Upgrade advice - 4000+ or an X2?

XyphusXyphus South Bend, Indiana
edited November 2005 in Hardware
Greetings all... I am finally making an upgrade from my aging Abit NF7-S 2.0 and a OC'd Barton 2500+ to the 64 bit platform.

Due to me dropping $300ish on an nVidia 6800GT what seems only a few months ago, I decided to try and use as much of my current gear that I could. Thus, I opted for an AGP board (ASUS A8V Deluxe 2.0) to base my transition to 64bit on.

I already purchased the mainboard, a Logitech G5 mouse, and with my Christmas Bonus from work I'm going with the x-FI Platinum sound card.

With tax return money, I'm planning on the bulk of my remaining upgrade parts.

My big delimma is which processor to get. I've been keeping my eye on an AMD 64 4000+ since I'm a gamer at heart, but I also do a bit of graphics and layout work.

Would the 4000+ suit me well, or is it worth looking into the X2 chips? If so, which would you recommend? I've earmarked about $350ish towards the CPU, but with some shifting I could possibly swing up to $400ish.

The planned parts are so far as follows:

ASUS A8V Deluxe (already purchased)
CPU (undecided)
RAM (Corsair XMS 2GB TwinX 2048-3200PT Kit)
PC Power&Cooling 510W PSU
Windows XP Pro X64 edition
Logitech G5 Gaming Mouse (already purchased)
SoundBlaster x-Fi Platinum (earmarked for X-Mas bonus)
Arctic Silver 5 (just because)

I've also been looking at the new Zalman HSF.. Looks pretty sweet, but a bit salty at $80... We'll have to see how the budget pans out. I have about $1000 to work with, with a little bit of wiggle room.. So the $1K will go towards CPU, RAM, OS, and Power.

(I currently have an Enermax 430W PSU, which I am sure will work fine with the new board, so I could possibly have $200 more towards parts if I don't purchase that..)

Thanks for any advice. :)

Comments

  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited November 2005
    If you do alot of multitasking work, I highly recommend the X2. The extra core does make a hell of a difference :D

    If you are just a gamer, you won't really see any benefit IN games BUT you can run other things on the box WHILE gaming (eg.. burning a DVD while playing) :D

    Im probably being a fanboy but I wouldn't recommend anyone gets anything but a dual core processor :D
  • XyphusXyphus South Bend, Indiana
    edited November 2005
    Shorty wrote:
    If you do alot of multitasking work, I highly recommend the X2. The extra core does make a hell of a difference :D

    If you are just a gamer, you won't really see any benefit IN games BUT you can run other things on the box WHILE gaming (eg.. burning a DVD while playing) :D

    Im probably being a fanboy but I wouldn't recommend anyone gets anything but a dual core processor :D

    I did notice that the X2 CPUs seem to run at a lower clock. (2.2GHz vs 2.4GHz). Do you think I would see a large impact on performance by a 200MHz deficit? Does the extra core make up in "snappiness" for applications and games? And how well does the X2 chips overclock? Would I easily be able to bump it up to the 2.4GHz speed? If so, then the X2 looks more attractive. However, I would then loose the extra 512MB cache that the 4000+ offers...

    Hrm... Decisions, decisions! My brain hurts... :)
  • deicistdeicist Manchester, UK
    edited November 2005
    If you want 1MB cache per core, and plenty of overclocking headroom you might want to have a look at the socket 939 Opterons. While opterons have traditionally been server chips, and thus avoided by gamers the current range are exactly the same cores that are going into the A64 and X2 chips. However, since opterons are marketed as server chips they tend to be better silicon and thus have more headroom for overclocking. I'm not entirely sure how much of the 'better silicon' thing is true myself, but the first batches of socket 939 opterons have shown fantastic overclocking potential. even the later batches, although not as good as those early ones, can easily reach 2.4GHz. If you look at the price of an opteron 165, consider that it's a dual core chip with 1MB cache per core that can easily be clocked up to 2.4GHz (and more than likely higher, some have reported 2.6-2.8GHz) you can see why they're the overclockers chip of choice at the moment.
  • XyphusXyphus South Bend, Indiana
    edited November 2005
    Hmm.. I haven't even looked at the Opterons... I didn't think of those as viable options.. I may have to check them out... (but depending on pricing, I may be better off with the X2 or 4000+)

    Will the board I purchased even work with the Opterons? (Asus A8V Deluxe)

    Aren't Opterons of the 940 pin variety? Or am I just not up to speed on the server side of things?
  • deicistdeicist Manchester, UK
    edited November 2005
    No, the new Opterons come in socket 939 flavour and are well priced against the X2's... or they were originally, a lot of retailers recently raised the prices of their Opterons to be more in line with X2 pricing.
  • XyphusXyphus South Bend, Indiana
    edited November 2005
    Hmmm.. I guess what I will do is check the pricing at the end of January and see what the best "bang for the buck" CPU might be... The more I think about it, the more I am leaning towards the X2 CPUs... The dual cores are really starting to appeal to me.

    It would be nice to be able to play a game while doing another task in the background on the other core... And when games finally start taking advantage of multiple threads, I will have a leg up...

    (But that 4000+ still looks very appealing as well... heh)

    Gah!
  • deicistdeicist Manchester, UK
    edited November 2005
    The quake 4 engine already utilises multiple threads, so any games built around that will as well :D
  • XyphusXyphus South Bend, Indiana
    edited November 2005
    Did some browsing over at NewEgg... The X2 4400+ caught my eye. It has the 1MB cache on it, is a dual core (of course), and runs at 2.2Ghz...

    Anyone using one of these? Do you think it would be a good alternative to the 4000+?

    With nVidia now offering drivers that will take advantage of the dual core CPUs, the X2 line is looking quite a bit more appealing to me...
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