With my new computer I just bought, I got an AMD X2 3800+ processor. Now, the clock speed on this is only 2.0Ghz and for games that isn't the best. Should I attempt to switch it for a higher clocked single core processor, or keep this one? What is the highest I can get that would be compatible with my motherboard(Asus M2N4 SLI Socket AM2)?
That board will take everything up to and including the FX62 on all PCB's but you need to ensure you have 0301 BIOS loaded.
I've clocked the AM2 X2 3800 up to 2.75 on several PC's and its very stable, but it can be hit and miss with the CPU you get and then it depends what your using with it.
Obviously you only get a 10x multiplier so you?d need to adjust the FSB to 275 to get that sort of speed.
On that motherboard you likely to bottom out at about 230FSB so you'd be looking at 2.3GHz, still more than enough to play any game out now.
P.S. you can't just whack the FSB up, you may need to adjust the HT multiplier down from 5x to 4x giving you 920 instead of 1150.
Whether or not Dual core will help you in gaming depends on various things.
Does the game you?re playing support dual core?
Do you want to close other applications down when playing a games or leave them open?
Personally I'd go with a dual core every time, but some games are a bit flaky with dual core processors, so on those occasions you need to set the process to run on one core only, easily done via the task manager.
There are sometimes patches for games that suffer when running on dual cores, but the affinity setting is there for those without such patches.
My specs for whoever asked are:
AMD Athlon X2 3800+
Asus M2N4-SLI Socket AM2
BFG nVidia GeForce 7900 GT OC
1 Gb of RAM
320 Gb Hard Drive
OS is XP Home Edition
Overclocking my CPU wouldn't be a bad idea, how exactly would I go about doing that? Or should I not chance it as I've never done it before?
Originally posted by Acerbic:My specs for whoever asked are:
AMD Athlon X2 3800+
Asus M2N4-SLI Socket AM2
BFG nVidia GeForce 7900 GT OC
1 Gb of RAM
320 Gb Hard Drive
OS is XP Home Edition
Overclocking my CPU wouldn't be a bad idea, how exactly would I go about doing that? Or should I not chance it as I've never done it before?
You have more than enough to play any games...any games! Why would you think you don't?
The Problem is that Most 90% of current games run it as single cored process not 2 so for games right now that need 2.8ghz you cant run them smooth because they will try to get 2.8ghz out of 1 cpu while your cpu is 2x 2.0ghz/2.2ghz fear I thin needs 2.9 or 3ghz and it is a single core process which means unless you run it on a Single core cpu like a pentium 4 with 3+ghz or a cpu like the Intel Core 2 Extreme which clocks in @ 2.93ghz per core will just hold on to make it stable but your current cpu will not run alot of new games until the PS3 comes out in all regions then producers will focus on multi cored games because of that generation of games and then will the 6th gen (single cored) gaming era end which I thikn sohuld be towards the end of next year that is why Iam sticking to my 3.4ghz P4 for now and hopefully by the time I change the Core 2 Quadro will be out
My specs
3.4ghz Intel Pentium 4 with HT
2048mb Samsung PC3200
Intel i915
Ati Radeon X1900XTX 512mb GDDR3 PcI-e 16x
100gb Segate ?? 7200rpm sata
320gb Segate Baracuda 7200rpm Sata
160gb external HD
2x Phillips DVD burner
Creative 5.1 soundblaster
