Upgrading my CPU...

[Ulyaoth]

Hey, right now I have this

Athlon 2400
Radeon X850pro
768mb RAM

and I want to upgrade the cpu to an A64. I was thinking of
this
Would that be good enough to run everything nicely for a while? I'd like to get decent settings with decent framerate for once. Also, I need a new mobo obviously, but have no idea about mobos. Also, would a 350w psu work for this?

Or how about this one? It's not much more for me to come up with, would it be that much better?

[Vanquisher]

I'd go for the first choice because, a) Thats just me, b)Its got a big cache, c)Very good value.

I should think a 350watt PSU should handle it fine.

I've got a amd310064 754 skt and that runs eveything fine with relativly no lag when coupled with a radeon 9550 256mb and 1gb of memory. So, with your card, there should be no problems with the first CPU, if you can afford it though, you might as well go with one closer to the second, but with 1mb cache.

PS. does that HT stand for hyper-transport/threading or whatever?

PPS. Arrch, just realised that second ones dual core so if you really want power go for that one

[sunsmountain]

Does your motherboard support socket 939?

I would get the second, more expensive one, because dual cores enhance your user experience by actually being able to do multiple things at the same time. If only Windows were a little more efficient.

Do know though that Intel's Conroe processors are top-dog right now, even for games (gasp!). Plus they overclock better. But the San Diego you're mentioning (the first one) has a good reputation for overclocking as well.

It boils down to how much you want to spend:

$100 Athlon, overclocks well
$200 Athlon X2 or Intel Core Duo, Intel overclocks and performs better while using less power
$300 Intel Core Duo with more L2 cache, 4 times as much as the Athlon X2.

Of course, Intel Core Duo's are little difficult to come by these days.... supply & demand...

[Ulyaoth]

I'm getting a new mobo, too. I asked on another forum and everyone just told me to get intels, but I never really liked them(bad experience with them, although it was years ago(. With the mobo the most I'd want to spend would be around $300. And the intel's out already?