Full house PC upgrade

[AMDCam]

Hey, well I just put up a thread for that fun MX440, T-bird system, but now it looks like I'm gonna actually building another new PC (which I love). Alright, mine is obviously the one with the specs in the signature, and I built my brother a...better but worse computer already, now all I need to do is get my mom a new computer. See my brother's is an A8N-SLI Deluxe (MUCH better compared to my NF7-S2) but it's got cheap parts and it's not built for overclocking. I (my dad, but I built it) spent about $700 on it and got that motherboard, an Athlon 64 3000+, case, 6600GT 128mb (SLI compatible), and that's it (while I've spent over $1200 on mine just on overclocking stuff). I scrapped last-generation things from the older computers we had (his old hard drive, optical drives, etc.) and even gave him 1gb of Value Select DDR400 RAM that used to be mine, so it's got way more potential than mine but it isn't as fast. So I'm planning on giving this (the one in the signature) to my mom, which should last AT LEAST 5 full years with how she uses computers- unless a new revolution comes up with Office programs, and I get to build another top-of-the-line PC, this time with all modern parts (64-bit, SLI, PCIe- so I won't be out-of-date when I want to upgrade and I have potential). Well finally the question, what is the best core out there for Athlon 64's (for each model, 3200+,3500+, 3700+, FX series, etc.), because I'm obviously gonna overclock a lot. Thanks guys

 

[Solaris17]

well if u whant to game FX series if your just going to oc and some heavey to medium apps..3700 for lowend apps and other random programs go w/ the 3500.

 

[AMDCam]

Okay thanks but I know about that, I mean the core's. Like what's better for overclocking, a Clawhammer or San Diego or a Venice or Newcastle etc? Plus I'm seeing these 4000+'s and they say the Clawhammer's overclock past 2.8ghz pretty easily, so if I did do that would it be exactly the same as an FX series or are the FX's architecture's a little different?

 

[thedivinehairband]

The San Diego is quite a good overclocker. It has been seen at around 2.8ghz. Mine has only made it to 2.66Ghz. Any higher and problems occur. Perhaps the Venice would be a better overclocker. I believe there is a restriction on San Diego because it has double the L2 cache. Have read some about it in articles.

 

[Deleted member 3]

If she uses offices your thunderbird system would be more than enough for her. So unless she does anything else besides her offfce programs it's a waste of money to give her your system.
Then again if your mom is paying and she's rich anyway feel free to rip her off

 

[AMDCam]

Dang dan, you put it that way and it makes me feel like a con artist dude. It's not to rip her off, it's for the future. I know the T-bird should work, but she does play games too, just not the most demanding games, so she will be needing a little bit better computer. Well I'm looking at the 64 X2's and am wondering, do they overclock well? If I go 1 core I'll get a San Diego 3700+, but for just a few bucks more I can get an X2 3800+ and just don't know if they're very good overclockers, or even gamers. Thank you

 

[GoLLuM4444]

The 3800 X2 is a great clocker but lacks the 1M cache (per core). On the other hand the 3700 sandy is a nice clocker too. If you're gaming on the dually you can set one core to run the game and one to run windows and all the rest of your background crap so it's probably better if you use it properly. I don't know of a problem with San Diego architecture for overclocking - my fx57 (SD) is happy at 3.6Ghz.

 

[AMDCam]

Awesome, thanks dude. I think I'll go with the X2, I had no idea you could set the cores. I would think that means like it's a full gaming system like Xbox or PS2, because I thought the only thing holding back PC games (why you need so much more power than consoles to run the same thing) is because of the heavy OS. If you can do that, I would think the X2's should blow the normal 64's away for gaming

 

[Deleted member 3]

Windows will automagically assign threads. You can assign them manually though this should not be required. Plus, SMP systems are actually slower with most games than single core systems due to various things like the sharing of the FSB. Though lately with the multithreaded drivers this could change.

The main power of consoles isn't in having a light OS but in the fact that there is only 1 configuration of hard/software, games are highly optimized for this single configuration.

 

[AMDCam]

Well still, a 1ghz fsb is still faster than mine, even when it's divided to 500mhz, I mean mine overclocked is only 456mhz (max), so 2x500mhz compared to my 1x456mhz and mine performs pretty well, there shouldn't be a huge problem. But about the specific hardware thing, that makes sense but still, even on high quality/equivalent quality to a console game, it still takes a lot more power from a computer to run the same thing