Athlon II X2 245 vs. Athlon 64 3700+?

[shrike37]

I have an older computer that is on the fritz. I am wondering how much of a difference I would see by upgrading to an AMD Athlon II X2 245 Regor 2.9GHz vs. my older Athlon 62 3700+ 2.2GHz San Diego?

Obviously it is dual core, so that will be very nice. But with programs that are not optimized for 2 cores, will I notice a significant change?

 

[SeasonalEclipse]

It will be a huge leap but, you will need a new board and RAM as well since a 939 board and DDR memory wont work with the AthlonX2.

 

[=XAF=AfterShock]

it'll be instantly noticeable. I went from an athlon 64 4000+ san diego O/C to 3GHZ to an athlon ii x2 250 regor 3GHZ and I knew as soon as I got everything in installed in my case and started running through the vista 64 setup that it took less than half the time not to mention the diff in gaming and that was even before I pushed the chip to 4ghz. weigh in the new instructions, ddr2 or ddr3 and the 45nm die size and you can figure 4x more power than a single core s939 chip. and probably half the price of what you paid for the chip. if your looking for a new mobo and ram stay way from any mobo that uses a 770 chipset and stay away from g skill ripjaw memory they don't play well with any am3 mobos.

 

[96s10]

Heck I went from a 4000+ X2 to a 250 X2 and it was night and day.

 

[QuietIce]

to the Forums!

I have an older computer that is on the fritz. I am wondering how much of a difference I would see by upgrading to an AMD Athlon II X2 245 Regor 2.9GHz vs. my older Athlon 62 3700+ 2.2GHz San Diego?

Obviously it is dual core, so that will be very nice. But with programs that are not optimized for 2 cores, will I notice a significant change?

Even with single-thread programs you'll notice a difference. The architecture of the Athlon II is much more efficient and runs things much quicker than the older s939 CPUs clock for clock, and you'll be going from 2.2 to 2.9 GHz if you leave it at stock. Also, it's very easy to overclock the newer CPUs even if you leave the voltages at default. IMO, it's worth the upgrade.

If you tend to keep systems a long time, as I do, you might want to look around for some of the newer USB 3 and SATA 6 Gb boards that are out now. Good future proofing for whatever HDD and peripheral upgrades you might do over the next few years ...

 

[hall1k]

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If you tend to keep systems a long time, as I do, you might want to look around for some of the newer USB 3 and SATA 6 Gb boards that are out now. Good future proofing for whatever HDD and peripheral upgrades you might do over the next few years ...

I think if he's looking at future proofing he'd be best served by picking up a processor that's not at the absolute bottom of the market right now (Regor 245's are like $50 on newegg). Probably your best bet for amd would be the phenom ii x4 range, plus get a motherboard that supports am3+ (backwards compatible with am3).