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x2 3800+ vs x2 4200+ or x2 4400, worth the difference in price

S

squigly

Member
Putttin together a new system as my old p3 1.2 is in rough shape and it's time to move on. I figure it's time to hop on the AMD bandwagon. I'm not a big gamer, maybe not even a mid gamer, and the x2's interest me. Up here in the great white north the price difference is like $154 between the 3800+ and the 4200+. Do you think I Should bite the bullet and get the x2 4200+ or save the money and get the x2 3800+? I'm not a big overclocker but will probably try to overclock the cpu a bit.

Thanks
 
Okay let me ask another question. This time about motherboard. I figure an nforce4 is the way to go. Since I'm not doing SLI and not really oc'ng much would an ASUS A8N-E do me good? I can get a non platinum MSI for like $30 cheaper.

I guess I maybe should've put this MB question in a different forum but just thought I'd keep my stuff all together 🙂

Thanks
 
I love you saving me money 🙂 Just to confirm, MSI K8N Neo4-F is good enough and the better choice than the Asus A8N-E.

Thanks again

 
The 4200 gets the AMD heatpiped heatsink, while the 3800 get the old ratail heatsink. Just so you know.
 
meh, the 3800+ is what they call their budget cpu and yet it cost like 400 bones. I would wait a little to see if it goes down more and see. Then pick one of those little cheapy ones up. Remember better to save money on major parts if you dont need the absolute best performance so that you can spend more on the other parts of your PC like hard drive, RAM, etc. =D
 
Could I take the 2.0GHz x2 3800+ to 2.2GHz with the stock heatsink and fan? That's about as much oc'ng as I intend to do. I'm not really into modding, etc.

Thanks

My setup would be like this:

Antec slk3000b
Enermax EG-565P 535W
x2 3800+
MSI K8N Neo4-F
2x512mb OCZ Premiier series
1 or 2 WD 2500ks 250GB 16mb hardrive
pci-e 6800GT or x800xl (whichever I can find cheapest)
DVD writer (not sure which one)
 
Squigly most possibly yes. Like a 99% chance you could, unless your chip is a real bummer lol.
 
You'll notice a big improvement and the 3800X2 will smoke on MM encoding and Multitasking over the SC...
 
Just thought I'd bump this up as something new has come into the picture. As I previously stated, the price difference between the 3800 and 4200 is like $150. Now the 4400 has come down in price and is $50 more than the 4200.

So now the equation is x2 3800+ vs x2 4400+ at a $200 price difference. Still go for the 3800 or spend the extra for the faster 4400 with the larger cache?

I edited the topic to reflect the x2 4400+ now being in the picture
 
I would get the 3800+, overclock it, and use the extra $200 to buy more RAM, better video card, or some other peripheral (sp?) that you might not have budgeted for.
 
Despite what the above members mentioned, I'd actually recommend the X2 4200. It is about $154 CAD more (I can see you are looking at prices from Canada Computers haha) and OC's much better from what I have seen. It is probably due to a better cooling solution while still using the Manchester Core, which also consumes less energy than the other X2 cores.
 
Originally posted by: Ranulf

How bad is the noise level on the stock hsf for the 3800 X2 ?
Click to expand...

If you have a "silent" PC, then you will hear it when it gets worked hard, but otherwise it's unobtrusive. I've replaced mine with an XP-90/panaflo combo and it's much quieter under load.
 
Originally posted by: squigly
Could I take the 2.0GHz x2 3800+ to 2.2GHz with the stock heatsink and fan? That's about as much oc'ng as I intend to do. I'm not really into modding, etc.
Click to expand...

My crude understanding of the multipliers/ht/fsb speeds is that you'd have a drop in memory performance going from 2.0->2.2 because the multiplier is maxed out at x10... at least it is on my Neo2, so unless the nf4 boards do anything differently (more ratios?).... unless of course you have memory that is happy at 220MHz at which point you can keep the memory:fsb 1:1.

My 3800+ runs at 2.4 happily with only a modest increase in voltage, and a little more gives 2.5GHz, but I think my board/memory limits me going beyond that.
 
athlon, what kind of memory do you have currently to run a ratio of 1:1 at 250 fsb, or have i just mistaken your post and that your running a divider.
 
The whole "1:1 FSB:ram ratio or you take a performance hit" thing only applies to conventional out-of-chip memory controllers. Since the mem controller on the a64s runs at full cpu speed (as in 1.8GHz+) it always runs at a divider (which normally is the same divider as the cpu multiplier). Using a different divider does not penalize you in any way unless you make your ram run slower than it's supposed to (ie. running ram at DDR350 instead of DDR400 will have a bandwidth penalty). To overclock from 2.0 to 2.2 you'd have to increase the memory divider but raising your HTT can make up for it.
 
Ahh, I see... I'm still not 100% sure I understand how all the numbers add up with the new chips..

Unkno: I'm using Corsair value PC3200 (CL2.5) with a divider of CPU/12 (or "166" in the Neo2 bios). At 2.5, I figure that runs the memory @ 209. I've memtested this memory and it's stable for a couple of hours (I got bored after a while...) at 220MHz, 2.5-3-3-7. With the x10 multiplier on the 3800+, I'm still unsure if there's a better way to clock up from 220x10 besides dropping the divider - goes from 200 or 1:1 right down to 166 (cpu/12) on my board.
 
i just got my 3800 X2 and i love it. running at 2.4 ghz right now on 1.42v prime stable, on 1.40v second core fails prime within minutes (im running cpu burn-in on it to see if i can get it in line. Load temp aroun 43C on xp-120 (as5) w/panflo m1a powered down by the bios (i have it set to go 100% rpm when temp is >45C). i can easily go higher with more voltage but im not comfortable with temps over 45C and i dont like the fan spinning up to full speed, maybe if i get a slower fan... i'm very satisfied with it and i don't see a reason to spend more unless you REALLY need the extra cache (not likely).
 
Originally posted by: shiznit
i just got my 3800 X2 and i love it. running at 2.4 ghz right now on 1.42v prime stable, on 1.40v second core fails prime within minutes (im running cpu burn-in on it to see if i can get it in line. Load temp aroun 43C on xp-120 (as5) w/panflo m1a powered down by the bios (i have it set to go 100% rpm when temp is >45C). i can easily go higher with more voltage but im not comfortable with temps over 45C and i dont like the fan spinning up to full speed, maybe if i get a slower fan... i'm very satisfied with it and i don't see a reason to spend more unless you REALLY need the extra cache (not likely).
Click to expand...

Hehe, I have almost the exact same setup, same cpu, motherboard and even the video card. I am a little more adventurous, increasing the voltage to 1.44 and is currently running at 2.5Ghz prime stable. So yeah, like you said, I don't see the 4200+ and better going over 2.7Ghz on air, so I don't think the extra money is worth the ~0.2 Ghz increase.
 
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