939 or 754 pin CPU. 13

On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 19:14:24 +0000, Donald McTrevor

CPU upgrades in the same socket are rarely worth it. To get a noticeable speed increase you want to at double a systems performance, preferably you it should be 3 or 4 times faster. Usually those kinds of increases require a new socket to accommodate the increased memory bandwidth and power requirements of next generation CPU. We have an exception to this rule at the moment, the dual core Athlon 64s fit the same 939 pin socket as the single core Athlon 64s so it's possible to double the performance (for some workload types) with a CPU upgrade. I think that this is a unique moment in history that won't be repeated.

As a general rule of thumb the only thing that you should plan on upgrading over the life of a system is the RAM and the disks. Buy a system that you think will meet your needs for a reasonable amount of time and then plan to replace the entire thing when the time comes.

In your case absolutely anything that you buy will be screaming fast compared to the antique that you have now. The socket 754 Athlon 64s are a great choice if you are looking for the best price-performance. I'd recommend a 3400+ with 1M of cache if that's the way you want to go. I think they offer two versions of the 3400+, a faster clocked version with 1-2M and a slower clocked version with 1M. Cache size is much more important than clock speed so make sure that you get the 1M version.

If you want to buy a system with the longest lifetime then get an Athlon 64 X2 4400+ system. The 4400+ is a dual core processor, each with 1M of cache. Essentially it's two 3400+s on a chip (same clock speed, same amount of cache per processor, same memory bandwidth per processor). Dual processor systems feel snappier then single processor systems even though single threaded applications won't run any faster. Even if you don't have any multi-threaded applications an operating system has a lot of things going on simultaneously so you'll some benefit from the second core immediately. As more and more applications are optimized for multiple processors you a greater benefit. Expect to pay about $450 more for a 4400+ system vs a 3400+.