Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: redsniper on July 15, 2007, 06:32:04 pm
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So, I'm considering upgrading my CPU from an Athlon 64 3000 to an Athlon X2 4600 (socket 939). I'm also planning on buying some more RAM, bringing me up to 2GB.
The question: Someday I'm going to upgrade to an AM2 mobo (or maybe even whatever post-AM2 standard they have) and at that time I will have to buy a new CPU anyways. Would I be better off just biting the bullet, spending more time and money, and doing a full mobo/cpu upgrade now rather than later? I like to think that the X2 4600 and more RAM will future-proof me enough for a year or so since my video card (X1900XT) I believe is powerful enough.
What does HLP think?
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A 4600+ with 2GB ram will last you more than a year when coupled with a video card like that, as long as you don't expect to play the very newest games smoothly at the very highest settings. So in my opinion, it's really a matter of whether you can scrounge up a socket 939 CPU relatively cheaply. I know I had a hard time finding them last time I needed one, and that one cost more than it should have due to scarcity.
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Would I be better off just biting the bullet, spending more time and money, and doing a full mobo/cpu upgrade now rather than later?
Yes, although you should get a 775 Core 2 setup and not AM2. 939 processors and DDR1 are relatively expensive these days due to their scarcity. If it was only the processor or memory, it may have been worth it, but you don't want to be buying both at this point.
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Ugh. Well, like an idiot, I didn't jump on any of the good deals I saw for 4600s back when I posted this. Now I can't find one online for less than $250. :(
But it's just as well because the chipset fan on my a8n-e, which periodically comes loose and makes horrible noises, is coming loose more quickly and more often. I've heard that the chipset fans were an issue on this particular mobo and that Asus offers replacement fans, but if I'm going to go to all the trouble of replacing that (screws are on the other side of the mobo :rolleyes:) then I might as well just get a whole new cpu/mobo.
What's the best dual core cpu motherboard combo I can get for ~$250? I would like to see a noticeable performance increase over my current athlon 64 3000. All I need on the mobo is pci-e and SATA, no need for onboard sound or SLI or anything silly like that.
Also, I've had bad experiences with power supplies screwing over my whole system and I just want to make sure that 430W Truepower 2 will be able to handle whatever is recommended.
Thanks. :D
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:bump:
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That is not much of a bump.Bump:3-10 days.
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Well, I'd kinda like to do this before I go back to school and it'll take a while to get the hardware if I order it online, so I'd like to get this done as soon as possible. In my experience, threads around here will usually get responses after ~24 hours, so that's why I bumped.
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What's the best dual core cpu motherboard combo I can get for ~$250? I would like to see a noticeable performance increase over my current athlon 64 3000. All I need on the mobo is pci-e and SATA, no need for onboard sound or SLI or anything silly like that.
Also, I've had bad experiences with power supplies screwing over my whole system and I just want to make sure that 430W Truepower 2 will be able to handle whatever is recommended.
I think your best combination for $250 is the Core 2 E4400 and Abit IP35-E. If you can spend a bit more, the E6320 is also worth a look. You can hit at least 3ghz on either one easily. I'm guessing you got some DDR2 memory already.
At 3ghz, each core will be about twice as fast as your 3000 if it's at stock speeds, although actual performance improvements in programs will be more modest. (but still fairly significant in most cases)
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What's the best dual core cpu motherboard combo I can get for ~$250? I would like to see a noticeable performance increase over my current athlon 64 3000. All I need on the mobo is pci-e and SATA, no need for onboard sound or SLI or anything silly like that.
Also, I've had bad experiences with power supplies screwing over my whole system and I just want to make sure that 430W Truepower 2 will be able to handle whatever is recommended.
I think your best combination for $250 is the Core 2 E4400 and Abit IP35-E. If you can spend a bit more, the E6320 is also worth a look. You can hit at least 3ghz on either one easily. I'm guessing you got some DDR2 memory already.
