Allright guys I've been thinking of upgrading from my Sempron 3400+ (754) to this:
mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813136015
CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103735
Ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220095

I'd probably return my agp card to Best buy and pick up a 7600 GT.

What's the verdict? will I notice a big difference? Should I stick with my current system of:
sempron 3400+ oced to 2.3ghz
1 gb of cheap ass ddr (pc3200, 400mhz)
512mb 1600 pro agp

I have not seen any specific OC reports for that board, though it should do pretty well since it's from DFI

The ram you chose should also do well, most DDR2 667 will run at DDR2 800 speeds with a slight bump in voltage.

It should be about double the performance of you current Sempron in 3DMARK 06 and Quake 4 (Both show massive improvements with Dual Core CPU's and the larger cache size.

There are reports of the 3800+ AM-2 running at 3GHZ with high end air cooling, so you should be able to reach 2.6GHZ or more with out much trouble at all

Looks good to me man, Yeah hecro i hear them AM2 3800's are some nice chips! Dude you will be able to see the difference for sure!




Matt

Quote: Originally Posted by capt_cope Allright guys I've been thinking of upgrading from my Sempron 3400+ (754) to this: mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813136015 CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103735 Ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220095 I'd probably return my agp card to Best buy and pick up a 7600 GT. What's the verdict? will I notice a big difference? Should I stick with my current system of: sempron 3400+ oced to 2.3ghz 1 gb of cheap ass ddr (pc3200, 400mhz) 512mb 1600 pro agp

Looks like a good setup. Im getting the same processor. For 50 dollars more, you should look at the ASUS Mobo for AM2.
Good luck with everything!!

The Asus one better than the DFI? I'll be honest untill I joined here I never paid any attention to brands, and it seems that when it comes to overclocking DFI (their lanparty ut at least) boards reign supreme. A local place is selling some "Asrock" mobos, what's the story on them?

Quote: Originally Posted by capt_cope The Asus one better than the DFI? I'll be honest untill I joined here I never paid any attention to brands, and it seems that when it comes to overclocking DFI (their lanparty ut at least) boards reign supreme. A local place is selling some "Asrock" mobos, what's the story on them?

Yes, they might be better for overclocking, however ive never had a DFI, so im not sure. The Asus mobo offers a little more in the way of upgrading overtime and supports ddr2 800 as opposed to 667. And supports as much as 8gb of ram. i think it has one more pci slot aswell. just a thought.

DFI is the way to go... That DFI will support Just about any ddr2 ram you could use in it And who is going to use 8Gb of ram?? And PCI IS not upgrading... I would say if anything it would be DOWN grading! When windows Vista comes atleast! PCI is 32Bit interface and windows Vista is 64 even tho im sure it will run 32Bit apps... BUT wouldnt you want to keep everything up to date.... You would not wanna bottle neck from a PCI card you know!


PCI cards = Bad!! lol



Look into a DFI's bios and then look into a asus's bios.... Nothing alike... DFI KIllz all! I guess im just a fanboy! Ive owned about 6 asus boards in my time and everyone of them bit the dust! Ive been running the same DFI board for the last year and never had any problems what so ever... And i overclock like crazy! 325x9 on my opty 165! Stable all day everyday! No blue screens no locks up since i bought it! Simple the best mother board ive ever had!


matt

Quote: Originally Posted by OCBeats Yes, they might be better for overclocking, however ive never had a DFI, so im not sure. The Asus mobo offers a little more in the way of upgrading overtime and supports ddr2 800 as opposed to 667. And supports as much as 8gb of ram. i think it has one more pci slot aswell. just a thought.

your probably right, im just starting out on this stuff. nOOb alert.

Ok I'm a little bit confused, when you say PCI do you mean PCI express? Is there some magic agp I haven't seen yet? And if I can get essentially the same system in 939 for less money (money is a large concern, otherwise I'd get a conroe) is it going to be roughly equivilent? (this is more memory than cpu, because I hear am2 3800+ = 939 3800+) I've read the various benchmarks comparing ddr 400 to ddr2 (667-800) and get a mixed bag: It appears that memory benchmarks see a decent improvement (anywhere from 12-29%) but games see from 1%-6% what does this mean for an overclocker? Does the higher rating mean I can push cheap ddr2 harder than cheap ddr 400? (My current cheap **** is running at 470mhz, fastest I can get it stable and with no heat spreaders I'm not tempting fate by upping the volts) Also 939 would let me recycle alot of my current hardware (well not that much, but things I'm fond of: my Zalman cpu cooler, my ram, that's pretty much it, but still that's a good $150 incentive to go for 939)

By all means if you can carry over old hardware and save money, then go 939, that is why I asked if there was a specific reason.

The performance difference is negligable to the "Seat of the pants" and can only be noticed on a benchmark...if you were starting from scratch then I would say AM-2 all the way, just because of the future upgradability.

