it daily as we worked opposite shifts. I build my own box 2 months ago so we could game together on our days off, it being whats in my sig. They are almost identical computers other than the CPU both with 4GB of RAM hers is a 780G chipset mine is a 790GX, we both have 4830's. Daily tasks such as e-mail, browsing etc seem faster on my system as well as most games. The only thing i noticed was faster on her machine was compressing files or uncompressing files as well as video transcoding. Her box can transcode media for my PS3 to play and you can still use the computer and you wont even know what its doing in the background unless you try to play a game but office/surfing type tasks are no problem, if i transcode from my machine especially depending on what format its going from my computer is pretty crippled for anything else but i dont care cause if im watching media from my PC on my TV i cant use my computer at the same time cause there is only one of me I would say that unless you plan to use the comp for encoding/rendering or other well multi threaded apps you are batter off with a faster dual core 7750 or 7850 than a phenom 1. Then wait a year till the 720 is $100 and buy one of those for a upgrade.

 

[Munky]

IMO, if you're gonna upgrade, do it right. There's no point upgrading a s939 system now, because you will still be cpu-limited in some cases, and soon you will want to upgrade again, only you've already wasted money. Switching from one dual core to another dually at this point is also a waste. I'd sell the old parts on ebay while they're still worth something, and go for a X3 720 phenom, a decent AM3 mobo for about $120 - $150, and a modern video card along the lines of a Radeon 4850 for about $100. It would cost you roughly $200 out of pocket after selling your old parts.

 

[Dadofamunky]

I pretty much agree with my near-namesake above. The only thing I HAVE done with my S939 system in the last three years is that I bought a $90 EVGA 9600GT card to replace the noisy laboring 7800GT, and my WinMark score doubled. Games are noticeably faster. But really, if you wanted to breathe a little more life into that FX-60 unit I wouldn't spend more than around $100. But think - as others have pointed out, your FX-60 is worth more on EBay then the basic cost of a freakin' Nehalem i7 920 chip! Sell that puppy and your upgrade budget will more than double, and you can get a good PII processor like the X3 720.

It also depends on what you're doing. I still use my Athlon X2 for lots of things, and I recently rescued an X2 3800+ S939 system from the boneyard at my previous job and rebuilt it, overclocking it to X2 4800+ speed. It's now my wife's machine, and she's really happy with it. I :heart: S939.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

I would stay away from the B2 Phenom processors, like the 9600. I just keep seeing people have problems with them. I know someone was having very bad performance in Source games with a Phenom 9500 which he fixed by simply upgrading the CPU to a Phenom II. And I know some motherboards just don't like the processors and give people BSODs. And if you enable the TLB bug fix for these processors you lose even more performance. So I would certainly stay away from the first Phenom processors. At the very least get B3 stepping (9550, 9650, 9750, 8750, 7850) or a Phenom II.

 

[WAZ]

Okay, I'm definitely not keeping the socket 939. My wife's got the FX-55 and she's fine with it (if she can use Word, Firefox, and maybe play the occasional Sims 2 or Zoo Tycoon, she's pretty much golden), so I'm not going to tear down my system and rebuild it with a new motherboard to keep the FX-60. If I'm going to the effort, I'd definitely like to do more than simply go from s939 w/AGP to s939 w/PCIx. So I appreciate that advice from everyone; you've really opened my eyes to what's out there that's affordable.

That said, I'm not (right now) looking for a huge upgrade in processor speed, so even though I'd love to drop the money to do a more significant upgrade, I don't think I can afford it just yet... and as long as my new setup is relatively future-proof and upgradeable, I'll be happy.

So between either:

- AMD X2 7850 Black Edition (Kuma) -- $69
- Intel Core 2 Duo (cheapest I see is $119 for the E7500 Wolfdale... E8400 is a good $100 more than AMD's 7850)

would one of these be a safer bet than the other... e.g. is one more or less future-ready than the other?

I see a number of reviews with Intel outperforming AMD, but man, they're expensive. That has me leaning toward the advice of many of you above -- going with AMD -- unless there is a good reason, such as upgradeability or a CLEAR difference in performance-to-price ratio (is Intel THAT much better to be worth double or triple the price of AMD?), for me not to.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

There is no clear reason for one to be better than the other in terms of upgradeability, although someone could certainly argue that AMD has the advantage because they are still releasing new processors compatible with their AM2+ platform.

Did you read AT's 7850 vs. E5300 article? It's a good read and shows the 7850 being a superior gaming processor. They even have the E7500 and the E8400's big brother the E8500 in there for reference. Of course you should also keep in mind they don't test with the highest graphical settings, meaning if they did then all of the scores you see will be closer to each other (from top to bottom) as the GPU does more work. And considering you're probably not going to get the GTX280 they tested with, I'm going to conclude that there would be no difference in performance between the E8400 and AMD 7850 if you're pairing it with a ~$100 video card like the HD4770*.

*Unless of course you'll be playing at low resolutions with low detail settings, but I doubt you are. You're going to want to push that GPU as far as it can go

 

[WAZ]

Thanks for the link; that's a good read.

After some more research, I'm leaning toward the X2 7850 Black Edition, with a 790GX board, such as:

- GIGABYTE GA-MA790GP-UD4H -- http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813128384
- ASUS M4A78-E -- http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813131368
- Foxconn A7DA-S -- http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813186150

The Gigabyte and the Asus look like they support future AM3 processors.

Also found a nice combo deal for the 7850 + Biostar board -- http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?ItemList=Combo.190737 -- but that one appears to lack the overclocking ability of the others, among some other mixed reviews.

Will keep looking before I take the plunge, but this setup looks pretty promising, especially for the money.

 

[ashishmishra]

With a black edition processor the HT overclocking ability of the motherboard should not matter, just up the multiplier and voltage.

 

[WAZ]

You mean the overclocking issues I read about the Biostar?

I think I'm probably going to get the Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-UD4H.

It'll cost me about $60 more than that Biostar bundle, but I think I like the Gigabyte reputation and reviews a little more.

 

[WAZ]

Actually, if I'm NOT using the onboard ATI 3300 video (which I won't be -- I'll be buying a PCIe card in the 4850 range), then do I even need a 790GX board? Can I not just get a 770 instead?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813128376

Or is there more to the doubling price of the 790GX that I won't get with the 770?