S939 Upgrade advice needed

[mrbenns]

My current 3500+ is showing its age badly in vista, even with the 2gb of RAM installed, so have decided to go dual core.
However, I am on a budget and so want to take as smooth a path as possible, i.e stick with the socket 939 board (at least for now).
As i see it, my choices are as follows:

1: X2 3800+ (with view to overclocking?)
2: X2 4600+ (probably not much o'cing potential)
3: Opteron dual (clueless about the performance abilities of these)

Obviously a primary concern is comparative performance in Vista and compatibility with my existing mobo/ram setup

Any suggestions/advice would be very gratefully received

MrBenns

[menthel]

In what was is your current cpu suffering in vista? I installed vista with a 3200+ and it seemed nice and speedy to me.

[Clunk]

If the rest of your stuff is up to overclocking, then go for the cheapest. The 4600 looks to be around 170 and I think that is silly money to spend on a 939 cpu.

If it were me, I would save a bit more and go the whole hog.

[mrbenns]

well, the decision is *sorta* being forced on me, I am building a cheapo system for a friend and am gonna put the 3500 into that and buy myself an X2

[s_kinton]

I had a similar predicament at christmas and decided to stick with my s939 and ended up buying a 4200x2 for about £120.

Scan have them listed for £103, but they are out of stock. Ive got my 4200 running at 3Ghz with very little extra volts, with a max temp for about 45c.

I would recommend getting the 4200 if you can.

[kalniel]

The X2 3800 is a fab chip

It's all the power you need right now unless you have an 8800 card.

[mrbenns]

what kind of overclocking potential is there in the 3800?
Anyone know of a guide to the AN8 bios overclocking options, as Uguru does not seem to be working in Vista (runs but doesn't show any readings from the board)

[MadduckUK]

im not the best example but my x2 3800 is doing 2.35 at the moment, worst overclocking motherboard ever (A8V-VM) and stock cooler.

im sure it could go WAY higher

[kalniel]

Getting to 2.4ghz is considered routine, many have gone to 2.5+

[dalex]

in the same position here with a 3700 sandiego
what about an asrock 4CoreDual-VSTA

with an intel 6300 or 4300 and use existing ram and graphics,the only drawback i can see is the pcie graphics is limited to 4 lanes ,so top end graphics would be limited

dave

[mrbenns]

i actually thought about that (Asrock) after seeing it mentioned in a forum (possibly this one ) but best pricing i can find is a little above my price range atm (and this is kinda a rushed thing so can't hold off)

[mrbenns]

hmm, doing a bit of pricing there and it would seem I can grab that Asrock board and a 6600 for about 170. That might be the deal to go for?

Would also give me a route towards DDR2 etc

Only problem is, I bought an OEM version of vista, anyone have any experience of re-activation after such a major hardware change?

[kalniel]

The ASRock 945G Conroe DVI would be a better board for Core 2 Duo - it's a full 16x PCIe slot.

[mrbenns]

yeah, but that 1 would mean having to buy new RAM as well

[mrbenns]

damn, another potential problem with the Asrock board. It has only 2 SATA slots, and I have 4 SATA drives

[kalniel]

Originally Posted by mrbenns

yeah, but that 1 would mean having to buy new RAM as well

You'll probably make money on changing - DDR2 is a lot cheaper than DDR now.