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Comparing X2s ( 4400 vs 4600 vs 4800)

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Kul

Registered
Joined
Jul 29, 2005
This is my 1st post on this forum. I was going to purchase A64FX55 but now that X2s are out one of them would be a much better choice for me. I do a lot of gaming but i obvliously use my PC for graphics and vid editing too so a well rounded fast beast would be perfect for me. I am thinking about getting a 4800 but they are a bit pricy and if i get one i need to be assured i am getting the best for my $$. What i mean is that i need to know that droping down to the 4600 would not mean that i would only loose 1 fps. I searched the web for comparison of all the X2 chips but sites like anandtech only seem to care about the 4200 and the 4800. Can some one please tell me how the 4400 and the 4600 perform when compared to the 4800. What is more important the 1mb L2 or the 200 more MHZ? people on the pc perspective forum said that the L2 was more important but if that is so then why would AMD price the one with higher L2 and lower MHZ below the one with lower L2 and higher MHZ. I also got a lot of suggestions to try to overclock my new CPU and although i have never overclocked anything yet i am interested so if you can provide any info on how well the CPUs overclock that would be great. Thanks.
 
The 4800 will be faster than the 4600, but it of course costs more. You can easily get the 4600 past 4800 speeds by overclocking.
It just depends how much you want to spend. My suggestion would be not get the 4800, but to just overclock the 4200/4600.

Read some of the stickies and overclocking is simply just a matter of changing a few settings in the BIOS.

Goodluck and :welcome:
 
Get 4400+, clocks same as 4800. the 4200 and 4600's are weak with only 1mb total L2
 
Well, you can't really say something like, "Get the 4400, it clocks to 4800 speeds" The 4800 can also clock to even higher speeds in that sense of thinking.

Well I'll still recommend 4400+, it's almost more or less in the middle, best price/performance ratio.
 
wow thanks for the quick reply. this forum rocks.

anyway i would like to see exact data on how the chips compare before overclocking and afterwards. I'm especially interested in seeing the 4400 vs the 4600 but i'm not ruling the the 4800 out just yet. My budget is around $2000 so i may fit it in. If you see any acurate data online that would compare these chips to each other please give me a link. By the way what the hell is X2 3800? Wouldn't it be the same as the 4600 with 512k of L2 and 2.4GHZ? What am i missing here?

I'm looking at a Crossfire motherboards ( if not then Asus A8N SLI Deluxe), x800XL, 1g of Corsair XMS, 120G Sata II drives in Raid 0, zalman coper fan, i'm not sure what PSU yet but it should be under $100.
 
:welcome: :welcome: I've been to a lot of forums in my time, but this one is AWESOME.

I'll answer the quick one first: the 3800 is like the 4200, but 200MHz lower. That is, 2.0GHz and 2x512k L2 cache.

Next: If you are doing graphics and vid editing, you'll probably be better off with one of the 2x1MB L2 chips, ie the 4400 or the 4800. all of the X2s can clock to about the same speeds, somewhere around 2.6-2.8GHz on air (other than the 3800: we dont know what its capable of as its not out yet). If you are willing to take the IHS off (they SUCK on the X2s), then you should get at least 100MHz more, probably more. Theres a poll floating around here somewhere where X2 owners have posted thier OCs. That should give you an idea on what to expect from each of the chips.

My suggestion: if you are willing to spend money on an FX55, get the 4400. its "only" $80-$100 more than the 4200, but its still cheaper than the 4800, and should OC to about the same as a 4800. As you can probably hit 2.6Ghz with it, it'll basically be like having two stock FX55s in your rig. Plus, you can save all the money you were going to spend on the FX55 and upgrade other components (water cooling, better mobo/GPU/PSU, etc). Or you could just send that money my way ;) :p .

If you end up with an nForce4 board, get the DFI board, not the asus. little harder to OC with, but you end up with much better results. I would trade my asus board in for a DFI in a heartbeat.
 
an 4800 wouldnt necessarily clock much higher than a 4400. unless you had serious/expensive cooling. and its not worth its cost.

4400.....end of story.
 
thanks lonewoolf. 4400 seems to be a great choice. With the money i'll save i could get an extra gig of ram and other goodies. I also saw your suggestion in the other thread but this would be my 1st overclock and i dont want to start anything as extreme.
 
Kul said:
thanks lonewoolf. 4400 seems to be a great choice. With the money i'll save i could get an extra gig of ram and other goodies. I also saw your suggestion in the other thread but this would be my 1st overclock and i dont want to start anything as extreme.

Good way to look at it. Money saved with an 4400 over the 4800 will allow you to upgrade other parts.
 
I agree, 4400+ definitely worth it, with a toledo core, it is prob more capable than the other core(i forgot), more power per clock probibly and it costs less. And if your going to overclock, u dont need that extra 12x, coz ur probibly gunna lower the multiplyer anyway to move up FSB and all
 
I have got a 4800 and I am not too bothered. If I wanted to OC like a nut then 4400 but as I had never owned something totally cutting edge, I went for the 4800. Even at stock it was awesome, currently at 2.75GHz and it just rocks...sucka did a awesome OC on his 4400.
 
Does the extra cache really matter THAT much? I want to get an X2, as I do lots of encoding (a little audio, but a lot of video) and multi-tasking, and I've forced myself to give up gaming. I had heard 4400 this, 4400 that, 4400 this that and everything, but after looking for myself at newegg, I noticed the existence of a 4200. I planned to get the 4200, as the only appreciable difference between the two was the extra cache. Now, in light of this thread that I read recently, I find it hard to justify to myself the extra $174 ($729 - $555) that the 4400 costs over the 4200, with the only difference being the extra cache.

Anyone got any solid, tangible (so to speak) proof that things may have changed regarding the benefit of cache in AMDs that the thread talked about? Or hell, even if the difference in and of itself is that much different between the two processors, stock for stock?
 
-_{MoW}_-Assasi said:
I agree, 4400+ definitely worth it, with a toledo core, it is prob more capable than the other core(i forgot), more power per clock probibly and it costs less. And if your going to overclock, u dont need that extra 12x, coz ur probibly gunna lower the multiplyer anyway to move up FSB and all

I ordered a 4400 from tiger direct on friday, I think the retail version was $630 and considering everyone else is out of stock on them and has the pre order priced higher, I saw it as a decent price. I will post my results in a week or so.
 
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