A cheap upgrade

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Dec 18, 2005
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A quick question. I currently have a 3500+ in my machine but I have an opportunity to get a X2 3800+ . Although the the X2 3800+ is 2.0ghz , will it be faster then the 3500+ ? I do a lot of gaming (RPG and FPS) though I don't do the overclocking thing. Also, I can get the 3800+ for $20 so it seems like a good deal to try it out.
 
yes it will be faster overall, for $20 go for it straight away.
 
Thanks for the response. I'm going to go ahead and give it a whirl. My main concern is whether I will see better performance in my games then with my 3500+ .
 
no You wont....BUT u can run ur game and watch a movie allot faster than the 3500+. second why not do the OC thing? its a 20$ its so cheap it wont hurt to OC it?
 
no You wont....BUT u can run ur game and watch a movie allot faster than the 3500+. second why not do the OC thing? its a 20$ its so cheap it wont hurt to OC it?

My guess is he is not overclocking becuase he doesnt want to.
OP ignore the above post and get your $20 cpu.
 
Well, for $20 the OP can afford to play around and try some oc'ing in the future if he wants to. I'd say you can't go wrong for $20 - overclocking or not.
 
I can't help but think (after a little research) that I'd be better off with trying to find a single core FX series CPU instead, given my qualifier (gaming). I bought the X2 3800+ anyways though just because $20 is hard to beat and it is practically new, but I don't think it's going to help me out with such a limited amount of multi threaded games on the market. I don't multitask while I'm gaming either. Or.........am I looking at this all wrong? Opinions?
 
I went from a 3800+ single core to a x2 3800+, and I DID see an increase in game performance. These chips are pretty good overclockers too, mine runs at 2.65GHz without breaking a sweat.
 
I think you made all of the correct decisions. What games do you play so we can tell if they are multi-threaded or not?

I'd say a dual-core chip is a good investment at this point. Buying and single core FX at this point isn't unfortunately. It may improve things now with your older single thread games, but as you move foward to other games (we all do eventually), you'll want the extra core(s).

If anything use the 3800 and play with your core affinity while gaming...offload all of your none gaming programs (like AV, or whatever) to one core, then set the game to the other. You might see some improvement there.
 
I think you made all of the correct decisions. What games do you play so we can tell if they are multi-threaded or not?

If anything use the 3800 and play with your core affinity while gaming...offload all of your none gaming programs (like AV, or whatever) to one core, then set the game to the other. You might see some improvement there.

Currently I'm playing Titan Quest, but I'll probably have COD4 tomorrow :) and I just finished Crysis. I play FPS's and RPG's generally.

So, you can tell programs which core to run on? How is that done?
 
Windows will generally do it by its self, but if you want to assign a specific process to a core it is easily done in task manager, there are also freeware programs to do this.
 
if all you do is game, then a single core for now should be ok, but if you use for pc for everything, dual core FTW!
 
if all you do is game, then a single core for now should be ok, but if you use for pc for everything, dual core FTW!

dual core is better for gaming aswell amd rules, as the windows processes can be loaded onto the second core.
 
dual core is better for gaming aswell amd rules, as the windows processes can be loaded onto the second core.

true, that's why I said single core would be "ok."
For $20, it's a steal. Go for it. If you don't, you'd be pretty stupid. ;)
 
Well,

I've got it installed and we'll see how this works out. What kind of temps should I expect with the stock HSF at stock speeds?
 
Should be fine, iv ran my x2's up to 80 load on the stock hsf.
 
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