Processor Upgrade?

[seekermeister]

I've not had a problem with my processor until now, because I've not been into anything all that processor intensive before. But now, I've found that working with video files which require a lot of encoding, runs my CPU at 100%. That is not a problem, except that I can't use the computer for anything else, during the processing...even simple programs will freeze up.

I don't want to spend the money for a real upgrade to current standards, but I'm wondering if upgrading my 4400+ S939 to a Athlon 64 FX-57 would make enough difference to make it worthwhile to upgrade it? As far as I can see, the only change would be to increase from 2200Mhz to 2800Mhz. This upgrade would cost ~ $200 for a used processor.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I know squat about AMD. Do you have a dual core?

Have you considered altering your "affinity" settings via Task Manager?

I have never changed my settings, but it supposedly allows you to force a certain process to use only 1 core, rather than the standard 2. That would slow down your video processing, but free up 1 core to do something else.

 

[stormy13]

No it isn't worth $200 by a long shot. Makes even less sense when for that same $200 you could get something like this,



that would pretty much blow away any socket 939 based system. Would just need to recycle the rest of the necessary bits from whichever of the computers you decide to replace.

 

[seekermeister]

ignatzatsonic,

Thanks for the suggestion. That did permit other operations to run with the video processing properly...but the video encoding speed dropped to ~1/3 of what it was using both cores. That would be tolerable, except that I have over 600 DVDs to process, and I would like to finish before doomsday. Therefore, I'm still pondering my original question.

 

[seekermeister]

No it isn't worth $200 by a long shot. Makes even less sense when for that same $200 you could get something like this,

View attachment 126702

that would pretty much blow away any socket 939 based system. Would just need to recycle the rest of the necessary bits from whichever of the computers you decide to replace.

Hmm, I like that processor and perhaps the memory, but I'm wary of Biostar. Not because I ever had one, but because it appears to be a low dollar board, unlike Asus or a couple of others.

In the past, I've had a lot of problems with "economical" motherboards, and if I were to scrimp, it would not be on that.

EDIT: BTW, where is that screenshot from?

 

[stormy13]

How about MSI? Same 770 chipset and $10.00 more (and was actually $10.00 less then the Biostar a couple of weeks ago),

Newegg.com - MSI 870-G45 AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard

No matter how you slice it though, $200 spent on a 939 system just doesn't make sense.

BTW, where is that screenshot from?

Newegg.

 

[seekermeister]

How about MSI? Same 770 chipset and $10.00 more (and was actually $10.00 less then the Biostar a couple of weeks ago),

Newegg.com - MSI 870-G45 AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard

No matter how you slice it though, $200 spent on a 939 system just doesn't make sense.

BTW, where is that screenshot from?

Newegg.

I wouldn't touch another MSI motherboard with a 10 foot pole. I have a bunch of them in the closet, and I will probably file 13 them, because the closet space is more valuable to me.

I also do not do business with Newegg, but perhaps I can find something similar elsewhere.

 

[Zepher]

your Athlon 4400+ is almost twice as fast as that FX chip so you would go down in performance.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Athlon+64+FX-57

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Athlon+64+X2+Dual+Core+4400%2B

the x4 640 is very fast compared to your current cpu,

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Athlon+II+X4+640

I am not sure what this one is even though it has nearly the same name,
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Athlon+X4+640

 

[seekermeister]

Zepher,

I don't guess that it matters much, because the other two posters have just about talked me out of my original idea, but I fail to understand those benchmarks, because the specs and price of the FX-57 is much higher than my current processor.

 

[Zepher]

The Passmark number show the power of the CPU, higher number = more CPU power.

Here is a review from 5 years ago when that FX-57 chip came out.
Athlon 64 FX-57 Review | Hardware Secrets

 

[seekermeister]

This discussion has inspired me to upgrade more than just the processor, so I have been searching for an ideal motherboard, but the best that I have found so far is an Asus ASUS M4A88TD-M/USB3, but it is too limited on expansion slots. I don't think that I would upgrade to any MB that wasn't SATA 6, and it would be nice for it to have USB3 also, but if such a critter exists, it would probably have a bigger price tag than I could handle.

 

[seekermeister]

Here is a better board:

ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 Motherboard - AMD 890GX, AM3, DDR3, USB, RAID, ATX at TigerDirect.com

But one thing confuses me...the onboard graphics. In another ad I found on this board, it said that it was Crossfire, which of course is ATI, but I want to use my EVGA GTX460 SC. Would that create any kind of compatibility issue?

