XP3200+ -> A64 2800+ up or downgrade??

[helloguy]

hie, currently i have a barton xp3200+ running with dual channel 400 nf2 board, not sure whether changing to A64 2800+ will be an upgrade or a downgrade ??? Thankss

 

[Budman]

Originally posted by: helloguy
hie, currently i have a barton xp3200+ running with dual channel 400 nf2 board, not sure whether changing to A64 2800+ will be an upgrade or a downgrade ??? Thankss

I will let you know in a week,I am doing that very thing myself.

 

[cirthix]

upgrade, assuming you get a good mobo

 

[BW86]

upgrade

 

[CraigRT]

upgrade
I went to an overclocked Barton 2500+ to an A64 3200+ and regardless of the A64 speed, you can just feel the difference using the A64 CPU.. you should notice a nicer feel to pretty much everything using the A64.

I :heart: my A64.

 

[helloguy]

thankss~ but does the m/board of the A64 matters that much ? I should go for nf3 ? or the VIA solutions?

 

[Elcs]

Originally posted by: helloguy
thankss~ but does the m/board of the A64 matters that much ? I should go for nf3 ? or the VIA solutions?

Motherboards can have a night and day difference to people and how their machines run. Some overclock really well (stable), some have amazing feature sets, some promise loads of features but disappoint. Even the best motherboards arent infallible but some of the major problems are ironed out rather fast in the motherboard world it seems.

Comparing the NF7-S Rev 1.0 (i think) to the 2.0 (1.1 and 1.2's were made) was for the most part night and day. This is of course Nforce 2 (socket A, Athlon XP) but there are quite a few problems with certain configurations in the Athlon64 camp.

My advice is to take it slowly, gather a lot of advice and never be afraid to check your sources again. I did this with my Nforce 2 setup, made sure I got my NF7-S REv20. and never looked back.

 

[RussianSensation]

I dont call anything an upgrade unless the performance improvement is at least 50%.

Think about it - A64 2800+ => $141 Retail + Cheap A64 motherboard S754 = $70
Total = $241

Now, A64 2800 is maybe 10-15% faster than AXP3200+. Is $241 worth that marginal increase? Later on you'll want to upgrade to PCI-E videocard and guess what, your socket 754 doesnt support it, so you'll need to buy a new motherboard and cpu AGAIN.

To really feel the worth of the upgrade, you should upgrade to least to A64 4000+ or more (and that doesnt even fit my definition of 50% increase). This way you'll get the speed increase you are looking for, and the cost/benefit ratio is reasonable since you wont have to buy a new PCIE motherboard later on and socket 939 should take you till the end of A64 life.

As for now, either save the $$$, spend it on other things, or commit $241 + towards a videocard.
Of course I dont know what your primary needs for computer usage are but you should know that AXP2400+ with X800Pro or 6800GT beats A64 3800+ and Radeon 9800xt in 99% of all gaming applications, and we are talking by 2x as fast.

It is up to you of course because this isnt the money I am spending. Of course my assumption here is that you are on a budget that is why you want to upgrade to a low performance A64. Well if you are on a budget certain things should be obvious like: upgrading from PC3200 2.5-3-3-7 to 2-2-2-5 ram and AXP 3200+ to A64 3200+ are not upgrades, they are waste of money (again for those on a budget). This is my opinion of course.

Back in the days I upgraded AXP1600+ to P4 2.6@ 3.2 ghz and i was impressed, but not blown away. The difference between AXP 1600+ and my P2 233mhz MMX was far more impressive (and it should be!). Long time ago upgrading would mean decreasing the time to process an application to 5 min instead of 10 min. Now it means decreasing your time from 30 seconds to 25 seconds. Hardly worth the price of admission. If 5 seconds is precious enough for you right now, you wouldnt even have time to read this post.

 

[helloguy]

hmmm...russiansensation's words seemed to make sense, thanks~! I'll think it through again I guess..

 

[RussianSensation]

Here is a link to a review article that shows the latest cpus -- maybe this will be more helpful for you to see exactly how substantial (or maybe not substantial each possible upgrade path is for you right now):

Review

 

[MDE]

I wouldn't spend the money on such a small upgrade. I'd try to go for at least a 3200+ or just sit on the XP until dual core Athlon 64s hit.

 

[cbehnken]

The 2800's will easily overclock to 3200 or 3400 speed though, they are the same core.

 

[Zebo]

It's the same speed. A64 will have a slight upper hand in games and rendering AXP will have a slight upper hand in everything else. Check the reviews you'll see.

Now if you're overclcoking it's HUGE. A A64 2800 AX stepppings reach 2500Mhz with stick HSF these days all the time. That means a A-XP @ 3050 mhz (ie no chance).

Re skt 754 NC:

A64 x 1.5 = P4 speed
AXP x 1.25 = P4 speed

A 64 @ 1800 Mhz = P4C 2800

A Xp @ 2200 Mhz = P4C 2750

A 64 @ 2500Mhz = P4C 3750

 

[masshass81]

Benchmarks: A64 2800+ vs AXP 3200+/2800+

Link is directed to the Far Cry & Halo benchmarks

 

[Avalon]

It'd be a small upgrade. I wouldn't do it unless you plan to overclock it a good ammount.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Originally posted by: Avalon
It'd be a small upgrade. I wouldn't do it unless you plan to overclock it a good ammount.

yeah, the link to the benchmark only shows the most drastic difference, otherwise a 1.8GHz A64 isn't much faster than a 2.2GHz AXP.

Crank the A64 past 2.2GHz and you'd see significan't differences across the board.

 

[helloguy]

hmmm...but what are the chances of oc'ing that A64 2800+ to over 2G ?? as I wanna use my current ram in the A64 board, btw, my ram is able to run at 200mhz 3-3-3-8 only...dual channel though.., if i were to change my ram as well, does the extra spending on faster ram worth it??

 

[darius3113]

I am also wondering the same thing helloguy, i'm going to be upgrading probably within the next month and am torn which A64 to pick. The computer i'm building is used purely as a gaming machine, so i'm wondering if the 2800+ will work for that. I was thinking of choosing the 3200+ w/ 1MB L2 cache, but if i just go with the 2800+ and heavily OC can i get comparable performance (2.5ghz?? seriously?). And even if it can reach that, would it be better to just oc a 3200+ and get the extra cache? And what kind of FSB can a oc'ed 2800+ reach? Also the RAM i plan on using is ballistix PC3200, any comments are appreciated.

 

[dguy6789]

Upgrade easy, my friend went from a 2.5ghz mobile barton to an athlon 64 2800 and the 64 was a pretty good bit faster, and was just so much smoother in desktop stuff.