[Anarchy101]

I have an Athlon 64 3200+ venice cpu at the moment and was thinking of picking up an Athlon 64 FX 55 because the price just recently plummeted.

My question is, would the FX 55 be a huge improvement over the 3200+ A64? The FX 55 only costs $130 now so it seems like it would be a pretty good investment.

I'm only interested in gaming performance. And I know that most games (that are out now) don't even use dual-core cpu's and actually run better on a faster single-core...and the ones that do use dual-core or have dual-core patches don't even take full advantage.

I'm not too worried about 2-3 years down the road, i'm basically worried about the performance of the games i'm playing now.

So will the FX 55 be much of an improvement over the 3200+ ? Also, is it compatible with newer video cards?

 

[OldGrayGary]

Hi Anarchy101

Tom's Hardware has an applet that can generate a comparison chart between your current processor and the FX 55 that you are considering. Comes in handy for this sort of decision.

My initial guess would be that you won't see $130 worth of difference, if you'd be able to tell any real-world difference at all - but then I'm an old fogey, and not a gamer! I also tend to think that the video cards have a greater gaming impact than the system's main cpu. So have a look - it sounds like your current system is pretty darned powerful = I think you'll be happy either way --- http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html

... and here's an overall chart, where you can see all sorts of processors stacked against each other --- http://xtreview.com/review112.htm

Best of luck & Happy Holidays
. . . Gary

[oops, almost missed your last compatibility question = It's the motherboard compatibility that matters for the cpus and video cards. So if parts are OK with the motherboard, they should get along]