3200+ to a 4000+ or 4200+ X2

[sulk]

I recently upgraded to 939, and i bought a 3200+ just so I could get past the 2GHZ range. Its overclocked to 2.2 GHz atm, which isnt much but I'll do more later. Pretty much with Christmas coming up, I wanna buy a processor which will last me for a while(year or two). I mainly see this processor falling behind while playing games, as my 6600 GT should be able to do better then how games are running name(namely BF2, but other new releases as well). I also do a fair amount of unraring, repairing files, Photoshopping, and Digital video editing. It performs pretty well on these tasks. Pretty much I can live with how it runs applications, but for gaming I'd like it to be better. So I was looking at a 4000+, or a 4200+ X2. From what I can tell the 4000+ is better for gaming of the two, so right now I'm leaning towards that cpu. Can anyone tell me if this is the right decision, or what I should be looking for in a new chip, roughly in the 4000+, and 4200+X2 price range. Thanks a lot.

-Sulk

 

[endyen]

I also have a 3200, on s939. The 4000+ isn't much of an improvement. If you have a good board, you can probably OC to close to 4000+ levels.
Mine is @ 2.5ghz now. It will go past 2.6, but what for? Room for later.
Maybe when I need more speed, I'll replace the stock fan, and get rid of the cheap ram.
Your problem may be your memory. BF2 likes a lot of ram, more than a gig really is a good idea.

 

[Teh_Catman]

An Amd 3200+ is good enough for games. BF2 needs like 2gig of ram to run properly so ignore it. Save all your money for a GFX card thats the most important part of any PC nowadays.

 

[mpjesse]

The 4000+ does better in gaming than the 4200 X2- no doubt. But consider the other things your doing. WinRAR, Photoshop, VirtualDub (as I'm sure you're using), and any other encoding program is going to benefit greatly from a 4200 X2. I do a lot of the same things you do and I'm glad I went w/ the X2. I game quite a bit, but in between it's nice to see WinRAR unrar a 4.7GB DVD in less than 5 minutes. Same goes for loading and doing crap in Windows.

Also consider that from here on out, new games are going to take advantage of dual core processors.

-mpjesse

 

[addiarmadar]

2.2ghz on that Athlon chip is more than enought for BF2, what jugs that game is SYSTEM RAM for it chews well over a gig easily with moderate settings.

Pending on ventage, that chip could do 4000+ speeds too. I got mine to do 2.7ghz with little effort, thats if you call installing an after-market HSF effort.

X2 chips are a plus but you have to ask yourself if its worth the substancial pricetag to get that performance boost. I'd wait to get the DC chips till next year when there should be more support options for them.

 

[sulk]

Thanks for the help, from what you guys have said it looks like the ram is the thing that needs to be upgraded, so ill probably spend the money getting more ram. Just one more question I heard that windows/programs running on windows(incl games), dont recognize more then 2GB of ram. Is that true? If not is it worth getting 2 gigs of ram? I'll probably buy enough to get to @gb, but would it be worth it going past 2GB? Thanks again for all the quick responses.

-Sulk

 

[mpjesse]

Uhhhh.... that's not true. Some games may not use all of the 2GB simply because they don't need to, but 4GB is the true "limit" in x86/32bit systems. Windows and games will use all of what they can up to 4GB.

I would say it's not worth going beyond 2GB. And if you wanna go past 4GB- then you'll need to get Windows XP 64-bit edition for AMD64/EMT64.

-mpjesse

 

[sulk]

kk, thanks for the info, I'll probably get 1-3 gigs of ram over the holiday season. Either that, or I'll just be lazy and buy the new cpu, lol. Thanks again for the help!

-Sulk

 

[jmwpom3]

Oh man,,, have you seen the 512 MB 7800 GTX OC cards????
I'm going off memory but I wanna say 1700 mhz and 580 on the mem,,,
DAMN! nice,,,,,, but like $750 each

but,, cheaper than buying 2 256mb 7800 GTX's and running them in SLI. ANd since there still arent' all that many games that utilize the SLI,,,, probably a better option. But if you could afford 2 of those 512 ers in SLI,,, my god,, I think i need to change my shorts. 😉