What sort of performance gain could I get?

I'm running a Venice 3200+ at 2.5 or 2.55ghz, which is OK, but if I was to splash out on a San Diego 4000+ what sort of performance gain would I get?

I know the San Diego has 1mb of L2 cache which is better, but how much better over the 512k of my Venice is it?

(i.e. If you had the chip at the same speeds, but one with a 1mb and one with the 512k, what would the difference be?)

Also, the San 4000+ clocks higher at stock, but what could I expect it to OC to and what sort of performance gain would I get compared to my Venice OCd and how much does one of these OC by on average?

Cheers - Slack

I don't think you would get closae to you're money's worth. I have seen figures like 5%, but I think it depends on the kind of application you are running. If you really want to splurge, I think you'd be better off doing it with an X2 where you would gain multitasking performance now and game performance later once newer games come out that utilize it's power.

In which case i guess I'll just wait and save some money.

Have any games programmers announced that they will start to write mulpi-core support yet?

Not that I know of, but I'm not a big gamer. Either way, I figure it's b ound to happen sometime next year. Saving your money is always a good idea. There will be a lot of changes in the coming year. AMD will have a new M2 cpu which will require a new mobo and ddr2 so there is not much point to going overboard now when you have a good rig.

I don't think X2 is worth it for gaming. The San Diego chips have 1 meg of L2 cache and that would improve anything running on that chip. hell, just going from 256k to 512 k back on socket A was a big leap. Plus the SDs clock better I think.

With the cpu frequency equal you will see little difference with the extra 512 cache. IMO it is not worth the money just to see a 3~5 fps difference while playing your favorite game. Upgrading to the X2 is the best route to follow. The OC as well as any SD core.

Well, since you already have a 7800GTX, it may bottleneck a bit under higher settings for your 3200+. But heck, I've seen reviews in where a 4000+ bottlenecked the 7800GTX on max settings for a few games.

But, the extra cache may be more noticeable while doing multitasking applications, things may load a tad faster. But in regards to gaming, the extra cache will probably give you 5-7fps, which is not worth it to upgrade to a whole new core atm.

Dual cores will eventually benefit from games much more then single cores. Probably when the 8 series forceware drivers come out, they promise for a 10-15% increase in performance for 7800s. So I'd save up, since your core isn't lacking much in terms of performance.

But if you really feel a tad of holdbacks while playing games or maybe feel that you need the upgrade, then go for it, it all depends on how your current games play like.

Cheers,

Game play a charm. Well, by games I mean BF2.

I have spent ages looking at various setting in BF2 and basically, there is almost no difference between Medium and High... so to get it to look punchy and run fast I run it Medium everything except geomety which is high, but max AA and AF.

Guess I don't NEED to buy a new CPU if theres not a massive gain.

I might have just fell into the usual trap... Just built a new PC so have been OCing and benchmarking... and once you get going... it's hard to stop.

Slack said:

Cheers,
I might have just fell into the usual trap... Just built a new PC so have been OCing and benchmarking... and once you get going... it's hard to stop.

Click to expand...

Ain't that the truth!

rseven said:

I don't think you would get closae to you're money's worth. I have seen figures like 5%, but I think it depends on the kind of application you are running. If you really want to splurge, I think you'd be better off doing it with an X2 where you would gain multitasking performance now and game performance later once newer games come out that utilize it's power.

Click to expand...

I agree 100%.

Unreal Engine 3 games (many games made from that), Quake 4, FM2005 and FM2006, Falcon 4.
Thats the only games that /will suport dual-core cpu that i know...

I play Falcon4 Allied Force, and I must say the difference with the dual core is very obvious. I can't wait for other games to take advantage of the technology.