Worth Going from Barton XP 2600 (333FSB) to XP 3200 (400FSB)?

[Spikesoldier]

from experience, i doubt that most mATX boards have such options in the BIOS for overclocking as their ATX counterparts.

sdack: sure a 3200+ upgrade will help, but not as much as a step up to the A64 platform.

buying a 3200+ is $184 at newegg for the OEM model. the 3200+ barton is also the highest chip you can get on socket A, and is priced accordingly, as a top of the line chip. the price point is horrible, and for $194 you can buy a socket 754 athlon 64 3200+ which would completely wipe the floor against its barton 3200+ brother.

i would not reccommend going to the barton 3200+ with the a64 option. save your money, you will be unhappy with the upgrade IMO, and the 2600+ should last you a while, but if youre playing today's demanding games, and given the great card you got (a 16pipe 6800), the CPU is REALLY your bottleneck.

i am running a mobile 2500+ @ 2.4GHz, and i upgraded from a 2200+ tbredA @ 1.9GHz. a 500MHz jump, and i really didnt notice anything. sure my dvd rips went a few FPS faster, but i am really unhappy with it and i think i should have gone the A64 route if i could do it over again. save your money for an upgrade down the line.

really, its from 2083 to 2200, thats only 117MHz for $184? get out of here. that would be like suggesting to someone to replace their P3 500 with a P3 550.

 

[Mister Dark]

I hear what you're saying, Spikesoldier. It makes sense to wait. But if I buy the 3200 from a local shop here, they'll take my 2600 in trade, which means I should be able to get it for a little cheaper. If I spring for the $194 athlon 64, I'll also have to pay for a new MB to run it on, and that's more disposable cash than I have on hand at the moment ... If you check the link I included in the first part of this thread, some reviewers listed big frame rate jumps going from the 2600 to the 3200 ... The 2600 is the bottleneck, you're right, and the 3200 will still be the bottleneck, but it will be faster ... But maybe you're right. Maybe I should just save up for a new MB and the 64. Less hassle in the long run.

 

[Spikesoldier]

your 2600+ is probably multiplier locked anyway, i doubt that you can reach 2.5GHz (12.5x200) so simply. if your board doesnt have increments to overclock, you really dont have a choice.

youre going to have to make a decision: to upgrade now or to wait for the A64's to come down in price. thats pretty cool that they would take the 2600 in trade, maybe you can trade in your 2600 and board for something better? maybe if you add $100 you can score a nice A64 combo, or the sempron 3100+, which when overclocked would absolutely crush your 2600.

 

[Mister Dark]

So I called my local shop and they said if I swap in my current CPU AND motherboard with a few other odds and $50, they'll set me up with an Athalon 64 2800 400FSB and an nforce capable MB to run it on ... Does that sound like a good deal?

 

[Spikesoldier]

Originally posted by: Mister Dark
So I called my local shop and they said if I swap in my current CPU AND motherboard with a few other odds and $50, they'll set me up with an Athalon 64 2800 400FSB and an nforce capable MB to run it on ... Does that sound like a good deal?

that is where it gets sketchy. crap, for $50 i would do it, it sounds almost too good to be true. make sure they dont make you trade in your video card or whatnot

go for it, and later if you want a better cpu you can do it, you have an upgrade path now

 

[Mister Dark]

Thanks for the advice, Spikesoldier ... I'm keeping my current card, the BFG 6800 OC, but I am giving them my old Geforce 4 Ti 4600 card as well (thought about keeping it to put together a second machine, but live for the future I say.) This swap will give me an upgrade path, but it's slightly limited because I'm getting a socket 754 MB instead of a 939 ... Still, it gives me a lot more room than I have right now, and from everything I've read, the 64 3000 (I bumped it up from the 2800) will be a big improvement over my XP 2800 ...

 

[Spikesoldier]

i think you will be surprised with the upgrade. the on die memory controller is the biggest part.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: Mister Dark
Thanks for the advice, Spikesoldier ... I'm keeping my current card, the BFG 6800 OC, but I am giving them my old Geforce 4 Ti 4600 card as well (thought about keeping it to put together a second machine, but live for the future I say.) This swap will give me an upgrade path, but it's slightly limited because I'm getting a socket 754 MB instead of a 939 ... Still, it gives me a lot more room than I have right now, and from everything I've read, the 64 3000 (I bumped it up from the 2800) will be a big improvement over my XP 2800 ...

Socket 939 wont live any longer then 754. AMD is discontinuing both once they release socket 900.

 

[Mister Dark]

Originally posted by: dguy6789

Socket 939 wont live any longer then 754. AMD is discontinuing both once they release socket 900.

I think it's best to just assume that any new computer or related part will be obsolete by the time you pull it out of the box ...

 

[sdack]

A brand new AMD Athlon64 including a board for only $50 is the best deal you can get. I wouldn't even ask what brand of board that would be since he takes back the old hardware. Much easier than selling it through eBay or storing it in a box. Going from an XP2600+ to a 3200+ is only making sense when you want to make a long use of your board.

