Dual Core Mainboard Quiestion

Hello,

I have a 4400+ X2 that I'm running on an MSI NEO plat 2 (MS-7025). Is this
cpu limited by this board? I'm about to upgrade my video card and, given
that I'm not a gamer (business apps, surfing, DVD, TV, photoshop, etc.), I'm
ok with AGP unless I would realize a significant performance increase by
switching to PCI-E.

Thanks, Hark

You'd probably see a decent boost with an Nforce4 mobo considering the MSI
is 2 generations behind. And, SLI would be avalable if you are a heavy
gamer.
Besides the SIS 755X chipset doesn't seem to offer much in the way of extras
or overclocking functions.

"Harkhof" wrote in message
news:C24Qf.85159$bF.9420@dukeread07...
Hello,

I have a 4400+ X2 that I'm running on an MSI NEO plat 2 (MS-7025). Is this
cpu limited by this board? I'm about to upgrade my video card and, given
that I'm not a gamer (business apps, surfing, DVD, TV, photoshop, etc.),
I'm
ok with AGP unless I would realize a significant performance increase by
switching to PCI-E.

Thanks, Hark

I doubt that you'd see a major CPU performance increase by going from your
present nForce3 board to a newer nForce4 one.

I went from an AGP board (Asus A8V Deluxe, Via K8T800 Pro chipset) to an
nForce4 one (Asus A8N-SLI) mainly so I could switch to PCI-E graphics. There
may not be much point to that if you're not buying a high-end graphics card,
useful mainly for gaming.

On the other hand, the choice of graphics cards is much better in PCI-E. As
a respectable PCI-E mainboard can be had for less than $100 (in the US), I'm
inclined to recommend getting one.


Address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

"Harkhof" wrote in message
news:C24Qf.85159$bF.9420@dukeread07...
Hello,

I have a 4400+ X2 that I'm running on an MSI NEO plat 2 (MS-7025). Is this
cpu limited by this board? I'm about to upgrade my video card and, given
that I'm not a gamer (business apps, surfing, DVD, TV, photoshop, etc.),
I'm ok with AGP unless I would realize a significant performance increase
by switching to PCI-E.

Thanks, Hark

On Fri, 10 Mar 2006 02:52:13 GMT, "dawg" don't
wrote:

You'd probably see a decent boost with an Nforce4 mobo considering the MSI
is 2 generations behind. And, SLI would be avalable if you are a heavy
gamer.
Besides the SIS 755X chipset doesn't seem to offer much in the way of extras
or overclocking functions.


He did say he's not a gamer, so I doubt SLI, and overclocking
would be of any use.


"Harkhof" wrote in message
news:C24Qf.85159$bF.9420@dukeread07...
Hello,

I have a 4400+ X2 that I'm running on an MSI NEO plat 2 (MS-7025). Is this
cpu limited by this board? I'm about to upgrade my video card and, given
that I'm not a gamer (business apps, surfing, DVD, TV, photoshop, etc.),
I'm
ok with AGP unless I would realize a significant performance increase by
switching to PCI-E.

Thanks, Hark

"dawg" don't wrote in message
...
You'd probably see a decent boost with an Nforce4 mobo considering the MSI
is 2 generations behind. And, SLI would be avalable if you are a heavy
gamer.
Besides the SIS 755X chipset doesn't seem to offer much in the way of
extras
or overclocking functions.

Hi dawg. I don't have a SIS chipset, and were I to go that route, I
definitely would go w/nforce4, since my current nforce chipset has served me
well.

Thanks,
Hark


"Harkhof" wrote in message
news:C24Qf.85159$bF.9420@dukeread07...
Hello,

I have a 4400+ X2 that I'm running on an MSI NEO plat 2 (MS-7025). Is
this
cpu limited by this board? I'm about to upgrade my video card and, given
that I'm not a gamer (business apps, surfing, DVD, TV, photoshop, etc.),
I'm
ok with AGP unless I would realize a significant performance increase by
switching to PCI-E.

Thanks, Hark

"Bob Knowlden" wrote in message
...
I doubt that you'd see a major CPU performance increase by going from your
present nForce3 board to a newer nForce4 one.

I went from an AGP board (Asus A8V Deluxe, Via K8T800 Pro chipset) to an
nForce4 one (Asus A8N-SLI) mainly so I could switch to PCI-E graphics.
There may not be much point to that if you're not buying a high-end
graphics card, useful mainly for gaming.