 

[Solarstarshines]

I've not had a problem with my processor until now, because I've not been into anything all that processor intensive before. But now, I've found that working with video files which require a lot of encoding, runs my CPU at 100%. That is not a problem, except that I can't use the computer for anything else, during the processing...even simple programs will freeze up.

I don't want to spend the money for a real upgrade to current standards, but I'm wondering if upgrading my 4400+ S939 to a Athlon 64 FX-57 would make enough difference to make it worthwhile to upgrade it? As far as I can see, the only change would be to increase from 2200Mhz to 2800Mhz. This upgrade would cost ~ $200 for a used processor.

you are probally better off going new board and cpu if you look around online there are a few combo models that will have a better processor and board for what you are trying to upgrade

 

[Solarstarshines]

Here is a better board:

ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 Motherboard - AMD 890GX, AM3, DDR3, USB, RAID, ATX at TigerDirect.com

But one thing confuses me...the onboard graphics. In another ad I found on this board, it said that it was Crossfire, which of course is ATI, but I want to use my EVGA GTX460 SC. Would that create any kind of compatibility issue?

it is just the card for crossfire you would need the bridge and a ati card that will match the onboard crossfire requirments but since you are using a single card there is no need to fear

either your card will automaticly turn off the onboard or you'll just have to do it through the bios

 

[Zepher]

Here is a better board:

ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 Motherboard - AMD 890GX, AM3, DDR3, USB, RAID, ATX at TigerDirect.com

But one thing confuses me...the onboard graphics. In another ad I found on this board, it said that it was Crossfire, which of course is ATI, but I want to use my EVGA GTX460 SC. Would that create any kind of compatibility issue?

I think that is the board my brother bought a couple of months ago.
You can use the onboard in conjunction with your add-in card, or turn it off completely.
He was using the HDMI out on the mobo to his 42" LCD HDTV and the 2 monitors were plugged to his HD6850.

 

[Wishmaster]

Biostar boards are actually pretty decent boards. Ive used 3 or 4 of them for builds and have yet to have any issues out of them. Some of them were lacking in the bios dept. as far as OC features, but overall the boards themselves were just fine. Can't really say anything bad at all about them.

You may also want to check into Gigabytes offering as well as ASUS.


If your going to be getting into alot of Video Encoding, a Quad Core will certainly make a huge difference over a Dual Core system in this situation.

Once you decide on the board you like, I would suggest at least 4GB of RAM and a nice Quad.

 

[seekermeister]

I think that is the board my brother bought a couple of months ago.
You can use the onboard in conjunction with your add-in card, or turn it off completely.
He was using the HDMI out on the mobo to his 42" LCD HDTV and the 2 monitors were plugged to his HD6850.

The part that confused me is that with a SLI rig, the two graphic card require a bridge between them, and I doubt that is possible with one onboard and one discrete card, especially when one is ATi and the other is Nvidia. However that is not really important to me, because I don't want to SLI or Crossfire.

What is more important to me, is that I read that when a single card is used, it has to be installed in the lower x16 slot, and for it to perform at x16, instead of x8, it require that a power card be installed in the upper x16 slot. I need all of the slots for other uses, and if I had to use the upper x16 slot in this fashion, I would be short one slot.

 

[seekermeister]

it is just the card for crossfire you would need the bridge and a ati card that will match the onboard crossfire requirments but since you are using a single card there is no need to fear

either your card will automaticly turn off the onboard or you'll just have to do it through the bios

I should have read your post, before my last post. The question is, can a Nvidia card be Crossfired?

 

[Wishmaster]

it is just the card for crossfire you would need the bridge and a ati card that will match the onboard crossfire requirments but since you are using a single card there is no need to fear

either your card will automaticly turn off the onboard or you'll just have to do it through the bios

I should have read your post, before my last post. The question is, can a Nvidia card be Crossfired?

No, but it does depend on the motherboard.

If the board only supports crossfire, you must run ATI cards to run multipile cards.

If you prefer Nvidia, youll need to have a board that supports SLI. And obviously you must run Nvidia cards for multiple GPUs to work.

The exception being something like x58 chipset, that supports either or. But it will be clearly labeled.


Single cards will run fine on either type of board however.

 

[logicearth]

Have you thought about using encoding software that makes use of your graphics card? The GTX 460 (which is a fricken power house) is more then capable of handling video encoding, but I am going to guess you are not encoding to h.264? I don't know if it can do more then h.264.

If you can use the GPU, you will free the CPU up greatly and even probably speed up the encoding process.