Worth getting an FX-57?

[eUphoria]

Come on guys - whats your verdict?! Ive been playing with the idea of a new cpu for ages now - seems most folks reckon it isnt going to do an awful lot of good for my pc usage (games and the internet - plus the odd bit of work here and there ). So what do you reckon changing to an fx-57 will do - anything special??? Specs in sig!

[schmunk]

No, save your money.

[NightshadowUK]

For games and the internet, an FX57 will be the BIGGEST waste of money you can imagine, games are GPU driven at the moment anyways.

For £670 you could buy an Opteron 146 with a nice motherboard and overclock the hell out of it (thus achieving FX57 speeds) - then upgrade to 2GB RAM and maybe even a better graphics cards/nice new TFT and STILL have change.

To summarize: don't get one.

[Nox]

I concur! either overclock an opteron, or go dual core.

Nox

[EtheAv8r]

.....For £670 you could buy an Opteron 146 with a nice motherboard ..........
:

...surely sum mistake?? £670????

[sawyen]

he meant to include the extra memory and gfx card as well.. read along his post..

For a whopping £670.. I'd drop them on a new board with 2x7900GT, sell the 1GB kit and drop the rest of the cash on 2GB of ram.. much more significant than an FX-57..

[kempez]

Where's the mistake??? FX-57 @ SCAN

They be a mighty waste of money

I'd get a dual core opty and clock the nuts off it

EDIT: and I'd get 1 x X1900XTX - sod the waste of cash for Sli

[schmunk]

...surely sum mistake?? £670????

For £670 you could buy an Opteron 146 with a nice motherboard and overclock the hell out of it (thus achieving FX57 speeds) - then upgrade to 2GB RAM and maybe even a better graphics cards/nice new TFT and STILL have change.

Read again...

[MSIC]

Opteron 146 - £120
Motherboard Asus A8N SLi deluxe- £100
2 GB RAM Corsair TwinX - £135
Graphics 7900GT - £250

Total = £605.

Would be a pretty crappy TFT, but I agree with the point being made

[aidanjt]

I concur! either overclock an opteron, or go dual core.

Nox

Or do both, opties come in dual core, not much pricer than X2's either.

[jamena]

unless you regularly use more than one cpu-heavy program at once then dual core isn't much use in performance terms either. check out firingsquads guide / comparison of a fx-57 & 7800gtx system with a 3500+ & 7800GT system. Also check out their comparisons of a 7800gtx system with cpu's ranging from an A64 3000+ to fx-57. Unless you're going SLi with cutting edge gpus then there's little point in the massively expensive cpu...

[kempez]

I disagree - dual core certainly makes a difference in games that use it. Q4 makes a helluva difference with r_use SMP 1

[vrykyl]

I had a 3700+ san diego overclocked at 2.8ghz...so faster than a stock fx57 (same cache, faster fsb etc)...
i then upgraded to an x2 3800+... which I also overclocked to 2.8ghz - in general day to day windows use, gaming and benchmarks the dual core consistently gave me BETTER results than the single core. it felt smoother and more responsive.

With games like q4, an new games like unreal3/ut2k7 all supporting dual core there seems little sense in buying single core now....
Like AGP its safe to say that single core is a dying breed - go dual core and move on

[jamena]

Dual core should definitely feel better for normal use as the applications you are multitasking can run on different cores rather than having to queue for cpu time. If a single app can take advantage of this it too will benefit individually from dual core systems, but you're going to pay around about twice the price for a dual core cpu for the same per-core-cache and clock (overclocking aside) so you're in a similar situation to SLi. Right now I doubt you'll see twice the performance in most tasks, and many games seem to be GPU limited in review/comparisons anyway. If you happen to multitask big programs a lot, or have a game requiring massive chunks of cpu which you run frequently then dual core may be a better route now than a single core.

I certainly agree that multi-cored processors are the way to go in time, I just don't think all the software is ready yet. With AM2, BTX, hdcp, vista, and massive nand-cache possibilities for hdd access likely to appear in the next few months, there's a lot of good reasons not to upgrade right now...imo

general concensus here though I think ...don't bother with the fx-57 unless price matters not at all, in which case get the fx-60 and seek out some quad-SLi components?

[eUphoria]

ok guys - point is made i think Looks like i either get an X2 chip, wait until a proven CABNE opteron appears on the FS threads or get a single core 3800 i guess. Or just stick to the 3200 and get 2gb ram

Thanks for the views folks!

[NightshadowUK]

Opteron 146 - £120
Motherboard Asus A8N SLi deluxe- £100
2 GB RAM Corsair TwinX - £135
Graphics 7900GT - £250

Total = £605.

Would be a pretty crappy TFT, but I agree with the point being made

Just for the record, I meant 'either' a graphics card or a new TFT (see the forward slash thingy).