939 over AM2...?

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greygoose

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 11, 2006
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if i went with a 939 socket processor i'd go with an AMD 4000+ san diego ($130)

if i went the AM2 route i'd go with the athlon 3800 (not the X2) $118

would i be better with the 4000+ as opposed to the athlon 3800? or is an AM2 processor going to be a better performer? i thought about the 3800 X2 but that's slightly above my price range.

when i make my purchase i dont plan on upgrading a processor with the same motherboard that's why i dont mind getting the 939 board and cpu combo. its a little cheaper. if i was to upgrade in the future (next year) i would just purchase a new motherboard and cpu combo. i also do NOT plan on overclocking.

any ideas which options will give me a better performance at stock settings?
 
depending on the amount of ram, most likely option 1, but again, depends on the amount of ram.

I would probabley get #1 for what you plan to do
 
i'd go with the am2 i had a 3800+ oced to 2.8ghz they are good overclockers if you get ddr2 800 since the ram is faster than ddr 400
 
i will NOT be overclocking. i will be running at stock speeds.

i will have 1 gig of ram corsair xms series.
the video card will be a 7900gs evga.

its possible that i will increase the ram to 1.5gigs or even 2gigs but that's weeks down the line if i feel that i need it. but right now only 1gig so far
 
greygoose said:
i will NOT be overclocking. i will be running at stock speeds.

i will have 1 gig of ram corsair xms series.
the video card will be a 7900gs evga.

its possible that i will increase the ram to 1.5gigs or even 2gigs but that's weeks down the line if i feel that i need it. but right now only 1gig so far
Click to expand...

If you're planning on buying ram further down the road, I'd go with AM2. ddr is going to get rarer and more expensive, while ddr2 should get cheaper going forwards.
 
well, on 939 i believe you can only upgrade to 4GBs and on some AM2 setups you can upgrade to 8GB
 
greygoose said:
i will NOT be overclocking. i will be running at stock speeds.

i will have 1 gig of ram corsair xms series.
the video card will be a 7900gs evga.

its possible that i will increase the ram to 1.5gigs or even 2gigs but that's weeks down the line if i feel that i need it. but right now only 1gig so far
Click to expand...

I assume your current RAM is plain old DDR RAM, correct? If so, with AM2 you will need more RAM. Get the 939 to save a few bucks and get the X2. You will be kicking yourself in a few months if you don't get the X2. It really is worth the extra bit of cash, especially if you were willing to buy new RAM for the AM2 system anyways.

If there's no way you can afford the X2, wait until you can.
 
Russell said:
I assume your current RAM is plain old DDR RAM, correct? If so, with AM2 you will need more RAM. Get the 939 to save a few bucks and get the X2. You will be kicking yourself in a few months if you don't get the X2. It really is worth the extra bit of cash, especially if you were willing to buy new RAM for the AM2 system anyways.

If there's no way you can afford the X2, wait until you can.
Click to expand...

right now i have no desktop.
i am trying to put one together right now via newegg.

just one last question since a few people mentioned x2.....would u go x2 > opty or would opteron be the better performer? assuming am2 is the route....

im trying to make the last minute loose ends.

thanks for the help thus far
 
AM2 opterons are not really an option.. they are there, but more expensive and not many OCd...

I know you arent OCing... the opteron 165 939 is 1.8ghz ways too slow... they OC great..

get an Am2 or 939 3800 X2 the AM2s are cheaper but you need new RAM DDR2


you can get a used 939 X2 around here or a 4200 X2 around your price range... just keep your eyes open
 
Your decision not to overclock causes a restriction on what is sensible to purchase.

The x2 3800 chips can run very fast without any stability issues and become a fantastic cheap option to give you the speed you need and dual core which will greatly boost processing for many new apps/games over the next year.
You should consider getting the x2 and clocking it, seriously!
Even with default cooler you can get a decent overclock with stock volts.

There was mention you need more ram to run AM2, that isnt true, I'm not sure that was really meant.
You will hardly see any performance advantage going to AM2 other than the different processor speeds. To liberate the small extra performance from AM2 you need to use fast DDR2 which isnt cheap!
This is a costly option, especially as socket AM2 is becoming redundant soon.

The other issue is if you need more ram.
If you dont, stick with Socket 939.
If you do still consider Socket 939 amd maybe the AM2 with DDR2 but that is quite a costly upgrade!
Your next PC in a year will only be able to use the memory (not the motherboard or CPU) but with DDR3 on the horizon, I'm not sure how useful that will be either.

If you really feel like going for AM2, save a little more and get a Core 2 Duo 6300 system, it will last you much longer and does hammer the Athlon 64 x2's!
You can use cheaper/slower DDR2 as the C2D chips arent bothered as much by ram speed.
(They clock incredibly well too. You can get even more performance for free if you wish but you wont need to for some time)
 
maybe slightly off topic but question:
lets assume i end up with x2 3800.
is there a huge performance increase in ddr2 (1gig) over ddr (1gig)?

like if i had two systems side by side with the same games/apps would i say "man this ddr2 sure performs better than that ddr next to me!!" or is it a slight difference in performance over ddr?
 
greygoose said:
maybe slightly off topic but question:
lets assume i end up with x2 3800.
is there a huge performance increase in ddr2 (1gig) over ddr (1gig)?

like if i had two systems side by side with the same games/apps would i say "man this ddr2 sure performs better than that ddr next to me!!" or is it a slight difference in performance over ddr?
Click to expand...

It depends on the speeds which is fastest and what you are running.
This DDR400 comparison should help
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2741&p=3
 
Chernobyl1 said:
It depends on the speeds which is fastest and what you are running.
This DDR400 comparison should help
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2741&p=3
Click to expand...

very interesting read.
i think im leaning towards socket 939 and x2 3800.
this would allow me for things like better psu upgrade and such. still reading and contemplating ideas. but looks like might be going 939...


i'll probably bite first thing in the morning once i decide
 
I've heard that there is almost no difference in the performance between an AM2 socket, and a similarly configured 939 socket system. In my oppinion, you should get the one that is cheaper.
 
I also agree, 939 is the way to go. You already have the memory. The choice is weather to go single core or dual. Right now I would get the 3700+ instead of the 4000. (save the money)
 
greygoose said:
maybe slightly off topic but question:
lets assume i end up with x2 3800.
is there a huge performance increase in ddr2 (1gig) over ddr (1gig)?

like if i had two systems side by side with the same games/apps would i say "man this ddr2 sure performs better than that ddr next to me!!" or is it a slight difference in performance over ddr?
Click to expand...


As you've seen already in this thread, DDR2 currently only yields a slight real world performance boost (less than 7%). Of course it's also about latency and speeds of the comparitive memory.

For example, I've two sticks of Patriot PC-4000 DDR500 memory that I run at 250MHz FSB. This memory is providing significant performance an according to Everest home and other memory benchmarks, puts lower speed DDR2 to shame, especially in comparison to latency. In fact this memory is stable at much higher overclocks, so it's all relative at this point in time. Over time, DDR2 makers will continue to push out faster speeds, just like DDR1 makers did. In another year or two, you may finally see a big enough increase to state "I've gotta have it!", but we are not really there yet.

As for the X2, get it, I did and I can't believe the performance boost compared to a neighbors single core 4000+. Since Xp is multi-threaded, the desktop experience is better even when not taking advantage of multi-threaded applications. These apps are also on the increase, so the single cores are going to become obsolete even quicker IMO.
 
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