Socket 754 Choices

GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
edited April 2006 in Hardware
Right now I have a Socket 754 motherboard sitting around just gathering dust (it's an Asus K8N, IIRC). All I need is a CPU and I'll be able to upgrade my main PC from a Barton 2500+ on an nF2 Chaintech mobo to an A64 system.

What Socket 754 CPU should I go with? I'm leaning toward the A64 3000+ Venice core due to decent performance right out of the box, but I'm definitely keeping myself open to suggestions. So suggest away! Keep in mind that my RAM is not highly OC'able, so I'd have to play with dividers to do any OCing.

Comments

  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited April 2006
    Any of the revision E processors would be a great choice, as they'll have a fair bit of OC headroom in them. Even the Sempron 64 chips are an awesome bang for the buck (once OC'ed) Don't worry about the dividers, you won't take a performance hit from using them like with Socket A systems.

    What is your budget like?
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited April 2006
    Up to about $125 for the CPU. Saving some would be great, but if the value proposition is there to go up to the high end of that $125, I will do so.
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited April 2006
    Just took a look at some old K8N reviews-- looks like the board has some PCI/AGP locking issues, so the maximum OC it can acheive will be very limited. Your best bet would be to buy the chip with the highest default clockspeed. The venice 3000+ won't be able to push very far I'm afraid (especially with a 10x multiplier). The 3400+ chips can be found around ebay for a decent price, and with a default 2.4GHz, should do fairly well. If you can get the reference clock to 220MHz, you should be ok to hit 2.6GHz.
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited April 2006
    lemonlime wrote:
    Just took a look at some old K8N reviews-- looks like the board has some PCI/AGP locking issues, so the maximum OC it can acheive will be very limited. Your best bet would be to buy the chip with the highest default clockspeed. The venice 3000+ won't be able to push very far I'm afraid (especially with a 10x multiplier). The 3400+ chips can be found around ebay for a decent price, and with a default 2.4GHz, should do fairly well. If you can get the reference clock to 220MHz, you should be ok to hit 2.6GHz.

    The 3400+ chips are which core revision? I'd like to go with 90nm if possible, plus we get SSE3 out of it.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited April 2006
    GH, will the K8N run a mobile A64 proc? If so, you might look into getting one of those. The CG rev mobile Claws overclock to the 2500-2700 range fairly easily and an XP90 or SLK947-U fits on them with no mods to either heatsink or socket. I found a mobile 3400 on eBay for sale with about 4 1/2 days left on th auction and it has only $.01 bid on it so far. A mobile 3400 has 1 MB L2 cache and runs at 2200 MHz, so you have an 11 multi. Here's a link to the auction - link
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited April 2006
    Thanks, mudd. I'll check into the abililty to run a mobile CPU, and I'll keep an eye on that auction.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited April 2006
    If I wasn't here at work, I'd break down 1 of my mobile claw rigs and send you the proc to test with, but unfortunately I just came back to work yesterday. I think that is a CG revision stepping on the proc in the link. With the large processor slug, you don't have to worry much about chipping the slug with those mobile A64's. They are roughly twice the size of a Barton slug. They are also easy to cool too.
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited April 2006
    Wow - That sounds like it might be a really nice solution for me.
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