AMD athlon 64 x2 3800 + vs AMD Athlon 64 3700+

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Metzzen1

New Member
so im building a new rig, gonna be 939 socket. havent decided if i want dual core or single. I can get a AMD Athlon 64 3700+ san diego 90nm rev for $200, and the athlon x2 3800 for $300. what would the performance difference be between the two? i will be using this comp for gaming, burning dvds, cds, and school.

is the performance worth $100 difference? esentually i would be getting an additional 2 ghz processor for $100 correct? basically means i could play music or play a game while burning a dvd? with sufficient ram that is.
 
i just found that alot of people are having issues with gaming with the dual cores... the games i will be playin will be doom 3, quake 4, battlefield 2, fear, things like that. i would also like to be able to play the games coming out in the future with this rig. should i just stick with the 3700 and overclock it a bit? i have seen them stable to 2.8 ghz
 
games that will have issues with dual core (unless you have a really good video card and ram): battlefield 2, Star Wars: battle fron 2, some lag with HL2 (depening on ur video card mostly tho), Prince of Persia, Neverwinter Nights, Thief, COD1


games that will run fine: most games

games that will take advantage of dual-core (games that are WAYYYYY better if u have dual-core): Quake 4, Call Of Duty 2 (when u download the patch for it online), and i beielve Oblivion... and i might have missed some...
 
thanks

looks like ill be goin X2. i was hopin you would say i should still get it. its what i wanted but didnt know how it would play older games.

how do you disable a cpu? can ou do it in windows or must it be done in the bios?
 
Metzzen1 said:
looks like ill be goin X2. i was hopin you would say i should still get it. its what i wanted but didnt know how it would play older games.

how do you disable a cpu? can ou do it in windows or must it be done in the bios?
Click to expand...

It is usually done in the bios.
 
Metzzen1 said:
i just found that alot of people are having issues with gaming with the dual cores... the games i will be playin will be doom 3, quake 4, battlefield 2, fear, things like that. i would also like to be able to play the games coming out in the future with this rig. should i just stick with the 3700 and overclock it a bit? i have seen them stable to 2.8 ghz
Click to expand...

you've seen them stable at 2.8Ghz, and they are single core,

compared to x2 3800 is a dual core...

for the same price, you can get an opteron 165, if you enjoy overclocking. only if you are going to overclock it...

it can be overclocked from 1.8Ghz to 2.5Ghz easilly, and i've seen it running stable at 2.8Ghz

so what i am saying is, either way dual core is the way to go...

any x2 series, or opteron 1xx series are good to go
for future+ and even currently
 
Encore4More said:
games that will have issues with dual core (unless you have a really good video card and ram)
Click to expand...
even if you have a really good video card and ram, still dual core would be nice,
it would be more helpful,
 
Id go with the x2 as most games are starting to go with them and 64bit. Also later on in life you are going to need it for multi tasking. I havent had any problems with using an x2 and gaming, only advantages! As for chaning the cpu (turning one off) push ctrl-alt-delete then right click on the program you are playing(the game) set affinity then you can select the cpu you want it to run on:D Hope this helps
 
Metzzen1 said:
how do you disable a cpu? can ou do it in windows or must it be done in the bios?
Click to expand...
well it can be done kinda in task manager... like u can right click a process, then set it to use one core...
 
ultimately the 3700+ is better for single core apps because it starts at 2.2ghz and has more cache (per core). its probably a lot more overclockable just because its single core... but look at me, im at 2.6ghz on AIR.
now, the 3700+ will be better for most games... but the 3800+ will be much better for quake 4. also, with the 3800+ you'll be able to burn a dvd while playing games easily.
I suggest the X2 3800+ but make sure you get 2gb of ram because otherwise your system will slow down quicker than expected.
for instance i was playing quake 4 before i upgraded to 2gb... i had plenty of ram bandwidth (6.4gbps) and quake 4 would run just fine on high quality... but if i upped it to ultra quality it just wouldn't take it. the same thing goes for trying to run many things... it would use over 1gb and not even all of my processor... i mean i had spent $300 on a processor and the ram was holding it back.

keep that in mind... if you go for the 3700+ get 2x512mb, because the two balance out.
if you get the X2 3800+ (which can easily be overclocked to 2.4ghz without an overvolt and without much heat increase, but its tough to o/c past that) get 2x1gb because otherwise the ram will hold it back.
 
games don't have issues with dual core... they just don't support it yet, and the two cores will only run as fast as a single core. there is no bad side to getting dual core.
when the game doesn't use both cores you can still burn dvds and stuff while you're gaming... which is sweet.
just make sure you get like 2-4 dvd burners, and nero 7 ultra is sweet too.
nero 7 ultra has an option to "use more than one burner" that is, twice as fast to copy many copies of dvds.
 
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