new dual core x2 from AMD?

[david_uk]

I would get the single core 4000+ rather than the X2 3800. They are priced very much about the same.

 

[DuxSyagrius]

I was thinking the same thing at one time, but it doesnt fit in with my upgrade strategy. First, I am using my computers as a video render farm primarily and for gaming secondarily. Thats why I chose the X2 CPU. Under normal conditions, the X2 will encode a 2 hr movie in 1 hr. The 4000 will do it in 1 hr 15 minutes. Not much of a difference huh? But with the Helium codec from Divx I can increase encoding performance on my X2 while the 4000 gets left behind. Under certain conditions I can reduce that encoding time to 30-45 minutes. In the encoding world, 15 minutes is a lot of time you know? When it comes to gaming, everyone thinks the CPU matters the most. They talk about cache size and the FX chip. I say BS. Take a good look at the FPS on a FX chip (or the 4000) and then say, a A64 3500. There is not enough difference in performance to warrant spending 3 times more for say 30 more FPS when you are already pushing 80 FPS with the 3500 CPU. Plus, as you ramp up the eye candy on a game, it becomes ever more GPU dependant. So I say "whatever dude" to those over priced CPUs. When it comes to my upgrade strategy, overclockability is a major part of that. A 4000 CPU is not going to go much higher than 2.6 without a major bump in voltage. That means heat. That means something is going to go wrong in probobly 6 months or so. Very dangerous. The X2 3800 will go from 2 ghz to 2.4 ghz with just a nudge in voltage and maybe 6 degrees up in heat. You just need to have decent RAM and a overclocker's mobo. So in the end, I will get the "gaming" performance of the 4000 and I will stay way ahead in video encoding. I dont intend to over clock until the 939 platform cannot push the envelope anymore. That will be about 1-2 years from now. Basically, 16x PCI-e cant cut it, I will buy again. Also, I am hoping that AVIVO from AMD will vastly improve encoding times and alleviate the need to switch platforms for another year after that. I mean, if you are encoding a 2 hr movie in 20 minutes what more could one possible want?

 

[david_uk]

Sounds like your requirements are different to mine, go with the dual core then. I'm not actually much in favour of overclocking, my philosophy is if it ain't broke then don't fix it. I did change my order of new system, so that it will now come with a 7800gt. However this is now nearly half the cost of the computer 8O ! At least now though I have the pc that I want and won't have to worry about upgrading or overclocking for the next 3+ years.

 

[DuxSyagrius]

I think its cool you got what you wanted in a GPU. It saves you from having to try and sell your cheaper GPU for a loss and then buy what you wanted in the first place. Overclocking is a mixed bag at best. It doesnt always work and it can create system instability. But if you do it the right way, you are all set. The point is not to buy a chip for the purpose of overclocking right away. The purpose is to begin overclocking when you need to squeeze some extra performance out of your existing system. To do this, you need a CPU that has room to overclock. For example, my XP 2700 CPU burnt out. I didnt want to jump onto 939 chips cuz they were too expensive for me at the time. I bought a XP-m 2800 (1.8 Ghz) fot 75 bucks shipped. Thats less than half of what a newcastle A64 3000 would have cost me at the time. I used my exiting RAM but my mobo crapped out so I got a proven Asus mobo for 50 bucks. My mobo and CPU cost less than the newcastle A64 3000. After I got Doom3, I needed more power since my 9800 Pro was choking up at the high quality setting. I learned from some forums how to overclock my system. I managed to get it to 2.35 Ghz which is pretty good for an older chip. I was able to game smoothly. My encoding times were now faster than real time too which was pretty cool to me. After a few months I had to back the CPU down to 2.1 Ghz due to instability. I sold it off to a light gamer for 400 bucks. I now have no left over parts and I am free to start over again. The point is, you have to put yourself in a situation where you can get the most out of your platform for as long as you can. So you have to buy wisely you know? I manage to skip over Socket 754, newcastle, winchester, and venice. I am catching socket 939 in its last phase which is Venus/manchester. I know people who have upgraded twice since socket 939 came out. Overclocking is something I am going to do when I need to. Not cuz i want to one-up somebody (which is why most jerk offs overclock....)

 

[david_uk]

Thought I was in a minority by not wanting to overclock lol. by getting a 939 board now I'm not sure if I'm getting in at a good/bad or average stage. However it is certainly good looking forward to having a new computer after years of messing about. I wonder how long this one will last me, another 4/5 years? However game requirements are already starting to creep up to the 2.0ghz athlon processor requirement mark and so I might be forced to upgrade processor sooner than expected. Don't think that will be a problem though with the 939 board and especially as compared to the price of graphics cards.

 

[DuxSyagrius]

You are not in the minority. Overclocking can be dangerous. Alot of people are just one uppers and lie about their specs. I read about one dude who claimed he has a A643000 over clocked to 2.7 Ghz. His multiplier was 9 and his FSB was like 245. What a lier. If you play games with high resolutions and with AA and AF enabled, its your graphics cad is what is going to be stressed not you CPU. here is an interesting link: http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/quake_4_dual-core_performance/ You will notice at higher res and standards, there is no difference in reuslts on dual core chips and thier single core counterparts. Its all about the GPU baby! Thats why I reccomended the 7800 GT. Now that is a card that will be around for a long time. Just like the Geforce 3 Ti500, Geforce 4 4200 and 4600, and the Radeon 9500 and 9800 Pro.

