Worth the jump to AM2 this summer?

[alimoalem]

it sucks how everyone's telling you to get conroe when you're not interested in it but oh well. they're right, it performs well and is relatively cheap (for an intel) but you don't wnat the first batch of cpus either. the AM2 doesn't seem like a valid upgrade path for those coming from s939. i think it's more appropriate for thsoe with s754 or earlier systems. buy the dual core, overclock if you need to, and just upgrade your video card whenever you need (i think you already said this but i'm just saying i agree with you ) and you'll definitely be good for all of 2007 and maybe even the first half of '08. good luck with your upgrades

 

[Madwand1]

I think the OP's system still has a lot of life in it. You don't have to replace everything to get a minor boost, and replacing a few things selectively would likely give him much better performance/price.

The signs that are coming from AMD also indicate to me that they're really dropping the consumer ball, and in that case, if they're giving us little more than the chance to buy a new socket and dump old hardware including RAM, then they are giving us no advantage to stick with AMD over switching to Intel. And Intel will give a significant gain in performance based on the IDF benchmarks, so there will be a reason to go there.

So my response is (a) No, stick with the platform you've got and optimize it. (b) Switch to AM2 only if AMD gives a demonstrated performance advantage, which almost nobody's expecting right now. (c) Don't buy AMD just for some falsely based loyalty if they're not doing much to earn that loyalty in return.

Hector Ruiz
"We don't feel we need to make huge strides in the consumer [space] in the near future," Ruiz told the audience. "In terms of retail around the world, for example, we have 40-50% of the market. Our desire, frankly, is to just hang on to that while we make much more significant impact on the commercial side."

 

[RichUK]

Originally posted by: JackBurton

Originally posted by: RichUK
I was trying not to be that presumptuous on your uses of a PC/Workstation, however i assume that your work load coming from a single core 2600+ wouldn't warrant it. I simply wanted to point out my views on future quad threaded or multi threaded apps.

The reason I'm using a 2600+ is because when I upgrade I want to see a substantial performance increase. I also use a dual processor hyperthreaded Xeon workstation at work, but I'm looking for a more powerful machine to crunch some numbers.

You also do not need multithreaded apps to take advantage of multicore CPUs. Simply running several CPU intensive apps in parallel would give you a substaintial performance increase from a single core compared to a multi core CPU. At home I can only run one CPU intensive task, and I have to wait until it is done before my machine returns back to a usable state. A dual core, or better yet a quad core CPU would REALLY help me out. I have an app that will take up to 10-14 days to finish (I think it finished in 7 days on the dual Xeon workstation). This particular app IS multithreaded and would really benefit from a quad core CPU, but even better, I can run other CPU intensive tasks if needed. The more cores the better for me. I can ALWAYS put them to work. The only people that think something like this is useless, is someone that doesn't do much with their PC and assumes everyone else does the same (and I don't call playing games, doing alot with a PC).

I totally agree and have not dismissed this advantage of running multiple apps at full performance simultaneously.

I have indeed owned two dual cores, both have been s939 opterons which were overclocked, these were an opteron 165 and a 170 to be precise. I had found that after using these over my previous OCed single core Winchester, I didn?t overly feel the improvement. Dare I say I bought into a FAD that didn?t suite my needs. So after a short while these processors were sold on ebay. I then purchased my current processor which is able to run a lot faster in single threaded processing, in fact once I acquire my long awaited (pre-ordered) motherboard, i will be able to run this over 3Ghz.

So I can personally evaluate my needs and come to the conclusion that I do not require, yet, a dual core processor. But due to my impulse buying can foresee a Conroe setup in my rig in the near future

I totally understand your situation if you do indeed require more processing power for use in multiple tasks, a quad core would indeed benefit your needs. My rig is just a toy and doesn?t serve that much of a purpose other then a hobby ?OCing?, and something to browse the web and play a few games with.

My real work is channelled through my work provided laptop which I connect remotely to a secure network via a VPN connection, although I don?t require a lot of processing power it is still a very much needed tool for my line of work. So of course everyone to their own.

 

[archcommus]

Originally posted by: Madwand1
I think the OP's system still has a lot of life in it. You don't have to replace everything to get a minor boost, and replacing a few things selectively would likely give him much better performance/price.

The signs that are coming from AMD also indicate to me that they're really dropping the consumer ball, and in that case, if they're giving us little more than the chance to buy a new socket and dump old hardware including RAM, then they are giving us no advantage to stick with AMD over switching to Intel. And Intel will give a significant gain in performance based on the IDF benchmarks, so there will be a reason to go there.

