FPS/3DMark Score improvement?

[djBon2112]

I currently have an Athlon 64 3500+ at 2400 MHz, 1 GB of OCz Platinum RAM (223 MHz, 2.5-2-2-5) and an x1950 XTX.

In the new year when I have some money, I'm planning to get a high-oc used Opty (2800 MHz +). Will my performance in games like Oblivion, Battlefield 2142, Far Cry, etc., as well as my 3DMark06 score, go up enough to warrant the upgrade?

I feel as though in some games I'm really bottlenecked, and I think its a combination of the CPU and RAM (I'm upgrading to 2 GB as well). Any advice?

P.S. I'm not upgrading to an Intel anything or to AM2: for me, s939 is here to say for AT LEAST a year.

P.S.S. Since this deals with FPS and my vid card bottleneck, I put it in the video card forum to see what other game/graphics-oriented people would think. Other than gaming, I don't do a lot of CPU intensive work.

 

[cantankerous]

Everything will go up, literally! I did the exact same thing as you a few months back and am very glad I did. I went from a 3200+ overclocked to 2.48ghz and it seemed half decent with X1900XTX. I then went to a 4800+ X2 which is now overclocked to 2.84ghz and the difference is quite noticeable! I gained an extra core, doubled the cash, gained 360mhz on each core and gained SSE3 instructions to boot. You will gain exactly everything I did as you too only have single core, less clocks and only 512mb per cache. If you can't afford a whole new setup going from an older single core cpu to a newer dual core/opteron is the best way to go to keep an older S939 system up to date. If you can get your cpu to at least 2.8 with a little overclock on that X1950 of yours you should be good to for quite some time as long as you don't wish to go the DX10 route in January, I for one am not. I MAY get a 8800GTS but only for DX9 game playing as I have tons of those already and many, many more will be out before the end of next year without a doubt.

Best of luck if you do decide to upgrade, The smile on your face from doing so will be priceless.