s939 CPU recommendation?

T

The Wayfarer

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 16, 2004
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I just discovered Oblivion, and I was blown away by it's beauty. Then I discovered the Oblivion modding community.

Now, suddenly, I need new hardware. :rolleyes:

Here's the deal: I know 939 is an end-of-life form factor, but at the moment I don't have the expendable capital to move to a new platform. So, for the moment, I'm only going to worry about upgrading my CPU. At the moment, I have a 3200+ (Barton, IIRC) in an EpoX 9NPA+SLI, with a pair of Gibabyte 7600GT (the "Silent-Pipe" versions) covering the video. The problem is, I haven't really paid attention to the hardware scene in a very long time, so I've kinda lost track of AMD chips. Opteron..? FX..? X2..? Huh..?

I hate asking to be spoon-fed anything, but it's finals week and I don't have the time. :( But as soon as finals are over, I wanna be wasting time playing Oblivion, not wasting time waiting for hardware to arrive in the mail! So, what s939 flavor is going to be my best best for the only app I currently care about? :D

Thanks!

-Wayfarer
 
If you're willing to risk overclocking, get an opty 165 or 170, they're absolute beasts in that arena, and often make FX-60 speeds or better with ease.

If you're NOT overclocking your 939 (blasphemy!), I'd say get a higher-end X2, opteron, or even an FX-60.

In any even, dual-core is pretty much mandatory nowadays. (Not really, but it's definitely a good idea.)
 
exactly what he said but remember if you get a low end X2 and want to OC you have to buy a new heatsink, if you get an opteron it wont matter since they come with a wicked one. Next, if you get a 165 make sure your motherboard can handle 300+ HTT. A few of the reviews I read said it hits well over that but its always a good idea to make sure. Turn down all the multis (CPU, HT, and Ram dividers). Then see how high you can crank it.
 
"If you're willing to risk overclocking?" How...do you mean? Certainly you don't to imply there are...pussies...out there who are "afraid" of overclocking?* Surely you jest, good sir. Why, such notion is quite absurd!

And no, I don't think a new heatsink will be necessary; I have a Ninja on the CPU, an HR-05 SLI on the chipset (yeah; I'm fan-phobic). ;) And really, who in their right mind buys a retail unit when the extra money one pays for the pretty packaging and crappy OEM cooler is much better spent on an aftermarket heatsink?

But anyway...Opty 170, huh? Any particular stepping/core I should be on the lookout for? And how much headroom do the FX chips usually have? Anything to speak of? Or are they pretty unattractive as OC prospects?

Thanks again.

-Wayfarer







*Long, long ago, in a neighborhood far, far away, I was the first kid on his street get his 486SX-25 running at an inconceivable 50 (yeah baby, I said fifty!) Mhz. All my friends kept saying "Dude, you're gonna fry your Dad's computer!" heh
 
Your 3200+ is a Venice or a Windsor, not a Barton.. different architecture completely :p
 
The Wayfarer said:
But anyway...Opty 170, huh? Any particular stepping/core I should be on the lookout for? And how much headroom do the FX chips usually have? Anything to speak of? Or are they pretty unattractive as OC prospects?

Thanks again.

-Wayfarer
Click to expand...
The recent newegg offerings seem to hit 2.9+ without too much trouble. CCBBE 0615, I believe. As the above poster said, though, make sure your motherboard can handle the high HTT speeds that overclockers like this demand.

FX chips tend to have decent headroom, not as impressive as the low-end opties though. 3.0-3.2 seems to be the upper limit. An FX-60 will generally have 400+ mhz of headroom, whereas an opty 170 may have 1Ghz+. FX chips do, however, have fully unlocked multis, as well as opty-quality silicon. ;)

Still, their price (400+ for an FX-60), is not worth it for someone with a good motherboard and a penchant for pushing their CPU to the max (read: any regular [h]ardforumer). I suggest buying an Opty 170, and be ready for one hell of an overclock.

EDIT: Oh, and I play Oblivion myself. It may be fun with an X2 at 2.4, but it's even better with an Opty 165 @ 2.7. :D
 
Personally, I'd look at a different video card rather than a new processor. Probably more Oblivion bang for your buck than a new processor IMHO.
 
kirbyrj said:
Personally, I'd look at a different video card rather than a new processor. Probably more Oblivion bang for your buck than a new processor IMHO.
Click to expand...
Considering he's already got an SLi setup, I'm pretty sure his video isn't changing for a bit.
 
Yar, he needs a processor :D

Remember, nvidia cards are more processor dependent in comparison
to ATI cards ;)
 
TechHead said:
Your 3200+ is a Venice or a Windsor, not a Barton.. different architecture completely :p
Click to expand...
You know, this is why I almost disclaimed about being out of the hardware arms race for so long. And on that note...

