S939 X2 4800+ - what is it still useful for?

[VirtualLarry]

Just curious what you all think I should use this box for. Recently picked up an X2 4800+ chip off of someone here, along with 4x512MB of RAM. The box used to have a single-core 3000+ and 512MB of RAM, so it was a nice upgrade.

Was thinking of selling it on CL as a "gaming rig", but wondering if I should OC it first. Unfortunately, I'm fresh out of high-end gaming cards. The newest spare gaming card I have to throw in the box is an X1950GT PCI-E. Would that be a balanced card for the speed of this CPU, or could it handle a faster card? (Remember, the X2 4800 is 2.4Ghz AMD64 dual-core.)

Or should I just throw in one of my X1300 PCI-E cards, and let the buyer put in a gaming card?

 

[Gillbot]

HTPC

I had a S939 x2-3800+ as an HTPC and wish I would have kept it.

EDIT, that card IMHO would do well in that rig as long as you understand the limits of the CPU and card itself. As long as you don't try to run the latest games at max settings/full res it should do OK.

 

[Raduque]

HTPC

I had a S939 x2-3800+ as an HTPC and wish I would have kept it.

This, plus a low-end HD4000 card (~$50) and a cheap blu-ray drive ($50-80) and you've got an HD HTPC that can play any type of content you can throw at it, PLUS you get the added benefit of throwing in tuner/capture cards or OCUR device and large drives down the line for an HD DVR.

I run an HD HTPC using an X2 4400+ and HD2600Pro with an LG combo BRD/HDDVD drive and it works great.

Edit: My X2 is also 939.

 

[alyarb]

a $30 4000-series radeon will make any system into a bona fide HTPC. That has everything to do with the Radeon and nothing to do with the Athlon. You're still talking about a low IPC 90nm chip on an obsolete platform. Any manchester/toledo core CPU + 939 chipset means you will be seeing about 110-120 watts at idle, and considerably more fully loaded. socket 939 is the one platform i would never grandfather into a HTPC because of its high resale value and power consumption.

you should have no problem selling the CPU/board/RAM as a combo on craigslist for $200. throw in that old radeon if you can get more cash for it. no sense leaving it on the shelf while the value dwindles away.

$200 is plenty of money to get set up with a regor + 785G + 4GB DDR3 which would be a much faster/lower power system, even stock, then a 2.4 GHz manchester. and after it's all said and done, it shouldn't cost you any money as long as you can get ~$200 for your 939 stuff. of course, if you don't have a proper display, then a HTPC is meaningless.

939 is still good for general purpose computing, multimedia and 2D productivity, but whatever your K8 can do, an Athlon II on AM3 can do faster with less energy. and it's all within the resale value of your 939 system. For a competent gaming machine, that regor will have no trouble doing 3.8 GHz and it will still be more power efficient than the K8 @stock. its a hell of an upgrade for being a simple exchange, even if you leave everything stock. Regor is simply faster and more efficient than K8, and the 785 is a faster lower power chipset. 55nm feature rich IGP + free PEG 16 slot + upgrade to thuban? i dont see socket 939 providing you with that at any cost.

and let me guess, you've got an nforce4 board? dump it before it flakes on you. i had one suicide the other day, took the RAM with it and i dont have any other boards to test if the CPU lived. also had a friend's machine, also 939 was an SLI board, and two of his PEG slots died.

 

[Tsavo]

That thing doesn't pull 110-120 watts at idle.

4800+ still decent for gaming at 1280.

Pair it with a 4xxx for watching HD/ backup box or whatever.

And there's nothing inherently flaky with NForce boards...just so long AS YOU DON'T FLASH THE BIOS WITHIN WINDOWS THUS BRICKING A DECENT GIGABYTE K8N board. Ask me how I know.

 

[Stefan Payne]

Well you can sell on eBay, if it works it's quite valuable.

Here in Germany you can get over a hundred €uros on eBay, I don't know how much it's worth in the US...

For that you almos could buy an AM3 system with CPU, IGP board and memory.

 

[alyarb]

the chip by itself should idle around 25 watts. but a DDR1-based 939 system will take over a hundred.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2410&p=2

you know anand doesn't bog his system with extra disks and peripherals for his power tests.

meanwhile a 785G + 3 GHz Regor idles at 55 and fully loaded consumes less than the K8 system @ idle.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3615&p=11

 

[douglasb]

And there's nothing inherently flaky with NForce boards...

I beg to differ. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NForce4#Flaws

 

[Stefan Payne]

Well, the nForce 4 was the worst you could get at that time.

The bad is, everyone belived it was a good product, now we know better...

 

[VirtualLarry]

a $30 4000-series radeon will make any system into a bona fide HTPC.

you should have no problem selling the CPU/board/RAM as a combo on craigslist for $200. throw in that old radeon if you can get more cash for it. no sense leaving it on the shelf while the value dwindles away.

and let me guess, you've got an nforce4 board? dump it before it flakes on you. i had one suicide the other day, took the RAM with it and i dont have any other boards to test if the CPU lived. also had a friend's machine, also 939 was an SLI board, and two of his PEG slots died.

Well, I will have paid $140 for the CPU + RAM (on Monday), so just reselling it for $200 would get me my money back for CPU + RAM + mobo.

I'd rather build out a gaming rig and sell it for $600.

It's not an NF4, Dual-VSTA.

x2 4800
4x512 ddr ram $140
dual-vsta mobo $60
case $30
500w psu $50
750gb hd $80
22x dvd burner $35
radeon x1950gt $40

total $435

even if I sold it for $500, I could make a few bucks.

