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Socket 939 Upgrade or Dump?

I have a socket 939 X2 4400, and I've been looking at the opty 185 as a last possible upgrade for about a year now. However... When AMD ditched 939 they lost my loyalty. They're making AM2 cpus that, with a little diff packagaging, would drop right into a 939 socket. Capped at a $229 2.6ghz in 939, I'm faced with a total system upgrade to get a meaningful speedup.

With intel's dominance right now, I'd be a freaking idiot to "upgrade" to another AMD system now. Intel has AMD beat hands down. The only possible AMD upgrade I"d buy would be one more cpu upgrade for existing socket 939 setup, but the cpu alone costs as much as a cpu + mobo combo upgrade that would be faster. Going to AM2 is no better than a lateral move, trading in perfectly good but slowish tech for another version of the same slowish tech.

So... sorry AMD, you lose this one and it's your own fault. They closed the door on my ability to upgrade so I'll go for the best performance NOW when I upgrade. If there was a 3.0ghz x2 cpu for socket 939, I'd buy it tonight, no question about it. Instead... Well, my mobo is socket 939 with AGP so any system refresh is a complete rebuild so I will of course go for the best bang for the buck. And at the $200-$300 cpu price point, Intel wins hands down.
 
flenser said:
I have a socket 939 X2 4400, and I've been looking at the opty 185 as a last possible upgrade for about a year now. However... When AMD ditched 939 they lost my loyalty. They're making AM2 cpus that, with a little diff packagaging, would drop right into a 939 socket. Capped at a $229 2.6ghz in 939, I'm faced with a total system upgrade to get a meaningful speedup.

With intel's dominance right now, I'd be a freaking idiot to "upgrade" to another AMD system now. Intel has AMD beat hands down. The only possible AMD upgrade I"d buy would be one more cpu upgrade for existing socket 939 setup, but the cpu alone costs as much as a cpu + mobo combo upgrade that would be faster. Going to AM2 is no better than a lateral move, trading in perfectly good but slowish tech for another version of the same slowish tech.

So... sorry AMD, you lose this one and it's your own fault. They closed the door on my ability to upgrade so I'll go for the best performance NOW when I upgrade. If there was a 3.0ghz x2 cpu for socket 939, I'd buy it tonight, no question about it. Instead... Well, my mobo is socket 939 with AGP so any system refresh is a complete rebuild so I will of course go for the best bang for the buck. And at the $200-$300 cpu price point, Intel wins hands down.
Click to expand...

Well yeah, this is the big problem with s939 upgrades, I was lucky in that when I was looking to upgrade from my newcastle 3800+ I happened upon an awesome deal on a opty 185 (it was a leftover from a biggish server build, so I got it for next to nothing), If I hadn't gotten that deal, or was looking to upgrade right now, I wouldn't even look at AMD, not because I'm a fanboy, on the contrary, historically I've been happier with AMD than with INTEL, but because AMD just isn't even in the game right now, their products are mediocre and their strategy is muddy, you just seem to get a lot more for your money from INTEL at the moment (unless possibly you're a serious o/c enthusiast, those "blacks" look pretty pliable :p) and INTEL appears to have this sort of momentum behind them where they just keep coming up with awesome stuff.
 
I have a 939 board, but I am upgrading to an AM2 .. but keeping the old board. ;)
Gotta love that Asrock SATAII 939 !! Best hardware purchase that I made in '06 !!

Ordered a 5000+ Black Edition to go along with an AM2CPU card, and using existing Super Talent DDR2-800 RAM, so for $150 total I can now retire the Opteron 144. That Opty did 2.8 even on the notoriously unfriendly towards high FSB Asrock board.
The Black Edition was an easy choice to make considering the unlocked multi, so I even have a voltmod on the AM2CPU riser card in mind to bump that from 1.4 to 1.55, just to see what it will do.

Do I feel stupid for buying AMD when so many jump on the Core2 bandwagon ?? Hell no, as this was the easiest upgrade that could be done using existing parts !!. If you want to forget about buying AMD even in a case like this, may I remind you that the Q6600 chip you may have is the same price as the e6600 that I bought in July, and it wasn't because AMD was having rough times either ! Its called competition, and without a competitor the prices don't drop nearly as far or fast.
 
I'm in the s939 upgrade scenario as well.

I'm going AM2+ and will get a 5000+ BE to have some fun with while the phenom matures. But I'm waiting on a SLI AM2+ motherboard to come out (preferably DFI). This wait sucks...
 
Upgrading my 939 also, just got my 5000+ BE/Call of Juarez bundle from Tigerdirect. Still debating on a motherboard, the Biostar TF560 appears to be a healthy choice but still question Biostars life expectancy. Any release news on the AM2+ DFI SLI board along with a entry price ?