On the other hand, the choice of graphics cards is much better in PCI-E.
As a respectable PCI-E mainboard can be had for less than $100 (in the
US), I'm inclined to recommend getting one.

Mainly, I want to upgrade my aging AIW 9000 Pro. I've been threatening to
upgrade for well over a month now. Since even before I picked up the CPU.
I've just not been sure what direction to take. I've tried some different
cards, including stand alone tuners. I suppose the best card I've tried was
the AIW x800xt, but given that I don't play games (well, sometimes), that
seems to be a bit overkill. Unfortunately, the AIW cards are confined to the
higher end card like the AIW x800xt (at least highend for my needs). Not
that I want to go the low road. Is the video technology in PCI-E superior to
AGP (I may have to take this one to the ATI group...)? I've heard a little
about ATI's "Avivo" technology, but not quite sure what that's about and how
it improves video playback. And then there's the fact that "Avivo" is
available only in PCI-E.

Thanks,
Hark

Address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

"Harkhof" wrote in message
news:C24Qf.85159$bF.9420@dukeread07...
Hello,

I have a 4400+ X2 that I'm running on an MSI NEO plat 2 (MS-7025). Is
this cpu limited by this board? I'm about to upgrade my video card and,
given that I'm not a gamer (business apps, surfing, DVD, TV, photoshop,
etc.), I'm ok with AGP unless I would realize a significant performance
increase by switching to PCI-E.

Thanks, Hark

"Bill" wrote in message
.. .
Harkhof wrote:

I have a 4400+ X2 that I'm running on an MSI NEO plat 2 (MS-7025). Is this
cpu limited by this board? I'm about to upgrade my video card and, given
that I'm not a gamer (business apps, surfing, DVD, TV, photoshop, etc.),
I'm
ok with AGP unless I would realize a significant performance increase by
switching to PCI-E.

Does it do what you want at the speed you want?

Well, I was expecting somewhat more out of this chip, at least multi-tasking
wise. I upgrade from a 3500+ in this same board. I was thinking perhaps it
might do better in a newer board. I also plan to, at some point, do a clean
install of XP, since I've changed the CPU, several HDs and tried out several
video cards (generally imaged back to the pre-video card install state, but
not in all cases).



Gamers want performance, so they drive the upgrade market. But business
and casual users often don't need the latest/greatest stuff. Dual-core
may be an exception because they help with multitasking programs, but
you have to ask yourself - will a new motherboard offer a significant
performance boost?

That's the $64,000 question. I do alot of multi-tasking, often cpu intensive
operations, thus the upgrade. But I do notice sometimes when doing something
such as encoding, merely moving a window around seems a little jerky. Even
though I may have had some other programs open, non-active, I really
expected better. The CPU utility from AMD's web site wasn't showing both
cores maxed out (although sometimes peaking). I did have cool 'n' quiet
enabled at the time (still do...).


I doubt it would. Perhaps you can spend the money on more RAM or hard
drive space?

Yes. I've just installed 3 250GB SATA drives (to replace 5 drives of various
sizes). I haven't put the 3rd drive in yet, as I plan to re-install xp on
that one (well, until I get more time, I plan to image my current xp install
to the new drive. I left my ATA IDE boot drive in the system). As far as the
RAM, I've already got 1GB. I suppose I could push it up to 2GB, but I'm not
sure that's really necessary. Also, remember, my purpose in considering the
upgrade is for the video card, probably an AIW. But I went into all that in
my response to Bob. And, although I don't want to take the low road, I also
want quality, performance and headroom for the future.

Thanks for any observations,
Hark

Whoops. I forgot to mention that I did receive a strange error message that
made me suspicious (it didn't look like a typical windows message and the
"details" of the message were garbage. A virus scan didn't pick anything up
(I'm very security concious and am behind a hardware firewall, plain text
email and news...). The below url shows a screen shot Iposted this earlier
to no response:

http://members.cox.net/kcrno/index.htm

Thanks,
Hark


"Bill" wrote in message
.. .
Harkhof wrote:

I have a 4400+ X2 that I'm running on an MSI NEO plat 2 (MS-7025). Is this
cpu limited by this board? I'm about to upgrade my video card and, given
that I'm not a gamer (business apps, surfing, DVD, TV, photoshop, etc.),
I'm
ok with AGP unless I would realize a significant performance increase by
switching to PCI-E.

