Upgrade

[johnny_uk]

Hi

I have just ordered an amd 64 3500+ and an msi k8n neo 2 motherboard. I would be interested in some thoughts if this a worthwile upgrade from a p4 3.0ghz and an abit Icg-7 motherboard. This is my first amd platform and was really interested if this was a good choice. Will I see a noticable performance increase from the p4?

Thanks for any advice in advance :)

[PaiN]

1. What do\will you use your PC for?
2. Do you overclock?

[johnny_uk]

Well Mainly I use my computer for games. I have never overclocked before, but I read that this motherboard is really good for that so I my have a dabble.

[PaiN]

Its a long story.....but not long ago I changed from the sys. in my siggy to an A64 FX-53 \ MSI K8N Neo2.....My personal experience with the K8N was very bad :thumbdwn: It was a nightmare to work with due to incompatibilities and the performance stunk. I did manage to get things working and performing better by changing to an Asus A8V rev2. but, in the end decided I was happier with my P4EE.
As for your new setup....if all works well, you should see a decent performance increase in gaming over your P4 at 3.0ghz.

gook luck

[moorfang]

Athlon64 performs very well in most games, outplays P4 with a great margin in fact.
Take a look at this article regarding the 2 species of CPU's performance in Half Life 2.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2330
And my system works flawlessly.

[johnny_uk]

Thanks alot to both of u for the info, I am looking forward to my delivery on monday now :)

Next on the list is some dual channel memory to push things along more.

:D

[macatak]

These are the performance changes i got in games that i have when i upgraded from an xp3200+(socketA)

Doom3 Timedemo
54.6====>57.7 fps

Painkiller: benchmark c5l2
90====>110 fps

HL2 'airboat' Timedemo
62.79====>68.76 fps

HL2 'Guru3D-demo5' Timedemo
97.57====>103.20 fps

CS:Source VST
98.04====>104.35 fps

Call of Duty Timedemo
134.73====>155.53 fps

Riddick EFBB Timedemo
no change

Far Cry Research Timedemo
no change

As you can see there was no change with Far Cry and Riddick, obviously these games are more GPU limited than CPU limited. The upgrade went fine, not expierencing any problems yet

ps, here's another article http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/half_life_2_cpu_shootout/

[Tr1cK]

My K8N Neo2 is a hoss. No issues except the known Geforce 6 fastwrites issues. Running the RAM @ 500mhz with 1:1 with no problems.

[Akirhol]

Whether or not you will be able to do well with the K8N Neo2 seems to be hit-and-miss. Once I flash the BIOS on mine to 1.36b, I'm confident I'll be able to get a stable overclock of 2.75GHz with the ram running 1:1 DDR550.

If you do want to overclock, be sure the flash your bios *first*... I forgot this vital step, and I believe I've paid quite dearly for it by corrupting the RAID array my dual 160s are in, or damaging the card itself... it boots w/o the drives on it and the card still in, but won't boot with the drives on, so I'm banking on array corruption. Seems the PCI bus wasn't locked when it should have been, heh. So I'm gonna lose everything on that array, but hey... at least I got my music downloaded to my zentouch before that happened. ^_^

Make sure you have a power supply with a decent +12v rail as well, the A64 seems to be pretty power hungry.

[Tr1cK]

Make sure you have a power supply with a decent +12v rail as well, the A64 seems to be pretty power hungry.

Yea a GOOD power supply is always a must, not just a big wattage. IMO a good brand lower power supply is often better than a cheapy 'high power' unit. Ive seen systems perform totally night and day different between PSUs.