Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

[Talus]

Just wondering if there is a performance increase to be had in BF2 by going with a better processor than what I am running now:

A64 3000+ (Winchester) at 1.8 GHz (I don't overclock my CPU)
4 GB PC3200
XFX 6800GT 256 MB AGP
X-Fi XtremeMusic

I was thinking of this CPU:

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=17798&vpn=ADA3700CFBOX&manufacture=AMD

I'm really not too sure about Dual Core CPUs yet (although if somebody gave me an FX60, I'd plunk it in my system for sure )

[claevade]

Re: Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

About 2-3 FPS, not more than that. A 3000+ won't bottleneck a 6800GT, at least not really noticeble. Therefore the performance increase with a new CPU will be minor in games, the videocard rules it all.

[Talus]

Re: Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

That's exactly the thing I needed to hear before spending any more money

I'm trying to decide on a new PCIe mobo and 7800GT card (cannot afford the GTX here in Canada) ... I figure THAT would be a worthwhile upgrade. But then I'd still be running the 1.8GHz A643000+.

[Noni]

Re: Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

The 3700+ is not a worthy upgrade from a 3000+.

The moral is if you want to upgrade do it properly :) . Go for a Dual Core setup. Your graphic card is still good.

Does the ASRock Dual Sata2 support X2

[Darksniper75]

Re: Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

That's exactly the thing I needed to hear before spending any more money

I'm trying to decide on a new PCIe mobo and 7800GT card (cannot afford the GTX here in Canada) ... I figure THAT would be a worthwhile upgrade. But then I'd still be running the 1.8GHz A643000+.

Talus, close your wallet. Wait till the Cebit at the beginning of March. They'll introduce the 7900GT. Which should be around the 300$ mark. 24 pipes, and even abit faster clocked then the 7800GTX. So, cheaper, newer chip and faster!

Overclock your cpu to 2.2 or 2.4 Ghz. Get a good cooler, should run fine on 2.2 and you'll probably can bring it to a 2.4 Ghz.

Btw, your welcome, I just saved you some serious dough! Lol

Cheers

[Talus]

Re: Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

Hehe...Will the 7900GT be an AGP or PCIe card? And $300CDN is more like $500USD

I wonder how high I could CPU overclock using stock cooling...

[Blackhearted]

Re: Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

a budget dual core will be a performance downgrade from a budget single-core. im not talking FX-60 here, obviously. but the average user if they are looking for a price/performance processor for BF2 is far better off with a single core processor. only benefits of dual core are in multitasking and generally higher-end graphics apps that will take advantage of the extra processor (like 3ds max).
buying a dual core now is a waste since the new DDR2 platforms are coming.

in your shoes? id get a decent HSF for like $50 and overclock. i have an athlon 64 3000 running at 2300mhz, thats a 500mhz overclock and puts it up to between 3700 and 3800 speeds. its running at idle at 35 degrees and under full load at 50ish. thats with just a thermaltake venus12 - on idle i have the fan at the lowest speed (2000rpmish, and cant hear it) and under full load such as when playing BF2 for several hours ill turn the fan speed dial up about 1/3 of the way... doesnt need any more, and stays 50 degrees or so like that, and it just barely becomes audible. at full speed the fan sounds like a 747 taking off.

the main setback when overclocking is getting your memory to run at the new FSB. if you have premium memory like PC4000+ you can easily achieve this, however with just run of the mill value RAM youll be lucky to overclock more than 5mhz.
the easiest thing to do is run your memory at DDR 333 speed, set your hypertransport multiplier to 4x, and overclock your FSB to 240-250. make sure your motherboard (they pretty much all do) has an AGP/PCI lock that will lock it at 66mhz. i have yet to find a budget athlon 64 that wont do this with even stock cooling.

an FSB overclock to 240 mhz will run your ram, now in DDR 333 mode, at 400 mhz even, and will overclock an athlon 64 3000 to 2160 mhz from its 1800mhz stock speed.
an FSB overclock to 250 mhz will run your ram, now in ddr 333 mode, at 416mhz or so, and overclocks your processor to 2250 mhz - a 25% overclock. some value memory wont overclock to 416mhz, so you might need to start clocking back down if you run into errors. every single athlon64, sempron, sempron64, etc i have ever seen under 3200+ speed has easily run on a 240mhz bus with stock cooling.

then save your money and wait for the next gen of processors on the new AM2 platform with DDR2. i also wouldnt dream of an upgrade to a 7800gt from a 6800gt - IMO the marginal performance benefit isnt worth the money. save it for the next gen of cards. from a 6600gt to a 7800gt is a different story.

*edit: ugh, darksniper beat me to the overclock thing, the bugger. :)
also, you might need to up the voltage on your processor from the stock 1.4v to 1.5v.