Can I bitch for a second? Ok. Christ, what ever happened to the days when each chip maker had, like, two or three chips; one desktop, one moblile, and one for servers (ala Xeon? Things were so much easier to keep track of back then. And damn AMD for that "Let's label our chips with random numbers instead of their frequency so they SOUND like they're as fast as Intel chips, even though ours can pull more flops at lower clock speeds!" bullshit. Grrr.

Jayemji said:
kirbyrj said:
Personally, I'd look at a different video card rather than a new processor. Probably more Oblivion bang for your buck than a new processor IMHO.
Click to expand...
Considering he's already got an SLI setup, I'm pretty sure his video isn't changing for a bit.
Click to expand...
Correct. I'll probably look for a new video solution after Christmas. Though, I'd be really curious to test a, say, 7950 against my two 7600GTs....

But anyway, while a new vid solution might yield good gains too, the CPU is a definately bottleneck. I can OC it quite a bit further than it is now, and when I do, I get appreciable framerate increases. Unfortunatly going much beyond where it sits now makes it way unstble. :p

-Wayfarer
 
The Wayfarer said:
Can I bitch for a second? Ok. Christ, what ever happened to the days when each chip maker had, like, two or three chips; one desktop, one moblile, and one for servers (ala Xeon? Things were so much easier to keep track of back then. And damn AMD for that "Let's label our chips with random numbers instead of their frequency so they SOUND like they're as fast as Intel chips, even though the pull more flops at lower clock speeds!" bullshit. Grrr.
-Wayfarer
Click to expand...
Blame intel for that, they started the whole gigahertz war.
 
The Wayfarer said:
You know, this is why I almost disclaimed about being out of the hardware arms race for so long. And on that note...

Can I bitch for a second? Ok. Christ, what ever happened to the days when each chip maker had, like, two or three chips; one desktop, one moblile, and one for servers (ala Xeon? Things were so much easier to keep track of back then. And damn AMD for that "Let's label our chips with random numbers instead of their frequency so they SOUND like they're as fast as Intel chips, even though the pull more flops at lower clock speeds!" bullshit. Grrr.
Click to expand...

Well that still holds true kinda. Opties ARE AMD's server chips. We all just got a hold of them :D
 
mdameron said:
Well that still holds true kinda. Opties ARE AMD's server chips. We all just got a hold of them :D
Click to expand...
True, true.

Jayemji said:
Blame intel for that, they started the whole gigahertz war.
Click to expand...
No way, dude. AMD was the first to start labeling their chips with numbers that weren't representative of their clock speeds. This was a marketing thing becasue, at the time, Intel chips ran much higher frequencies, and AMD's marketing monkeys thought the only way to sell was to put big, impressive-to-the-cretins sounding numbers in the chip names. Bastards. And if you remember, Intel was "first to produce a 1GHz chip." :rolleyes: I'd say their paper launch (what, two months before the parts were available in retail channels?) was the first bullshit move of the "gigahertz wars."

-Wayfarer
 
The Wayfarer said:
True, true.

No way, dude. AMD was the first to start labeling their chips with numbers that weren't representative of their clock speeds. This was a marketing thing becasue, at the time, Intel chips ran much higher frequencies, and AMD's marketing monkeys thought the only way to sell was to put big, impressive-to-the-cretins sounding numbers in the chip names. Bastards. And if you remember, Intel was "first to produce a 1GHz chip." :rolleyes: I'd say their paper launch (what, two months before the parts were available in retail channels?) was the first bullshit move of the "gigahertz wars."

-Wayfarer
Click to expand...

The unfortunate truth however AMD began optimising their "cycle-per-clock" rather than pushing high frequencies with crap netburst technology. Overall I'd agree that AMD did start the gigahertz war in producing the first chip to hit 1ghz and I'll be honest, the whole number crap that AMD had confused me at first heh.
 
The Wayfarer said:
And if you remember, Intel was "first to produce a 1GHz chip." :rolleyes: I'd say their paper launch (what, two months before the parts were available in retail channels?) was the first bullshit move of the "gigahertz wars."

-Wayfarer
Click to expand...
Actually, I don't remember. The first time I ever tinkered with, or knew any appreciable amount about computer internals, was only about 20 months ago. Anything before that is nothing but blackness.
 
The number crap was absolutely necessary otherwise uneducated people would have put them out of business.

Derr... I needs me a new computer
do I want the...
3.4ghz intell...... or the 2.2 ghz amd?

They needed a way to make their chips not sound gimpy compared to the competition. Kinda like if motor manufactuers rated motors by their RPM instead of hp. If you built a motor that made a ton of torque (picture chevy 454) and only turned like 4500rpms it would look horrible against something like a honda 1.6 litre which could turn 6000+. Which would you rather have in your sports car though?
 
