Need help with CPU upgrade

[Nigel Atkins]

I'm looking to upgrade the cpu in my sons pc which is struggling to cope

current specs:

Asus M2N4 sli clicky
Athlon 64 X2 4200+
4gb ddr2 ram
2 x 6800 512mb in sli
Corsair 550w

I have been looking at cpu options, but theres just so many to chose from and i haven't a clue which would be the best as i don't have much money to spend on it. i have seen 5200+/6000+ on ebay for between £20 & £30, but these are just duel core and i don't know if the MB can take a quad cpu...

Appreciate any help with this as i haven;t got a clue

thx

 

[Chris Preston]

The MB has a AM2 socket which is somewhat old technology so from the list of supported CPU's ASUS provide I don't think the MB can support a quad core CPU. You might be better off buying a MB with a AM3 socket because while you will spend more money, you'll get a longer life out of it instead of replacing a new AM2 CPU in a year or two.

The current mobo I bought a couple years ago has worked well for me: http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3/M4A87TD_EVO/ and I run a AMD X4 965 Black Edition: http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3537528&CatId=4433 You can pick both these up for probably $220 depending on where you get it, I know two other people running this same combination and they love it as well But no matter what you decide to do I'd really recommend upgrading the motherboard to AM3.

Also a side note because I got burned on not looking at this, if you want to keep your current DDR2 ram make sure you buy a motherboard with DDR2, the one I posted is DDR3 which means you would need to buy new RAM, however it's not as expensive now as when I made that mistake two years ago. Last thing is to check the wattage on the motherboard/CPU to make sure the motherboard can handle if, if you try to get a budget motherboard sometimes it doesn't have enough juice to run a CPU even if it's the same socket type.

Hope this helps

 

[Von Butters]

Got to agree with you Chris, the is one hell of a Mobo/CPU combo. I use the sli/Nvidia chipset version of the board with the 965BE for my gaming back-up, and they are still to this day, a highly competent pairing.

@Nigel You need to get the naming right when you go to purchase your parts though, there are folks who will take your lack of knowlage and robbing you blind!
Do your reserch, make sure you know what it is you want, and get those parts.

Id suggest that if you have trouble getting what you want, take a moment to do more research. There's many ways of getting good parts, and you dont have to 'settle' for something you may later regret buying later!

 

[Nigel Atkins]

thanks for the replys

the PC not used much as my son mainly uses his xbox and uses the PC for Minecraft, so i don't/have the money to spend of a new MB etc.

if i was to get a 2nd hand 6400+ to replace the 4200+ how much improvement will i get from the cpu?

thx

 

[Von Butters]

Simply put, quite a bit.
I always wanted a 6400+ but could never afford one so had to settle for the 4200+.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=AMD+Athlon+64+X2+Dual+Core+6400+

 

[Jim Cole]

The advantage of the 6400+ is the higher core clock speed, and most games look to a single core for their performance, so the higher clock speed with show quite a bit of improvement.

If your son is using the system to play Minecraft he will definitely see an increase in performance as that game still only utilizes a single core. One thing that will help that game out is the amount of ram the system has and how Minecraft is setup to handle ram.

There are commands to increase the stack size for java which you can use by setting up a bat file to start the game, or download magic launcher for Minecraft and you can set the stack size there as well. With his system there is no reason you can't set the stack to 2048 instead of the default 1024.

 

[Nigel Atkins]

thx for the link Chris

thx Jim, at the moment the cpu is running @90-100% with Minecraft, so the new cpu will really help. he upped the ram it uses a while ago, which did help a bit, but the cpu is the real bottle-neck.

thx again guys, you've been a great help