The DDR2 is dirt cheap, wise reason to upgrade now !
 
I recently destroyed my Asus A8V deluxe after many years of faithful service. Earlier this week I picked up a 939 pin mobo (some shitty asus one that was the only one I could find) and it throttled my cpu whenever it hit 45 degrees celcius.

Fed up with the inability to find anything good 939 pin mobo (we don't get newegg here in the north) I opted for the following:

Asus 7600gs
Asus X2 5200+ Windsor 2.6 ghz
Asus M2N-E
2 gb Dual Channel DDR2 800mhz

Total cost: 450 taxes in

I have to say I am happy with it. I was looking for a budget build to replace my old rig, not a top of the line, best in show style computer. (The new rig is coming later, after the market settles from the many anticipated launches.)

Fact is, where I am you can't get an equivalently fast intel dual core processor for the same price. However, I can see people bashing AMD if they are in the market for a hardcore gaming rig. I was merely cheaply replacing my old POS and I am happy.
 
Seems like a good place to ask...I'm also running a 939 mobo/CPU...I have an AMD X2 4200 with a 7950GX2 that will be upgraded to an 8800GT soon. I game at 1920x1200 as well. Will the X2 4200 be fast enough to do the 8800GT justice?
 
Daggah said:
Seems like a good place to ask...I'm also running a 939 mobo/CPU...I have an AMD X2 4200 with a 7950GX2 that will be upgraded to an 8800GT soon. I game at 1920x1200 as well. Will the X2 4200 be fast enough to do the 8800GT justice?
Click to expand...

Yes.

Resolution, texture quality/detail, AA/AF, shader/post-processing effects, these are all things that are almost entirely reliant on the GPU and RAM of your video card, not your CPU.

The CPU only comes into play as a bottle neck if it's really crap, and the 4200+, while hardly cutting edge, is quite capable of crunching enough numbers to keep everything playable.

Of course, the 8800gt isn't tied down by your set up, what I would do is get the 8800gt, put it in your system and see how happy you are, if you are unhappy with the performance, go back and look at reviews where the 8800gt has been used, copy the actual graphics settings used in the reviews (May I recommend [H] reviews for this in particular, as they go into a lot of detail on the exact settings), if they are getting noticeably higher fps with the same settings, but with a better CPU, then yes, you might benefit from a better CPU, If not, then the Graphics Card is still the bottleneck.

And, to be brutally honest, even with a card as good as the 8800gt, I very strongly suspect that at 1920x1200 the GPU will top out in recent and upcoming games, long before the 4200+ starts to choke.
 
I just gave my 939 system that I built 3 years ago a very nice upgrade.

First I replaced my PCI-E eVGA 6800 GT with an eVGA 8800 GT SC.

Then I swapped my AMD 3200 for a Dual Core AMD Opteron 185.

It feels like a whole new system, and is running CoD4 and UT3 great.

All in all, I paid $500 bucks for what feels like a whole new system, capable of running any current game very well, and should hopefully last me at least another 2 good years.

No reason to kick 939 to the curb just yet.
 
VanEck said:
I just gave my 939 system that I built 3 years ago a very nice upgrade.

First I replaced my PCI-E eVGA 6800 GT with an eVGA 8800 GT SC.

Then I swapped my AMD 3200 for a Dual Core AMD Opteron 185.

It feels like a whole new system, and is running CoD4 and UT3 great.

All in all, I paid $500 bucks for what feels like a whole new system, capable of running any current game very well, and should hopefully last me at least another 2 good years.

No reason to kick 939 to the curb just yet.
Click to expand...


Sounds like what i did, and man am i happy too, recently upgraded to the opty 185 from an FX-55, and and 8800 GTS 640....(it was before the 8800 GT's came out), from a 6800GT.. and upgraded from 1 megs of ram to 2...

and there is nothing i cant throw at this thing, i can play everything on max settings...there was no reason to change to c2d.......my 939 rocks everything i throw at it...For $600, i got a system that will last another 2 years easy....and it took 5 minutes to do the upgrade...and the other beauty was i was able to build a second PC with the fx-55, 1 gig of ram, and the 6800 GT.. and make an awesome media PC my wife wanted, for all of $60.. for a mobo and PSU.. i had all the other parts.. so I got a rocking gaming rig, and a media P... for $660 :)

So yeah, 939 still have quite a bit of life in it, for current 939 owners, there is no real need to upgrade yet, assuming you have the ability to go dual core, and have a pci-e slot.
 
Given thier cash strapped state,you'd think they'd throw us a bone (and themselves for that matter) and ship some 939's... :rolleyes:
 
I upgraded from X2 3800+ with 7800GT SLI to Opteron 185 with 8800 Ultra about 6 months ago. It runs great for all games @1920x1200 except Crysis and World in Conflict. I just find Crysis high setting 1920x1200 under 30 fps a bit too slow for my taste.
 