At 3ghz, each core will be about twice as fast as your 3000 if it's at stock speeds, although actual performance improvements in programs will be more modest. (but still fairly significant in most cases)
S939 (iirc) is DDR1 only--he'd need new RAM. Your best bet would probably be more like a Pentium E2160 and Abit IP35-E--that should bring you to 3GHz at ~$210.
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Well, he only said CPU and motherboard, so I assumed he already got some memory. :p If the memory needs to be included, it would be difficult to get everything in with $250. Should be possible with $300 though (the 2GB 800mhz Ballistix pack on Newegg is easily the best choice at $80).
There are actually one or two Asrock PT880 boards that support DDR1, but they don't overclock well and I think their PCIE slots are limited to 4x, which may hurt performance slightly.
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:o I didn't know that my memory would be incompatible. In that case I'd be willing to spend ~$100 on 2GB of RAM and it looks like what CP suggested will fit the bill nicely.
EDIT: Okay, after looking around a bit, both the IP35-E and E6320 seem a little more expensive than I'd like. I'm looking at $160 for the cpu and $115 for the mobo, if you've seen better deals feel free to show me where.
A few things:
1. If I get a cheaper Core 2 Duo, will I be kicking myself later for not getting the e6320? Would I miss those 2MB of cache that much if I got the e4400 instead?
2. Will the stock heatsink handle overclocking to 3Ghz like you're suggesting?
3. If I want to look at alternative motherboards, is the P35 chipset the best for these CPUs? Are there others that would be worth looking into?
4. Is 430W enough? I've got several hard drives, but I can get rid of a couple of them, and a Radeon X1900XT.
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The motherboard is about as cheap as you can go and still get a good FSB clocker, but you can certainly save on the processor. The extra cache does make a bit of difference but is not worth worrying about if you're on budget. The E4400 seems to be the sweet spot right now. The E2160 is pretty nice for the price too, but the cache reduction starts having a more significant impact at that point.
The P35 is indeed the best Core 2 chipset unless you want SLI. It runs much cooler and gets better overclocks than the Nvidia ones. The stock cooler should be good to about 2.8-3ghz as long as you don't increase the voltage, which is typically not necessary on the 4xxx and 6xxx models.
At stock speeds, the new setup will actually use less power than what you currently have, but that increases quickly when you pump the speed up. It should be fine with the video card, but you may run into trouble depending on how many hard drives you have.
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I actually have four hard drives right now, but I could easily get rid of two of them.
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Get a 550+ watt power supply, and make sure it comes with a PCI-e power connector.
By the way, get an AMD processor.
If you can read this without resizing the text, you have eye cancer.
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So, I'm considering upgrading my CPU from an Athlon 64 3000 to an Athlon X2 4600 (socket 939).
What does HLP think?
Your upgrading your cpu to one that is less than 50% faster (more like 35%)?
(remember most programs are only single core aware)
waste of time either stay where you are or go faster
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*disregarding dumb posts*
Okay, I ordered the IP35-E, E6320, and 2GB DDR2 800 yesterday. I managed to get a $20 rebate on the mobo. :D
Now I wait on the mail.
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Nice--sounds like a good rebate. Tell me how the IP35-E works for ya, 'kay?
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Alright, the hardware is all working fine. The IP35-E does a weird thing: when I turn it on, it runs for a few seconds, turns off, then turns back on and runs normally. Pretty much all the user reviews I read reported the same thing, so I think it's normal.
So now it's on the the joy of re-installing Windows. :doubt:
What would be the best way to partition my HD, if at all? I have an 80GB main drive and a 200GB backup/storage drive. The last time I did this, I made a 10GB partition for Windows and a 70GB partition for everything else on the main drive (and didn't own the 200GB drive yet). I realized after the fact that this was mainly pointless, since if I reinstall Windows on the first partition that takes the registry with it and then all the programs on the second partition won't work. Also, I don't want to go and make five different partitions for games and music and video and so on, just one or two is fine. What do you guys recommend?
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Yes, that is a known issue on the IP35 boards. It's more of an odd quirk than an actual problem though, and is better than the cold boot bugs that occur on some other boards (particularly Asus ones).
