I know this has been asked a million times

J

jcll2002

2[H]4U
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Jan 28, 2006
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But which am I better off going with...the x2 3800+, 4200+, or 4400+?

I was set on the 4400+, but some posts have changed my position. Ill be gaming and i will barely be doing any audio/video encoding and alot of multitasking.

I dont want the rest of my rig to be bottlenecked by my cpu (x1900xt, 74gig raptor, 2gb gskill extreme pc4000, 535w enermax, dfi lanparty nforce4 ultra d)

So, do you think its worth saving the money and going with the 4200 or 3800?

Also, I was wondering what I could get out of the 3800+ in terms of ocing. What am i "guarenteed" to get out of stock cooling? What about if I have a thermaltake a1770 cooling?

Thanks,
jcll2002
 
The fact is your system is bottlenecked by your hard drive anyway so what does it matter what CPU you get.
 
what do you mean? Are you saying my choice in a hard drive or all hard drives in general?
 
Depends on the task but hard drives in general are a huge bottleneck. Everything else is up to snuff so I wouldn't worry about a slightly slower CPU causing a "bottleneck"; its like asking if you should get the 42 inch penis or the 44 inch penis.

Whichever is cheapest, man.
 
id say a 44 inch penis would be overkill, but thats a different story :D

Anybody else have any thoughts.

BTW, im planning to keep this for a couple years (probably through highschool~4 years or so)
 
All drives in general.

The only thing I see wrong with your HDD choice is the storage capacity. Are you sure you're going to be alright with 74 GB? :confused:

On processor choice: Most of the gaming-related bottlenecks today come from either 1) graphics cards, or 2) RAM. Your system's got both bases covered.

Unless you're going to be playing against shitloads of computer bots (30+) in CS:Source all the time, the CPU isn't really going to be a bottleneck in any of the games currently out... With your video card, the difference between a 3800+ and a 4400+ isn't even going to be noticeable to begin with... and what little gap there is between the two procs will be tightened even further with overclocking (since the 3800+ has a bit more headroom).

Go for the 3800+.
 
When I was in high school I had a Amiga 1200 running at a whopping 14mhz and a 0 gig hard drive. I think it costed me around 600 bucks to upgrade to the 50mhz 68030 chip; you kids today have it easy :)



Anyway in all seriousness I'd go with the cheapest chip because you can overclock the rig anyway and in the end the overclock mhz will be roughly the same.



If there is anything I know from experience is that whatever you buy now will be so slow and outdated in just a couple of years the best option is to save your money and get the cheapest. Especially when your 16 I don't know why 200mhz would make a difference but $200 sure does.
 
deathstar550 said:
All drives in general.

The only thing I see wrong with your HDD choice is the storage capacity. Are you sure you're going to be alright with 74 GB? :confused:

On processor choice: Most of the gaming-related bottlenecks today come from either 1) graphics cards, or 2) RAM. Your system's got both bases covered.

Unless you're going to be playing against shitloads of computer bots (30+) in CS:Source all the time, the CPU isn't really going to be a bottleneck in any of the games currently out... With your video card, the difference between a 3800+ and a 4400+ isn't even going to be noticeable to begin with... and what little gap there is between the two procs will be tightened even further with overclocking (since the 3800+ has a bit more headroom).

Go for the 3800+.
Click to expand...
Im only using 30gigs right now, and I guess I can always add another drive later on.

The thing is, after reading guide after guide, on ocing, Im still going to need someone to walk me through it.

Do you think i could get close to 2700mhz on the stock cooling on the 3800+ and what about a thermaltake hsf a1770?

I think ill go with the 3800+ anyway and spend the extra money on the x-fi xtrememusic and/or a better monitor
 
old skool said:
The fact is your system is bottlenecked by your hard drive anyway so what does it matter what CPU you get.
Click to expand...
Once data has been loaded into the RAM, the HDD no longer affects performance (that is, of course, assuming that your not running on Virtual Memory). So the only time when the HDD should be bottlenecking is during load times.

Then again, I could be totally wrong.
 
Since you're spending/spent so much on this system why be so concerned with what kind of overclock you can get on stock cooling. Stock cooling is not really meant to support the added heat of overclocking.

Definitely get some kind of aftermarket HSF for your CPU!
 
jcll2002 said:
Do you think i could get close to 2700mhz on the stock cooling on the 3800+ and what about a thermaltake hsf a1770?
Click to expand...

I think 2.4 is a more acceptable goal, you're setting yourself up for disappointment
 
2.4ghz is reasonable. I find 3800+'s can overclock to the same level as 4400+'s so you might as well save the money and go 3800+ and overclock it.

