P4 3GHz -> Athlon X2 4200 worth my money?

[Kobaia]

I currently have a P4 2.4c@3GHz and a very satisfying AGP 6800GS.

I'm thinking of getting an Asrock 939 board that has both AGP and PCI-E. I read in anandtech that the ULI chipset has good performance on both (not fantastic but good).

I'd also go for a sk939 X2 chip.

That way I could keep my 6800 and my 1.5Gb of ram.

Do you think I would notice an improvement that would justify the money?

and should I go to a 4200 or is the 3800 X2 enough?

Thanks

[Pitch]

The difference between the 3800 and 4200 can be made up with some minor overclocking really.

[Kobaia]

So, assuming I'd go with an X2 3800, I'd be spending around €230 on the chip and the mobo. Do you think I would see a big improvement from my P4?

[Pitch]

Depends how you define "big" I guess.

But you will see an Improvment, with the ability to upgrade to PCI-E without too much fuss at a later date.

[Azriel]

hmmm you are running intel now.. scrape up 20 bucks and upgrade to a K6-III 450. It'll be smoking ass fast for you. (Intel hater's club president)

[Andrei80]

Much better gaming, multitasking, encoding...pretty much everything. Go for it, you will feel the difference. However A64 works best with only 2 sticks of DDR. 4 in a little worse and 3 is quite bad, as you lose the dual-channel speed boost(double memory speed with A64, really)

[Kobaia]

I have 4 sticks of ram, 2x512 on channel A and 2x256 on channel B.

[SteveI]

you only lose command 1T filling all banks... It only matters if you are benchmarking, AFAIK.

Overall, it should be a noticable improvement in most tasks, especially games.

Goodluck.

[Seperah]

I'm gonna say a couple things real quick.

I recently ordered an Asrock Dual SATA for a friend. First off, the board doesnt support 3.3v AGP GPU's...next, it was DOA, which obviously didnt make me happy. However alot of newegg reviews (although I really never pay much attention to them) state that there's more than a few DOA boards recieved. So I"m just giving you fair warning.