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I'm going to be building a new computer with in the next couple of days. Originally I had planned to go all out and do the socket 939 with an Athlon 64 3500+. Then I got to thinking. Since there's no socket 939 boards with PCI express that maybe I shouldn't go all out yet and just build a temporary upgrade box that'll hold me over 'til next year or so. But then comes the decision on newcastle core, or clawhammer. To get a motherboard and clawhammer chip would cost nearly as much as going with the socket 939 setup. Newcastle cores are much cheaper. The only difference I see in the two chips is the L2 cache. My question is, does that 512K of cache make that much of a difference to justify a $100 dollar or more difference in price? And if it does, would going with the socket 939 and dual channel ram be a better choice? Does the dual channel ram make up for the 3500+ only having 512K of L2 cache?

Moderator Joined: 05 Dec 2000 Posts: 5941 Location: USA

AnandTech wrote:
Dual-Channel 939 is the fastest Athlon 64 socket, followed closely by 940. It appears that the reduced latency of unbuffered memory actually does translate into slightly improved performance for 939. Socket 754 is slower than either of the Dual-Channel solutions, but the difference between fastest and slowest among the 3 sockets is still relatively small.

Posted: Fri Jul 30, 2004 12:15 am Post subject:

You can always upgrade the motherboard later.

Posted: Fri Jul 30, 2004 3:09 am Post subject:

For 32-bit applications running on a 32-bit operating system, the Newcastle cores perform better than the equivalently-numbered Clawhammer cores. The fact that Newcastle is also less expensive than Clawhammer should make this an easy choice.

Look at the 2.0 GHz 512KB L2 cache Athlon64 3000+ and at the 2.2 GHz 512KB L2 cache Athlon64 3200+ for the best values in Socket-754 at this time (excluding overclocking).

Posted: Sun Aug 01, 2004 1:56 pm Post subject:

I ended up going with the 3000+. It just seemed like the sensible thing to do, and more cost effective for now. Thanks for the input guys.

Oh yeah, and I went with the MSI K8N NEO platinum edition. Aside from some problems with the ANTEC USB headers, it all went smooth.

Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2004 1:26 pm Post subject:

radar1029 wrote:
I ended up going with the 3000+. It just seemed like the sensible thing to do, and more cost effective for now. Thanks for the input guys.

Oh yeah, and I went with the MSI K8N NEO platinum edition. Aside from some problems with the ANTEC USB headers, it all went smooth.

You got SATA hard disks in it? I'm really interested in the performance of the raid. I'm thinking about buying a new setup myself but am puzzled about the onboard performance. I read a test about the onboard raids against a SATA controller based on PCI-X 100 and the controller outnumbered the onboard solution by a mere 100 MB/s in both read and write. But hell, did you try finding a good 754 board with PCI-X 100 slots???

Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2004 6:14 pm Post subject:

Yes I do have a SATA drive in it, however not in a RAID setup because I only have one 120gb drive. I like my mobo a lot, it has tons of overclocking options.

Moderator Joined: 05 Dec 2000 Posts: 5941 Location: USA

radar1029 wrote:
I ended up going with the 3000+. It just seemed like the sensible thing to do, and more cost effective for now. Thanks for the input guys.

Oh yeah, and I went with the MSI K8N NEO platinum edition. Aside from some problems with the ANTEC USB headers, it all went smooth.

Thanks, that's good to know - still pondering the 64bit world - w Big Smile

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