Definately get after market cooling. Stock cooler isn't great.
 
jcll2002 said:
Im only using 30gigs right now, and I guess I can always add another drive later on.

The thing is, after reading guide after guide, on ocing, Im still going to need someone to walk me through it.

Do you think i could get close to 2700mhz on the stock cooling on the 3800+ and what about a thermaltake hsf a1770?

I think ill go with the 3800+ anyway and spend the extra money on the x-fi xtrememusic and/or a better monitor
Click to expand...


If you are trying to hit 2700mhz, why the hell would you spend the extra $200 on a 4400+ instead of a 3800+???!

Personally, I run my opteron 146@stock 2.0ghz, and it plays CS:S at over 130-150fps on most maps. I never thought I'd be happy at stock, coming from an xp [email protected], but with this chip I am.

So yeah, buy the 3800+, and try it at stock speeds for a week or two. Chances are it will be plenty.
 
If you're planning to overclock anyway, go with the 3800+ and spend some of the savings on a good heatsink and fan. I just got my 3800+ and it seems Windows-stable at 2.7GHz with 1.4-1.425v though it isn't prime-stable. It bails out loading Windows at this voltage and 2.8, so it looks for my chip at least that 2.7-2.8 will be where I end up depending on how voltage hungry it is and what temps look like. The stock HSF is ok but not anything special, and I'll probably replace it before I push the chip much harder. If you buy one of the higher rated chips, you're guaranteed the extra couple hundred MHz of stock speed, but chances are really good you can OC a cheaper chip by that much anyway.
 
Yeah, 3800+ it is.

Now the only question is, what hsf to go with it? The options they include at monarch are (where im buying from, they installit)

Thermaltake a1770 ($15)
Thermaltake a1772 ($50)
Thermaltake CL-P0075 k450 ($40)
Thermaltake tr2tt a4014 ($21)
Zalman CNPS7000B Alcu-silent ($50)

Yeah, I knew I wasnt really going to get 2700mhz. I was hoping for 2500-2600.

BTW, I have 2gb of g.skillextreme pc4000 ram to go with it.
 
Elec said:
I just got my 3800+ ...
Click to expand...

Did it come with the 4 heat pipe heatsink?

Opterons are supposed to have this new HSF and I read elswhere they come with the x2 4200. I wondered if they also came with theX2 3800

Review for the HSF I'm talking about.
 
Since this seems to be your first time oc'ing, I'd suggest the more modest goal of 2.5 ghz. Since your memory is pc4000, you wouldnt have to overclock your ram to reach this. Just make sure you have reasonable cooling (check the forum on cooling here for mor info on the HSF) and all you'll have to do is change you HTT (or cpu frequency, as its sometimes called on BIOS) and your voltage. Just make sure you do this step by step. Don't go out and just set the frequency to 250mhz...
 
grizzed said:
Did it come with the 4 heat pipe heatsink?

Opterons are supposed to have this new HSF and I read elswhere they come with the x2 4200. I wondered if they also came with theX2 3800

Review for the HSF I'm talking about.
Click to expand...

GAH! I wish it had :( The one I got is all aluminum with no copper plug in the base, no heat pipes. It's close to the size of my old copper Thermalright SK-7 I used forever on my Barton and a similar fin design. But I think the stock fan is a 70mm and I'm not sure you could mount a bigger one (or that it would help with this design).

Still, the heatsink is barely warm to the touch right now - puttering around in Windows with IMs, web, IRC, not running anything real strenuous - my temp programs read 28-30C IF they can be trusted (and that's at 2.7 and 1.425V). I'm happy with <=50C full load, my Barton ran 48-54C full load depending on season for 2 or 3 years, but I may need a better HSF to really max out this chip, especially depending on how much voltage it needs to be stable. Would've been nice if they had included a beefier HSF, but then again, stock speed IS only 2.0GHz...
 
I'm very happy with my set up. Ive got a 3800+ x2 and have Mushkin PC4000 ram.. Its running at its rated 250 mhz. Ive got a solid OC @ 2.5ghz and I couldnt be happier with the performance. I had it at 2.6ghz but was only 2 1/2 hours prime95 stable with a higher than wanted voltage. Now Im back at 1.425 volts.
 
Yeah, that HSF only comes with the more expensive X2's. The 3800+ comes with the one that's found with the regular venice/SD cores. If Thermaltake is readily available, I'd get the Big Typhoon out of that list.
 
I'd assume that the big typhoon is one of the coded thermaltake products listed...probably around $50.
 
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