Small upgrade before I go Directx10

Killing2Live

Killing2Live

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Hello everybody my current setup is this:
AMD Athlon 3200+ Venice
Epox Nforce4 Ultra 939 mobo
2x512mb Kingston HyperX DDR400
Nvidia 7600GT OC

Before I do the switch to AM2 or Core Duo whatever is better in about half a years time I want to squeeze the life out of my 939 for a tad longer.

I was thinking an Opteron 165 with 1x2gb OCZ Performance

If I spend around $150 on the processor and around $180 on the ram that comes out to about $330 which is reasonable for a short to mid term power boost.

What do the experts think, any input would be appreciated!
If you find anything better in those price ranges feel free to throw them at me!

PS: The $80 OEM AMD 64 4000+ at Newegg was very very tempting
 
If you are thinking about getting a boost in games that take advantage of multiple CPUs then a dual core CPU would be better than a higher clocked single core CPU (such as Crysis or UT2007).
Here you can see a 2GHz dual core out performing a 2.4GHz single core CPU in Quake 4 which can do SMP (multi-threaded). Although with the GFX settings turned up high they all end up performing about the same waiting for the GFX card to finish it's job (at least in Quake 4 that is the case).

But the dual core won't help single threaded games except for removing any load from programs running in the background making the game a bit smoother. The 4000+ looks nice but with a lot of up coming games being multi-threaded it would probably be better to get a dual core.
 
listen to asus, he speaks truth.

go for dual core - no reason not to.
 
Thank you for the suggestions! (people over at Hard Forum are stubborn about giving advice)

The only reason not to is I am not sure how long I am going to keep this system before I upgrade yet again. I dont want to overspend on a 939 cpu and normal ddr ram when in less than a year I might have to jump to AM2 and ddr2 and throw all that stuff in the trash.

What do you think? Is this a reasonable upgrade? Or should I just wait until I make the full jump to a new platform? Its either keep my money and wait or decide how much I should spend to hold me out until then. And I am a student so money is hard to come buy.
 
I would wait.

Does your current machine have 16x PCI-Express or AGP as the graphics slot? If it has PCI-Express and you do decide to put some money into this system the order I would consider is GFX card then CPU and last memory (because it isn't worth buying more DDR memory if you might switch to DDR2 sometime soon).
 
i agree with asus. Am2 isn that huge of a difference imo opinion but im sure there is features that are new in it that idk. mabye i just dont notice it lol. anyways i'd go with a graphics card upgrade also like asus said;if you have pci-e that is.
 
Yes I have PCI-E but I wouldnt want to upgrade my graphics card right now with directx10 right around the corner unless it was a 8800GT/X but thats too much for me. The only reason for this sudden upgrade is because I wanted to install Vista and that requires 2gb of ram for gaming so Im not sure what I want to do but for now I think I will just wait it out. Any other suggestions still muchly appreciated. Thanks!
 
Hey Asus and others, do you think that if I upgrade my 939 pin mobo I can make the lifespan to around a year?

Basically what Im asking is do you think that 939 will be able to compete in a year or so or do you think I should safe up for a Am2 and ddr2 ram just for future proofing?
 
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