- Joined
- Aug 16, 2004
As this is a partial doublepost pls forgive me for doing this but i did not want this post to be overlooked. Also i try to make my argument a bit more visible as in the initial post.
This is a simple story of the socket 754, why it is the best bang for your buck and why you should'nt be a follower to the Hardware Manufacturers Hype.
The essence of this post: don't wait if you want to upgrade, buy now, do not buy because of hype or insane highscore screenshots in benchmarks, buy cheap, validate the products before you buy and last but not least know what to expect.
All that said i give you some practical advice what to buy in the following as its my humble opinion that you can't go wrong with what i am telling you now. Most of the people following discussions here and over at other boards will find this information redundant but its not meant to be significant to them anyway, the advice is meant to be a best bang for your buck upgrade path for those that want to upgrade now but do not know what to do.
While i think that i am right i know that there are always details one cannot know so pls don't go out and buy something before you can validate the information, i will point out later how to do this.
Simply spoken the essence of this post is this:
Go and by yourself an s754 system even if you are now in waiting line for some top notch 90nm socket939 chip to come by.
Why do i say that?
Lets ask a question first:
Why wait another couple of months for a s939 solution when you can have some decent (maybe equivalent) performance in the so called value socket 754 of Amd?
Some if not most would answer with an argument around dual channel.
But imho there is no point in running dual channel ram configs if your benefit isn't scaling with the cost for the new system. If you do already own high end dc ram the matter is of course different. But to make most out of it you need a decent oc'able mobo. You also want a good 939 cpu, not some entry level chip. Currently there are no nobrainers in the s939 family that will overclock like the s754 Newcastle CG.
One one more point why not to get s939:
I don't feel like spending hundreds of $ for technology that will be obsolete in the near future. Dozens of ppl keep telling me the opposite that going with the s939 is future proof. I don't feel so. By the time (next year or even 2006) you feel like upgrading your system things like dual pci-e sli, new chipsets like nforce4 and ddr2 will force you to drive even more money to the hardware vendors. You can get a good s939 now and have a great time with it but its not futureproof. So why 754? Its not futureproof either but you got a great bargain in it. And if you spend 250$ today you will be in a better position to spend your money next year when the next gen cpus und boards are out - not to speak of ddr2 which performance will improve over time.
So what are the main reasons to go with a socket that AMD calls its value path?
Reason no.1:
Performance
People coming form a Athlon XP sys like me - even those running mobile bartons @ 2.6ghz and above - will get a good amount of benefits in upgrading to the s754 A64. And i am not speaking of any future 64bit OS or app hype i am speaking of goold old 32bit Appz. Go and google some Benchmarks and find out for yourself how an A64 2800+ is doing compared to an old xp or mobile barton even if the are overclocked. Now imagine what a [email protected] and above can do to your everyday gaming and working... no need to go the 939 path as you need plenty of cash to buy a cpu that is equivalent of doing so good. And Dual Channel Ram does'nt make up for this raw cpu processing power. Of course after spending some money for the latest Crucial or Corsair etc.etc. your sandra bars will be larger but everyday apps and games don't gain so much performance that you will run out praising dc for its powerful benefits. In the end you will find yourself posting screens of your scores because that is the benefit that you have over some guy running his ram in single channel because else - lets place a large bet here - he will be as perfectly satisfied as you are. Who bothers some frames in Doom when those frames come with a 300$ pricetag? We are not talking smooth fps vs slideshow here we are talking about an indistinguishable experience that is just recognized in numbers and that is thus hype. Its hype imho because the benefits you get don't scale with the money you spend. Not roughly even. Believe or do not believe in benchmarks but when you run Doom3 or HL2 Source on your rig you WILL experience (speaking of the [H] experience not measured in numbers) no difference in your everyday gaming, surfing, calculating or working. If all what you want is a unbelivable fast rig in 3dMark or a horrific highscore in Sandra than go ahead and get yourself the cream of the market but you will find yourself outclassed pretty soon as technology in the pc consumer market advances very fast now and will advance even faster in the next years. Have some money by your side when the next big thing turns around
That said i come to Reason no.2:
Price. Its simple than that. Don't you want to spend your bucks on a new gen gpu like the x800 or the nv6800 series? Why spend all your money on a pricey 939/Intel rig just to keep your old gpu?
Here's the math:
Buy a 754 mobo with a working pci/agp lock. A cheap nforce3 board like the Chaintech VNF3-250 (70$) will get the job done (use a newer bios than 1.0).
Now get a A64 3000+ CG for 160$ (while not guaranteed most of them will do 2.5ghz on air easily not running hot with a bit more vcore)
Get the CPU retail and stay with the stock hsf. Do yourself a favor and get some decent thermal paste like AS5 (5$) as it will help you a bit for the oc.
