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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."

5 of 333 comments (clear)

  1. already outdated by _|()|\| · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This review claims that the cheapest socket 939 processor is $450. With the recent price drops, you can get a retail 3500+ for about $350, compared to $220 for a 3200+ or $175 for 3000+. Also, the review would have been much more useful had it shown results for both versions of the 3200+, so that you can compare the impact of clock speed and cache.

  2. Buying an Intel by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Interesting

    used to be the lazy man's way to make sure you got a good mobo. You could always just buy an Intel branded board and you'd be good to go. With AMD, you had to navigate through several choices to avoid a crappy board (yes, I know those choices where there for Intel too, but they were so easy to avoid).

    Whelp, Nvidia came along and changed that. Now I recommend AMD/Nforce to everyone I talk too, if only for the kick-@$$ sound on the higher end boards :).

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  3. Re:Just what I was looking for... by Slack3r78 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In the past, I'd agree with you - chipsets were the sticking point for AMD, but nForce2 is coming up on 2 years old this winter, and that was the turning point. Outside of one odd implementation (an MSI board that doesn't even use the standard drivers, but I dislike MSI anyway), I have yet to see an nForce2 machine with stability problems.

    Of the 3 nForce2 based machines I own and all the ones I've built for other people, I've yet to come across a piece of hardware that didn't just work. Time to bring your notions about AMD out of 2001. :-)

  4. Re:If I recall by Zocalo · · Score: 4, Interesting
    It sure sounds like a false economy going with S754 now to me too; saving up a little more and getting a S939 mobo and the 3500+ CPU would be much better. S939 is the way AMD is going with its mainstream CPUs, and there is the dual-core "Toledo" chip due late next year according to their roadmap to give a sweet upgrade path that's pretty much guaranteed to work.

    I've just upgraded two of my boxes to the 3500+ and 3800+ S939 chips and couldn't be happier with the results. Both Linux (FC2 x86_64 on the 3500+) and Windows (XP on the 3800+) motor along far faster than I was expecting, and I have that dual core upgrade to fall back on when games require that much grunt. As far as I'm concerned it's "Intel Inside" alright - "Inside the store, covered in dust on the shelf". :)

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  5. Re:Just what I was looking for... by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The last time I assembled a computer, the difference was $0. Granted, this was at a local shop. The chips weren't all that different in cost. This was pricing out the best board and the cheapest chip for each brand CPU.

    The kicker at the time was that the Intel chipset board included sound, a couple Firewire ports and a network jack all onboard. Even the shop's best Athlon boards didn't have all three, so it would have been just as much money to buy the extra cards, and then two of precious open slots would be taken.

    Those slots were important. I didn't assemble the replacement system (a used Xeon), but seriously, it has six PCI slots (four PCI 33/32 and two PCI 66/64) and I have a card in every slot.