I'm liking the AM2 reports, for the ASrock board anadtech did a review on how they stack up (generic vs mainstream) and they did pretty well, for anadtech standards

personally DFI hasnt done me wrong before, and i have heard the boards are starting to add to there BIOS's (Gigabyte just seems to ad a few more) and they havent been doing too bad, but paying more for a board that DFI make the same as is almost irrelavent

Allright thanks for the input guys, I'm going to head out to the bank and then my local PC shop to pick up my stuff. I've decided I'll go with 939, and spend the money I'd save on a real grapics card, probably a 7900gt. I'll let you all know what I can get it up to, I'm running on air (decent IMHO) just a zalman v7000 cpu cooler and a v700 gpu cooler. Thankfully I've got enough AS5 to get me through this swapping, but out of curiosity, is there any better (easily availible) thermal compound? We don't see too much exotic stuff around here, hell finding AS5 was a trick, most places are trying to pawn off this "dytex" or Dynex or something like that as being better than AS5. For ****s and giggles I picked up a tube... bad plan. It looks like it has more silver content (though it may as well have been glitter, my temps were terrible)

AS-5 is still the "Standard" IMO

I have seen a few pastes that match it or beat it "Supposedly" by 1c, but that is within the margin of errror, and even if it does win, you certainly won't see any "Real World" performance increase.

I believe it was Zaman (Super grease?) and that new "Liquid Metal" (Wich cannot be used on aluminum, it will eat it!)

Review of that board.
http://www.pcmoddingmy.com/e107_plug...hp?content.377

Quote: Originally Posted by $SOLID$ Necro AS-5 is still the "Standard" IMO I have seen a few pastes that match it or beat it "Supposedly" by 1c, but that is within the margin of errror, and even if it does win, you certainly won't see any "Real World" performance increase. I believe it was Zaman (Super grease?) and that new "Liquid Metal" (Wich cannot be used on aluminum, it will eat it!)

The PCM+ fuild like thermal transfer compound does beat it in some occasions, when theres less heat the AS5 works better, but i've seen my athlon XP run much nicer with the PCM+ stuff IMO, when i rigged the zalman to my socket A board i did a AS5 vs PCM test the PCM helped about 2C better actually, but on my sempr0n the AS5 wins every time, IMO the PCM is so much easier to use, and clean up, but AS5 is still standard in my books.

Well it's all here and together, and wow is it better than before! I went with what was availible cheap and local: Asus A8n-sli, 3800+ X2 (939) and an nVidia 7900gt. The performance compared to my old sempron is insane. While the Asus is no DFI (judging only on what I've read of DFI boards, I've never owned one) it appears to be much easier for the novice overclocker (such as myself) I haven't run into any problems with my memory, as it automatically adjusts clock and voltage to keep it running stock speeds, it also handles my CPU voltage for me, leaving me to set the clock. The whole jumperless cmos thing is pretty nice as well, and it offers way more tinkering than I will ever need. As I wasn't too hot with the dremel or paint, I picked up a coolermaster "praetorian" case to toss it all in, and I can't say enough about it, really well made, looks amazing (I was mightily impressed by the fact that even the frame under the brushed aluminum goodness is... aluminum. No cheap monkey metal to be found. I ditched my death "system-restore" copy of XP (from my emachine box) and went with a fresh install of xp-pro from MSDN subscriber disks (pays to have a mother who works for a software company) but I had a question: While home for the weekend and rooting around the MSDN disks I found ISOs for XP 64bit. Is this a good idea to install?
Thanks for the help and input guys.

Ok quick update here: I've been working on overclocking it, and have had far more sucess than I thought I would (Now stable at 2.5ghz) my question is this: how high can I push it? Can I keep dropping my memory divider and upping my clock untill the cows come home? does ddr running at 200mhz after a cpu/15 divider (I haven't figured that part out yet, it's only at 166mhz at my current cpu clock, but I'm afraid to run my cpu any higher, I kept the zalman on my 754 system, so I'm on stock air at 40c idle)run the same as ddr at 200mhz after a cpu/15 divider? Is the 500mhz increase going to be worth it compared to slowed down memory? I can push my memory to 233mhz before it gets unstable.

Argh the edit didn't work for me, said it was too short of a reply so I will be a post whore.

Another update: I got antsy, my computer got faster. now stable at 2.6ghz, same temps on my lame stock AMD cooler, and my memory is up to 173.9 mhz. Any idea when I'll hit the wall? (FSB is limited to 1600 on this board, I'm at 1042, though I haven't figured out what that means yet.)

Quote: Originally Posted by capt_cope Argh the edit didn't work for me, said it was too short of a reply so I will be a post whore. Another update: I got antsy, my computer got faster. now stable at 2.6ghz, same temps on my lame stock AMD cooler, and my memory is up to 173.9 mhz. Any idea when I'll hit the wall? (FSB is limited to 1600 on this board, I'm at 1042, though I haven't figured out what that means yet.)

What you want to do is first download all these benchmarks andif not all at least get OCCT and run its stability test, it will tell you if you stable and whether or not to go further, nowfor as far as itwill go i think the newest steppings should do pretty good, around 2.8, im not sure but i think thatswhere there at, with much better cooling you could push maybe even 2.9-3 i dunno im sure necrowill drop by and filly ou in, hes got one of these X2's and probally knows alot more than i do

Well I ran OCCT and I'm stable on stock air at 2.6
Not going to lie, I'm pretty happy with this result.
Edit *** Well I'm picking up a TT big Typhoon tomorrow or Sat. Untill then I'm keeping the oc at 2.3 (it got up past 50c load at 2.6, I'm not too comfortable with that) I'll let you guys know what I end up at with legit cooling.