Athlon 64 2800

J

jason93

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 8, 2004
Messages
133
I'm looking at buying a new mobo,cpu, and ram. I'm on a budget so I'm looking at the athlon 64 2800, gigabyte ga-k8ns, ang a gig of kingston pc-3200 ram. I know it's not a 939 mobo but I can upgrade up to the athlon 3700 with that mobo later on. What kind of fps and benchmarks are you getting with this cpu? I have an athlon 2600 t-bred so I assume I should see a big enough difference to upgrade. Also I'll be using my bfg 6800oc with the new system. I need to stay around $300.
 
you'll see a difference in some things.. not others.
gaming will probably be the biggest improvement. however, i say hold off a bit. you don't really need to upgrade yet.
 
"I'm on a budget"

Key phrase there.

I'd say, don't upgrade yet. Wait a little longer, than get something better than a 2800.
 
I have a 2800+ that does 2.4Ghz - no dual channel on the 754 but real world shows little difference between the two.

I have built a few for relatives that were looking for cheap and quick and I have hit at least 2.25 ghz with them.

Sure they run a little hotter than the winnies but nothing a Zalman can't handle -

I would recommend the Gigabyte K8NS Pro 754 mother board - it has A LOT of features for cheap ( 4 SATA ports, IDE Raid, Firewire - gobs of USB) -

For Ram you can get a dual channel 1 GB kit of Kingmax from New egg for 94 bucks. The K8ns Pro is 89 and the retail 2800+ is 120 - that puts you right at 300 bucks
 
I have a lot of XPs and a couple 64s. The main difference (same clock) that I see is that the 64s seem more responsive in day to day operations which is probably due to the much lower latency of the memory. You would see pretty good improvement in gaming, but I don't think it is significant enough to justify the upgrade.

I would wait until the Rev. E's come out and pick up a 3200+ 939.
 
In your position, I wouldn't upgrade just yet. That graphics card will more than make up for any shortfall on the CPU front.

If you were itching to upgrade (ie you'll end up spending the money on crap if you don't spend it on the computer) I would:
Buy cheap ram, and with the money saved there, buy a s939 motherboard and chip (a 3000). Depending on how good your current ram is, you could get away with not buying any ram and using your old stuff. When it comes to upgrading later, you'll definitely have some nice chips to choose from, and you can also change or just add to the ram as you see fit. It will also be cheaper if you decide to go PCIe, if PCIe doesn't make an appearance on s754.

Dual channel isn't as sensitive to the sticks as the memory manufacturers make out. There are reports of certain s939 mobos enabling dual channel with one strip of 512 in one channel and two strips of 256 in the other.
 
I am also getting a 2800 and a DFI nf3

I am upping from a 2.53ghz p4 :) Should be more worth it for me atleast.
 
the 2800 is a great chip. i love mine, and ill love it more when my new ram comes in and lets me hit 2.4ghz. go with the dfi lanparty board (i know its more, but itll be worth it) and who says 754 is dead. wait until AMD puts out there new socket 754 chips. itll be worth it, cause they are low power consumption(25 and 35W) and will allow for intense overclocking. i did the same thing as you and got the 754 because of lack of funds. you wont be let down by these 2800+'s. they hit 2.4 with ease and allow for good 1:1 mem speeds.
 
can't you run your memory @ 133 to get ti 267 fsb?

Hope you didn't spend too much not much of a difference between where your at an 2.4 :lol
 
yea i changed my divider from the ddr333 setting to the ddr266 divider. i noticed heavy, and i mean HEAVY, lag going from ddr430 to ddr350 even with 2-2-2-5 timings. i really am not spending any money on the ram, as im building a system for my friend, and as a fee for buidling it, he bought me a stick of patriot pc4000 and i get to put my bufalo b-line ram into his machine. so i got it for free. and i might push my cpu to 2.5ghz and have the ram run a 5:6 divider having tighter timings and still ddr460 speeds.
 
actually you'd need 300mhz at 133mhz ram divider, but yeah, you have a point groebuck. that's what i tell people when they claim their ram is holding them back. ram dividers are your friend :D
 
If you run 9*267 with memory set at 133 you should get ddr340 right?

I can't imagine that ddr340 is that much slower than ddr400 :) - but hey we are all tweakers aren't we?
 
well, its from ddr430 cause of the 5:6 divider instead of 1:1. the next avaiblable divider is 2:3 so id be taking a hit of over 80 mhz on the ram and 2-2-2 timings cant make up for 80 mhz.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top