Worthwhile upgrade from a 3500+ Winchester?

[Speed]

Hello,

Basically I'm looking to upgrade from my trusty 3500+ Winchester in the next month or so. My main worry is however that the upgrade won't show very much of a noticeable increase in performance/speed for the money I will be spending.

I will of course have the money from the sale of my 3500+ Winchester, it's fully boxed and retail, any idea what I will get?

I don't overclock so what ever I buy will be ran at stock speeds. So basically what I'm asking is what would be a good upgrade that will be noticeably faster. I think doubling the L2 cache from 512kb to 1024kb would help, however I'd like to know what people think about that.

These are the processors I was thinking of:

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm 1MB L2 (939 Pin) (Approx £150)
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Venice 90nm (939 Pin) (Approx £200)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (939 Pin) (Approx £235)
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ San Diego 90nm 1MB L2 (939 Pin) (Approx £240)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ (939 Pin) (Approx £295)

All prices are retail units. Just looking at the prices, I can't see the 3800+ Venice being a good choice. It's only 200mhz faster than the 3700+ San Diego and has half the L2 Cache. The Dual Core 3800+ and San Diego 4000+ are pretty much the same price, but which is the better choice? And is the 4200+ Dual Core worth the extra money?

Any help would be much appreciated!

Regards,

Mark

[Dark Horse]

Hello,
My main worry is however that the upgrade won't show very much of a noticeable increase in performance/speed for the money I will be spending.

I will of course have the money from the sale of my 3500+ Winchester, it's fully boxed and retail, any idea what I will get?

I don't overclock so what ever I buy will be ran at stock speeds. So basically what I'm asking is what would be a good upgrade that will be noticeably faster. I think doubling the L2 cache from 512kb to 1024kb would help, however I'd like to know what people think about that.

It depends on what you do whether it is worth it or not. If you spend a lot of time gaming then that will influence the decision for single or dual cores. Most games these days don't see an increase in performance with dual core but this should change in the future. However you will see a massive increase in multi tasking performance basically allowing you to do two cpu intensive processes at the sametime with minimal slow down. For reference on the dual core chips clock speeds are equivalent to two 3200+ cores for the x2 3800+ and two 3500+ cores for the x2 4200+.

Most games these days are actually graphics card reliant not cpe reliant so I wouldn't think that the cost is worth it unless you want the very best. I did a little test with the Fear benchmark with between my 144 at 1.8ghz and then at 3ghz. The increase was 2fps average and an extra 15% over 60fps while the minimum fps didn't change at all. Its the minimum fps that is most important as thats when the gameplay will be at its worst for you so a graphics card upgrade would provide a much better value if you're a gamer.

I also haven't noticed a significant difference between my old venice with 512kb l2 cache and the opteron with 1mb l2 cache.

I'd think you'll get around £100 for the 3500+ winnie.

[Speed]

It depends on what you do whether it is worth it or not. If you spend a lot of time gaming then that will influence the decision for single or dual cores. Most games these days don't see an increase in performance with dual core but this should change in the future. However you will see a massive increase in multi tasking performance basically allowing you to do two cpu intensive processes at the sametime with minimal slow down. For reference on the dual core chips clock speeds are equivalent to two 3200+ cores for the x2 3800+ and two 3500+ cores for the x2 4200+.

Most games these days are actually graphics card reliant not cpe reliant so I wouldn't think that the cost is worth it unless you want the very best. I did a little test with the Fear benchmark with between my 144 at 1.8ghz and then at 3ghz. The increase was 2fps average and an extra 15% over 60fps while the minimum fps didn't change at all. Its the minimum fps that is most important as thats when the gameplay will be at its worst for you so a graphics card upgrade would provide a much better value if you're a gamer.

I also haven't noticed a significant difference between my old venice with 512kb l2 cache and the opteron with 1mb l2 cache.

I'd think you'll get around £100 for the 3500+ winnie.

Hi,

Thanks for your reply!

Although most modern games are graphics card dependant there are still some that are cpu dependant . I do have a fast graphics card (BFG 7800 GT OC) and my processor does seem to be a bit of a system bottleneck, hence the upgrade. I do game quite a bit and like you say the improvement with Dual Core on games is small. So for now I guess there isn't much point in going Dual Core.

