Global Conflict

Hi all

Im thinking of upgrading my CPU. I currently have a 3200 athlon 64 but it wont run the new ghost recon well enough for my liking. The trouble is i dont know what my motherboard can cope with.

Can you please tell me what speed CPU my motherboard can handle? i have this board: http://uk.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l ... odelmenu=1

also, if u have any tips on which CPU is best then please let me know

any help much appreciated.

http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/cpus ... uage=en-us

put in mainboard and your model then .. there you got a list of supported cpus.

ah, cool. Looks like i can use a 3700 for that socket. Any idea what the speed increase will be like?

Well I just upgrade not long ago to a 3700 San Diego Core not long ago and to be honest with you going from a 2800 to this, it was hard to tell how much I actually got since I also upgraded my RAM and Vid Card at the same time.

But when I did all three I was able to go from medium graphics on BF2 to everything maxed out and still got 45 fps.

its just that my system has 2 gigs ram and an X850XT agp, my CPU is holding the system back big time.

i dunno, ill see how rich im feeling

Then the 3700 is a good core for the price range considering what you already have

okok, how does this look:

this board
http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/102900

and this cpu
http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/109092/rb/18978913908

Thats an excellent upgraders motherboard, Dax. It's got both an AGP slot and a PCI-E slot, which is great if you have an AGP video card. (If you have a PCI-E card, though, this doesnt seem to be the best option, because you'll have a small performance drop).

As for the CPU, its a fairly good upgrade but I would recommend you get the boxed retail version instead (this one). You would have to spend $10 or more anyway on a heat sink, and you get a 3 year warranty, particularly useful since CPUs can have a fairly high failure rate.

You'll probably see a negigible increase of only a couple frames per second on most games. Ghost Recon will likely have a higher increase since its so AI and physics intensive (unless you're one of the few with an AGEIA PPU).

Oh, its worth mentioning that youre processor upgrade might be obsolete pretty early. AMD is rolling out 940 pin processors which will be the new standard pretty soon, probably in June. However, your motherboard apparently has an expansion slot which would convert it to a 940 pin board, so you wouldnt have to upgrade the mobo a second time, just the processor.

If I were you, I wouldn't spend too much on any new processor. the 3700 is probably top end of what you'd want to spend on. Splurging and throwing down $300 for a processor that will be surpassed in a month or two wouldn't be a good idea.

Thanks peter, very helpful info there. I hate upgrading computers, too much choice and it moves along far too fast for my tastes.

im tempted to get an x2 3800 too, but thats a little bit more money. Does duel core make a difference when playing games, or should i go for all out single core speed?

I do have an agp card as it goes, an x850xt. Its a good card, more capable than the rest of my machine thats for sure. My problem is i dont like playing games unless i can run em on nearly max settings, which is just about impossible to maintain!

the other side of it is i downloaded red alert to play again and even on minimum scroll speed its far to fast to be able to play, lol!

EDIT: has anyone actually used one of those Ageia Physix cards yet? im interested to see how much of a difference it can make to a game considering physics in games like hf2 were pretty good without those cards.

Peter: Dont you mean 939, not 940? Unless Im way off the mark, 940 died off some time ago for desktops. Its a server socket now for Opteron procs.

WoodenPlank wrote:Peter: Dont you mean 939, not 940? Unless Im way off the mark, 940 died off some time ago for desktops. Its a server socket now for Opteron procs.

Yeah, its pretty annoyingly confusing, but AMD is making a new 940 pin socket.

from Extreme Tech:

For the first time in a couple of years, AMD will be changing CPU sockets. Known widely as AM2, the new socket has 940 pins rather than the 939 pins of current desktop AMD systems. However, AM2 is not the same as the Socket 940 used in Opteron-based systems today.

Ah, if you had said AM2 I would have caught you. I think AM2 is going to be dual-core only, and theyve said 939 isnt going anywhere any time soon.

Does duel core make a difference when playing games, or should i go for all out single core speed?

Thats a pretty big debate. It varies widely based on each game. The common speculation is that newer games will use it more and more. Games like Ghost Recon are probably included in the games that use dual core, so you would see significant benefits there. But for the most part, dual core finds its usage today in fields like video and audio editing. It's really not too big in gaming at the moment.

There are people who would vehemntly argue the opposite, though. Just my opinion.

Dax_inside wrote:EDIT: has anyone actually used one of those Ageia Physix cards yet? im interested to see how much of a difference it can make to a game considering physics in games like hf2 were pretty good without those cards.

From the test I saw on the Internet, it will look better in-game, but you will have a signifiant drop in performance (:?) Yep... And I will not pay 300$ just to have a game with more particules in it...