Help, AMD X2 4200+ or 4400+ for £90 more?!

[Chazzer3]

Hi guys,

I am nearly drawn to a final decision on desktop, but my budget of £1000 is getting a bit stretched.

I was wondering, how much better is the 4400+ X2 than the 4200+ X2? Is it worth £90 more? I know it has 2mb of Cache as apposed to 1.

I need to know, as otherwise I've got it sorted so the final spec would be:

- AMD X2 4400+ or 4200+
- 2048mb of Corsair RAM
- ATi X800 GTO
- DVDRW+/-

etc etc 200gb hdd, and anyway, I just need a final verdict because the monitor I want is what is stretching over the budget and with the £90 less price, I'd be able to afford it...!

Charlie -

 

[cyrax]

If you need the money, get a 3800+ x2. It can overclock to the speed of an 4200+. Get the 3800+ or the 4400+.

 

[PZEROFGH]

Just get the X2 3800+ and overclock it. If you dont plan to overclock get the 4400+

 

[Chazzer3]

But, what is the speed difference between the 4200+ and the 4400+? Is it really large? what clock speeds does this equate to, (I've never fully understood the AMD system of ranking their CPU's....!?

 

[Apokalipse]

(I've never fully understood the AMD system of ranking their CPU's....!?

it's really quite simple. look at the P-rating
the only difference between the 4200+ and 4400+ is the extra cache. sometimes this gives good benefits, sometimes you won't even notice it.

 

[Chazzer3]

What P-Rating?

Like if I were to say, AMD X2 4800+ just like that, how would you know what clock speed that has?

 

[Nitestick]

the 4200+ and 4400+ are both clocked at 2.2ghz. the difference is in the size of the L2 cache which does make a noticeable difference in games. i would suggest either getting the 3800+ or the 4400+, i think the higher clocked versions of each core are a waste of money. also you may be interested in the opteron 165 if you might plan on overclocking. it is clocked at 1.8ghz and would perform roughly similar to a x2 3800+. however this is a very good overclocking processor and i hear in america (unfortunately not in australia and i don't know about the UK) it is cheaper than the x2 3800+

edit: you can't tell clock speed by P-rating. clock speed is really an irrelevant way of measuring cpu performance anyway. i can see you are someone who more easily understands the pentium clock speeds. that is the purpose of a p-rating, it gives the approximate p4 equivelant of that cpu in mhz. so the 4400+ is roughly equal (or better than) a pentium 4, 4.4ghz. however if you use the cpu for video encoding or something else that takes advantage of dual cores/multiple processors it will be roughly equivelant to 2x3.7ghz pentium 4's. the p-rating of the dual cores is from a benchmark of standard programs, most of which do not take advantage of the dual core architecture hence such a low score despite the fact that each core is very powerful

 

[Chazzer3]

Awesome cheers for the details, but I'm gonna stick with the 4200+ as I really am not the kind of person for overclocking, or noticing tiny differences!

Thanks for the help guys!

Charlie -

 

[m3incorp]

You didn't say what you intend to use your computer for. In most instances, the X2 4200+ should be just fine. If you are a big gamer, then yep the 4400+ will give you a little more juice.

 

[Kazama]

I thought Dual cores are not suitable for OC