Venice/San Diego or wait for X2?

C

Captain Kirk

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 22, 2002
Messages
288
As you can see from my signature, my current system is somewhat weak. I've grown tired of the fact that my 6800U is being held back by my AXP. I'm not ready to make the jump to PCI-E and/or SLI, so I'll be keeping my 6800U AGP for sometime. Based on that, I'd like to build a new system in the next few months. Folks from other forums have been pointing me at the Venice and San Diego chips, so I figured I'd ask the [H] crew :).

1) If I decide to go with a 939 board now, which will be better a Venice 3800 or a San Diego 3700?
2) Should I wait for X2?
3) Based on the above data, what do you recommend?
 
What do you do that you would benefit from a dual core? If you cant think of too many things then I would definitely go for a 3700+ San Diego (at least that is the chip I am looking at for my computer build this summer)
 
Everyone can benefit from dual-core. Even surfing the web when something instantly pops up, my 3400+ slows down for a little while because it can only handle one thread at a time.

With dual-core, you will basically not feel any of the previous lag you had with a single-core. No matter what happens, one core will handle anything new that may slow you down, basically leaving you a free processor at all times (unless you are doing heavy encoding on both cores or something similar).

I thought this was the greatest appeal to DC. Not having to worry about downloads and programs in the background slowing your game or graphics app up.
 
Originally, I was going to wait for dual cores. I thought that their pricing would be much lower than they will be, in order to compete with intel. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

If I had the cash, I would go with the X2's. If you are on a budget, it is a hard call. I cannot justify spending $400 more on something that wont offer twice the performance in most scenarios. But hey, I am a budget minded person.

I'm just going to get a 3000+ venice and overclock :)

Oh yeah, for multitasking, the dual core X2's own...but still, they cost a pretty penny.
 
For right now i would just get a 3000+ or 3200+ Venice and overclock it. Alot of people are able to hit 2.7-2.9Ghz on just aircooling.
 
Do what I did:

I had a 2500+ Barton and a gig of ram (you have a better video card though)
I didnt want to loose my 5900XT AGP (I love it, I dont care what others say!), so I went with a Gigabyte K8NS - nforce 3 Ultra 939 board and a 3000+ Venice. It is leaps and bouds faster and more responsive than my barton (and I loved it too). I wanted to wait for X2, but for 260 bucks for both the CPU and mobo - you cant beat the price tag (thanks Newegg!)

You are set to save a few extra nickels (OK a lot of nickels) in about 6 months for X2 - if you can wait, then a year - it will be even cheaper (obviously).

Good luck and tell us if you pull the trigger.
 
I agree with you completely. And I just did the same thing in the build I completed last week for my wife. Asus a8n-sli and a 3000+ will provide the foundation for a SLI capable rig when those prices go down. And the motherboard will accept a x2 when those prices go down. In 12-80 months you'll see those dual-core processors at reasonable people for budget minded people like us.

Bottom line: just make sure that your motherboard will accept a dual core later when the prices are favorable. I would suggest a SLI capable part as well since eventually those will drop to main stream prices and will kick serious but.
 
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