At the moment I’ve got a AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Procosessor 3200+
I am thinking of upgrading my PC’s Processor, Is the one i have now good? (compared to the ones in the shops)
Mostly because i want better framerate in my games. I have a good video card (recently) and I can support everything on high with the same framerate.
If possible, can you reccomend any good ones, I’m not bothered about price range, I just need a good idea of which ones are good and what are bad.
Video Card: XfX nvidia Geforce 7800 GS
Ram: 1 GB
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AMD processors have really lowered in price, so an Athlon 64 X2 4200 would be a great processor if you don’t mind spending a couple of hundred bucks. You might actually spend your extra money on a nicer video card though and some higher performance memory. For a good gaming system, you want at least a gig of RAM.
The AMD 64 X2 4200 is dual core and thus does not tend to overheat as much as other single core processors. AMD is 64 bit whereas Pentiums are 32 bit, so AMD is better equiped to handle games that will be coming out in the future.
Also, the AMD 64 X2 will fit in the motherboard you already have at home as long as it’s the socket 939, which if you have the AMD processor you mentioned above, it should fit fine.
GET A INTEL PROCESSOR 3.0 WITH HT TECHNOLOGY OR HIGHER. JUST MAKE SURE OF L2 CACHE IS 2MB OR MORE. ALSO USE 512 MB RAM OR HIGHER.
AMD processors are pretty good, in general. However, I’ve found that they have a habit of overheating a bit, and when they start to overheat they start to slow down.
If you’re looking for a new processor, give a Pentium 4 a try. The newer Pentium 4′s come with HT technology, which can let them perform up to double the stated speed (as they can deal with two tasks at once instead of just one task, though the exact speed gain you get will depend on how much load is on the processor at the time).
First let me correct a few things in the previous answers. HT is a dead technology and contributed very little to the overall system performance, and sometimes it works against the performance:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/chips/0,39020354,39237341,00.htm
I suggest you go for an AMD 64 X2 duel core or if you are really paranoid Intel Core Duo
See the comparison of AMD 64 X2 vs Intel Core Duo on some popular games
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2648&p=11
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2648&p=13
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2648&p=12
Still as far as I know AMD has better 64 bit processors and most of the popular games have special binaries for AMD 64 architecture