 

[alyarb]

that's a ULi 1695 dude. probably the least produced and least supported 939 chipset ever. hardly something i would want to keep around. you are going to have a very difficult time selling a gaming machine using 6 year old technology for $600.

 

[Tsavo]

I beg to differ. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NForce4#Flaws

What I meant was there's nothing inherently flaky about the chipset in that it breaks more than other chipsets.

Beyond that, I've not run across a chipset with such gamut of implementation issues that vary from manufacturer to manufacturer as I have encountered with the NForce 4. The Gigabyte K8N was a solid board with that chipset...others made me want to rip every hair out of my head in frustration.

Just remember never to flash a BIOS in Windows.

 

[Stefan Payne]

that's a ULi 1695 dude.

Nope, that's an nForce 3!
This time used as a south bridge.

with an ULi 1695 PCie tunnel on it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

that's a ULi 1695 dude. probably the least produced and least supported 939 chipset ever. hardly something i would want to keep around. you are going to have a very difficult time selling a gaming machine using 6 year old technology for $600.

Least supported? It's supported just fine in Win7, including the onboard LAN.

 

[spdfreak]

If I were you, I'd just sell it on ebay. The faster 939 chips bring a lot of money...

 

[Stefan Payne]

Least supported? It's supported just fine in Win7, including the onboard LAN.

Look on the boar
Wich LAN Chip do they use?

I bet it's a pretty standard Realtek RTL8111B or similar.

The integrated LAN of the nForce3 wouldn't work under 64bit Windows...

 

[veri745]

If I were you, I'd just sell it on ebay. The faster 939 chips bring a lot of money...

+1

s939 4800+'s still go for $200+ on ebay. Sell it and put in a faster/cooler/better Athlon II

 

[Schmide]

the chip by itself should idle around 25 watts. but a DDR1-based 939 system will take over a hundred.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2410&p=2

you know anand doesn't bog his system with extra disks and peripherals for his power tests.

meanwhile a 785G + 3 GHz Regor idles at 55 and fully loaded consumes less than the K8 system @ idle.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3615&p=11

First test was done with an x850xt (30-40w idle, 65w+ load) do the math and the systems fall right in line. (within 20w)

 

[VirtualLarry]

Look on the boar
Wich LAN Chip do they use?

I bet it's a pretty standard Realtek RTL8111B or similar.

The integrated LAN of the nForce3 wouldn't work under 64bit Windows...

It's PCI ULI LAN, there's a driver on windows driver catalog for it, but only for x64 versions of Win7. I really don't think that it's an NF3, there's no support for NF3 anymore, but there is for this chipset. Likewise, I think it's a ULI southbridge.

http://www.asrock.com/MB/overview.asp?Model=939Dual-VSTA

Chipset
- Northbridge: ULi® M1695
- Southbridge: ULi® M1567

 

[StrangerGuy]

1. Ebay for $180+
2. ?????
3. PROFIT! And buy a new AMD combo.

 

[alyarb]

First test was done with an x850xt (30-40w idle, 65w+ load) do the math and the systems fall right in line. (within 20w)

well, you have a somewhat of a point there, and if the idle is 40w for the X850, that would bring anand's K8 system down to 67 watts with zero video. that is still more power than the K10 machine WITH a Radeon 4200. you can't beat it. A radeon 4350 will still put another 10 idle watts on top of the 939 system. AM3 is still lower power.

My argument really isn't about the power, though. My argument is that K10 on AM3 is a faster and cheaper system than K8 on 939, i don't care what year it is.


my jab about ULi isn't toward driver support. it's customer support. there is no widespread adoption of their products in the consumer space. Whether they have a working Win7 driver or not is irrelevant; they do not have enough of their products in the field to bring issues to light when/if they occur. You won't get anything from the manufacturer and there are certainly no ULi forums to fall back on. There is no such thing as a perfect device, it's a matter of how many users put it to the tests in the varying conditions they require and how much information is readily available to resolve whatever it is. if you want to put together a $600 machine to sell to some poor sucker when he could've gotten something from dell for $400 that would own it, i'd say you're going way out of your way to make a negligible profit by selling someone a "gaming" machine with a "gaming" GPU from years and years ago. you're better off parting out the CPU on ebay so you get a premium price, and selling the 939 board + RAM to someone desperate guy trying to do a swap on craigslist.

 

[edplayer]

Was thinking of selling it on CL as a "gaming rig", but ...

Don't do that

if someone shows up who wasn't smart enough to research the parts first, and ends up buying it as a "Gaming" rig, you are ripping them off.

 

[chubbyfatazn]

Until May of last year I gamed on an Opty 165 overclocked to 2.6GHz and an X1900XT at stock speeds. At 1360x768, I had to play FO3 at low-medium settings with minimal AA/AF in order to maintain a framerate above 30fps. With TF2, I could play at high settings (had to lower AA/AF a bit).

When I built the rig back in '06 the NF4 chipset was the most highly regarded chipset; I still regret going with ATI's chipset (can't remember exactly what it was, the mobo was a DFI CFX3200 with a craptacular ULi southbridge).

 

[Gillbot]

Don't do that

if someone shows up who wasn't smart enough to research the parts first, and ends up buying it as a "Gaming" rig, you are ripping them off.

Buyer beware applies to all purchases. I can advertise a pinto as a sports car, doesn't mean i'm a scammer if someone is dumb enough to buy it as such.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Buyer beware applies to all purchases. I can advertise a pinto as a sports car, doesn't mean i'm a scammer if someone is dumb enough to buy it as such.

That analogy isn't so hot. This rig is definately more than a Pinto. Perhaps a Fiero? I mean, it's no corvette, but the price will reflect that as well.