I'm working on a friend's computer that is a HP workstation from around 2006. It is a 2 physical cpu system with 2X Opteron 2216's (only 1 is working at the moment because he's on Windows 7 Home, an upgrade to Professional is coming). I'm selling him a graphics card that will be either Radeon 270X or 280X depending on what makes more sense.
I saw very little difference between the 270X and 280X with just 1 Opteron 2216, and even with the 280X, Farcry 3 was only just playable on low settings, leading me to believe the cpu is really holding the system back (he has 4GB DDR2 PC-5300). I'm concerned that even with the 2nd cpu working it won't make a huge improvement so I'm looking at possible processor upgrades.
This is a Socket F system and the cheapest easy upgrade I found was going from the Opteron 2216's (dual-core 2.4GHz) to a pair of Opteron 2384's (quad-core 2.70Ghz).
I can't find any gaming benchmarks for these processors to know if this is a worthwhile upgrade or not. I don't have a good sense if it would help gaming to a point to release the cpu's from bottle necking the 280X and even the 270X to a lesser degree.
I saw very little difference between the 270X and 280X with just 1 Opteron 2216, and even with the 280X, Farcry 3 was only just playable on low settings, leading me to believe the cpu is really holding the system back (he has 4GB DDR2 PC-5300). I'm concerned that even with the 2nd cpu working it won't make a huge improvement so I'm looking at possible processor upgrades.
This is a Socket F system and the cheapest easy upgrade I found was going from the Opteron 2216's (dual-core 2.4GHz) to a pair of Opteron 2384's (quad-core 2.70Ghz).
I can't find any gaming benchmarks for these processors to know if this is a worthwhile upgrade or not. I don't have a good sense if it would help gaming to a point to release the cpu's from bottle necking the 280X and even the 270X to a lesser degree.