New CPU!

So i have a Asrock ULi 1695 mobo. Its as the option to upgrade from 939 to AM2, but i would have to buy the addon card and DDR2 ram along with the new CPU(600 bucks). I would like to get a X2 processor but with the amount it would cost me to buy all that, i could buy a new AM2 mobo, ddr2 ram, and the cpu and have a second machine. So its not real adventagious to do that. I guess, ultimatly my question is; Is there a 939 solution out there that would give me a decent performance gain with out spending alot of money. I currently have a AMD64 3000+ at 2.4 Ghz

It depends on what kind of performance you are looking for. If you want straight up single threaded gaming performance or general usage speed, you aren't going to get too much further without spending more than its worth. I agree that the AM2 upgrade board is more a gimmick than an option.

If you wan't some more clockspeed I guess you could get a San Diego 3700+ for $75 and get it to like 2.8 and have like a 20% performance increase. It wouldn't be too bad because you could probably sell your 3000+ for like $40-50.

If you want a dual core, the 939 chips are getting kind of expensive. You could probably find an Opteron 165 or X2 3800+ 939 for around $150 if you look hard enough, probably cheaper used.

You may want to consider moving completely to AM2 though, you can easily get an X2 CPU, 2gb DDR2667, and a motherboard for less than $300.

i have one of those AsRock boards, been thinking the same thing. It would cost you about $100+ additional to upgrade to a complete AM2 system, so either way you are spending $600, or $700.

of course, you could tinker with the amount to DDR2 to begin with, maybe only 1 gig to start out, thus lowering the cost a bit.

i say go for it because of this, all the parts you get would come over to a pure AM2 system with the exception of the $30 + shipping riser card later on (easy sell i am sure for another adventurous clocker). so it isn't like you are buying parts that are deadend.

the one benefit is the AM2 slugs seem to clock much better, so you could have the AsRock combo just pumping out some horsepowa..............

i found the AsRock to be a good clocker too, and with the lower voltage requirements on the newer parts (especially the ramski), you should have no problems getting a righteously fast rig going here.

laterz,

baldy

to the best of my knowlege i dont beleive my 939 dual will take ddr2 ... so at that point you only have to worry about the daughter board for the am2

i think the asrock vista board does take the ddr2

The AM2 daughter board has slots for DDR2, AM2 chips will not work without DDR2, since the memory controller is on the chip.

I think 600-700 is too high unless you actually are talking about building an entirely new system with new case, hdds, video card, etc. If you just want an AM2 upgrade, you can get X2 CPU, 2gb of ram, and a motherboard that can do 2.8-3.0 ghz with a 3600+ X2 for less than $300.