to upgrade or not? need some 2nd opinions

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sbetchel

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Hi everyone :) first post and I would like some second opinions from all you hardcore people on whether or not i should upgrade a couple things.

first off, heres my current rig and what i want to upgrade:

450w power supply
BFG Tech GeForce 7950GT 512mb 565/715 core/mem speed
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 2.2GHz (currently 2.6GHz OCed)
2GB DDR400 System RAM
SATA Hard Drive 1.5Gb/s
Giga-Byte GA-K8NF-9 rev.1 nForce 4-4x chipset MOBO

This system plays pretty much every game very fast, even oblivion is quite smooth with just minor graphics tweaks.

The 2 parts I was thinking of upgrading are the Motherboard (its a couple years old) and the processor.

My current MOBO:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128268

Upgrade:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131540

My main concern with the MOBO upgrade is the FSB speed increase. my current is 800MHz (1600MT/s) while the upgrade is 1000MHz (2000MT/s). Would this be an upgrade worth spending the money on? I know my current processor has 2000MHz HT and it probably isnt using the full FSB potential. but If its not a big enough upgrade then ill pass.

As for the processor, my current athlon 64 3700+(OCed to 2.6GHz):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103539

upgrade: athlon 64 FX-55

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103526

is this a worthy upgrade? or not enough to justify the cost? my current 3700+ is clocking @ 2.6GHz right now and it has pretty much the same specs as the fx-55 besides base core speed, does this mean it would run along side this chip? if so i shouldnt upgrade right?

any help from everyone is greatly appreciated. and please suggest any upgrades that would be a better candidate for purchase. thanks!
 
I wouldn't recommend either of those upgrades. If you have your 3700 at 2.6, then an FX-55 isn't going to do you much good.

If you are looking for an upgrade, why not go with an X2 CPU. Depending on what price range you are looking for, you can get a 4200 for a decent price. I'd link to it on Newegg, but for some reason IE7 is not liking Newegg....

By the way, welcome to TF:D
 
thanks for the welcome :)

ok so the fx-55 is thrown out, i was kinda thinking that but wanted to make sure. as for the X2 4200 dual core athlon, would that be a sizeable increase in performance? i.e. worth the money?
im not experienced with dual core chips since ive never owned one. does this mean the x2 4200 runs at the same speed as a single 4.4GHz chip? ( i would also have to upgrade the MOBO if i got this chip anyway, my current mobo only supports athlon 64 and 64 FX)
 
It wouldn't be like a 4.4Ghz chip. The difference you would see is in your multitasking abilities.

Have a look here to compare the CPUs.

Also, your motherboard will support X2s as well. The only consideration is that you may need to upgrade the firmware for your motherboard.
 
those are some cool charts, but yeah with my 3700 being OCed it basically performs along with the fx-55, and as for the x2 4200, its not that much better in terms of games, just a few frames. it beats my encoding time 'n' such by a decent amount, but i rarely ever use my rig for anything other than gaming. so i guess i dont need to upgrade yet after all :D works for me ill save the cash for the future upgrades, thanks for the advice!
 
with all the money you wanted for upgrading.. you could get a geforce 8800 gt in a few days, that would help out your gaming bigtime or even another 7950
 
i really could run an X2 dual core chip on my current MOBO? i was looking at either the 4400 or 4600, either of these be worth the money to upgrade from my 3700+ OCed? (i do mostly gaming)
 
look at the opteron 165 last time i checked it was around $160 on newwegg

also you may want to upgrade your PSU pretty soon
 
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