A year ago I bought an nForce2 ultra board (65 Euros) together with a Duron 1.3GHz (60 Euros) and just today order a Sempron3000+ for 104 Euros. I planned to get the XP3200+ but it has stayed on its rather high price for some time (guess why...). My harddisks are now almost 2 years old and full and I also ordered a new 160GB. At christmas I will have a computer for playing last year's games or maybe even the new ones but then on a low detail setting.
I see how much socket 754 based systems cost, but would really want a 939. Since PCIe (or -X?) is doing its first steps - together with DDR2 - I couldn't convince myself to do just that step. I simply want more than just a faster computer. Next step then has to be a big one; from AGP to PCIe, from IDE to SATA, DDR to DDR2(3?). You will have alot more choices. The really interesting boards like the nForce4 are only becoming availabe now, it is almost christmas and I know prices will drop in spring. It is just not the right time.

Whoever can avoid socket 754 should do so. It's a low-cost socket and all a socket does is to hold a CPU. If AMD can manage to combine sockets again, they really should do so. The two sockets should actually have increased the cost (in total).

I read socket 900. Are there any details out?

Sven

 

[sdack]

Spikesoldier: AMD would have sold you that surprise anyways. If it wouldn't have been for the on-die memory controller, they would have increased the caches like Intel. However, the on-die memory controller really is a good thing. The bad thing about it were the two sockets it created (for having a single channel and dual channel CPU). The real problem behind all this btw is that when people talk about "low cost", they actually mean _lowest_ cost. You cannot really be serious in trying to produce one of the best products and one that is the cheapest. "Low-cost" is a marketing term for "outdated", which only sounded better.

Sven

 

[tfinch2]

I'd rather get a better motherboard (nforce2) and overclock the 2600 than get an XP3200 processor. That would probably be the cheapest solution.

 

[RussianSensation]

Wait for the time when you have enough to jump to A64. For now you should be able to overclock the barton to 3200+ speeds.

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: dguy6789

Originally posted by: Mister Dark
Thanks for the advice, Spikesoldier ... I'm keeping my current card, the BFG 6800 OC, but I am giving them my old Geforce 4 Ti 4600 card as well (thought about keeping it to put together a second machine, but live for the future I say.) This swap will give me an upgrade path, but it's slightly limited because I'm getting a socket 754 MB instead of a 939 ... Still, it gives me a lot more room than I have right now, and from everything I've read, the 64 3000 (I bumped it up from the 2800) will be a big improvement over my XP 2800 ...

Socket 939 wont live any longer then 754. AMD is discontinuing both once they release socket 900.

socket 900 has never and will never exist. Its a rumor that was disproven months ago.

 

[Spikesoldier]

Originally posted by: sdack
Spikesoldier: AMD would have sold you that surprise anyways. If it wouldn't have been for the on-die memory controller, they would have increased the caches like Intel. However, the on-die memory controller really is a good thing. The bad thing about it were the two sockets it created (for having a single channel and dual channel CPU). The real problem behind all this btw is that when people talk about "low cost", they actually mean _lowest_ cost. You cannot really be serious in trying to produce one of the best products and one that is the cheapest. "Low-cost" is a marketing term for "outdated", which only sounded better.

Sven

as i said before dual channel on an AMD platform both socket A and the Athlon64 doesnt provide such a big performance improvement as you think. dual channel on a P4 is great because the P4 is a bandwidth starved platform.

also the reason DDR2 is being used on intel systems right now only, is again because it is bandwidth starved. AMD wont be seeing DDR2 implementation until 2006 AMD says. at the moment DDR2 is beaten out by equally priced high quality DDR(1) sticks. DDR2 right now is expensive, and have much higher latencies than that of DDR(1).

again the only difference between 754 and 939 is the dual channel, the fact that 754 wont be seeing any .09u chips, and no PCIe support. as far as PCIe goes, big flippin deal, it has no performance advatages over AGP right now, and AGP will be sticking around for at least another 2 years, possibly longer. it doesnt matter for the OP anyway since he has an AGP 6800. maybe the only thing he would be missing out in the furture would be SLI, but then again there are virtually no SLI boards out right now anyway.

at the moment the difference between the two is maybe 5%, and the difference between the OP's old system vs the one he might be getting is maybe (im going out on a limb here) 15%-25%, even higher if he gets a good overclock.

socket 754 is in no way outdated. socket 7, yes. i would go as far to even say taht socket 370 isnt outdated yet.

 

[Lark888]

Couldn't find an online manual to check out the overclocking capabilities of your motherboard. However, the specs for the board do show support for the 400FSB speed. If the bios has option to increase FSB (and I suspect it does), overclocking might work just fine to reach 3200+ speeds without any cost. If you have never done any overclocking, it might be a little tough to get everything working at that speed. Memory will need to support the higher FSB (the 3200 will do just fine) and a slight voltage increase may be required to get stable o/c at 3200. If you are using stock cooling, temperatures may limit the stability.

I have a Barton 2500+ running just fine at 3200+ speeds, required a 0.1 volt increase on CPU to be stable. I do, however, have a very nice copper heat sink fan (think it is a 900U) that keeps temperatures in the mid-to upper 30's C. Temps in the 40s are fine if CPU runs stable. I do notice the increase performance from this overclock but would likely have stayed with lower speed and saved my dollars for the next generation (for me) A64 if I had to buy a 3200+ to get 3200+ speeds. But I've always been a little tight on buying CPU power (my 166Mhz Pentium MMX overclock to 233Mhz speed was great... ) and have never purchase the current generation of CPU. I'd rather spend the money on good memory and video cards.

Wish you well in whatever choice you make.