M2N68 questions

Hi - I have a basic M2N68 mb running an Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 2.7GHz cpu
under Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit. Graphics adapter is an Nvidia
geforce GTX 460.

I've been told by my local computer shop that I could get a decent boost
in performance by installing a Phenom II X4/Quad 955 (Socket AM3),
requiring a BIOS update.

Does anybody have any experience of this upgrade path? Worth doing?
Problems to look out for?

TIA - Peter

Seasidepeter wrote:
Hi - I have a basic M2N68 mb running an Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 2.7GHz cpu
under Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit. Graphics adapter is an Nvidia
geforce GTX 460.

I've been told by my local computer shop that I could get a decent boost
in performance by installing a Phenom II X4/Quad 955 (Socket AM3),
requiring a BIOS update.

Does anybody have any experience of this upgrade path? Worth doing?
Problems to look out for?

TIA - Peter

The boost depends to some extent, on the software.

Your new processor, would have a higher clock rate. When software
is single threaded, you'd get a speedup proportional to the
improvement in clock rate. That would be a small bump.

Going from two cores to four cores, requires software which
uses more than one thread of execution. For example, Microsoft
Flight Sim, uses on-the-fly thread launching and multiple cores.
More cores, gives more performance. But that only works up to a point,
as eventually there just aren't enough independent things you can
do in parallel. FSX only has so many threads it can launch.

Even Photoshop, one of the first programs to make use of multiple
processors, doesn't use that approach for all filters. Half the
filters are single threaded, and the other half will run on multiple
cores.

Games on average, tend to saturate one core (there is a dominant thread
of execution, and it's the limiting factor), while three other cores might
run at 30%. There will be exceptions to that, but that's a general observation.
By going from a dual core to a quad core, you would not expect game speed to
double.

The best observable improvements come, when a system is slightly below
spec, and the new processor just makes it past that point. For example,
I had a system, where my favorite game used to stutter in scenes with
a lot of bots or explosions. I did an overclock by a small amount (maybe 10%,
because my processor stunk). And that was enough to stop the stuttering and make
the game enjoyable. If that was the situation you were in, you might be quite
satisfied with the result of the upgrade.

If on the other hand, your games play pretty well as it is, maybe Task
Manager shows you're flat out most of the time, you might find after
the processor upgrade, that "nothing changed". Well, something did change,
but it just wasn't something important to your user experience. I've been
disappointed like that in the past. It's one of the reasons, I try not
to upgrade, unless the new component can double my performance (and do
that, most of the time, rather than just some of the time).

So really, it will depend on what software you use, and what percentage
of the time you're using multithreaded software, as to how worthwhile
the upgrade is. Since the processor you've selected isn't extremely
expensive (not like eyeing one of those $1000 Intel processors), it
probably won't bother you that much if it isn't a big improvement.

Paul

On 03/04/2011 03:07, Paul wrote:
Seasidepeter wrote:
Hi - I have a basic M2N68 mb running an Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 2.7GHz cpu
under Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit. Graphics adapter is an Nvidia
geforce GTX 460.

I've been told by my local computer shop that I could get a decent
boost in performance by installing a Phenom II X4/Quad 955 (Socket
AM3), requiring a BIOS update.

Does anybody have any experience of this upgrade path? Worth doing?
Problems to look out for?

TIA - Peter

The boost depends to some extent, on the software.

Your new processor, would have a higher clock rate. When software
is single threaded, you'd get a speedup proportional to the
improvement in clock rate. That would be a small bump.

Going from two cores to four cores, requires software which
uses more than one thread of execution. For example, Microsoft
Flight Sim, uses on-the-fly thread launching and multiple cores.
More cores, gives more performance. But that only works up to a point,
as eventually there just aren't enough independent things you can
do in parallel. FSX only has so many threads it can launch.

Even Photoshop, one of the first programs to make use of multiple
processors, doesn't use that approach for all filters. Half the
filters are single threaded, and the other half will run on multiple
cores.

Games on average, tend to saturate one core (there is a dominant thread
of execution, and it's the limiting factor), while three other cores might
run at 30%. There will be exceptions to that, but that's a general
observation.
By going from a dual core to a quad core, you would not expect game
speed to
double.

The best observable improvements come, when a system is slightly below
spec, and the new processor just makes it past that point. For example,
I had a system, where my favorite game used to stutter in scenes with
a lot of bots or explosions. I did an overclock by a small amount (maybe
10%,
because my processor stunk). And that was enough to stop the stuttering
and make
the game enjoyable. If that was the situation you were in, you might be
quite
satisfied with the result of the upgrade.

If on the other hand, your games play pretty well as it is, maybe Task
Manager shows you're flat out most of the time, you might find after
the processor upgrade, that "nothing changed". Well, something did change,
but it just wasn't something important to your user experience. I've been
disappointed like that in the past. It's one of the reasons, I try not
to upgrade, unless the new component can double my performance (and do
that, most of the time, rather than just some of the time).

So really, it will depend on what software you use, and what percentage
of the time you're using multithreaded software, as to how worthwhile
the upgrade is. Since the processor you've selected isn't extremely
expensive (not like eyeing one of those $1000 Intel processors), it
probably won't bother you that much if it isn't a big improvement.

Paul

Thanks, Paul, for a well-argued and thoroughly knowledgeable post. I
notice that the Windows Performance app shows the two slowest areas to
be processor (at 5.7 cps) and sata drive (5.9 transfer rate). Graphics
is up in the 7.5s.

So I guess I'd e right in thinking overall performance wouldn't shoot up
if I did buy the new processor - I'd presumably still have to upgrade to
a faster main drive.

All in all, I think I'll take your advice and try a little tweaking
first. Thanks again for the input.

Seasidepeter wrote:


Thanks, Paul, for a well-argued and thoroughly knowledgeable post. I
notice that the Windows Performance app shows the two slowest areas to
be processor (at 5.7 cps) and sata drive (5.9 transfer rate). Graphics
is up in the 7.5s.

So I guess I'd e right in thinking overall performance wouldn't shoot up
if I did buy the new processor - I'd presumably still have to upgrade to
a faster main drive.

All in all, I think I'll take your advice and try a little tweaking
first. Thanks again for the input.

I'd have to agree with you, on hard drives. I find them really slow now.
The worst part, is the manufacturers making 15K SAS hard drives, and not
offering them with a SATA controller board instead of SAS. A 15K drive would
help drop the seek time, without all the quirks of an SSD drive (the ones
with flash memory).

(The price is a bit out of hand... :-) And not all the reviews are positive. )

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...tem=22-148-617

*******

Consider when you're playing a game though, the hard drive is pretty quiet
when you're in the middle of the game. So bumping up the processor, without
changing the hard drive, might still make sense (if your game play was
lagging). It's all a matter of whether you can get some value out of the
processor, and that's where studying your own habits comes into play.

Some people are pretty hard to satisfy. Occasionally, you'll run into someone
here, who does an upgrade, and finds it underwhelming, to the point they
return the hardware to the vendor. If your hardware is already pretty good,
it's going to take a lot to impress you :-)

Paul