Will a dual core Athlon 64 help me out any?

[KDOG]

I'm the typ of person that like to be doing more than one thing at a time on my PC. Right now I have a Venice 3000+ running at 2.34Ghz - not too shabby. This evening I was watching the Superbowl via tv tuner about half screen size while my wife played solitare on the other half of the screen (I have a 2005fpw) and the solitare game was lagging. Other things were lagging about a half second reaction time also. Hadn't done that before. I checked out my temps and they were fine. 29C with my XP-90. Pretty good. I don't know if it was just a quirk or maybe my beast can't handle too many things at once. I have 1g of Corsair XMS DDR400, so I don't think its the memory. Would I be able to OC a 3800+ X2 to the same level as my current cpu?

Whaddya think?

 

[JMWarren]

2.4-2.6 should be doable on a 3800 X2. Alot depends on your MB tho.

 

[KDOG]

I have the ASRock 939 DualSATAII mobo....

 

[JMWarren]

From what I've read it should be possible. I'm sure someone on here has that setup and can give you more advice.

 

[KDOG]

Now I'm wondering if 2Gb of memory will help me more than a dual core....

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: KDOG
Now I'm wondering if 2Gb of memory will help me more than a dual core....

Load up your most used apps and see how much RAM they use. If it's under 1GB, then upgrade the CPU.

 

[farmercal]

I have a 1.5 GHz AMD overclocked to 2.0 GHz, Asus MB and 1 G of XMS as well and I am always watching TV and playing spider solitaire while browsing the internet and I don't have very many complications. Sometimes the TV picture will start stumbling and I have to close it and start it back up and it works fine from then on. I don't know if it is a memory problem or CPU speed or something else. I was told that my TV tuner (PVR 150) had its own processor and wouldn't use my CPU so I shouldn't have any difficulties at all, but I sometimes do.

 

[KDOG]

Originally posted by: MDE

Originally posted by: KDOG
Now I'm wondering if 2Gb of memory will help me more than a dual core....

Load up your most used apps and see how much RAM they use. If it's under 1GB, then upgrade the CPU.

Good point. I loaded up Firefox, the TV and spider solitare and still had 615MB of memory free. Along with everything thats running in the taskbar. Maybe it was just a quirk.

 

[letdown427]

At the moment, 2GB is basically only necessary for higher end gaming.

I have an ASrock dual sataII and a 4400+. I've been able to OC it to 2.5Ghz, although oddly more recently, the results have dropped a bit. I think possibly because i've started using the two sata ports. Basically I get file errors if i'm overclocked, so maybe the sata isn't locked, like on ports 1 and 2 on the asus? That was my idea anyway.

Either way, 3800+'s seem to be very good OCers, and you'll most probably be able to better your current CPU performance wise. I used a non dual core PC the other day, girlfriends family pc, and as soon as you do anything it seems, it just falls to its knees. For example, I opened the usual scanning programs I use at home (adaware,spybot S&D, microsoft antispyware beta, registry first aid, ccleaner), and i just run them all at the same time, as there's no slowdown, whereas on this 2.6Ghz P4, jeeeeesus it just ticked along, it was sooo slow. Just simple abilities like using the pc whilst running all yor anti spyware crap, you don't really notice them as much until they're taken away from you.

dual core FTW!

 

[Looney]

First, how exactly does solitaire lag? It's not a network game... and even if it was, CPU usage wouldn't cause that... unless you were watching the superbowl through a videostream, inwhich case nothing you do to your computer will help... you'll need to increase your bandwidth.

 

[reader850]

You have a good system already. Wait and build a new system this summer with the new AMD platform. Scrounge around in the meantime and collect a cheap monitor, etc for your wife, and give her your old system then, so you don't have to share, plus you'll be able to play LAN games with her.

 

[Bobthelost]

Tbh that's not really hardcore multitasking. If you were watching the superbowl and your other half was playing quake then you'd have more need for it.

Before you upgrade anything bin any excess junk on your HD and defrag it, think about doing a clean install but it's a bit of a nightmare so probably not for you.

The RAM usgae will probably go up, look at the peak usage in the comit charge section, if that's greater than 1gb after a day's usage then you need more RAM.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: letdown427
At the moment, 2GB is basically only necessary for higher end gaming.

You seem to have forgotten things such as many kinds of "real work" including digital photography / graphic art, videography, scientific analysis of many kinds, etc. We use 2GB (or more) as well. It goes without saying, however, that the OP's needs should not require more than 1GB, as Solitaire plus a TV tuner should not stress any reasonably modern system.

 

[bob4432]

were you watching the SB on your computer via HD card? or just regular SD? if solitare is lagging i would say something else is the problem consider my old P75 ran it no problems....

 

[Rage187]

I have the exact same ASROCK board and a X2 3800, it did 2.5 out of the box on air.

I also run 2gig (2x1gig) OCZ Platinum.

I am usually running multiple instances of Bittorrent, encoding dvd's and watching Hidef using VLC and I maybe hit 66% usage across both cores.



This is by far the best setup I have had.