What's The Best?

[Tatty_One]

Hi all,

I am looking for a little advice, In a direct speed comparison (mainly in gaming terms) is there much difference between a Socket A Athlon xp3000+ (333FSB) Barton Core or Semperon 3400 64 Bit? I appreciate the socket/motherboard will play a part in that as well as the fact that the 754 with its higher FSB will run PC3200 RAM as opposed to PC2700 on my current Socket A.

I have also seen loads of conflicting remarks about comparisons between the Newcastle core Socket 754 Athlon 3000+ and the Semperon, basically is it worth upgrading from the Barton Socket A xp3000+ to either of the others. I am on a tight budget and have been offered both the Semperon and Athlon 64 3000+ Newcastle at £74 each. Some say the Newcastle is faster than the Semperon and vice versa?

Grateful for any advice you could give.

Cheers

Cheers

[bim27142]

get a sempron (period)....

[trog100]

in gaming terms i dont think u will notice much difference..

what sort of grfx card do u have.. ??? cos its the grfx card that really matters..

when u see cpu reviews that produce big differences tween cpus in games.. its a bit misleading cos its always at low resolution settings with very high (more than enough) frame rates.. in such situation the game (frame rate wise) is cpu limited..

in the real world a game is never cpu limited if low framerates are the problem.. it only gets cpu limited when frame rates are not a problem.. frame rate wise the grfx is the only thing that matters.. if u dont have that u are wasting your time trying to improve things with cpu upgrades..

to put it another way.. the fastest cpu available might take your frame rates from 140 to 200.. or even 400 to 700..

but it wont make any noticable difference down in the real world 30 not being enough situation.. your 30 will say 30.. he he he

that why low frame rate (gpu limited) 3dmark2005 wont show much of difference cpu or memory wise..

but high frame rate (cpu limited) 3dmark2001 will show a massive difference with a faster cpu and memory..

the first example (low frame rate) is the real world.. the second (high frame rate) isnt..

trog

[Tatty_One]

Originally Posted by trog100

in gaming terms i dont think u will notice much difference..

what sort of grfx card do u have.. ??? cos its the grfx card that really matters..

when u see cpu reviews that produce big differences tween cpus in games.. its a bit misleading cos its always at low resolution settings with very high (more than enough) frame rates.. in such situation the game (frame rate wise) is cpu limited..

in the real world a game is never cpu limited if low framerates are the problem.. it only gets cpu limited when frame rates are not a problem.. frame rate wise the grfx is the only thing that matters.. if u dont have that u are wasting your time trying to improve things with cpu upgrades..

to put it another way.. the fastest cpu available might take your frame rates from 140 to 200.. or even 400 to 700..

but it wont make any noticable difference down in the real world 30 not being enough situation.. your 30 will say 30.. he he he

that why low frame rate (gpu limited) 3dmark2005 wont show much of difference cpu or memory wise..

but high frame rate (cpu limited) 3dmark2001 will show a massive difference with a faster cpu and memory..

the first example (low frame rate) is the real world.. the second (high frame rate) isnt..

trog

Thanks for that, I have an ASUS V9999 GeForce 6800 128MB Vanilla with 12 Pipes and 6 Vertex shaders (the extra pipes wont unlock without too loads of artifacts). I have it overclocked from 325 to 375 core and 700 to 790 DDR on stock cooling. With the rig I previously mentioned I get around 17000 on 3D Mark 2001 and 9900 on 3D Mark 2003. I think in this case there may be a small bottleneck on the processor and was just wondered with that in mind if the Newcastle 64 3000+ or the Semperon 64 3400 would add much in processor power.

Cheers for your help, I am thinking that there is not really anything to seperate the 2 TBH, both run at 2 Gig, both 64 bit and whilst the Newcastle has the 512K L2 cache over the Semperon's 256 the Semperon makes up for that I am told in overclockability, I have heard of Newcastles running at upto 2400 and have a friend who has a Semperon running at 2500.

[trog100]

another option for over clocking a socket A board is the athlon or barton mobile chip.. its especially picked to run at a lower core voltage and the theory is if u crank it up to normal voltages or over it will overclock a lot.. i think its also multiplyer unlocked..

i toyed with buying one of those and sticking with my socket A system.. in the end i upgraded the lot.. the probelm now with any agp sytem is fast agp grfx cards cost a lot more than the same card in pci e format.. u cant buy the "fastest" and the half decent ones cost too much..

the old socket A system still has enough grunt.. its just hard to get fast decent priced grfx for em..

trog

[wazzledoozle]

Any Sempron 64 plus a NF4x based motherboard will slap around an Athlon XP.

And dont get a Socket 754 Athlon 64 unless its a Venice core. The others have problems, run hot, and dont OC well.