So my response is (a) No, stick with the platform you've got and optimize it. (b) Switch to AM2 only if AMD gives a demonstrated performance advantage, which almost nobody's expecting right now. (c) Don't buy AMD just for some falsely based loyalty if they're not doing much to earn that loyalty in return.

Hector Ruiz
"We don't feel we need to make huge strides in the consumer [space] in the near future," Ruiz told the audience. "In terms of retail around the world, for example, we have 40-50% of the market. Our desire, frankly, is to just hang on to that while we make much more significant impact on the commercial side."

Cool, sort of the same stuff I was thinking, this system could be great for a LOT longer with more memory, a dual core, and a new video card down the road. Of course I already have PCI-E and SATA 3.0 so I'm all good in those departments.

Thanks for the opinions. I'll probably wait to do anything, though, until a game warrants it - maybe a UE3-based game?

 

[Nocturnal]

I am going to wait until ASUS comes out with whatever nForce 5 chipset motherboard's third generation lineup is prominent and has rave reviews. I went out and bought the original ASUS A8N-SLI. I regret not waiting for the A8N32.

 

[magomago]

Originally posted by: JackBurton
Whenever quad core CPUs come out, I'll get whichever board supports them. I'm REALLY stretching my Athlon XP 2600+ out.

You call a 2600+ streching out? LOL...makes me wonder how I plan to live with my 2400+ for another three years!

But I've noticed that for the stuff I do...its perfectly fast~ I still haven't hit a point where I said "I WISH MY PC WAS FASTER". Even when I encode or something which isn't that often, I do it when I sleep so its not an issue. To a degree I like that because before having a pc that was 1 year old was unbearably slow and now that isn't het case anymore

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Corporate Thug

Originally posted by: Soviet

Originally posted by: RichUK

Originally posted by: Looney
I'm personally going to skip AM2 and jump on Conroe.

CHING CHING

Rite on brotha!

another vote for conroe

I don't really see why people are "voting for Conroe" in this thread when 1) you don't know if the price would be competitive yet to a comparably-performing AMD part, and 2) the point of this thread is asking if I'd be okay with keeping my current board and getting an X2 and more RAM, NOT if I should build a Conroe system.

Well, i'm in a similar boat. I want an upgrade, and i was going to go with an Opteron, but then AM2 is getting close to being released, so i decided to wait for that. But seeing as how Conroe is going to be released shortly after that, i'm just going to hold out... i don't NEED an upgrade, so i can hold off on it, especially for the huge performance Conroe has over AMD.

As for the pricing... the launch prices have already been released i believe... at least i saw something like that on Dailynews not long ago.

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: JackBurton
Whenever quad core CPUs come out, I'll get whichever board supports them. I'm REALLY stretching my Athlon XP 2600+ out.

That's what i'm upgrading from as well!

 

[seanp789]

hell no

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: RichUK

Originally posted by: JackBurton
Whenever quad core CPUs come out, I'll get whichever board supports them. I'm REALLY stretching my Athlon XP 2600+ out.

Quad cores are useless since we as consumer end users are not yet fully reaping the benefits from dual cores. I think quad cores will kick off in 2008+ at the earliest for consumers, and will be fully utilised by software in 2010. Most non enthusiast end users haven?t even heard of dual cores yet.

Its useless .. well .. unless you are a Server power user, that likes to play database

I got to throw in my 2¢ on this, here's a screenshot of my dual-core rig hard at work:

http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/mechBgon/I_WANT_QUAD-CORE.gif

The Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 software is multiprocessor-aware and doubled its performance when I went from single-core to dual-core. As you can see, I'm also capturing from a camera using my Hauppage PVR-150 at the same time, as well as burning a CD in my second DVD burner, shopping two online stores D), running VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i... yeah, I think I'm gonna want that quad-core goodness, a 64-bit OS and 4GB+ of RAM sometime when I can afford it. Just having the Premiere Elements encoding go another 70%-90% faster would be sweet.

 

[Sentinel]

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Looney
I'm personally going to skip AM2 and jump on Conroe.

That is also a consideration, but 1) Intel's prices would simply have to be more competitive, as AMD has always offered the better value since I've been building computers, and 2) since I already have a nice socket 939 board and a gig of really good DDR memory, I think if I just got an X2 processor and doubled my RAM I'd be good for another year to 18 months, wouldn't you think?

At the very least.

 

[archcommus]

Originally posted by: Sentinel

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Looney
I'm personally going to skip AM2 and jump on Conroe.

That is also a consideration, but 1) Intel's prices would simply have to be more competitive, as AMD has always offered the better value since I've been building computers, and 2) since I already have a nice socket 939 board and a gig of really good DDR memory, I think if I just got an X2 processor and doubled my RAM I'd be good for another year to 18 months, wouldn't you think?

