Anyone with an AMD (pref. skt AM2+) processor? A few questions...

[randombs]

Hi all,

I managed to pick up a little Acer X3200 tower very cheap which is, and I quote, "Lovely stuff". It's got an AMD 9100e (1.8GHz quad core, 65W) at the moment and I'm thinking about upgrading the processor. I don't need four cores so would be interested in dropping the number of cores in exchange for raw speed.

Right now, it uses the onboard Geforce to handle BR/HD-DVD playback, and XBMC does DXVA2 so pretty much anything I play in that is also perfect (not bothered about 1080p rips of anything and whether it can handle them or not, even though it can but at around 50% CPU).

It's very quiet (quieter than my 360S) as it has two laptop hard drives inside instead of a desktop one and the CPU fan rarely needs to kick into gear.

I'm interested in playing about with emulators such as SSF, which I tried on my old Core Duo 1.83GHz laptop and it played at more-or-less full speed even then.

I'm not too clued-up with AMD processors (last one I had was a K6-2/300!) so I'm not sure what they're like for things like differences in heat and power draw between processor models, and I'm going to find out what processor speeds the motherboard can support.

I suppose the sort of question I'm asking is would a 1.8GHz quad core have similar heat output and energy requirements to, say, a 2.2GHz dual core?

Also, what do I need to pay attention to in terms of processor compatibility? I know with Intel CPUs for a particular socket type, I'd keep an eye on FSB and multiplier limits but I'm not sure how AMD stuff works.

I'm trying to find the service manual for it to see if that's any help.

If it matters, I believe the motherboard model is an Acer DA078L (also says 'Boxer' on it) and the Acer part code is 48.3V001.011.

Thanks for any replies!

[randombs]

After much Googling, I downloaded the X1200/X3200 service manual.

Seems it at least supports these:

AMD Athlon LE-1600/1620/1640 processor
AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core BE-2300/2350/2400 or 4200+/4400+/4800+/5000+/5200+/5600+ processor
AMD Phenom X3 Triple-Core 8400/8450/8600/8650 processor
AMD Phenom X4 Quad-Core 9100e/9150e/9500/9550/9600/9650 processor
AMD Sempron LE-1250/1300 or 2100 processor

Gonna have to figure out which is the best to get from those...

[abigsmurf]

Not entirely sure any of the CPUs there are worth the cost of the upgrade to be honest. The vanilla AM2 CPUs peak at 2.3ghz. It's a shame the motherboard isn't AM2+ as that would give you access to much faster CPUs.

Are you actually struggling at all for anything on it? 50% CPU on HD video isn't too bad, especially if you install something like coreavc which will lower CPU usage further.

Otherwise try overcloking. Should be able to get a 15-20% boost (CPU is an especially low power one)

[randombs]

It is AM2+, just not AM3. As for grunt, according to the the Wiki, the X2 5600+ is 2.9GHz (AM2) at 65W and the X3 8650 and X4 9650 are both 2.3GHz at 95W (AM2+).

I'll probably have to guess what the maximum capabilities of the board are as the above list could just be what was available at the time the board was manufactured.

In all fairness, if all I was going to do would be watching videos then I'd have no obvious reason to upgrade the CPU at all. I'm thinking in terms of software stuff that just uses the CPU being slower than I'm used to. Being a PC, I'm bound to start using it for all sorts of fun things I can't do on my Mac.

I'll give the Saturn emu a go tomorrow and see what it's like. It might be fine, for all I know, which may well make this thread redundant!

I don't think I can overclock it because it doesn't have any options I can see for fiddling the CPU settings - it's a custom Acer Phoenix bios and the motherboard is an adapted ECS model and I'm finding warnings against trying to flash it with the ECS bios.

It seems TDP is a good way of telling what sort of heatsink/fan I'd need, so I imagine if I stay with 65W chips I can keep the fan I have and I'll also have a good idea of the expected noise level.

The PSU is 220W and I doubt think the two laptop hard drives' combined power usage is anywhere near that of the single 3.5" drive they replaced. The BR/HD-DVD drive probably doesn't use that much either, nor does the motherboard, so I bet I could get away with a 95W CPU but I'm not sure I'd want to do that because of the heat increase.

[ETC]

i have the 9650 in mine and tbh the difference is negligible - same board

[randombs]

Difference in speed or noise/heat?

[ETC]

didnt seem to be but its stock didnt bother with overclock as i have no need seems ok its in the exact same micro case

[randombs]

Thanks. I'll probably relax for now and see how things pan out.