socket selection

[n1ghtsh00ter]

I'm looking to purchase a new pc,
but am having the hard decision of going either 754 or 939.
If i go for a 939 i will be buying the 3200
If i go for a 754 i will be buying the 3400

Can anyone recommend which deal i should go for, and what would be the best motherboards to go with these?

 

[Shamrock]

First of all, Go with the socket 939 and the 3200. The only reason is because Socket 939 will be the easiest to upgrade in the following years. Second of all, are you looking to be using a PCI-Express videocard or an AGP card? That would help us greatly.

 

[n1ghtsh00ter]

Prob AGP, ive been looking at the albatron 6800GT for a while now.
I havent seen many PCI cards for around that price that can give better performance. unless you can think of one?

 

[oni_666]

I've got socket 754, but given the choice at the time of my last upgrade I would have gone for socket 939.

I think its pretty much AMD's idea that S-754 is gonna be for the budget processors, such as the new sempron, and S-939 is gonna be for the more expensive processors such as the FX-55 and lower.

Since socket 754 processors only support a single channel on chip memory controller and S-939 support a dual channel, You'd be best going for 939, since you should see quite a difference in memory bandwidth, Not exactly double, but a good 30-50% difference.
S-754 memory bandwidth is currently about 3000-3200Mb/s whereas using dual channel memory in a 939 board expect about 4000+Mb/s.

As for the motherboard,,,check out some reveiews...google for them.
My board the Asus K8VSE Deluxe (VIA chipset) is Ultra stable, and I have'nt had a single problem with the board.

Your best bet for either socket, is to look at Asus or Abit, Personally my thoughts are ..
Reliability with fairly fast speed...Via chipset.
Some instabilities but very fast....Nforce 3 or 4.

But some reviews rate the Via chipset faster than the Nforce.

 

[Asus]

The only difference between the platforms really is what you can upgrade to. If you pick AGP then they both are limited to that. You will be able to upgrade to a much higher CPU model on the Socket 939.

But if you are going to upgrade your gfx card in the future as well as the CPU then you probably will be getting a new board anyway.
The 3400+ (2.4GHz) will perform a lot better than the S939 3200+ (2Ghz) will, unless you OC.

It's up to you. Personally I would get a PCI-Express S939 system along with the 6600GT, 6800GT or the X800L and a 90nm CPU. Otherwise I would get the S754 system. But that's me.

If you will only be upgrading the CPU in the future and not the GFX card then a AGP S939 platform really looks good too.

 

[n1ghtsh00ter]

The 3400+ (2.4GHz) will perform a lot better than the S939 3200+ (2Ghz) will, unless you OC.

Thanks for the feedback guys, I've been googling for about an hour now and if anyone can pass me onto a tutorial on how to overclock the 3200+, it would help heaps. Mainly cause i have no idea how to overclock.

 

[holydeadpenguins]

You posted this exact same thing on halflifesource.com