upgrade ??

[Gazcoop]

Hi all looking for cheap up grade, i have 2300xp athlon 1gig mem 6600gt gfx, am thinking of changing m/b cpu an keeping mem an gfx, can u recommend m/b cpu combo that will give me best performace upgrade for bout £150 ish

cheers

[dodgybob]

If you bought one of the dual agp/pci-e asrock boards for about £50 you could then pick up a 3200 venice for a little over £100. Even better would be a 939 opteron but supplies seem limited. This way you can keep your graphics card but also get a much better pci-e graphics card in the future.

[iranu]

^ that's a popular way of upgrading. Asrock dual board is a good one. Scan have oem opteron 146's in for £105 at the moment and the 144's at £93

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=314607
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=311094

[Gazcoop]

thanks will this give me much improvment ?? what do these opteron,venice codes mean ??

[Gazcoop]

think asrock dual is the way to go but what cpu do u recommend ??

[dodgybob]

Basically if you're going to overclock as much as you can and can easily get hold of an opteron get one of those. If you overclock as much as a venice you still have double the l2 cache on these chips, 1mb vs 512kb for a venice. If you're not planning to overclock too much, don't want any hassle and are finding opterons difficult to get hold of (although it seems that scan might currently have a few in stock if you're quick) then get the 3200 venice.

Essentially the main differences between the two are that the venice has 512kb level 2 cache whilst the opteron has 1mb. Also in theory the opterons are selected as better quality chips so they should overclock better. This is of course luck of the draw but the chances of a high overclock should be greater with the opterons. Naturally this is a mute point if you don't want to overclock.

[Gazcoop]

well im not a tecki so not it to overclocking just looking to bring it up to speed a bit will this give me much improvment ??

cheers

[sawyen]

Even just running stock, its better just to dish out that extra 10 quid for an Opteron.. but if ur tight on budget, a 3200+ venice works just as well as any 146..