How far will the 3500 take me

[marclar1104]

I am building a comp and for my price range I am looking at the AMD 64 3500 with a ATI 256mb X800 or X850 vid card. I want to be able to upgrade my computer eventually but I am not sure how far the 3500 will go before I need something better. Any suggestions. Thanks for any help.

 

[marneus]

and X2 upgrade when u get too sloowww.... lol

Trust me I know what I'm doing... ooops, grab the cat...

 

[ChipDeath]

It'll be fine for a while. If you shove one of those dedicated physics processing boards in when they become "de rigeur", It'll have very little to do, assuming developers don't make completely unrealistic jumps in AI processing complexity...

It's good enough. Of course if you don't mind overclocking then you may as well just get a 3200+ or something, as they'll probably have roughly the same clockspeed ceiling anyway.

Hell, It's a good CPU now, so why bother worrying about the future... IMO people are far too concerned about such things when buying components. All too often they make purchasing decisions based on future upgradability, only to fully replace those parts when they eventually do upgrade.

So to sum up:
Worry about "Now";
"Now", a 3500+ has a very good price/performance ratio;
"Now", the additional cost of a higher-rated CPU is not worth the benifit;
If overclocking, you may as well get a 3200+.

Oh, and try to get a Venice core if you can.

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