Does it do what you want at the speed you want?

Gamers want performance, so they drive the upgrade market. But business
and casual users often don't need the latest/greatest stuff. Dual-core
may be an exception because they help with multitasking programs, but
you have to ask yourself - will a new motherboard offer a significant
performance boost?

I doubt it would. Perhaps you can spend the money on more RAM or hard
drive space?

On Thu, 09 Mar 2006 18:49:47 -0600, Harkhof wrote:

Hello,

I have a 4400+ X2 that I'm running on an MSI NEO plat 2 (MS-7025). Is this
cpu limited by this board? I'm about to upgrade my video card and, given
that I'm not a gamer (business apps, surfing, DVD, TV, photoshop, etc.),
I'm ok with AGP unless I would realize a significant performance increase
by switching to PCI-E.

Thanks, Hark

There is 0 difference in performance between an Nforce3 board (the Neo2
which you have) and an Nforce 4 board (the Neo4). The only advantages of
the Nforce4 are PCI-E graphics which you don't need. The Nforce4 also has
SATA-II instead of SATA-I, but that makes very little difference because
there aren't any drives that are limited by the 150MByte/second bandwidth
of SATA-I. I have both boards, here are the results from hdparm:


MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum (SATA-I)
Timing cached reads: 3376 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1687.89 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 174 MB in 3.03 seconds = 57.38 MB/sec

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum (SATA-II)
Timing cached reads: 3584 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1791.89 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 200 MB in 3.02 seconds = 66.31 MB/sec

The difference here is due entirely to the drives, the Neo4 system has a
Seagate drive, the Neo2 has a Western Digital.

"Bill" wrote in message ...
Harkhof wrote:


"Bill" wrote in message
...
Harkhof wrote:

I have a 4400+ X2 that I'm running on an MSI NEO plat 2 (MS-7025). Is
this
cpu limited by this board? I'm about to upgrade my video card and, given
that I'm not a gamer (business apps, surfing, DVD, TV, photoshop, etc.),
I'm
ok with AGP unless I would realize a significant performance increase by
switching to PCI-E.

Does it do what you want at the speed you want?

Well, I was expecting somewhat more out of this chip, at least
multi-tasking
wise. I upgrade from a 3500+ in this same board. I was thinking perhaps it
might do better in a newer board. I also plan to, at some point, do a
clean
install of XP, since I've changed the CPU, several HDs and tried out
several
video cards (generally imaged back to the pre-video card install state,
but
not in all cases).

You have to remember that there's a lot more to a computer than just the
processor. A dual-core can help with multitasking, but the rest of the
system is the same. You need to upgrade memory, video, and chipset in
order to see a noticeable increase in performance.

Yes, I agree. However, it was the multi tasking I was referring to.


Gamers want performance, so they drive the upgrade market. But business
and casual users often don't need the latest/greatest stuff. Dual-core
may be an exception because they help with multitasking programs, but
you have to ask yourself - will a new motherboard offer a significant
performance boost?

That's the $64,000 question. I do alot of multi-tasking, often cpu
intensive
operations, thus the upgrade. But I do notice sometimes when doing
something
such as encoding, merely moving a window around seems a little jerky. Even
though I may have had some other programs open, non-active, I really
expected better. The CPU utility from AMD's web site wasn't showing both
cores maxed out (although sometimes peaking). I did have cool 'n' quiet
enabled at the time (still do...).

I bought a dual-core because I multitask a lot as well, but I didn't
expect the CPU to completely eliminate performance bottlenecks.

You need to find out where the bottlenecks are before you can make a big
improvement. For me, the biggest performance issue is hard drive speed.
That's why I run a RAID 0 setup with two drives.

I don't believe RAID is a necessity in my case. A RAM upgrade may help,
although I have 1 GB of corsair RAM now.


If video bandwidth is your bottleneck, then getting a PCI-express board
with a good video card may help. Depends on the apps you run though.

I just finished installing the AIW X800XT yesterday, and it seems to have
helped some of my issues, although I've had 2 BSODs relating to the new card
(while coming out of hibernation). I'll be investigating that when I have
time and possibly trying the Omega drivers.

Thanks,
Hark