 

[david_uk]

I'd been looking at 7800gt for about a month so I'm quite familiar with it, although perhaps overkill for me, maybe a 6800gt would of been enough for me at 1280x1024 res (price difference £60). However it will be good not ever having to worry about whether I can play any game due to system constraints. I'm not a player of doom, quake, cod2, fear, half cry or any of those types of games, but do play turn based and real time strategy games and combat flight simulators and in the past I've always been restricted and had to play these games at lower screen resolutions and lower graphical quality (if I was even able to play them at all, even dungeon keeper2 is too much for this computer). I'm glad all that is about to change. I could even upgrade monitor to an lcd 1600x1200 as soon as these become more affordable and not be restricted. I got a new lcd monitor for my old computer (the one I'm using now) but the computer wasn't able to match it so thats why i'm having to buy new computer lol. However it is the first time I'm buying a computer built around the graphics card lol. However in a years time 7800gt will probably be 'mid-range'. Based on that article, looks like I'll be upgrading processor next, to a dual core.

I am also sceptical about some of these overclocking claims.

 

[lonewolf_xix]

Dual Cores do offer a slight boost over the single cores but single cores aren't anywhere near dead yet, i have an Opteron 146 CABYE 0536, it's a great overclocker, it uses the silica from the fx57 and on my mother (ASRock 939dual-sata2) on default BIOS it'll reach 2.66ghz, wiv the OCWBeta BIOSes im just building it up now.. @ 2.4ghz right now, if u want a good overclocker opteron CABYE or CABGE r good but expensive on ebay, i'm upgrading my graphics card so i can overclock this better to an XFX GeForce 6800Ultra (cheaper used wiv cooling mods so run cooler) 425/600 (over stock 400/550) from a review i read on the FX60 it is a good chip but only obviously at multithreaded - if your not in for the highest FPS then the FX57 is the best single core to get without overclocking, if your an overclocker, an opteron 146 CABYE or CABGE and you're flying.. they canb do 3.2ghz on AIR!!!! (for a comparison... FX57 is 2.8ghz but you guys know that) an FX60 has liturally only boosted multithread enabled games by a bit.. 3-5fps @ max... Unreal tournament which suposedly supports it you got a drop of about 5fps, Quake4 a drop by 2fps, far cry an increase by 2fps, halo an increase by 4fps.. it's not really much more of a dif

 

[mdd1963]

"I'm thinking of going for a really cheap system actually, just to tie me over for the next couple of years.

Don't suppose the sempron 3400+ is worth considering, "

I assembled a relatively inexpensive socket 754 Sempron 3000+ for my daughter; granted the cache is only 256k, but it is not a slow system, being roughly equivalent to an Athlon64/2800+....

There would certainly be a noticeable difference jumping up from a P3/800...

 

[mdd1963]

"However in a years time 7800gt will probably be 'mid-range'."

Update:

Despite owning a 7800GT myself, the release of the 512mb GTX and the various Radeon x1800 series has bumped the 780GT down into about 10th place, more of a high-mid range card...

But, pricewise, it's quite excellent performance for the money!

 

[lonewolf_xix]

sempron64 3400+ is a well known overclocker on skt754 too for it's higher multiplier, most ppl reach 270fsb max but the 10x multiplier does it good so if u want high performance that's best...i've recently had an idea of a skt754 as an overclocked HTPC.. The offering from ASRock is quite a good 1 to consider too, £35 motherboard, £67 cpu, it has a decent onbaord graphics.. (Geforce 6100 onboard, done reasonable score @ 3dmark same as(or roughly) a Ti4200 which still packs a punch in the low end gaming market) and the board has a PCI-e so you can add any high end card of your choice @ any time.. great features.. the board is the ASRock K8NF4G S754 SATAII it is a great board.. tho the old BIOSes don't like cold booting on overclock (so get the latest BIOS.. v1.3 is good apparently) also it's M-ATX so if it doesn't reach all standards you can tell why, nice small board, for ppl wiv not much space or just want a small HTPC.. to mdd.. the 2800 wud provide more of an overclock coz of the C'n'Q u can get more voltage from it (obv. disable before OC) and their's 512k cache... both generally good cpu's and nicely priced tho

 

[mpjesse]

"Support" isn't the right term. Certainly the 7800GT won't support shader model 4.0 and some other stuff, but the 7800GT will run fine in DX10. The differences in SM 3.0 and 4.0 are going to be minor anyways.

Besides, games are JUST now starting to advantage of DX9 stuff like HDR and SM 3.0. Currently, the only two games that even do HDR are Serious Sam 2 and Half Life's Coast demo.

Currently no video card does SM 4.0. So how can the 7800GT be "out of date" when DX10 hasn't even been released?!

-mpjesse

 

[lonewolf_xix]

some games are only just starting to use Shader Model 2.0.. and as jesse said there will be practically no difference. you can read the reviews about SM 3.0 and SM 2.0 and the differences which are very small.. even old fx5900xt's are adequate, though, slowly becoming inadequate... HDR is supported in the 6 series isn't it? lol