I personally don't bother with partitions and keep it at one per drive. It's only worth doing if you will be running more than one OS. As you said, if Windows gets deleted, you will have to reinstall most of your programs anyway.
In any case, you might not actually have to reinstall Windows, especially if you got rid of your motherboard drivers on the old setup. My current XP install is from 2004 and works perfectly fine even after going through something like four upgrades.
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Well, I think I could just keep going with this install if I wanted to, but it's good to format and reinstall every once in a while. Gets rid of all the residual crap that builds up.
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You could backup the registry... if it crashes, it should keep most or all of the important stuff. Still, reinstalling will be basically required.
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I've already formatted the drive to one partition and reinstalled XP, now I'm just reinstalling drivers and such.
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Now I'm trying to get my laptop to connect to my desktop since I downloaded a bunch of drivers and such in anticipation of Teh Format™, but I can't get the buggers to communicate. The ethernet controller on my laptop is being
gay retarded. It says limited or no connectivity unless I manually give it an IP address (which is the wrong way to fix this anyways), and whether it has connectivity or not, I get a "You might not have permission to use this network resource" error when I try to access it from my desktop.
I ran the network wizard on both computers. They have the same workgroup name, the cat-5 is plugged in, I have folder and printer sharing turned on, I have folders actually set to be shared. When I try to repair the connection on the laptop end it hangs on "Renewing IP Address".
So, wtf?
EDIT: and I updated the drivers for the networking... thing on my laptop.
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Get a Cat5e crossover cable.
Or a router would help too...
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Wait, so I can't just hook one computer straight to the other? I distinctly remember hooking this laptop up to a friend's laptop (to give him FS2, in fact) and it worked just fine, and he had a Mac!
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No, because the Tx and Rx lines need to be crossed over so the two network adapters don't see Tx to Tx and Rx to Rx. Hence the name Crossover cable :p
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Bah! Fine... and I guess Mac OS can somehow magically sort it out w/o a crossover cable but Windows can't. :doubt:
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It's in the hardware, not the OS. He probably used a crossover cable and you didnt realize it (who would?).
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Actually, you know what? I'm using a different cable now than I was then. :o
This one has patch cable written on it and I'll bet that one was a crossover cable. I'll see if I can find it tomorrow and try this again.
Thanks.
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Alright, I found what I'm almost certain is the cable I used that time with the Mac<--->PC connection, and it behaves the same way. Limited or no connectivity, hangs on renewing IP address.
So this means that-
1. It's a different cable (likely)
2. It's the same cable and it somehow worked then but doesn't now (highly unlikely)
3. It's the same cable and it isn't working now because something else is wrong. (sort of likely since this is a dell laptop)
Just out of curiousity (for now), if/when I go out and buy a crossover cable and this still doesn't work, what then?
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Alright, I found a little Linksys workgroup router, which I have used to connect two computers in the past, and this still isn't working. I managed to get the connection on the laptop end to say 'connected,' while on the desktop end it only said 'enabled' and would say that the IP address couldn't be renewed when I tried to repair it. Now the laptop end hangs up on acquiring network address again. :mad:
Oh and I've tried many different combinations of the three ethernet cables I have here now. Is there anyway to tell a regular cable from a crossover cable? Should it even matter with the router? Should I look for better drivers?
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I've restored my laptop to factory settings using some crazy utility that Dell puts on their laptops nowadays. I'm still getting the same problem, "Limited or no connectivity," but now I know it's not because of me uninstalling something vital on the laptop.
I don't even need to network these two computers since I have an external hard drive, but I just want to get this solved as a matter of principle. I can't find any good reason why this shouldn't work, so I want to find out what's wrong and get it working.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_crossover_cable
Look toward the bottom, automatic crossover NICs. It is very possible that newer macs have this technology. Hell, I didn't even know it existed. Learn something new every day :).
Anyway, look at the first picture in detail. If it's a crossover, the two ends of your cat5e should have their wiring order look very different, as illustrated. If they are identical, it is a standard patch cable.
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Two of my cables have ends that look the same and one has the wires arranged differently. On the one arranged differently there aren't any brown or orange wires, they're just white.
