Wow. What a difference an upgrade can make.

[Homerboy]

For years I have been using an Opty 165 @2.4Ghz, 2GB RAM and a 8800GT

I just upgraded the CPU/MB to a PII x2 555 (unlocked cores to 4 cores and OCed to 3.5ghz) and 4GB RAM... still using the 8800GT (though for shits and giggles I OCed that a tad too).

Wow. I really didnt think it would make THAT big of a differnce. But wow. And all I have really played thus far are older games like CoH and TF2 (the load times and smoothness in CoH is outrageously better).

$200 well spent.



Moved from PC Gaming

Anadtech PC Gaming Moderator
KeithTalent

 

[Elcs]

Sounds good. Glad you've got a real bang for buck performance boost, we all need those

I'm still living on an X2 6000+ (3.0Ghz stock) and a 512mb HD4870. Still does 1080p (native resolution) pretty well for what I play.

Next time I think I am going to go more processor-heavy on my build as I am playing more of the RTS/RPG market as opposed to the FPSes these days.

 

[Homerboy]

Sounds good. Glad you've got a real bang for buck performance boost, we all need those

I'm still living on an X2 6000+ (3.0Ghz stock) and a 512mb HD4870. Still does 1080p (native resolution) pretty well for what I play.

Next time I think I am going to go more processor-heavy on my build as I am playing more of the RTS/RPG market as opposed to the FPSes these days.

This was my thought too. I do a lot more RTS stuff, and with Civ5 out soon too. I figure if there is a "must have FPS, by the time I "need" it a new GPU will be dirt cheap.

 

[Firsttime]

That must feel so good, getting the 555 and unlocking a quad. All that bonus performance. I'm debating risking one here in a few weeks. A friend and I built him a rig around a 550 and were only able to unlock a tri-core, so you did get lucky. Should probably just go with a 635 but the 555 is soooo tempting.

 

[Homerboy]

That must feel so good, getting the 555 and unlocking a quad. All that bonus performance. I'm debating risking one here in a few weeks. A friend and I built him a rig around a 550 and were only able to unlock a tri-core, so you did get lucky. Should probably just go with a 635 but the 555 is soooo tempting.

Well I bought used of the FS/T forums. So I knew it was unlockable. What is nice is the OCing too. I literally didnt do anythign either. Just cranked it up and took a guess at where it would be... blammo. Good enough for me. I don't have the patience to tweak anymore.

 

[Firsttime]

Ah. Very nice then. Still sure you got a steal of a price for your quad. Have fun with your refreshed gaming experience.

 

[hellfire88]

Gotta love AMD for price/performance especially if you can unlock those cores!

 

[Liet]

Amazing what a big difference a CPU upgrade can make! It can be easy to forget that it ain't all about the GPU.

Congrats!

 

[Homerboy]

Amazing what a big difference a CPU upgrade can make! It can be easy to forget that it ain't all about the GPU.

Congrats!

let's not forget that jump to 4GB too. I think that's a huge game changer too in helping out even some-what modern games. CoH used to suck every drop of that 2GB it could spare. Now I have excess it seems.

 

[Jesusthewererabbit]

Sounds good. Glad you've got a real bang for buck performance boost, we all need those

I'm still living on an X2 6000+ (3.0Ghz stock) and a 512mb HD4870. Still does 1080p (native resolution) pretty well for what I play.

Next time I think I am going to go more processor-heavy on my build as I am playing more of the RTS/RPG market as opposed to the FPSes these days.

I went from a 6000+ to an Athlon II 620. Huge difference, even if the single thread performance isn't that huge of an improvement. Of course, I do a lot of encoding, so it really was a big jump getting those extra two cores. Mmm, Thuban, how I would like to find you for cheap...

 

[Rhezuss]

Good move!

I did a move like that a few months ago and got an Athlon X3 435 and unlocked it to a Phenom II X4 and OCed to 3.5GHz.

Best bang for your bucks!

And Phenoms, you have L3 Cache which looks another nice boost in games and whatnot!

 

[Terzo]

I was in a very similar situation. I went from a 939 x2 4400 with 2 gigs ram to a x4 630 with 4 gigs ram. Kept my 8800gt as well. The difference in tf2 was quite noticable.

