Advice on upgrade

[MarineCommando]

Hi Chaps,

I'm justing getting round to upgrading my P4 3 Ghz (533 fsb) which is getting a bit long in the tooth. I've got around £1500 and have come up with the following:

AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 32/64Bit (2.8GHz) "San Diego" CPU S939

Abit Fatal1ty AN8 SLi S939 NF4 PCI-E

256MB XFX PCI-E GF7800GTX*Pre Overclocked

1 Gb (2 x 512 Mb) Corsair TwinX-XL, DDR, PC3200XLPT, Cas 2,

550W XClio-SCF aPFC Super Silent (21Db) 12cm Fan 8/20/24 + SATA+PCI-E+Super Cooling Function

Scythe Kamaboko Z AMD A64/P4 Copper/Alum Heatsink with Super Quiet variable fan Speed

I want to get something that is going to last a couple of years at least. What im not entirely sure about is compatibility between items and whether the difference between an Athlon 64 4000 and an FX 57 is worth nearly 400 quid?

Any thoughts?

Cheers

MC

[Hottentot]

I think you would be better getting a dual core athlon (4400) and 2 GB of Memory , preferably 2 x 1 GB sticks. The FX 57 seems very poor value when compared to a 2.4 GHz Athlon 64 4000 and even poorer value against a dual core Athlon 64 CPU.

Cheers

[Dark Horse]

An X2 would definately be a good idea, although the dual core capabilities aren't used much today they will be much more useful in the future compared to the fx-57. The 4400+ with the 1mb cache is the best value at the moment.

I don't hear very good things about the Abit Fatality, if you're an overclocker the DFI lanparty NF4 is better and if you're looking for stability and features the Asus A8N sli is better. Check the net for some nf4 roundups. www.amdboard.com is really useful.

1gb or 2gb ram is a personal choice, 1gb of high performance ram costs roughly the same as 2gb of value ram.

7800gtx is good.

No idea about xclio psus, tagan or ocz modstreams are pretty good quality though.

I hear good thing about some scythe coolers but bad things about others. If you want proven quality then the thermal right xp-120 with a good panaflo 120mm fan is great.

[BUFF]

I don't hear very good things about the Abit Fatality,

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NzkyLDc=

there are others but it happens that i was just reading that before I logged in here.

I certainly wouldn't say that the AN8 series was flawless at this point (having read both MSI & DFIs forums obviously neither are their nF4s haven't checked ASUS) however it's nothing that can't be sorted by a good BIOS.
I certainly wouldn't have any qualms about buying 1 (& I really fancy the Guru panel) if I were going SLi.

[MarineCommando]

Thanks for the replys guys,

I hadn't really considered an x2 so thats food for thought. I primarily want to use it for gaming and am not looking to overclock (id be scared to death of breaking a £400 component!!!

Will a dual core be up to the job gaming wise?

Thanks

MC

[nichomach]

It should be easily up to the job. The FX57 has a 400MHz clock speed advantage over say a 4800 X2 (similar price range) at stock, but the X2 is easily up to the job. If it was my money and I was spending that much on a CPU, I'd buy the X2. That said, you may just decide that you want the extra clock speed, and if you're just using the machine for gaming that might be a sensible choice. Depends on whether game developers start producing games that take advantage of multithreading. I think that with both Intel and AMD chucking dual cores at the desktop they will do, but it might take a little while.