Athlon 64 bit?

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Bobby

I am thinking of upgrading my mobo plus CPU (currently Athlon 2000).

I use my PC for office work (MS Office 2K3), Internet (usual stuff),
watching DVDs and a little gaming (Doom 3 currently).

I am thinking of buying an Athlon 64 bit CPU and mobo.

Is this wise?
Will I notice a big improvement over my current config?
Will it take my current cards (esp. my ATI 9600 Pro gfx card)?
Is there a particular CPU or mobo I should consider?
Money is very tight.

Cheers.

Bobby
 
I am thinking of upgrading my mobo plus CPU (currently Athlon 2000).
I use my PC for office work (MS Office 2K3), Internet (usual stuff),
watching DVDs and a little gaming (Doom 3 currently).

I am thinking of buying an Athlon 64 bit CPU and mobo.

Is this wise?
Will I notice a big improvement over my current config?
Will it take my current cards (esp. my ATI 9600 Pro gfx card)?
Is there a particular CPU or mobo I should consider?
Money is very tight.

Cheers.

Bobby
Click to expand...

Bobby, for most of the things you mentioned you probably wont notice much of a
change, but for gaming you may and if you do any kind of cpu intenstive work
you most deffently will. You shouldnt have any issue using any of your
compoants since nothing has been subtracted from the new boards since yours
(unlike the new intel 925x boards).

There are however 2 flavors to pick from now that the newer socket has come
out. these are socket 939 have come out, and the older socket 754.

Thing to consider, the boards and chips for socket 939 will be a bit more
expensive, but they are also the new socket AMD is going with so will have
(more than likely) a decent lifespan for the CPU's. The coket 754 boards and
chips are in general cheaper, however they are the older socket and the
lifespan for the chips is at the end or very near it.

Now if you dont intend to upgrade for a while (couple years) the socket 754 may
be the way to go. Here are a couple links for both the sockets.

Socket 939
www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2128

Socket 754
www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2063

Hope this helps.
~A
 
Cheers A. Very helpful. I'll check the link.

I'm looking for the best bang-per-buck since money is tight and I'm not sure
whether to go for a Pentium P4 (2.8GHz?) or an Athlon 64.

I do do some CPU intensive work (TV/DVD while working on Net, editing - lots
of open windows) - which is the best for this sort of thing?

Will I notice much of an improvement over my Athlon 2000? I don't want to
spend £250 for nothing very much. Will my current memory work in the new
mobo (PC 2100 - 512Mb)?

Bobby
 
Cheers A. Very helpful. I'll check the link.
I'm looking for the best bang-per-buck since money is tight and I'm not sure
whether to go for a Pentium P4 (2.8GHz?) or an Athlon 64.

I do do some CPU intensive work (TV/DVD while working on Net, editing - lots
of open windows) - which is the best for this sort of thing?

Will I notice much of an improvement over my Athlon 2000? I don't want to
spend £250 for nothing very much. Will my current memory work in the new
mobo (PC 2100 - 512Mb)?

Bobby

Cheers A. Very helpful. I'll check the link.

I'm looking for the best bang-per-buck since money is tight and I'm not sure
whether to go for a Pentium P4 (2.8GHz?) or an Athlon 64.

I do do some CPU intensive work (TV/DVD while working on Net, editing - lots
of open windows) - which is the best for this sort of thing?

Will I notice much of an improvement over my Athlon 2000? I don't want to
spend £250 for nothing very much. Will my current memory work in the new
mobo (PC 2100 - 512Mb)?

Bobby
Click to expand...


I personaly think you may seen an inprovment in your video work, while the mhz
isnt a great deal higher, the memory architecure is signifigently inproved.
With the 64 AMD put the memory control on the CPU die and depending on the CPU
you get, increased the L2 cache. All things that'll ramp up the proformance.

Your memory will work however it will be a slower speed than the highest the
boards will support. If your only running 512 right now anyway, you can pick up
a new stick of PC3200 for about $65 US (not sure on local deals your way tho)
so you could try selling your older stuff, again it'll improve proformance.

If your doing any 3D Rendering Intel has been the way to go for years. AMD has
given them a run for their money tho so you wouldnt suffer going with AMD but
you would lose a lil in preformance. However something to keep in mind. The new
775 Socket and 925x, 915x chipset for Intel has changed things a bit. Intel is
pretty much demanding people adopt the new graphics slot and SATA, what this
means is on new intel boards (again, 925x,915x) they have gotten rid of the AGP
slot entirely and have reduced the PATA slots to 1. This means you have a total
of 2 PATA devices you can hook up (cd-roms, harddrives etc), which means if you
need more than one harddrive you must go SATA. It also means your videocard
will need to be replaced.

That being said there is hope for Intel if your deadset on it. Recently a few
companys have taken the 865PE chipsets and bonded them with the 775 socket for
the new intel CPU's. What this means is you are able to continue to use your
older video card and all your PATA devices but still be able to use the current
and future CPU's that Intel will be producing. Like the AMD 754 CPU's, the
older style 478 CPU's will only go to a cetian speed before Intel stops pushing
them to higher speeds. As it is I belive they've already hit the limit, so this
is actualy a really good solution. Also depending in the benchmark, the older
865 chipset has out preformaned the newer 925x chipsets.

OK so your probably pretty tired of the random numbers so I'll leave it at
that. Here are a couple of links for reading up on the intel side.

About the new chipset/cpu
www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2162


A short review of one of the boards doing the combo 865 w/ 775 socket
www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2169

And heres the specs on another board that does the combo thing as well (they're
a bit few and far between right now)
www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/products.php?categories=1&model=191

~A
 
Bobby said:
Cheers A. Very helpful. I'll check the link.

I'm looking for the best bang-per-buck since money is tight and I'm not sure
whether to go for a Pentium P4 (2.8GHz?) or an Athlon 64.

I do do some CPU intensive work (TV/DVD while working on Net, editing - lots
of open windows) - which is the best for this sort of thing?

Will I notice much of an improvement over my Athlon 2000? I don't want to
spend £250 for nothing very much. Will my current memory work in the new
mobo (PC 2100 - 512Mb)?

Bobby
Click to expand...

Well, I WAS going to say, save your gingle for a new graphics card -
you'll get a lot more from Doom 3 with a top-of-the-line graphics card
than you will with a faster CPU. You'd want something in the ATI X800
or NVIDEA FX6800 lines.

BUT, you seem to be saying that you do a lot of video
editing/encoding; then go with a new Intel CPU - the fastest you can
afford - and increase (and speed up....) your RAM - 1GB of DDR-3200 at
least. Intel clearly has an edge in the benchmarks I've seen - the raw
CPU speed makes a difference, it seems.

And if you're saying you just like to bigtime multitask with lots of
small apps, then the best would be a dual CPU rig, along with lots of
RAM. Even a dual 1800+ AthlonMP (if you could find them) would give
your work that nice "Snap". (Just for the record, I'm not really
seriously suggesting this - you'd be outside your $250 budget with a
good MB alone. Also for the record, Intel's "hyperthreading" so far
hasn't lived up to it's "dual core" promise; it won't speed anything
up.)

Anyways,good luck whatever you decide!
ECM
 
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