Stay with your DDR266/333/400 ram, even if its a piece of crap cl3 or cl2.5 because the performance of the A64 single channel ram will not scale when lowering latency or upping ram mhz no matter what others are telling you. This is because of the on die mem controller. And you will even find yourself loosing 1:1 ram speed in favor of upping the htt(fsb) of your system. You should also favor one over two and two over three sticks of ram. The CG Revision should help with the old s754 mem compatibility issues.
Of course you can get coolnpricey PC9999 Ram for much money but you will find yourself not even touching the max of your ram with the s754. But no reason to cry as you will run circles with your so called not futureproof rig around much higher rated (and hyped) Dual Channel Rigs.
With the money saved the next step would be to spend some on a decent new gen graphics card and pair it with the s754 A64. You will find your (oced or not oced) A64 to be a decent partner for a x800 or a 6800. My bet is that the nvidia 6800gt would be almost perfect speaking in terms of price performance.
But you could also wait for the new 6600gt or x700 line.
Just try it. If all fails and you do feel like getting a s939/P4 is the way to go you can always sell you system on ebay but i doubt it
Don't just always jump on the train if some guys are getting 35000 3dmarks with their watercooled rigs. Just calculate and inform yourself. Read Boards like this one or the [H]Forum and XtremeSystemsboard. Read the sigs as they are telling a lot of stuff. Don't trust two or three posters. Don't trust screens of horrific ocs as they are not always telling the whole story (speaking of stability). If there are a dozen or more posters saying the same thing you can start with a slight believement into their statements.
So now you have my humble advice on being perfectly fitted for the next months not spending more than 250$. Keep in mind that the price can differ if you want better (air)cooling like slk948u or a zalman7000CU but its not really necessary as the 3000+CG runs with stock air (we are speaking of a cheapo aluminium cooler) @2.5ghz. There are enough posts to validate this. Even if you can't get 2.5ghz and find yourself being stuck at 2.3-25 (which is uncommon) you will be perfectly outfitted for the next games or whatever you want to do with your rig.
On the other hand you can always shell out your hard earned money for some benchmarking galore. Don't understand me wrong. The benchmarking community is a great thing and if you want your system to be an argument so that you can post your best oc results in SuperPI,Sandra and stuff go ahead. If you find yourself perfectly satisfied with a Newcastle [email protected] or a [email protected] or above (and i think most readers will) don't shell out your money for nothing..
Thats my two cents about the s754 and why not to upgrade to it because of dual channel hype, 90nm cpus or 3 more fps in Doom3@1600x1200 resolution (speaking of which most won't even recognize no matter what the hype tells you
).
This is a simple story of the socket 754, why it is the best bang for your buck and why you should'nt be a follower to the Hardware Manufacturers Hype.
The essence of this post: don't wait if you want to upgrade, buy now, do not buy because of hype or insane highscore screenshots in benchmarks, buy cheap, validate the products before you buy and last but not least know what to expect.
All that said i give you some practical advice what to buy in the following as its my humble opinion that you can't go wrong with what i am telling you now. Most of the people following discussions here and over at other boards will find this information redundant but its not meant to be significant to them anyway, the advice is meant to be a best bang for your buck upgrade path for those that want to upgrade now but do not know what to do.
While i think that i am right i know that there are always details one cannot know so pls don't go out and buy something before you can validate the information, i will point out later how to do this.
Simply spoken the essence of this post is this:
Go and by yourself an s754 system even if you are now in waiting line for some top notch 90nm socket939 chip to come by.
Why do i say that?
Lets ask a question first:
Why wait another couple of months for a s939 solution when you can have some decent (maybe equivalent) performance in the so called value socket 754 of Amd?
Some if not most would answer with an argument around dual channel.
But imho there is no point in running dual channel ram configs if your benefit isn't scaling with the cost for the new system. If you do already own high end dc ram the matter is of course different. But to make most out of it you need a decent oc'able mobo. You also want a good 939 cpu, not some entry level chip. Currently there are no nobrainers in the s939 family that will overclock like the s754 Newcastle CG.
One one more point why not to get s939:
I don't feel like spending hundreds of $ for technology that will be obsolete in the near future. Dozens of ppl keep telling me the opposite that going with the s939 is future proof. I don't feel so. By the time (next year or even 2006) you feel like upgrading your system things like dual pci-e sli, new chipsets like nforce4 and ddr2 will force you to drive even more money to the hardware vendors. You can get a good s939 now and have a great time with it but its not futureproof. So why 754? Its not futureproof either but you got a great bargain in it. And if you spend 250$ today you will be in a better position to spend your money next year when the next gen cpus und boards are out - not to speak of ddr2 which performance will improve over time.
So what are the main reasons to go with a socket that AMD calls its value path?
