Alrighty, you guys may remember me from my thread about my poor processor performance in the games section I wanted to give a belated howdie.

That out of the way, Im going to upgrade my dell dimension 4700 by basically throwing the case, mobo , and the old processor out. Ive already selected my motherboard , which is this.

Asus M2R32-MVP ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 Socket AM2 2000MHz DDR2 Motherboard at ZipZoomfly
Asus M2R32-MVP 580X CrossFire Sempron/Athlon 64(FX)(X2) SktAM2 DDR2 ATX Motherboard w/Audio, Gigabit LAN, RAID/Serial ATA

This will cost me about....160 dollars. Is this a good pick?

Now my dilemma is selecting a good gaming amd processor. I obviously dont have 500 bucks to blow on one.... my total overall budget is 300 bucks... could push it up to 320-340 if I had to for the processor. So lets put it at 340-160 = 180 bucks for the processor. I have NWN 2 , Oblivion , Counterstrike : source , guild wars , and am planning on getting WoW , Battlefield 2142 , and probably the latest dx10 game in the future. An upgrade to vista is planned later on , along with a crossfire configuration. Ill be recycling my hard drive, ram , etc, which is listed above in my comp specs bar.

The processor I have picked out is this.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 4200+ Socket AM2 Retail at ZipZoomfly
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 4200+ Socket AM2 (89W)
This costs....170 bucks.

I did some research and I found that X2 processors failed the clock tests for FX , kind of like a 1900 XTX getting scaled to a GTO for failing the clock tests. Is this better than my p4 , and will it give me the smooth performance I want in css , oblivion , etc?

If not, what would you reccomend? If it does , but you have a better choice, please post here. My budget is very limited at this time , but Im planning on ordering this thursday (feb 1st).

All help is very much appreciated

Hey NightJ,

PM me with your zipcode. Perhaps we can take down the price of your Mobo a bit, and give you a little more to work with for your processor.

TTFN

LGW

Hey NightJ,

These guys,Mwave.com say that they can get you the motherboard delvered for 150.17. So that gives you, $189.83 to work with.

NewEgg has the processor you are talking about for $169 right to your door.

Savings is....(ala The Family Feud ) $20.83

Now we just need the hardware gurus to chime in regarding the gaming specs, not my forte unfortunately. However your processor did rate very high here.

Looking forward to your reply,

TTFN

LGW

*laughs* LGW , you are awesome ! TYVM

According to the newegg reviews of the processor (and you picked one with a lower watt rating... how important is that? does it affect performance?) If this thing had a hole that they could *ahem* get it on in, they would marry it.

People keep comparing it to the core2duo , but after dealing with p3 , celeron , and then p4 , and then watched that old AMD athlon 2200 beat my p4 like a red headed stepchild, I think Im sold on AMD. Quality > Quanity. Let intel stick to the business field, Ill take AMD for CSS. Ill wait and see what the gaming hardware guys say before ordering.

Very colorful analogy NightJ, LOL. Glad to be of help, like I said before, hardware is not my area of expertise, I look for lower watt for cooling purposes, and I'm not a big gamer, my thing is CSI and Myst. One of the hardware gurus may be able to give you more info about performance.

But as far as budget, and compatiblity, you should be good to go.

Keep us up to date on what you decide to do, and how it works out for you.

Looking forward to your reply,

TTFN

LGW

Okay, after further research , if I decide I want to upgrade my processor to amd's latest and greatest in the future, my motherboard will be compatible with their release. Im so psyched about that. Ive read reviews about how I need to download something to sync the cores for games and multitasking..... hm... Ill start another thread on that in the future , but it certainly seems to me like I picked something with good performance for the price..... Im a newbie to amd so Im going to have to figure out the difference between hyperthreading and configuring and managing a comp with two physical cores.

Im not going to have the money to buy a new case and my dimension is obviously too small, so Im going to take an old 1980's case and try to set it up for this. I really do hope this can handle the physics in source on max settings, along with oblivion , nwn2 , etc. My x1900 has been sulking at me over my poor processor, giving a pale 9-40 fps in games where it should be getting 150 fps, minimum. Really new information to me concerning smoothness and frames per second. Video card is only half of it , processor is the other half. Wish I knew this earlier. Now I know why people couldnt understand why my performance sucked, when they had amd processors released a year before mine, and getting stutter free performance. If you are a gamer , fold proteins , or just a heavy multitasker , amd is the way to go.

Back to research !