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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 |
#2
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M2N68 questions
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 |
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M2N68 questions
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. |
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M2N68 questions
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 |
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