 

[quadomatic]

If you can find a Athlon X2 5000+, you could unlock it to a Phenom II...not sure that those are still around though. I think most everybody was able to unlock successfully, provided they used the right motherboard.

UPDATE: Still alive, $40 on eWiz...I paid way more than that ($68). Either of these should work, but I'd check around on xtremesystems or something for confirmation

http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=AD5000ODJ&show=r
http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=AD5000OGJ&show=r

I bought mine from NewEgg back in January. Many people recommended using the Gigabyte US2H motherboard, but there were others that were recommended as well. One of them may have been a Crossfire motherboard I think, so if you want full ATX and crossfire, it's there.

I built the computer in about 2 hours, and unlocking was a snap. I only was able to OC to 2.86Ghz because my slowest memory in my system is at 667mhz. When I tried pulling out the 667 ram and left in the 1066, I was able to boot at 3.5Ghz. I didn't test the stability though, so I have no idea how solid that was. I think other people were doing 3.2Ghz no problem, but then again, my memory fails me. I recommend checking xtremesystems.

 

[jlee]

I went from a 6000+ to an Athlon II 620. Huge difference, even if the single thread performance isn't that huge of an improvement. Of course, I do a lot of encoding, so it really was a big jump getting those extra two cores. Mmm, Thuban, how I would like to find you for cheap...

Yep, I went from an E5200 @ 3.24Ghz to a stock i5 750...same video card (Vapor-X 4890). Huge difference.

 

[Rifter]

yeah, i noticed a pretty large jump in performance with my upgrade a little over a year ago. But i went from a Duron 1100 with 512MB and a GeForce 4 440 MX. Upgraded to rig in sig.

 

[drstk]

yes it does! i went from a 4 year old Dell XPS Gen 2 lappy (Intel M770 & gf 6800 go) to a i7+5870 build. don't know how managed gaming on that laptop....lol

 

[biostud]

I upgradede from a x2-3800+ and 8800GT to current system and was pretty amazed how much better the games run, specially DoW II.

 

[zCypher]

Went from XP1800+ / 1.5GB / 80GB to E5200 / 4GB DDR2-800 / 1TB WD black. Huuuge difference. The old AMD was just fine for web browsing, playing music and videos, and unreal tournament, starcraft etc. The new setup is sooo much faster even though it's still fairly low end compared to most of your systems.

I haven't done any overclocking since the 486 days though. Overclocked that DX2/66 to 83MHz lol.

Yep, I went from an E5200 @ 3.24Ghz to a stock i5 750...same video card (Vapor-X 4890). Huge difference.

How hard was it to overclock the E5200 and should I bother, or just wait for upgrade?

 

[M0oG0oGaiPan]

i have an e4300 @ 3Ghz w/2GB of DDR2. Would it be a big jump if I went to a Phenom ii x2 555 and try to unlock the 2 cores with 4GB of DDR3? I heard those chips run pretty well at 3.8 and you could possibly get it to 4.

 

[pmv]

For a moment I read that as a Pentium II, which confused me no end.

 

[quadomatic]

i have an e4300 @ 3Ghz w/2GB of DDR2. Would it be a big jump if I went to a Phenom ii x2 555 and try to unlock the 2 cores with 4GB of DDR3? I heard those chips run pretty well at 3.8 and you could possibly get it to 4.

That's about what happened to me. I went from E2200 @2.93Ghz to the processor in my sig, which is the same as a quad core Phenom. You'll notice a pretty large difference in multithreaded stuff (obviously). I think I felt a pretty solid difference in other stuff too, but it wasn't groundbreaking or anything.

I thought of it more as future-proofing, since stuff is really starting to use quad-cores now.

 

[DefDC]

Almost the same for me. Just yesterday I upgraded from an Athlon 7750 Black to a Phenom II X4 940c Black. Kept my 8800gt for now. Was curious to see how much of a difference the processor would make. And, I upgraded to an SLI mobo, for a little future proofing... I don't mind waiting a bit for the GPU price wars in the future.

No change in the game I am currently playing, Stalker: COP. (Doh!) But, from what I hear, it's insanely GPU heavy. Fired up BC2 and it looked great. Didn't get to spend a lot of time testing any other games.

Next up, installing Win7 to get more than 3GB of RAM!