Legit Reviews

Is it worth the money to go from a 3700+ to a 4800+ X2?

Do you have the 3700+ overclocked? (the recent ones are ocing VERY well).

If anything, I would upgrade to an Opteron 165 or 170. They are cheaper, have double the cache per core vs. the x2s and overclocke Extremely well. Most will hit around 2.7 @ or near stock volts.

No the 3700 is running stock,mem is running at FSB216.
The 4800 I am asking about has 1mb x2 L2.
My BIOS will take up to a Opty 180,I was thinking 185 but I am not sure if it will work.
This board is not O'c friendly.

CyberWarrior wrote:This board is not O'c friendly.

If this is the case, I would probably go ahead and do it. If you don't have a good OCing board, an Opty would probably not work out very well for you.

The few times I have O'ced,all I get out of it is a big crash.
Good thing this board is one button restore for BIOS.

The 939 processors stay very expensive compared to AM2.
I would wait until April and than invest in a new Intel System.

Well I have been a diehard AMD fan since 1992,and I won't have the $$$ to revamp the whole sys.
What happens in April?

More Intel Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors, ATI's DX10 graphics cards and more nVidia DX10 graphics cards... a few months later will be AMD's Barcelona quad-cores.

If you will be using the same system for at minimum a year before revamping anything then yes I'd suggest switching to a X2 4800. Unless you only use your computer for light use you should quickly notice the difference a 2nd core brings.

Actually I was really thinking of a Opty 185,but MSI only tested up to a Opty 180 on this BIOS revision which is v 1D.
Also will take a FX-60 S939.

I'd say it depends. Are you doing lots of games? Or are you doing video compression?

This is because a dual core cpu would not really help you in games, but would be a very nice upgrade to any multithreaded CPU-intensive task like video encoding...

Vincent

Basically,some of the time I would on the web,erasing a RW on one drive and encoding a DVD on the other.So what happens is,sys just freezes and I have to cancel all tasks.I am planning on adding another 2 gigs RAM,so I think that will help a lot.

honestly, people are taking this "add more RAM" thing to extremes ;)

Normal surifng, burning, etc SHOULD NOT use the 1gb you have! You might want to check your computer for crap running that doesnt need to be.

I have 2gb on this ancient AMD 3000+ Barton, and even when video editing/encoding using Ulead programs, I still have memory available!

Mike

encoding a dvd? - ripping? burning? creating from scratch? - only creating from scratch should use masive amounts of memory.

Basically I also want to move on to Vista,when all the kinks are out.
Already tried Ultimate on here with a spare drive I have,and it runs a little slow.My kid is running it on a XP 3200+ Barton with 512mb and is like working on slow motion.

Despite what they say, 512mb is not enough for Vista. Minimum specs should have been 1gb, with 2gb being best for running Vista.

The Opty 185 would be cheaper than an FX60, which have started vanishing everywhere as I think AMD no longer makes them. Opteron's were mostly favored just for the overclockability... The AMD X2 4600 probably would be your best buy since the cache difference doesn't affect most tasks. Newegg has that one for $219

Tiger Direct has the FX-60 for $380.NewEgg has already dropped all the X2 lineup except the 4400+.
As far as the Opty 185,I could take a chance on it and hope that it runs on this board with this BIOS version.
I am just not ready to drop a ton of $$ into moving on to AM2 sys.
It reminds me of Win ME.