[SgT.uK]

Re: Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

yes the AsRock Dual Sata2 does support x2's - thats what my up next upgrade is, that board and a 3800 x2, cant wait ordering tomorrow

its got AGP 8x and PCI-e - thats why im getting it so i can put my 6800 agp in for the mo until i upgrade to a 7800 pci-e in a few months

[Talus]

Re: Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

Ok, I'm using ValueSelect RAM so I might try your option of lowering the RAM speed and increasing the FSB....I probably won't be able to overclock the RAM at all.

[Darksniper75]

Re: Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

Hehe...Will the 7900GT be an AGP or PCIe card? And $300CDN is more like $500USD

I wonder how high I could CPU overclock using stock cooling...

Talus, it's gonna be 300 US $

Cheers

[Blackhearted]

Re: Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

"Hehe...Will the 7900GT be an AGP or PCIe card? And $300CDN is more like $500USD"

i highly doubt they will make any newer cards AGP, AGP is fast becoming obsolete. in fact in many online stores where formerly it was a 50-50 split between AGP/PCI-E you are now lucky to find more than a handful of AGP cards.
i think the 'pinnacle' of AGP technology will be the 7800GS, which is thoroughly spanked by the 7800GT PCI-E that costs the same.

im not saying noone will sell more AGP cards - theres a lot still on the market that need to be unloaded, and a lot of value and lower-end users arent going to upgrade for awhile. but i doubt any of the newer high-end cards are going to be geared towards the AGP market.

i stuck with AGP because at the time i bought my comp i had a 9700 pro which was a solid card at the time. also, i saw no benchmarks (but plenty of theory) showing that the AGP bus bandwidth was actually holding back the cards of the time.
at this point, however, its clear that all of the high-end cards will be developed for PCI-E. perhaps theyll throw AGP users a bone by releasing a budget or enthusiast card in an AGP version but it will cost $100 more than its PCI-E counterpart (since all new cards are PCI-E native and the AGP versions require a bridge chip) and will probably be outperformed by a significant margin by its PCI-E brethren.

AGP is dead.

[Blackhearted]

Re: Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

corsair valueselect?
ehh, its good reliable ram but i will fall out of my chair if you get more than a 5mhz (ddr 410) overclock from it.

when i first put my comp together, it kept crashing. abit av8 mobo, a64 3000 winchester, and 1 gig corsair valueselect ram (hey i was on a budget).
i couldnt for the life of me figure out why until i looked in the bios settings and noticed that the board - by default - sets the FSB to 204mhz. this was overclocking my RAM by 8mhz, to DDR 408. as soon as i set it back down to 200mhz FSB it was rock stable. corsair valueselect doesnt overclock at all.
i havent been able to get more than a 2mhz overclock out of it, which is pitiful.

this is why running your memory at DDR 333 speed, setting your hypertransport multipler down to 4x (FSBxHT multiplier needs to = <1000), locking your AGP/PCI at 66/33mhz is the safest and most foolproof method of getting more juice out of your rig. the A64s run so cool that you can do this with the stock HSF with no problems 90% of the time.
this will clock your CPU at 2160mhz (240x9) and your memory at 400mhz even. thats a 'free' 20% overclock of your processor, and even though you are running your memory/cpu asynchronously with the A64's memory controller it really doesnt matter. again, you may have to set your CPU voltage up to 1.45, 1.475 or 1.5 volts, although with such a mild overclock it shouldnt be necessary.
an athlon 64 3700 runs at a 2.2ghz clock speed. IMO its not worth the upgrade when it is pretty much assured you can overclock your 3000 to near or the same speed for free. save your money for the AM2.

[Talus]

Re: Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

Talus, it's gonna be 300 US $

Cheers

I got that backwards...$300USD ends up being around $500CDN...oopsie!

[Talus]

Re: Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

So far so good...

-set CPU voltage to 1.45V
-set RAM divider to 5:3 (333MHz)
-set FSB to 240 MHz
-set HT to 1000MHz

Now, in CPU-Z, it shows my CPU as being 2160.5 MHz. In the memory tab, however, it shows my frequency to be 216.1 MHz...that doesn't seem right. It says CPU/10...

I'll check into that and do a little BF2 benching and see if the whole machine comes crashing down

[Blackhearted]

Re: Anybody upgraded from an A643000+ to an A643700+ or higher?

I got that backwards...$300USD ends up being around $500CDN...oopsie!

atm US currency is down, you can thank bush and various other unfortunate events for that. $300 USD is $345 canadian right now.

unfortunately, thats not the main problem - its that whenever any electronics cross the border the price skyrockets to at least double. so your best bet is if you live near the border to just drive across, buy it, and bring it across yourself.
i live in windsor so thankfully i can just cross into detroit, michigan and buy it there and be back in a few hours. you REALLY have to shop around to find competitive prices here in canada. a 6800 ultra is still $900 at futureshop, FFS.