Upgrade of socket 939 question

[ptitterington]

Hello, hopefully someone can help with a bit of info. Currently I am running an asus AN8 SLI Deluxe board with 2 gig ram and a AMD Athlon 64 3500+ MMX 3Dnow 2.2ghz. I see that the newer socket 940 chips are a better price but I am generally happy with my setup but would like to give it a bit of a boost as rendering video could be quicker.
I can buy a AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ for about £85. is it worth the cost. Will I notice much difference in performence.
Thanks

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Short answer, yes. Long answer, maybe. It really depends on what you're doing with your PC.

 

[ptitterington]

Thanks for the reply, I do make it work hard, mainly converting avi files to play on dvd players. and that puts the machine out of action for a couple at a time.
Anyway I have purchased the 4200 as the others were out of my price range.

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

If you're pushing the PC to it's limits as it is, it's definitely worth the purchase (although, you've purchased it anyway).

Good luck with the upgrade, hopefully everything works out well and to your expectations.

 

[ptitterington]

Well I have installed the processor and am running at 10% overclocked but am not noticing the slightest increase in performance. if anything the thing takes longer to do the same jobs. I have reinstalled windows and have the latest bios.
Just think I wasted my money.

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

If you weren't pushing your PC close to or beyond it's limits, you very well may have just wasted your money.

If you don't believe your new CPU is faster than the old one, go take a look at some benchmarks. Humans have some odd obsession with speed and owning faster things even if they don't need it.

 

[ptitterington]

I know what you are saying,
Pass mark performance says
Overall computer passmark rating old 358.5 New 354.6

old cpu sse3dnow 1465.6 new 1535.4
Floating point math old 385.2 new 405.6
rest of the scores very similar.

But I was hoping to see rendering video etc speeded up and there is no noticable difference as there is not when opening progs. which is sad as with the clean install with the old chip I think it would be better.
One other thing, the processor is noisier than the old one.

 

[X1950XT]

Huh, thats pretty weird. I had a socket 939 3700+ till i upgraded to a AMD Athlon X2 3800 2.0GHZ (OC'ed to 2.7GHZ) And i was getting a BIG amount of difference even before i OC'ed it.

:S