My X2 3800 is still going strong. I just wish that they'd come out with some new matx mobos that are as feature packed as the ones out now, but I know that won't happen. :( It's not worth it for me to upgrade to AM2 or Intels because i'd have to get DDR2 ram, mobo, and hsf.
 
i'd say keep your current rig for a bit longer, then upgrade when the time is right.
 
*sigh*

The upgrade bug is starting to bite again...

But it's just so damn hard to part with the better part of $1000 of hard-earned cash for a serious C2Q upgrade when a single-core FX-55 @ 3 GHz and 8800 GTX OC still can handle just about anything I can throw at it on a 24" LCD (Crysis & WIC being the major exceptions, but neither title has interested me much).

I'll admit, this system isn't as snappy as my E6700/4GB box @ work in multitasking, but even after 3 years, an AGP-to-PCI-E motherboard swap, a 6800 Ultra to 8800 GTX OC upgrade and the addition of another GB of 2-2-2-5 1T RAM, this 939 still has some life left in it for gaming. :)

Who would have thought it would last this long? Certainly not I.

*Goes back to viewing Newegg...* :)
 
I faced the same question close to a year ago and decided to swap my 3700+ for a Opty 170 instead of doing a whole system upgrade to C2D. Looking back I'm glad I did. As has already been stated gaming is not going to be bottlenecked that much and I don't use any applications where having a C2D is going to show it's advantage. Currently waiting on the 8800gt deal from Dell to replace my x1900xt and figure that will last me a good year before worrying about a new build from the ground up.
 
My system is:

M/B: DFI LP Ultra-D (939)
CPU: Athlon 64 3200+(venice) @2.65Ghz
GPU: Sparkle 8800GT
Ram:OCZ PC3500 GOLD EDITION 2x512 2-2-2-5 @239MHz 3.2v
PSU: Enermax NoiseTaker 485Watt

So i decided to spend some money upgrading my weakest part, the CPU.
I'm between a 4200+ or an Opteron 180. The diference in price is about 40$. The 4200+ can easily OC at 2.9Ghz how about the Opteron can it go fron 2.4 to 2.9+? If anyone has tried plz share your experience:)

The PC is usded mostly for gaming and with the 8800GT i have no complaints but a few tests tha i did with a friend that has almost same pc with the 4200 @2.95Ghz i saw tha in some games such as Supreme Commander, World in Conflict that are mostly cpu based games the difference was quite big. His pc outperforms mine in Crysis also, Mine 27AVfps his 32.

So whats ur opinion 4200 or 180?

Thnx for reading:)
 
batig0al said:
My system is:

M/B: DFI LP Ultra-D (939)
CPU: Athlon 64 3200+(venice) @2.65Ghz
GPU: Sparkle 8800GT
Ram:OCZ PC3500 GOLD EDITION 2x512 2-2-2-5 @239MHz 3.2v
PSU: Enermax NoiseTaker 485Watt

So i decided to spend some money upgrading my weakest part, the CPU.
I'm between a 4200+ or an Opteron 180. The diference in price is about 40$. The 4200+ can easily OC at 2.9Ghz how about the Opteron can it go fron 2.4 to 2.9+? If anyone has tried plz share your experience:)

The PC is usded mostly for gaming and with the 8800GT i have no complaints but a few tests tha i did with a friend that has almost same pc with the 4200 @2.95Ghz i saw tha in some games such as Supreme Commander, World in Conflict that are mostly cpu based games the difference was quite big. His pc outperforms mine in Crysis also, Mine 27AVfps his 32.

So whats ur opinion 4200 or 180?

Thnx for reading:)
Click to expand...
First of all, overclocking is never guaranteed. What would you do if you got the 4200 and it topped out aorund 2.6?

A rule of thumb I use is this: never buy a CPU if you wouldn't be happy with its performance at stock. That way, if it does overclock like crazy, it's a great surprise, but if it doesn't, it's not a show stopper.

Thus, my recommendation is to spend the extra $40 for the extra 200 MHz.
 
LstOfTheBrunnenG said:
First of all, overclocking is never guaranteed. What would you do if you got the 4200 and it topped out aorund 2.6?

A rule of thumb I use is this: never buy a CPU if you wouldn't be happy with its performance at stock. That way, if it does overclock like crazy, it's a great surprise, but if it doesn't, it's not a show stopper.

Thus, my recommendation is to spend the extra $40 for the extra 200 MHz.
Click to expand...

I look to see which CPUs are clocking the best and buy one of those, saves tons of cash each time :)
 
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