Worth getting a new 939 or waiting and moving to AM2/Conroe?

Hi guys,

I'm just wondering what to do at the moment. I'm not sure whether to get a new S939 chip, e.g. an X2 4800+ or to wait for 6 months or so and to get a new kitted out system then? (New mobo so probably a conroe quad, etc..)

I'm gonna be wanting to play Crysis but I'm not sure if my PC's gonna be up for playing it upon release - atleast on half desirable settings anyway

Computer performance is really realitive. The 939 core is far from dead from a performance viewpoint. The AM2's are nothing more than 939's with a better memory controller capable of using DDR2. (As least as far as I have read) That being said, in reviews of the AM2 chips the benefit of DDR2 (now still more expensive than DDR) does not get realized until you get into the higher clock speeds. So the 3800+ 939 will perform much like a AM2 3800+ at least from a noticable/benchmarking standpoint.

In today's PC world, hard drive speed, ram capacity and graphic card capability make more of a speed differance than CPU clock speed. Want to speed up your PC? Drop 2 WD raptors in RAID configuration and watch it fly! Unfortunally, no matter how good the 939 chips were, AMD has dumped them in favor of the AM2's. How long this socket lasts remains to be seen. AMD has some real work ahead of them to catch up with conroe, but I'm sure AMD will take the lead again and then back and forth. Next generation AMD's may or may not use AM2 sockets.

I doubt you would see a "real world" differance in anything you buy that is currently available. (Even more so if it is custom built for you, not a HP or Dell) They are all going to be speedy PC's. (well with the exception of Celeron, yuck, gag) As for me? I upgraded to a 939 even though I knew that AM2 was comming out. I am running a 3500+ venice core with 1 gig DDR. I am really pleased with its performance, it gives my old 3200+ barton a run for its money.

I think that with what you are running a PC upgrade may not help as much as you think it would. I think the graphic cards are where you are going to see the bulk of "playability" of the new games. Nvidia has a new GPU comming out and so does ATI soon. Save your $$$ and get one of those. Don't know if this helps, just my opinion.

Thanks Richard, yeah, I posted asking in the GPU forum whether it'd be an idea to get a 8800GTX, I'm thinking that might be a good route and then if need be I can simply throw out the mobo, RAM & CPU sometime next year.

From what I understand AM2 will be replaced with AM3 by this time next year.

If you aren't looking for benchmark scores and are happy with your current setup I say hang on.

DarkVirusVx said:

From what I understand AM2 will be replaced with AM3 by this time next year.

If you aren't looking for benchmark scores and are happy with your current setup I say hang on.

Click to expand...

dont forget ddr3

Also, there's the fact that many of the newer X2 chips are overclocking like MONSTERS! I purchased 4 different 4400's before I finally got the one in my top rig and each OCed successively higher than the last on air. If you're going to OC, I'd try to find a 939 4400. The one I now have at 3.0 stable on 1.45v is from newegg. Not sure if they're still in stock, though. I'm also waiting for Crysis and judging my my performance in the newest games now, I don't feel that I will need any upgrade at all to play it on at least moderately high settings. I'd say go with top of line gear for 939 platform and wait until it starts to lag behind.

What's wrong with what you have now? A dfi motherboard should be able to get that chip to at least as good as a 4800+ or better if you're lucky. Then you can get an x1900xt or 7900gtx(or gto) and you'll be set. As far as I know even an overclocked conroe is no match for an 8800gtx. If you have to have dx10 get an 8800gts, though even that will outpace most setups.

I could see you considering this if you had a single core, but already armed with a DC I dont see the point in spending the money unelss you are one of those people who fiddles with chip after chip.

your system with a modern graphics card will handle any game just fine.

oh yeah, I didn't see that he had a 3800x2 already. Have you tried to OC it?

ninjacore said:

oh yeah, I didn't see that he had a 3800x2 already. Have you tried to OC it?

Click to expand...

Heya, yeah, I've now got it stable at 2.5ghz, idle at approx. 30oC on air, 44oC ish under load. My memory's holding me back a bit though - I can't get the memory past 215mhz (Corsair XMS 2GB, PC3200 - not sure on the exact model) - ideally i'd like to be using a 1:1 divider but the memory just won't budge so I've ended up using 166 - to get to 2.7ghz I'd need to use an even lower divider - would the performance from the increased clocks be worth it?

As far i a'm aware. (and seems to be the case.) running a mem devider has very little impact on performance with SKT 939.you would benifet much more from the raw clock speed.

Drop the divider, and ramp that chip up!! if it wil run a 2.7 then run it at that.

yah if your getting a 8800 then thats really all you need to upgrade your system

(maybe 2GB of ram if you are runnig only 1) but even 4x512 is nice.. I just moved to that and its incredible the differnce it makes

I would wait till next gen settles, save up and see where it lands (isnt that always the case? )

Yeah, I've got 2 x 1GB of 'em.

K awesome, in which case I'll just lower the divider and turn up the clock speed. What's the effect of the HTT also? I've noticed with higher FSBs the HTT is too high and won't boot - would it matter having an e.g. 270x3 HTT? 4 x 270 won't even boot. I guess I could drop the CPU multiplier to x9, up the FSB and reduce the HTT to x 3 and the memory divider a bit - but is it worth the hassle to get a 100mhz faster HTT?

Thanks

again, th HTT doesn't really boost performance. tends to crap-out a little over 1000MHz try to keep it around the 1000MHz mark. dropping in to x3 won't lose you much performance. a 270FSB/x3HTwill be fine.

broken_Naols said:

again, th HTT doesn't really boost performance. tends to crap-out a little over 1000MHz try to keep it around the 1000MHz mark. dropping in to x3 won't lose you much performance. a 270FSB/x3HTwill be fine.

Click to expand...

Yeah, mine wouldn't go much further than 1020 or so mhz.

Thanks for the help

Not a problem . happy o/c'ing!!!

Nails