5600 X2 to 925 X4 upgrade

[Pederv]

I'm going to sneek an upgrade on my neices system. She currently has a 5600 (2.9GHz) and I'm going to slip in a 925 (2.8GHz). My neice is the computer gamer in my sisters house.

Besides the benifits of going from dual core to quad core, is the L3 of the 925 going to improve her gaming experience even though the operating frequency is 100MHz lower?

I thought that I had built her system around a 5000 X2 (2.6GHz) but when I checked her system I found the 5600 (after I had already ordered the 925, of course).

 

[toyota]

the Phenom 2 is a completely different architecture and is MUCH faster clock for clock then the old A64 X2 cpus. you didnt even mention the graphics card which will determine whether the cpu upgrade will even matter. in other words if thats a low end card like a 9500gt in that system then the cpu change wont matter at all.

 

[Pederv]

Toyota

I didn't mention the video card because that's getting upgraded also, from a 3850 to a 4870. I know that upgrade will improve her gaming experience. I was just wondering if the new CPU, by itself, would improve her gaming experience.

I know the quad core will help with the other things that she does with her system, because she always has multiple aplications open working on her "artsy stuff".

 

[Arkaign]

That will be a GREAT combo of cpu/gpu!

Might consider a very very mild OC to around 3-3.2ghz, should be able to do it with stock volts and almost no difference in heat.

 

[toyota]

with a 3850 there will be very little difference in most games when going from a 5600 X2 to a 925 Phenom 2 X4 especially above 1280. with a 4870, having the Phenom 2 X4 will certainly be more beneficial for modern games than the 5600 X2.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Your Phenom 925 may be a stout OC'er with little if any need for a boost in volts.

What type of mobo and RAMs do you have? That x2 5600+ doesn't happen to have one of those Opty copper-heatpipe coolers, does it?



-

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

Does she even want an upgrade?

 

[Pederv]

heyheybooboo

She has one of the Gigabyte GA-MA78 DDR2 motherboards (the note with the board PN is at home but it supports up to a 125W CPU). I picked up 4GB of 1066 DDR2 GSkill to replace the 4GB of DDR2 800. It's been a year since I've looked inside the case but I doubt it has that big of a HSF because it's only a 65W CPU.


WaitingForNehalem

Yes she does. She just asked a month or two ago about what she should upgrade first in order to make her games run better. I told her video card first then CPU, she has more memory than XP can handle so she didn't need to worry about that.



Her CPU, memory, and video card are going into a new system for her brother. I set him up last year with under clocked XP2700 with an AGP 3850. It's under clocked because I found that the ATI AGP drivers have an issue with Athlon XPs clocked at 1900MHz and higher. He will definatly see a big improvement, but he doesn't normally push his computer very hard. When his sister was asking about upgrading, he was complaining about AGP errors.

 

[crazylegs]

Like people have said that combination of CPU + GPU (alone neither would make that much sense although GPU probably better) is the key and will be a very nice upgrade for your niece, am positive it will improve her gaming experience

 

[Pederv]

I did the switch. But I didn't do it clean, she knows that her system has been messed with, just not how. I don't think that she knows that see's been upgraded, I think that she thinks that one of her freinds is messing with her.
Now I'm using her parts to help put together her brothers upgrade. When I dropped her CPU into his MA770-UD3 lo and behold it was a 5000 X2, she had overclocked it so Windows was seeing it as a 5600 X2.

When I put her system together it scored
3DMark2000 - 21994
3DMark2001 - 30287
3DMark03 - 30055
3DMark05 - 13431
3DMark06 - 8607

After the upgrade it scored
3DMark2000 - 33363
3DMark2001 - 39734
3DMark03 - 51568
3DMark05 - 19662
3DMark06 - 14304

So overall about a 50% improvement.
3DMark2000 - +51.69%
3DMark2001 - +31.19%
3DMark03 - +71.58%
3DMark05 - +46.39%
3DMark06 - +66.19%

Average - 53%

 

[cusideabelincoln]

That's a nice upgrade, but you can't use 3DMark as a metric of overall performance. In real games, going from a 5600+/3850 to a 925/4870 should yield way more than a 53% boost.

 

[Pederv]

That's a nice upgrade, but you can't use 3DMark as a metric of overall performance. In real games, going from a 5600+/3850 to a 925/4870 should yield way more than a 53% boost.

I know the 3DMark scores aren't the best metric but since they are the only benchmarks that I have historical data on that's what I use for comparison. I figure the 53% improvement is worse case for single threaded games.

I had to stop by my sisters yesterday because installing the 9.12 ATI drivers messed with the sound. My neice was playing left4dead2, looking at Tom's Hardware graphics chart for that game she should see about a 300% improvement going from a 3850 to a 4870.