[SOLVED] Retro build single core Amd Athlon v dual core Athlon

TechBloke

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Jan 1, 2016
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Hi all. I have a windows xp retro build for my old games. cpu is Amd Athlon 64 3500+ single core cpu. I've a dual core 64 x2 3800+ and was wondering if playing my older games such as Crysis, Far Cry 2, Stalker and Fear will have an improved fps with the dual core? The clock speed of the single core is slightly higher. tia
 
Solution
Keep in mind, that putting too new of a video card into such an old system isn't going to help. If you're stuck on AGP, your choices are slim. HD3850/4670 or 7950GT on the nVidia side, all of which are not that easy or cheap to get. If you're on PCIe, it's going to depend on your operating system, what you can get drivers for. If you can run Windows 10 on that, you're going to be limited to 32-bit. I doubt that CPU would even take full advantage of a GT 710. The Athlon 64 doesn't have the features required by 64-bit Windows starting with 8.1. With 32-bit, you're also stuck with 3.5gb of RAM available, so upgrading your memory beyond 4gb, is also going to be useless.
I had the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ until mid 2008, when I upgraded to an 8800 GT 512MB and found out it got bottlenecked hard. So I switched over to a Core 2 Duo E8400. Everything was hunky dory until my 2011 build.

So if mid to late 2000s games are what you're after, a Core 2 processor is a must. The Athlons you're looking at are only good until games from about 2007 or so.
 

Joseph_138

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Keep in mind, that putting too new of a video card into such an old system isn't going to help. If you're stuck on AGP, your choices are slim. HD3850/4670 or 7950GT on the nVidia side, all of which are not that easy or cheap to get. If you're on PCIe, it's going to depend on your operating system, what you can get drivers for. If you can run Windows 10 on that, you're going to be limited to 32-bit. I doubt that CPU would even take full advantage of a GT 710. The Athlon 64 doesn't have the features required by 64-bit Windows starting with 8.1. With 32-bit, you're also stuck with 3.5gb of RAM available, so upgrading your memory beyond 4gb, is also going to be useless.
 
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