Author Topic: CPU upgrade questions (Read 320 times)

tapakeg · « **on:** December 22, 2005, 08:30:01 PM »

My computer can be faster.

I have a gig of ram, a 256MG X800 vid card on an Asus P4S800 MX mobo
my processor is a Pentium 4 2.4 (northwood) with 512k L2 cache

I think the ram and vid card are ok I want it faster and the processor is the weak link right now.

I know AH could run better, as well as FS2004 and it takes me FOREVER to load and log into a map on Battlefield 2. I mean flags are already being captured when I finally spawn.

Will this processor make a bigger difference?

http://www.buyxg.com/store/item.asp?id=184&catid=38

It has Hyperthreading Technology (mine does not)
800Mgz Front side bus (I think mine is 533)
1MG L2 cache (mine has 512)

Is this a good price and will it make a noticible difference?
and heck, that is the best price I could find, anyone know of a better store for about the same price?

I think it is a good imporvement for 200 bucks.

Any suggestions, comments, tips?

thanks

Tapakeg

Balsy · « **Reply #1 on:** December 22, 2005, 08:37:11 PM »

Consider raid 0 striped SATA hard drives for faster load times.

I doubt the CPU is pegged, I bet its your HD thats keeping those times slow.

OOZ662 · « **Reply #2 on:** December 23, 2005, 02:37:18 AM »

I run that CPU only with a Northwood core. Mmm...

I'd make sure that there aren't any resource hogs running in the background before buying new parts just so they can eat up more space.

tapakeg · « **Reply #3 on:** December 23, 2005, 03:45:03 AM »

I am on a freshly formated HD

not much running at all

Tap

eagl · « **Reply #4 on:** December 23, 2005, 05:32:01 AM »

Before going with a new cpu, you might try overclocking your existing one. Make sure the heatsink is good and clean and properly installed, and see if you can get a little speed bump out of it.

Or not... But I remember reading something about overclockers routinely getting 2.8-3.0 Ghz from the northwood 2.4s.

As for BF2, you need an additional gig of memory to run BF2 without delays. Every single review of BF2, and every single hardware review that uses BF2 to test memory configurations, mentions that BF2 runs a heck of a lot smoother and has much lower start, load, and exit times with 2 gig ram.

tapakeg · « **Reply #5 on:** December 23, 2005, 06:00:59 AM »

gotcha thanks.

I am also thinking the bottleneck might be the 1 Gig of 2700 ram

2 Gig of 3200 ram might be faster than the cpu upgrade eh?

tap

eagl · « **Reply #6 on:** December 23, 2005, 06:11:11 AM »

With the 533mhz bus, I don't know if you'll gain much by going to PC3200 memory unless you also boost the cpu FSB speed. It depends on what your mobo will do and if it will run the memory FSB faster than the cpu FSB.

MrRiplEy[H] · « **Reply #7 on:** December 23, 2005, 07:32:53 AM »

Async memory speeds rarely if ever benefit the system, sometimes they even slow it down.

I second overclocking the system. That way you can benefit from faster rated ram. I would not, however, do a raid 0 system. HD's are so cheap nowadays that it pays to go straight to raid 3, 5 or something similar that brings faster load times but also data redundancy.

Nothing sucks more than losing 80+ gigs of data, trust me.

tapakeg · « **Reply #8 on:** December 23, 2005, 11:47:44 AM »

the mobo will support a
cup with 800Mgz fsb
PC 3200 ram

OOZ662 · « **Reply #9 on:** December 23, 2005, 01:07:03 PM »

I've read in many places, and am experiencing it myself, that Northwood CPUs run extremely cool and are stable overclocking platforms. If they could make Northwoods forever, I'd never turn back.

WhiteHawk · « **Reply #10 on:** December 26, 2005, 02:44:37 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by OOZ662
I've read in many places, and am experiencing it myself, that Northwood CPUs run extremely cool and are stable overclocking platforms. If they could make Northwoods forever, I'd never turn back.

my 2.6 northwood runs hot as a beecth, but I can OC it to 3.2 with occasional lockups and 3.0 no problem at all.