At the very least.

Sweet, I expected naysayers.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Looney
I'm personally going to skip AM2 and jump on Conroe.

That is also a consideration, but 1) Intel's prices would simply have to be more competitive, as AMD has always offered the better value since I've been building computers, and 2) since I already have a nice socket 939 board and a gig of really good DDR memory, I think if I just got an X2 processor and doubled my RAM I'd be good for another year to 18 months, wouldn't you think?

Good luck installing more than 4GB on a socket 939 system.

1. Soon DDR1 prices will be much higher than DDR2
2. The majority of socket 939 boards do not support more than 4GB
3. Memory Denisties will increase drasticly for DD2
4. DDR1 DIMM's most likely won't get much larger than 2GB on average, I know some rare 4GB dimms exist, but they are rare and setting them up in dual channel on 939 boards is pointless.
5. If you eventualy want more then 4GB+ get socket M2 and your memory budget will thank you later.

ABIT is the only manufacturer of Socket 939 to Support 8GB of RAM on most of their motheboards. Thank you ABIT.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: RichUK

Originally posted by: JackBurton
Whenever quad core CPUs come out, I'll get whichever board supports them. I'm REALLY stretching my Athlon XP 2600+ out.

Quad cores are useless since we as consumer end users are not yet fully reaping the benefits from dual cores. I think quad cores will kick off in 2008+ at the earliest for consumers, and will be fully utilised by software in 2010. Most non enthusiast end users haven?t even heard of dual cores yet.

Its useless .. well .. unless you are a Server power user, that likes to play database

Dual Core has been writen about in the technology and buisness sections of most major and local newspapers. Those tech sections of newspapers are written in Dick and Jane style plain english for the mass public. The word is out.

 

[archcommus]

Originally posted by: Googer

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Looney
I'm personally going to skip AM2 and jump on Conroe.

That is also a consideration, but 1) Intel's prices would simply have to be more competitive, as AMD has always offered the better value since I've been building computers, and 2) since I already have a nice socket 939 board and a gig of really good DDR memory, I think if I just got an X2 processor and doubled my RAM I'd be good for another year to 18 months, wouldn't you think?

Good luck installing more than 4GB on a socket 939 system.

1. Soon DDR1 prices will be much higher than DDR2
2. The majority of socket 939 boards do not support more than 4GB
3. Memory Denisties will increase drasticly for DD2
4. DDR1 DIMM's most likely won't get much larger than 2GB on average, I know some rare 4GB dimms exist, but they are rare and setting them up in dual channel on 939 boards is pointless.
5. If you eventualy want more then 4GB+ get socket M2 and your memory budget will thank you later.

ABIT is the only manufacturer of Socket 939 to Support 8GB of RAM on most of their motheboards. Thank you ABIT.

Uhh, wtf? I currently have a gig and said I wanted to double it.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Googer

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Looney
I'm personally going to skip AM2 and jump on Conroe.

That is also a consideration, but 1) Intel's prices would simply have to be more competitive, as AMD has always offered the better value since I've been building computers, and 2) since I already have a nice socket 939 board and a gig of really good DDR memory, I think if I just got an X2 processor and doubled my RAM I'd be good for another year to 18 months, wouldn't you think?

Good luck installing more than 4GB on a socket 939 system.

1. Soon DDR1 prices will be much higher than DDR2
2. The majority of socket 939 boards do not support more than 4GB
3. Memory Denisties will increase drasticly for DD2
4. DDR1 DIMM's most likely won't get much larger than 2GB on average, I know some rare 4GB dimms exist, but they are rare and setting them up in dual channel on 939 boards is pointless.
5. If you eventualy want more then 4GB+ get socket M2 and your memory budget will thank you later.

ABIT is the only manufacturer of Socket 939 to Support 8GB of RAM on most of their motheboards. Thank you ABIT.

Uhh, wtf? I currently have a gig and said I wanted to double it.

Apparantly reading is not one of your best attributes.

 

[archcommus]

Originally posted by: Googer

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Googer

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Looney
I'm personally going to skip AM2 and jump on Conroe.

That is also a consideration, but 1) Intel's prices would simply have to be more competitive, as AMD has always offered the better value since I've been building computers, and 2) since I already have a nice socket 939 board and a gig of really good DDR memory, I think if I just got an X2 processor and doubled my RAM I'd be good for another year to 18 months, wouldn't you think?

Good luck installing more than 4GB on a socket 939 system.

