Upgrading my s939 CPU

G

GDstew4

[H]ard|Gawd
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May 16, 2006
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I currently own a Winchester 3500+ that I bought about 3 years ago. With a baby on the way, I can't upgrade much more than my CPU at the moment.

I'm trying to decide on an X2 4400 or 4600 since I think any 4800 out there is probably out of my price range. I was checking out this page on AMD's website and notice that the 4400's have double the L2 cache of the 4600's but a slightly lower core speed.

Would I be better off going with the 4400+ and doing a little overclocking? My PC is primarily used for games (Supreme Commander, UT3, TF2, etc...)
 
Higher clock speed will help you more then the larger cache. Like you said though, if you can find one with the higher cache and OC it you might be better off. In the end though, if you can't find a chip with the higher cache, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Either way, make sure you update your BIOS if you need to. Some boards released new BIOS's for dual-core 939's.
 
I went from a 3500 to a 4400 about a year and a half ago, it was a nice upgrade. The extra cache makes almost no difference performance wise, but it shouldn't be hard to get a 4400 up to 2.4 GHz.

I don't know where you're going to find any decently priced non-Opteron skt 939 chips though. Socket 939 is dead.

Like maddude0025 said, make sure your motherboard's BIOS supports dual core processors.
 
Thanks guys, I know my board supports the X2's (Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe) but couldn't find anything about supporting Opterons. If it supports the dual-core X2's can I assume it'll work for dual-core Opterons?
 
if you board supports DC's then yeah an opty will work. the board may not display the correct CPU during boot and consequently be misnamed by the OS, but it is a cosmetic issue really. as long as your mobo has support and the BIOS for s939 DC.

by misnamed i mean the CPUID string is not available or unknown. just check the BIOS to see that the FSB/Multiplier and CPU speed are correct for the CPU installed.
 
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