Reason no.1:
Performance
People coming form a Athlon XP sys like me - even those running mobile bartons @ 2.6ghz and above - will get a good amount of benefits in upgrading to the s754 A64. And i am not speaking of any future 64bit OS or app hype i am speaking of goold old 32bit Appz. Go and google some Benchmarks and find out for yourself how an A64 2800+ is doing compared to an old xp or mobile barton even if the are overclocked. Now imagine what a [email protected] and above can do to your everyday gaming and working... no need to go the 939 path as you need plenty of cash to buy a cpu that is equivalent of doing so good. And Dual Channel Ram does'nt make up for this raw cpu processing power. Of course after spending some money for the latest Crucial or Corsair etc.etc. your sandra bars will be larger but everyday apps and games don't gain so much performance that you will run out praising dc for its powerful benefits. In the end you will find yourself posting screens of your scores because that is the benefit that you have over some guy running his ram in single channel because else - lets place a large bet here - he will be as perfectly satisfied as you are. Who bothers some frames in Doom when those frames come with a 300$ pricetag? We are not talking smooth fps vs slideshow here we are talking about an indistinguishable experience that is just recognized in numbers and that is thus hype. Its hype imho because the benefits you get don't scale with the money you spend. Not roughly even. Believe or do not believe in benchmarks but when you run Doom3 or HL2 Source on your rig you WILL experience (speaking of the [H] experience not measured in numbers) no difference in your everyday gaming, surfing, calculating or working. If all what you want is a unbelivable fast rig in 3dMark or a horrific highscore in Sandra than go ahead and get yourself the cream of the market but you will find yourself outclassed pretty soon as technology in the pc consumer market advances very fast now and will advance even faster in the next years. Have some money by your side when the next big thing turns around
That said i come to Reason no.2:
Price. Its simple than that. Don't you want to spend your bucks on a new gen gpu like the x800 or the nv6800 series? Why spend all your money on a pricey 939/Intel rig just to keep your old gpu?
Here's the math:
Buy a 754 mobo with a working pci/agp lock. A cheap nforce3 board like the Chaintech VNF3-250 (70$) will get the job done (use a newer bios than 1.0).
Now get a A64 3000+ CG for 160$ (while not guaranteed most of them will do 2.5ghz on air easily not running hot with a bit more vcore)
Get the CPU retail and stay with the stock hsf. Do yourself a favor and get some decent thermal paste like AS5 (5$) as it will help you a bit for the oc.
Stay with your DDR266/333/400 ram, even if its a piece of crap cl3 or cl2.5 because the performance of the A64 single channel ram will not scale when lowering latency or upping ram mhz no matter what others are telling you. This is because of the on die mem controller. And you will even find yourself loosing 1:1 ram speed in favor of upping the htt(fsb) of your system. You should also favor one over two and two over three sticks of ram. The CG Revision should help with the old s754 mem compatibility issues.
Of course you can get coolnpricey PC9999 Ram for much money but you will find yourself not even touching the max of your ram with the s754. But no reason to cry as you will run circles with your so called not futureproof rig around much higher rated (and hyped) Dual Channel Rigs.
With the money saved the next step would be to spend some on a decent new gen graphics card and pair it with the s754 A64. You will find your (oced or not oced) A64 to be a decent partner for a x800 or a 6800. My bet is that the nvidia 6800gt would be almost perfect speaking in terms of price performance.
But you could also wait for the new 6600gt or x700 line.
Just try it. If all fails and you do feel like getting a s939/P4 is the way to go you can always sell you system on ebay but i doubt it
Don't just always jump on the train if some guys are getting 35000 3dmarks with their watercooled rigs. Just calculate and inform yourself. Read Boards like this one or the [H]Forum and XtremeSystemsboard. Read the sigs as they are telling a lot of stuff. Don't trust two or three posters. Don't trust screens of horrific ocs as they are not always telling the whole story (speaking of stability). If there are a dozen or more posters saying the same thing you can start with a slight believement into their statements.
So now you have my humble advice on being perfectly fitted for the next months not spending more than 250$. Keep in mind that the price can differ if you want better (air)cooling like slk948u or a zalman7000CU but its not really necessary as the 3000+CG runs with stock air (we are speaking of a cheapo aluminium cooler) @2.5ghz. There are enough posts to validate this. Even if you can't get 2.5ghz and find yourself being stuck at 2.3-25 (which is uncommon) you will be perfectly outfitted for the next games or whatever you want to do with your rig.
On the other hand you can always shell out your hard earned money for some benchmarking galore. Don't understand me wrong. The benchmarking community is a great thing and if you want your system to be an argument so that you can post your best oc results in SuperPI,Sandra and stuff go ahead. If you find yourself perfectly satisfied with a Newcastle [email protected] or a [email protected] or above (and i think most readers will) don't shell out your money for nothing..
Thats my two cents about the s754 and why not to upgrade to it because of dual channel hype, 90nm cpus or 3 more fps in Doom3@1600x1200 resolution (speaking of which most won't even recognize no matter what the hype tells you
).
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Great original post. Reality checks are few and far between on boards like this. My new mantra is "Performance must scale with price".
