CPU Upgrade Question

wild_eyed

hi all.
Im running an AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5200+

on a

GeForce 6100PM-M2

i would very much like to upgrade to something more powerful but im not sure about how to rate cpus on http://www.cpu-upgrade.com

i mean what should i be looking for? higher frequency or what?

which is better athlon, phenom or Sempron?

any help as always is greatly appreciated.
p

Procrastastudy

What are you doing?

Gaming, surfing, curing cancer?

What case and PSU do you have? Are your drives SATA or IDE?

wild_eyed

oh right sorry...

the pc is in an arcade cabinet, so its for gaming...... emulation, that kind of thing

-( i )- Wicker

Is it retro games that are being emulated? You could benefit more from an SSD or increased RAM.

wild_eyed

im running mame, all the older stuff runs fine. im looking to run supermodel and demul emulators.. and they run ok at the moment but a new cpu is needed for the extra UMPH! if you know what i mean.....

i have 2 gigs of ram and will upgrade that at a later stage, but im sure that its a better cpu thats needed.... so phenom, sephron or athlon.......
a multicore would be required....

Procrastastudy

I'll bow out I know sweet FA about that kind of gaming - sorry

Only thing I emulate is my Amiga 1200 for nostalgia purposes.

IrishMetalhead

if you can get your hands on a phenom x4 that am2+ and 95Watts then you should be grand but there fairly hard to come by these days

Gurgle

IrishMetalhead wrote: »

your more or less at a dead end for upgrading the cpu with that board because it only supports dual-cors and single-cores so upgrading to a tri or quad-core isn't possible

are you sure?

IrishMetalhead

editied my post when i relised it take phenoms just before your post appeared =P

º AMD Phenom™ processor (Socket AM2+)
º AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core/ Athlon™ 64 / Sempron processor
º High-performance Hyper Transport CPU interface.
º Support transfer rate of 2000/1600/1200/800/400 mega-transfers per second.
º Note: This board supports CPU up to 95W TDP only; you can refer to AMD website to check your CPU.

altho i found on on ebay for just under €60

http://www.ebay.ie/itm/AMD-Phenom-X4-9600-HD9600WCJ4BGD-Sockel-AM2-AM2-/221103312500?pt=DE_Elektronik_Computer_CPUs&hash=item337ac8ce74

wild_eyed

I boughts that processor on ebay and it just arrived today... im very disappointed with it and cant see any speed increase at all....

how i can check?

IrishMetalhead wrote: »

editied my post when i relised it take phenoms just before your post appeared =P

º AMD Phenom™ processor (Socket AM2+)
º AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core/ Athlon™ 64 / Sempron processor
º High-performance Hyper Transport CPU interface.
º Support transfer rate of 2000/1600/1200/800/400 mega-transfers per second.
º Note: This board supports CPU up to 95W TDP only; you can refer to AMD website to check your CPU.

altho i found on on ebay for just under €60

http://www.ebay.ie/itm/AMD-Phenom-X4-9600-HD9600WCJ4BGD-Sockel-AM2-AM2-/221103312500?pt=DE_Elektronik_Computer_CPUs&hash=item337ac8ce74

Eboggles

wild_eyed wrote: »

I boughts that processor on ebay and it just arrived today... im very disappointed with it and cant see any speed increase at all....

how i can check?

No increase at all? Those phenoms are very good chips, and compared to your older one it should be like night and day...

I would've presumed the system is much snappier, and your games running better.

wild_eyed

so would i have thought that!!!!!

i have 2gb of ram in the machine, i know it should be 4 (its on my list of things to do).

running windows xp (would that be a problem?)

and im simply running mame....

i upgraded because my old cpu was doing ok but i wanted to run some of the newer games it does...

and i am not kidding virtually no difference.

would there be something in bios?

Gurgle

You should see almost 100% increase in performance if the CPU was actually your bottleneck in the first place.

Try CPU ID, make sure your Phenom is configured correctly.

What graphics card are you using?