Do you think I would see an improvement upgrading to a 3700+ San Diego? I do think that spending £90 extra for the 4000+ San Diego, giving me just 200mhz more is not worth it. Unless I'm missing something?

Thanks for the price, very helpful!

Regards,

Mark

[kalniel]

The 3500 will not be bottlenecking your 7800gt, noticably at least.

To be honest, none of those upgrades will show you much if any performance increase in gaming. If you are not gaming you might notice a difference going dual core (depending on what apps you use) but that's really the only thing.

If you want to spend the money and improve gaming, sell the 7800gt and use the money from that and what you would have spent on a CPU going for a 7800gtx. That will increase your gaming performance more than changing the CPU probably.

[Speed]

Hmm, fair points. However assuming the 3500+ sells alright it would only be a £50 upgrade to the 3700+ SD. I'm not sure I could get enough for my 7800GT to get a decent GTX with the same amount of money.

I'll have a think, thanks for your input though. Very helpful!

Having just had a quick scan of the prices, I'm not sure I could justify the extra £100 odd to go from the GT to the GTX. From what I've read the differences between them are not that great.

[kalniel]

Not that great no, but still many times the difference you'd get spending the same amount on a CPU upgrade.

Pulling some figures out of my posterior just for comparisons sake,

spending 100 more on the CPU will give you 0-1% extra fps
spending 100 more on RAM (assuming better RAM is available) gives you 2-5% extra fps
spending 100 more on gfx card gives you 15-30% extra fps

[Speed]

Not that great no, but still many times the difference you'd get spending the same amount on a CPU upgrade.

Fair enough, guess the money will go on a Raptor or another 1Gb of ram. Thanks for the help!

[aidanjt]

The only reason you'd need an X2 is if you're running SLi, or doing heavy weight processing. Else, you're upgrade is pointless, get 2x1Gb sticks of RAM, that'll give you a good boost in performance.

[Dark Horse]

Although most modern games are graphics card dependant there are still some that are cpu dependant . I do have a fast graphics card (BFG 7800 GT OC) and my processor does seem to be a bit of a system bottleneck, hence the upgrade.

Mark

It really depends how big your screen is when talking about a bottleneck. FPS limitations are all relative because as soon as you go over 60fps you won't be able to notice anyway.

Once you reach an fps limit which you feel is cpu limited then you can put as much AA and AF on as you want effectively for free as long as you keep the fps above that limit. It also depends on how big a screen you have, if you run 1280x1024 then you won't feel the effects of a limitation as much as if you're trying to run 1600x1200 or higher on a big screen. Even then just notch the detail up and it'll make gaming better overall for no decrease in performance .

[Speed]

Screen is 19" TFT so 1280x1024. I'll have to do some FPS tests to see what it's like.

[aidanjt]

Well 1Gb of RAM is already a bottle neck in most games already, since Windows piss poor memory management throws everything into swap too frequently. You can try Windows memory reg tweaks, failing that, the 2 Gb of ram will help a lot.

[Speed]

Well 1Gb of RAM is already a bottle neck in most games already, since Windows piss poor memory management throws everything into swap too frequently. You can try Windows memory reg tweaks, failing that, the 2 Gb of ram will help a lot.

Yeah I had planned on getting two sticks of 1Gb DDR for 2Gb in Dual Channel. I just thought a processor upgrade would have been better, guess I was wrong. Anyone know of a good 2Gb Dual Channel kit which would be good for stock use, but with tight timings?

[aidanjt]

Depends on how tight you want to get and what kind of money you're thinking.

[Speed]

Not sure about how tight, I was thinking of getting Corsair TWINX2048-3200C2.

http://www.corsairmemory.com/corsair...048-3200c2.pdf

Timings seem to be 2-3-3-6, not sure how good that is for £178.00, I'm pretty new to memory timings.

[Noni]

Thats quite good!!!

you got PM.

[aidanjt]

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatal...aMY_2d007_2dGS This stuff has equally tight timings at stock and a bit cheaper than the twinx