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Upgrade path
I currently have a Barton 2500+, which is pretty decent, but the DVD recodes
are a tad slow. I was thinking of upgrading to a ASUS SLI & 3500+, but the 3dMark scores look pretty much identical (2026 vs. 2097) to mine and the CPU scores are not phenomenally different (2793 vs. 3600). I'm surprised there is so little difference, but I don't know the stepping of the comparison CPU. Ideally, I would just overclock my Barton to 3200, but I have an old ASUS MB and the Northbridge can't handle the heat. I thought if I upgraded now, I could pop a better chip in later, when the prices fall. But with so little difference and AMD going to Socket M next year, I'm vacillating. I'd appreciate comments from anyone with a similar upgrade path or X64 experience. TIA |
#2
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In article , Bill Stock says...
I currently have a Barton 2500+, which is pretty decent, but the DVD recodes are a tad slow. I was thinking of upgrading to a ASUS SLI & 3500+, but the 3dMark scores look pretty much identical (2026 vs. 2097) to mine and the CPU scores are not phenomenally different (2793 vs. 3600). I'm surprised there is so little difference, but I don't know the stepping of the comparison CPU. Ideally, I would just overclock my Barton to 3200, but I have an old ASUS MB and the Northbridge can't handle the heat. I thought if I upgraded now, I could pop a better chip in later, when the prices fall. But with so little difference and AMD going to Socket M next year, I'm vacillating. I'd appreciate comments from anyone with a similar upgrade path or X64 experience. Intel DO beat AMD for multimedia stuff wuch as WMV9 decoding and encoding DVDs. If you're not gaming then socket LGA775 with a Pentium 4 531 is a good cheap option. Although it runs at 3GHz, it'll ramp up another 500-700MHz with a little voltage tweaking on the stock cooler. Current advice for AMD is to go to Socket 939. An AMD 64 3200+ will nicely overclock up by around 30% and is a very good buy. It has all the SSE3 stuff etc of the high end AMDs. Both options around £120 GBP for the CPU. If you want dual Core then the Pentium D 820 (LGA775) or Athlon 64 3700 - both options around £180 for the CPU. -- Conor "You're not married, you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart, Extras. |
#3
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Conor wrote:
[...] Intel DO beat AMD for multimedia stuff wuch as WMV9 decoding and encoding DVDs. This isn't entirely clear cut. Which one is faster depends heavily on the codec and system settings. For example, the P4 does better (on average) with WMV, whereas the K8 does better (on average) with XviD. Or possibly the other way round, I can't remember The difference MHz-to-rating is almost always less than 10%, and less than 5% most of the time, much closer than the K7 days when the P4 could be up to twice as fast. Unfortunately, it's doesn't seem to be possible to say whether a particular system will do better than another one in a particular case, as even for quite similar systems, different review sites get quite different rankings. Presumably this is due to different codec and system settings (quality settings, RAM latency, etc). Oddly, the K8's almost always do better at audio (MP3/OGG) encoding than the equivalent P4, though the margins are still quite small. [...] If you want dual Core then the Pentium D 820 (LGA775) or Athlon 64 3700 - both options around £180 for the CPU. I think you mean the 3800+ -- Michael Brown Add michael@ to emboss.co.nz ---+--- My inbox is always open |
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