And what in particular is slow? Boot time? Desktop responsiveness? In-game FPS?

breadbin

the only thing i can think of for you not being able to see any difference is that it was running as fast and as smoothly as possible beforehand? or that mame doesn't use the extra cores.

your old cpu is 2700mhz vs the new one at 2300mhz its just that the new cpu has 4 instead of 2 cores. from the mame website:


Does MAME benefit from SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) / HT (Hyper-Threading) / dual cores?

Recent versions of MAME include a -mt switch which allows some tasks to be threaded off for use by SMP or multicore systems. Thus far the benefits from this are relatively small, because accurate emulation such as MAME strives for cannot easily be broken up into parallel subtasks (it would be like trying to have a baby in one month by impregnating nine women). There are exceptions of course, and MAME will support them via this mechanism in the future.

wild_eyed

my graphics is onboard

where could my bottleneck be?

i was avergeing 66% in a game with my old card and its still at 66% fps with my new card....

2 gigs of ram

do you want full spec?

Eboggles

wild_eyed wrote: »

my graphics is onboard

where could my bottleneck be?

i was avergeing 66% in a game with my old card and its still at 66% fps with my new card....

2 gigs of ram

do you want full spec?

Might be worth your while to slide in a discrete GPU, what's your PSU model?

A HD7750 would kill all those games, and it doesn't need an extra power connector.

wild_eyed

right so mame doesnt even use the extra cores, so my cpu isnt getting used by mame?

dammit!!!!

Gurgle

wild_eyed wrote: »

my graphics is onboard

where could my bottleneck be?

^^
I think I found it.
The good news is: Chuck a decent graphics card in there and you've a system that will run another 3 to 5 years.

wild_eyed

cool.

im getting the lend of a graphics card this eveing

but would this one be good to buy?

http://www.dabs.ie/products/best-value-vtx3d-ati-radeon-7750-hd-1ghz-1gb-pci-express-3-0-hdmi-7YFL.html?q=7750&src=16

Eboggles

wild_eyed wrote: »

cool.

im getting the lend of a graphics card this eveing

but would this one be good to buy?

http://www.dabs.ie/products/best-value-vtx3d-ati-radeon-7750-hd-1ghz-1gb-pci-express-3-0-hdmi-7YFL.html?q=7750&src=16

I'd actually get this one as Sapphire's coolers are excellent, but it doesn't actually make much difference.

Tea_Bag

would you even need a 7750?

would a 6450 suffice? it'll be passive so no annoying extra fan, and uses next to no power anyway. maybe the nvidia GT610?

Eboggles

Tea_Bag wrote: »

would you even need a 7750?

would a 6450 suffice? it'll be passive so no annoying extra fan, and uses next to no power anyway. maybe the nvidia GT610?

I was using it as a maximum, but the good thing about it would be it would last him through a few upgrades, due to it's very good performance/watt.

wild_eyed

ill have to see what i get the lend of later. my brother has three or so cards, one of which is a decent one of mine that i had no atx for.

it required two power leads from psu and i hadnt the got the correct adapter that went from the two separate 4 pins of the psu to the connection on the card....

so fingers crossed,

i'll get a 600w from dabs too and see if i cant buy the connection....

Eboggles

wild_eyed wrote: »

ill have to see what i get the lend of later. my brother has three or so cards, one of which is a decent one of mine that i had no atx for.

it required two power leads from psu and i hadnt the got the correct adapter that went from the two separate 4 pins of the psu to the connection on the card....

so fingers crossed,

i'll get a 600w from dabs too and see if i cant buy the connection....

What PSU are you using at the moment? You definitely don't need a 600 watt.

wild_eyed

im using 400 watt

Eboggles

wild_eyed wrote: »

im using 400 watt

Should be fine, what's the name of it?

wild_eyed

its an EVO Labs pentium p4 model 400w

atx sswitching power supply.

i just tried a ati radeon 5450HD.

and i saw very small increase. like 2 or 3 % on fps.. should i have seen a much better increase?