Just pondering which CPU to get for games. I think its a question of money and whether I need the power now.


AMD 64s (all Venice s939)

3500 £170
3200 £120
3000 £82

Now as far as I can see, will I really need the 16% extra processing power for the 100% price increase?
The 3000 just looks like a bargain in comparison and I could always overclock it. The following year I could always sell it and upgrade. Just in terms of value for money the other chips look over priced?

Do you guys really think its worth paying the extra and going for the 3500?


My system so far has

21" Sony monitor

[processor?] Freezer 64 Arctic cooling or Akasa AK913
Gigabyte GA K8NXP-9 Nforce Ultra 4 (was gonna have a DFI lan, but changed mind.
1 Gig Corsair platium RAM
250GB HD SEagate Barracuda 7200.8 NCQ new version
LG 4163 DVDRW
Radeon X800XT Graphics card.

Thanks for your views.

For games you can almost certainly go with the 300 - you have plenty processing power for the graphics anyway! Whats you ram in though - single stick or a pair of 512 sticks?

since im skint i would go with the 3000. But looking at the rest of your system specs that your looking at getting it looks like ur loaded anyway :o

what are u upgrading from? The only game around that can really push a pc is battle field 2, if you play anything else it might be worth waiting a bit.

I just think at £82 a 3000 AMD 64 s939 venice represent superior value. Unless i have a change of mind I'd better get it.

The Corsair is a pair of 512s.

I have a graphics card that will cope with just about anything. I can swap out the processor later on. I can overclock it to a 3500 no problem, but I didnt want the DFI borad because Im not a hardcore overclocker.You can do a lot of it in software using Ntune.

Funny how what used to be the most expensive bit will end up being one of the cheapest.I can get a 4000 next year.

My computer died, which is why Im building this one. I only want to play WOW at the mo and that ran ok on my previous.

I used to have an Athlon 1600, but am now reduced to a K7 400mhz until this one gets put together. Should eb quite a change.

I did save a lot of money by shopping around.

I've seen a review of the 3000+ venice reach 2.8GHz on stock air cooling (default is 1.8Ghz) 3200+ is 2Ghz, 3500+ is 2.2Ghz.

At 2.8Ghz it's pretty much equivalent to an Athlon FX55 performance wise (£550 to buy new).

People get the 3000+ to 2.4Ghz without a sweat so I'd go for that, assuming you RAM and motherboard are upt to scratch to overclock it to that level.

how powerfull has your powersupply got to be for a 64bit system? Do you have to unlock the cpu first before overclocking or can you just get stright to it?

As far as I know you can just go straight in.

The key is your board must be able to cope that is it must be stable and have the facility to alter the FSBus.

You can do this by messing with the bios or more recently if you get an nforce 4 MB, then you can use nvidia NTune utility that will tellyou from software how far it thinks your cpu will go until it becomes unstable. Further you push it the hotter it gets, hence the need for cooling. Nune isnt as good as manually overclocking, but safer and easier.

You can also mess with the memory.