1. Soon DDR1 prices will be much higher than DDR2
2. The majority of socket 939 boards do not support more than 4GB
3. Memory Denisties will increase drasticly for DD2
4. DDR1 DIMM's most likely won't get much larger than 2GB on average, I know some rare 4GB dimms exist, but they are rare and setting them up in dual channel on 939 boards is pointless.
5. If you eventualy want more then 4GB+ get socket M2 and your memory budget will thank you later.

ABIT is the only manufacturer of Socket 939 to Support 8GB of RAM on most of their motheboards. Thank you ABIT.

Uhh, wtf? I currently have a gig and said I wanted to double it.

Apparantly reading is not one of your best attributes.

I don't see what I misread. All you're talking about is going above 4 GB and I obviously would never be going beyond 2 with this board.

 

[igowerf]

Originally posted by: newtekie1

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Looney
I'm personally going to skip AM2 and jump on Conroe.

That is also a consideration, but 1) Intel's prices would simply have to be more competitive, as AMD has always offered the better value since I've been building computers, and 2) since I already have a nice socket 939 board and a gig of really good DDR memory, I think if I just got an X2 processor and doubled my RAM I'd be good for another year to 18 months, wouldn't you think?

It should last you more then a year to 18 months, especially if you are talking about games since most of them are more video card dependant then anything else.

Yep. Some people are still getting along fine with the Athlon XP + 6800 AGP systems.

 

[SonicIce]

Originally posted by: morkus64
i just ordered the AsRock mobo with the future slot... I'm not sure if i'll make the jump to AM2. Maybe, after i see some benchmarks on that particular board using the futureslot.

what exactly is that slot for anyway?

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: SonicIce

Originally posted by: morkus64
i just ordered the AsRock mobo with the future slot... I'm not sure if i'll make the jump to AM2. Maybe, after i see some benchmarks on that particular board using the futureslot.

what exactly is that slot for anyway?

Do you mean the yellow one that looks like AGP? A daughter card plugs into it that has a socket M2 and DDR2 dimm slots soldered on it. The last socket 939 upgrade card (for socket 754) cost in the neighborhood of $30-40, but I do not know if you can still find them.


http://images.google.com/images?q=asrock+upgrade+slot&hl=en&btnG=Search+Images

 

[Googer]

http://www.asrock.com/PRODUCT/754Bridge.htm

http://www.hkepc.com/hwdb/asrockupgrade/k8install.jpg

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Googer

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Googer

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Looney
I'm personally going to skip AM2 and jump on Conroe.

That is also a consideration, but 1) Intel's prices would simply have to be more competitive, as AMD has always offered the better value since I've been building computers, and 2) since I already have a nice socket 939 board and a gig of really good DDR memory, I think if I just got an X2 processor and doubled my RAM I'd be good for another year to 18 months, wouldn't you think?

Good luck installing more than 4GB on a socket 939 system.

1. Soon DDR1 prices will be much higher than DDR2
2. The majority of socket 939 boards do not support more than 4GB
3. Memory Denisties will increase drasticly for DD2
4. DDR1 DIMM's most likely won't get much larger than 2GB on average, I know some rare 4GB dimms exist, but they are rare and setting them up in dual channel on 939 boards is pointless.
5. If you eventualy want more then 4GB+ get socket M2 and your memory budget will thank you later.

ABIT is the only manufacturer of Socket 939 to Support 8GB of RAM on most of their motheboards. Thank you ABIT.

Uhh, wtf? I currently have a gig and said I wanted to double it.

Apparantly reading is not one of your best attributes.

I don't see what I misread. All you're talking about is going above 4 GB and I obviously would never be going beyond 2 with this board.

If you upgrade to Vista, it will not be long before you may desire to have more than 4GB to take advantage of 64-bit capabilities. DDR1 RAM densities will not grow that much more in compairison to DDR2. DDR2 will only get cheaper while like PC133, DDR1 will skyrocket in price.

512MB of PC133 costs more than 1GB of DDR1 in todays market. Just 3.5 years ago, I purcheased 512MB of CAS2 PC133 for about $68 @crucial.com and today it sells for $95-126.

 

[Sunbird]

Vista? Bleh!!!

*Hugs his CRT and WinXP*

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: Sunbird
Vista? Bleh!!!

*Hugs his CRT and WinXP*

Good for you! 32 BIT XP is plenty for email and web surfing. I do not see a need for 64bit internet browsing in the next four years. After that it's anyones guess, what will probably drive dual core CPU's and 64-bit computing home to the masses (mom and pop) will be manditory HDTV and the deire to record TV programing that will require large amounts of RAM. The media center PC will probably see the begining of a boom.

 

[Sunbird]

Well South Africa is far away from digital AND HDTV, 2010 at earliest for anything except satelite...