System Upgrade (thoughts?)

This is the planned system upgrade I am doing.
Of course this is to allow me to run Oblivion on full...hehe

CPU: Amd a64 3700+939pin 1m 90nm bx
MB: A8N-SLIDELUXE (Asus socket 939 nforce4 sli 3pci/0isa/2pci-ex 4d.ddr sata)
Video: Asus 7600 512 PCI-e
RAM: Kingston DDR2 4200 512 x2 for 1 GB (will upgrade to 2 GB later on)
Box w/fans: Antec SLK 3000
PS:Antec 380

The friend I deal with sells Asus brands so that's why the Vid and MB are Asus...

I already have the CD/DVD, sound and HDD's so these will come from my old system.

My budget is $1000 CDN and this just breaks it by about $70 so I'm pretty happy.

Looks pretty tasty. I am going to upgrade this summer to the 3700+. However, I think that only a gig of ram will be a bottleneck for ya.

is it true that this is actually just a 2000mhz cpu?
What is the 3700 in the model?

Would I be beter off going with this?
MB:
P5ND2-SLI
Asus socket 775 nvidia nf4 atx 3pci/1pci-ex1x/2pci-e16x 4ddr2

CPU:Intel 640 (3.2 GH):
Intel p4 3.2 2m 800 775 bx 640 em64t 90nm

I am sure that some techies on the board will be able to explain this better. However, to my knowledge, the AMD 64 chips are 64-bit processors whereas the Inte chips are 32-bit processors. So you can't just compare them straight across like that. My current chip is a 2800+ which is a 1.8 Ghz chip, but it is comparable to a 2.6 Ghz Intel chip.

Also, I think that Windows Vista will have full support for 64-bit processors which will give them magical powers.

Once again, I don't know much about this stuff. I normally just buy the parts that get good reviews and then insert tab A into slot B and hit the power button.

OK, that's what I thought and after doing a bit more research on the + it seems this is the "comparable" GHZ to the Intel chips (or close to it).

Thanks, I'll be sticking with teh AMD setup.

shivering with antisipation!

Most Intel and AMD chips sold today are 64bit..outside the lower end scale of their product lines you'll find full 64 bit support in their mid and upper range.

Intel is pretty much out of the game in terms of price vs perfomance against AMD at the desktop level. On the notebook level their processors are very competitive and hold a lead over AMDs mobile offerings.

Intel's next desktop platform the Core Duo is promising.. initial Intel "sanctioned" benchmarks showed the Core Duo outperforming AMD's top chip in most tests..

Naturally though benchmarks are begin to leak out from independent sources from the Far East that show the Core Duo not beating even an AMD X2 4400+ at similar clock speeds.. but does put Intel closer in the game (so to speak).

AMD engineers certainly are breathing easier today.. and while the M2 from AMD is more about a memory controller change than major rework...supposedly AMD's next cpu technology will be something "special" special enough that rumors abound of changes at certain top dog OEM's.

Microsoft's competitors could very well take a long hard look at AMD and how they fight the top dog...

Thaks alot GG...
I'll be sticking with teh AMD setup.

Cheers!

Do AMD's support DDR2 now? I knew it was due out soon or maybe had recently been released but Im fuzzy on that.

fangblackbone wrote:

Do AMD's support DDR2 now? I knew it was due out soon or maybe had recently been released but Im fuzzy on that.

I don't think it's out yet. I thought all the socket AM2 stuff was due for release in June?

Thin_J wrote:

I don't think it's out yet. I thought all the socket AM2 stuff was due for release in June?

That's the latest word.

GG wrote:

supposedly AMD's next cpu technology will be something "special" special enough that rumors abound of changes at certain top dog OEM's.

I've seen a ton of speculation on this. My favorite so far has been the idea of "reverse-Hyper Threading"; essentially allowing a dual-core to appear as a single core proc to the OS providing a boost for the large majority of applications that aren't multi-proc aware.

groan wrote:

OK, that's what I thought and after doing a bit more research on the + it seems this is the "comparable" GHZ to the Intel chips (or close to it).

Really, people are going to have to bail on the idea of comparing GHz as a direct measure of power.

For years it was thought of as GHz = horsepower. But that's a misconception that just happened to parallel the truth for a time (well, more like marketing led the development of chips with higher MHz/GHz numbers instead of achieving increased performance through better efficiency).

But that's fading fast. Measuring computer speed by GHz is quickly becoming like comparing cars by the size of their gas tanks, rather than what we do compare them by: fuel efficiency. Yeah that SUV has a big tank, but we all know that it burns a hell of a lot more than that Honda Civic. Well, here too, it is becoming increasingly silly to judge CPUs against each other based on GHz numbers. Hence AMD and even Intel coming up with "numbers" for their chips, which should be taken with grains of salt themselves, blah blah blah.

Of course, one can hardly be blamed for the fact that they look for the MHz/GHz number after a decade or so of being conditioned to do exactly that. But it's a habit that people will have to find a way to break.

Well then groan should be careful as he paired DDR2 with an AMD chip and mobo... Unless its a typo.

My favorite so far has been the idea of "reverse-Hyper Threading"; essentially allowing a dual-core to appear as a single core proc to the OS providing a boost for the large majority of applications that aren't multi-proc aware.

Sweetness!

The problem is without Ghz providing some semblance of a lighning rod, how do you judge? There are so many CPU's and CPU technologies on the market. When I was looking into laptops I kept on seeing pentium m CPUs with 1.5 or 1.66 Ghz. Seeing as I didnt want to make a lateral move with my laptop as my desktop was a 1.6 Ghz P4, I got very frustrated. Until someone explained what the pentium m's were all about.

Thanks alot for all this great info.
You are in fact right. DDR2 is not supported.
The techs that are putting this together informed me of this when i put the order in after i changed to the amd configuration.
Getting 3200 now.

It's in now and i'll be picking it up on the weekend..dying to see that 512 card in action!
I'll probably get another gig of ram next month 8D