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The Athlon 64 3000+, A Budget Gamer's Perspective

Posted by timothy on from the enjoy-the-las-vegas-effect dept.

VL contributes a link to Viperlair's budget-conscious and game-oriented review of an AMD processor that's not on the bleeding edge, but makes a good showing for the money: "For the price of the Socket-939, you can pick up an A64 3000+, K8T800 based motherboard, and a decent mid-range video card. For gamers on a budget, I think the choice is obvious."

4 of 333 comments (clear)

  1. Re:already outdated by Judg3 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yup, I was pricing a system recently and Newegg has the socket 939 3500+ at 352$. The next step up, the 3800+, is almost double the price at 643$ - I figure when I'm ready to buy in a few months the price will drop enough to be worthwhile.

    And the ability to upgrade without needing to buy a new motherboard definately makes it worth my wait right now!

    --
    Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
  2. Low-budget is right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    While CPU speeds may not be going up as fast as they used to, prices just seem to keep falling. You can now build yourself a socket 752 system with a decent video card for $1000, minus monitor.

    My last build, a T-bird 1.4ghz, was in 2001. It cost $1200, yet the thing was built with a lot of the cheapest parts - the case, the mobo, the drives. It overheated constantly because of the poor airflow in thge case, which I eventually fixed through a crude expansion to the existing front intake in the bezel, and by moving the case fan from the side to the back.

    My next one, to be ordered sometime this month, is going be smaller(using the Antec Aria and an m-ATX), faster(A64 2800+), quieter(better PSU, fans and heatsinks), and cheaper($950 including all-new cards and peripherals, unlike the previous one, which stripped whatever it could from the one that came before it).

  3. How about sub-1000 by KenFury · · Score: 4, Informative

    XP 2500 ($80), FX5700 or Radeon 9800 ($200), SB Live 4.1 ($30), 1 gig DDR ($200), 160 gig Seagate SATA ($120), ASUS MATX MoBo ($100), CD-RW/DVD Combo drive ($75) and a nice case ($75).

    This comes in at just under $700. It's a very nice system that can play any game out there. Really who needs more than that for your current gaming needs? Sure you can shell out another grand for the bleeding edge but I would rather spend another 700 in two years and kick my old box down to the wife.

  4. Frequency scaling by T0t0r0_fan · · Score: 5, Informative

    They could have mentioned that, too. It's really nice to see my 3000+ stay below 30 degrees C(at 800MHz) most of the time I'm using it(and no case fans or anything, just what came in the box), and not even always going full-speed when gaming... Fairly quiet, too, even with my really cheap and quite loud case.

    Wouldn't help much in comparison with 3200+, but it's still a nice bonus on all Athlon64s, especially when over half of your time is spent on normal workstation tasks, with the rest being gaming :)