Upgrading my processor

Wacked

I have this board,
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe, nForce4 SLI, Socket -939,S-ATA,Dual-GbLAN,Firewire,PCI-Ex16

At the moment I have a 3800+ processor but I want to put in an intel duo, maybe this one ,


My question is do i need a new board? I'm pretty sure I do. If so, can someone recomend one..
Also, what is the equivalent amstrad chip. Do I need a new board for an am 64x2 ?

dazftw

You want to get a intel core 2 duo cpu? Your going to need a new motherboard!

Youd could probably sell that board you have now on adverts.ie and put the money towards a new board!

As for what board to get look at the accessories for it... theres a list of mobos there.. ASUS and Gigabte are pretty good I can comment on them any much better than that tho!

latenia

I'm pretty sure the confirmed date for Intel's price cuts on the core2duos is April 22. 40% off most processors. I'm hanging on till then myself. With the price difference you could easily get a nice new mobo.

L31mr0d

Amstrad chip? WTF?

The A in AMD does not stand for Amstrad. Also afair there has never been a mobo that runs an AMD and Intel CPU, due to socket difference.

Also if you are changing to C2D, you are not only going to need a new motherboard, but new ram also.

8T8

As others have pointed out a new motherboard & new RAM will be required.

Here is a motherboard that will do the trick.

Here is 1GB of DDR-2 RAM that will work with it.

As for the original motherboard it does support the Athlon 64 X2 CPU's.

However AMD phased out the Socket 939 X2's in favour of the current AM2 socket so you would need to go on a hunt through the on-line stores to find one or go trough other channels like eBay or adverts.ie

Wacked

Thanks for the replies. Im so useless my computer should have L-plates on the side. One more quick question. Whats the best cpu available to suit my mobo? Is it the opteron?

zilog_jones

There are several Opterons, and not all are socket 939. I don't know if all S939 Opterons will work with your motherboard. There's also the Athlon64 X2 (again only S939 versions), which will probably be a lot cheaper but any S939 Athlons are hard to get these days unless you go second hand.

L31mr0d

An opty is really only worth your while if you are into overclocking, if you aren't then stick with the X2's. Also how much RAM do you have, it might be a better idea to get more RAM instead of a different CPU (why do you want a new CPU anyway?) If your machine is for gaming, a new graphics card will show a greater jump in gaming performance over a new CPU.

Wacked

My current setup is below, perhaps someone can tell me where my bottle-neck is from a gaming point of view. I am really not getting the performance I was ecpecting.

8T8

Wacked wrote:

Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe,AMD Athlon 64 3500+,Crucial PC3200 DDR-DIMM 2048MB,Gainward GeForce 7950GT 256MB,Seasonic S12 Powersupply 500W,Samsung SpinPoint P120 200GB SATA2

It looks a decent system what exactly is the problem ?

Your not over doing the AA/AF at insanely high resolutions are you & what is the resolution you normally play at & what games ?

A change of CPU to a Core 2 will bring some benefits over your current one but really we need to know what sort of problems your having before recommending upgrading it.

L31mr0d

Maybe you can be more specific on what performance you are expecting that you aren't getting?

Do you do any sort of overclocking? It might be an idea to read up about it as you could squeeze ALOT of extra performance out of that system. You could at least get the CPU up to or above 2.5Ghz, maybe get the RAM up to pc4000? (doubtful, but it's worth a shot) check also that your RAM is running at a command rate of 1T, those ASUS mobos are known to default it to 2T.

Also those 7950GT's are EXCELLENT overclockers, with a simple voltmod you can get them beyond 7900GTX speeds. You might want to also check the jumper config on your HDD, I know some of them come defaulted to SATA 1.5Gb/s for safety reasons, you might need to remove the jumper to enable SATA 3.0Gb/s support

d_advocatus

L31mr0d wrote:

Also afair there has never been a mobo that runs an AMD and Intel CPU, due to socket difference.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/01/ecs_amd_intel_mobo/

Wacked

I play a lot of bf2. At 1024*768 32 and average setting I get reasonable frame rates(40-50). I have just started playing armed assault. With everything on low, AA off 800*600 res, I am getting 20 to 30 fps. I was expecting more from my system. I'll look into overclocking a bit.

Thanks again.

Fanny Cradock

what card do you have?

8T8

Wacked wrote:

I play a lot of bf2. At 1024*768 32 and average setting I get reasonable frame rates(40-50). I have just started playing armed assault. With everything on low, AA off 800*600 res, I am getting 20 to 30 fps. I was expecting more from my system. I'll look into overclocking a bit.

Thanks again.

The problem isn't the system it is Armed Assault it runs very slow on all systems - see the games forums and other fan sties.

Now that said Armed Assault would actually benefit from a better CPU but it will not be blazing fast if you get my drift.

Make sure your running the latest version as well as there is a 500MB patch out their.