X2 3800+ for a X2 4600+

[HighCalibreHooch]

You?ve probably seen the recent price cuts leaked on Anandtech. I have an x2 3800+ and I was wondering if it would be ?worth it? to swap that CPU out for a 4600+ or 4800+ at the reduced price.

I looked at the gaming benchmarks on this site and the improvement seems practically negligible. Has anybody personally made the move from a 3800 to 4600 or 4800?

 

[biostud]

in theory I went from a 3800+ to a 5000+ by overclocking 😛

 

[Krakn3Dfx]

I'd say no at this point, hold onto the 3800+ at least until the end of '06 and see what AMD announces. The CPUs we're using now are 1-2x more powerful than what we actually need for today's games and most apps, the video GPU technology is where the real performance gains are. I've heard quad core processors are coming from Intel and AMD next year, with rumors of an "anti-hyperthreading" technology from AMD sounding very promising (making apps seeing 2 or more cores as a single CPU, thus single thread apps would actually take advantage of multiple cores). Right now, any upgrade you do will be strictly for bragging rights, but if that's what you're into, then sure, the upgrade is well warranted 🙂.

 

[pctwo]

I'm running my 3800+ at 4600 speed (with half 1MB cache). The difference is hardly noticeable. I doubt you'll notice much with a 4600.

Spend your money on RAM or video card

 

[pkme2]

Verrrry interesting.

 

[Captante]

I run my Opteron 170 at 2.4ghz & the speed bump is noticable during DVD burning, video editing etc, but in most games the performance increase is very small, so if you are doing the upgrade to increase frame-rates forget about it.