Jakalwarrior said:
The number crap was absolutely necessary otherwise uneducated people would have put them out of business.

Derr... I needs me a new computer
do I want the...
3.4ghz intell...... or the 2.2 ghz amd?

They needed a way to make their chips not sound gimpy compared to the competition. Kinda like if motor manufactuers rated motors by their RPM instead of hp. If you built a motor that made a ton of torque (picture chevy 454) and only turned like 4500rpms it would look horrible against something like a honda 1.6 litre which could turn 6000+. Which would you rather have in your sports car though?
Click to expand...

Very true. I forgot to take into consideration the average PC user doesn't know anything beyond RAM, clock speed, and hard drive space. So yes, in an effort to save themselves, AMD gave odd numbers to their products to help along sales.

I still think Intel is evil but my next machine will still be a Core2Duo. What can I say? The forbidden fruit is the sweetest.
 
Jakalwarrior said:
The number crap was absolutely necessary otherwise uneducated people would have put them out of business.

Derr... I needs me a new computer
do I want the...
3.4ghz intell...... or the 2.2 ghz amd?

They needed a way to make their chips not sound gimpy compared to the competition. Kinda like if motor manufactuers rated motors by their RPM instead of hp. If you built a motor that made a ton of torque (picture chevy 454) and only turned like 4500rpms it would look horrible against something like a honda 1.6 litre which could turn 6000+. Which would you rather have in your sports car though?
Click to expand...

It really depends on the type of sports car, now doesn't it. There's so much more to it than just torque and rpm's. Torque and horsepower would be a more approprate comparison. but I digress.

Best bang for the buck is the AMD 3800+. it's less than $100 at Newegg and oc's well. If you wanna spend more then go for the dual-cores or opty's. Depends what you want to spend.
 
Jayemji said:
If you're willing to risk overclocking, get an opty 165 or 170, they're absolute beasts in that arena, and often make FX-60 speeds or better with ease.
Click to expand...


That's what I did to get a little more life from my 939 setup. Used a MSI N-force 4 MB with the Opteron 165. Running 2700mhz @300x9.

CPU cost $158 from the egg. Oh yes and its on stock voltage =)
 
The Wayfarer said:
And if you remember, Intel was "first to produce a 1GHz chip." :rolleyes:

-Wayfarer
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure the Athlon 1000 chip was the first to reach 1000mhz.
 
TechHead said:
Your 3200+ is a Venice or a Windsor, not a Barton.. different architecture completely :p
Click to expand...

Pretty sure you mean Winchester right? Windsors are AM2 dual core 512 kb cache. ;)
 
Waveforme said:
It really depends on the type of sports car, now doesn't it. There's so much more to it than just torque and rpm's. Torque and horsepower would be a more approprate comparison. but I digress.

Best bang for the buck is the AMD 3800+. it's less than $100 at Newegg and oc's well. If you wanna spend more then go for the dual-cores or opty's. Depends what you want to spend.
Click to expand...

Not really, hp is just a function of torque and rpms. Chip rated on pure mhz is like rating a motor on RPMs since it dosent describe the actual amount of work able to be done (hp) just how fast it goes. Torque would be like IPC, which also doesnt tell much. Might do a ton of instructions per clock but only run 500mhz. High IPC paired with high clocks though = fast chip. Same way high torque at high rpms = lot of hp. The sports car comparison was a bit off though I guess since the 454 is typically a really heavy motor. No replacement for displacement though ;) which is why they have to limit motor size in all race enviornments to keep people alive. DANG am I way off topic.

Back on topic. If you decide to go used dont worry about L2 too much. The opterons do perform a little better with the extra L2 but a higher clocking or cheaper chip would totally negate that. So dont forget the little ol X2 3800.
 
you show me a 3800 X2 that out clocks a 165..... i had 2 X2s 3800+ and both did 2.6-2.7 @ 1.5+ vcore... and the second couldnt run my ram at 250 weak ass mem controller..

165> any X2
 
"If you decide to go used"
when you go used the person usually states what the chip can do. Was making note of the fact that it wouldnt be a good idea to take a 165 that clocks poorly over a 3800 that clocks well. Or to pay much more for a 165 that clocks about the same.
 
polemos4u said:
That's what I did to get a little more life from my 939 setup. Used a MSI N-force 4 MB with the Opteron 165. Running 2700mhz @300x9.

CPU cost $158 from the egg. Oh yes and its on stock voltage =)
Click to expand...
...That's exactly what I have. MSI nf4 with an opty at 9x300 at stock volts.
 
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