Now, I've got both patch cables (with ends that look the same) plugged into my little router and one plugged into each computer involved. So wiring is good and the network card drivers are good, but I'm still getting the same problems. Could it be a hardware problem since the laptop seems to have no connection no matter what I do? I can't think of what else to mess with.
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It sounds to me that there is a problem with the NIC. The router should assign an IP whether or not your other PC is connected. To make sure it isn't a hardware problem, I would grab a recent LiveCD and try to see if you can get an IP in a virtual linux environment. If you can't get one there either, the odds are something is wrong on the physical layer.
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Sounds like a good idea. I just finished updating Windows all the way, which hasn't had any effect on this problem.
EDIT: Well, using Knoppix 3.8 I can't get any kind of network going. It's entirely possible that I'm just not doing it right, but I remember it being ridiculously easy the last time I did it two years ago. So I guess there's something wrong with my hardware.
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So I abandoned the network approach and just transferred stuff via external hard drive. I've gotten things more or less back up to snuff (less, I think since I haven't reinstalled FSO yet). Just today I decided to install something I had overlooked: abitEQ, a voltage/temperature/fan speed monitor analogous to good ol' asusprob.
So I install this bad boy and my system speaker starts making alarm noises. I go to see what the problem is and it turns out that the DDR2 voltage is higher than it should be. I promptly shut my compy down just in case this was something serious, then booted back up into the BIOS setup to see what the deal was.
I haven't overclocked anything on this computer yet and I haven't adjusted any voltages; everything is set to Default or Auto or an equivalent setting. The hardware monitoring part of the BIOS (as well as abitEQ) reports the voltage to be something around 2.3-2.4V, while the part where I can actually set the voltage only says 1.8V. So why am I getting 2.4V when it's set to 1.8? :wtf:
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Sometimes it is wrong--quite often actually. I'd say don't worry about it...
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Well, I wouldn't except for the annoying alarm sound. That and the fact that I'm kinda out of my league here and I really don't want to fry any of my new shiny stuff. :(
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Yeah, I think the program is just misreporting the voltage. 2.4V is very high, especially for the Micron chips, and I'm not sure if the memory would boot up at all at that setting. See if there is some option to turn off the alarms in that program.
This sort of thing is also often solved by a BIOS update, so check if there is anything available for that board.
Not sure what to say about your network problem. I didn't have much trouble setting up one around my house, but I don't know a whole lot about networks.
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Right, the POST memory test doesn't report anything wrong and I haven't noticed any strange behavior in Windows even when running intense stuff life Oblivion and the Bioshock demo.
I'll try a BIOS update and report back after that.
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Blargh, no BIOS update available. I did manage to turn off the alarm noise, though.
So what the heck, guys? Could I really have 2.4V (sometimes 2.3, sometimes 2.23) across my RAM or would things be flipping out by now? I'd hate to ignore this now, if it's a real problem, and have it bite me in the but later. :doubt:
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1.8 to 2.4, eh? An overvoltage of 33%. That's way more than enough to kill plenty of transistors in your memory modules. If it was really that high, your system wouldn't even POST.
Does the BIOS hardware monitor report anything about the voltages?
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2.2V is actually possible and people used to use it until they found that it sometimes causes long-term stability issues, but 2.4V is suicide run stuff. I doubt your memory would have lasted more than a few minutes if was really using that.
You may want to skim through this thread (http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=29&threadid=2063989&enterthread=y), which has several people using the same motherboard/memory combination. At least at a glance, I couldn't see any complaints about memory overvolting. There are some boards that are notorious for this, but the IP35 line doesn't appear be among them.
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Right, the thing is it isn't consistent with the voltages it reports. I can go to the hardware monitor in the BIOS and watch it jump from 2.4 to 2.23 to 2.37... I think something's screwy with the voltage monitoring hardware.
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Right, the POST memory test doesn't report anything wrong and I haven't noticed any strange behavior in Windows even when running poorly coded stuff, like Oblivion.
Fixed. ;7