need help upgrading from an Athlon64 3200+ socket 939 cpu

[DanW]

Hi All. I have a couple year old e-machines T6212 computer. Specs are: WinXp Pro, 3 gigs ram, PCIe X16 NVidia GeForce 8600 GT w/1 gig DDR2 memory video card, currently with an Athlon64 3200+ cpu running stock at 2 mhz. I have flash updated the BIOS, so it can take a dual core cpu now. Question is: which cpu should I put into the MSI MS-7093 socket 939 motherboard to get the max speed from the system? Starcraft 2 is coming out soon, and I want to be able to play it at a decent speed on this machine. Tigerdirect.com has an Athlon64 3800+ single core cpu for $50, or an Opteron X2 180 cpu for $170. Both are socket 939's and both run at 2.4 gigahertz. Which would be better? Would the X2 180 be worth the extra money? As regarding Starcraft 2, there aren't specs out from Blizzard yet, but the best guess is that it'll require at least a 2 gigahertz cpu with 1 meg ram, 128 meg video card and Win XP. At least that's what I've been able to find out about SC2. If someone knows of a different cpu that would work faster on this system, that would be great also. Help is greatly appreciated!!! thanks a ton in advance.

[Cobracon]

Have you tried Live Chat @ eMachines for information about a faster CPU which your motherboard will support?? I'd go with the dual core CPU if eMachines says the Opteron is supported.

http://www.emachines.com/support/product_support.html?cat=Desktops&subcat=T%20Series&model=T6212

Another consideration is the memory interface of your video card. It probably has a 128-bit memory interface which severely bottlenecks game peformance regardless of the amount of GPU RAM, which to my knowledge is either 256MB or 512MB (GDDR2 - another bottleneck) with an 8500GT. I noticed a download listed on the eMachines site which allows improved performance with nVidia GPU's.

On a brighter note, the makers of Starcraft 2 (and their other games) design them for systems that don't have the latest high-end hardware, to play at decent levels. I found this list of requirements:

Minimum Requirements:
GFX: GeForce 7/8 Series or Radeon 1000/2000 with 256 MB RAM
CPU: Pentium 4
RAM: 1 GB
Internet: ADSL 1 Mbit

Recommended Requirements:
GFX: GeForce 8000 or Radeon 2000 series with 512 MB RAM
CPU: Core 2 Duo or Athlon X2.
RAM: 2 GB
Internet: ADSL 3 Mbit

Optimal Requirements:
GFX: Geforce 9000 or Radeon 3000 Series
CPU: Core 2 Duo 3 GHz or Athlon X2
RAM: 2GB with Dual Channel mode

[Dan W]

I haven't tried that Live Chat you mention Cobracon, but I'll give it a try. I'm trying to squeeze another year or two out of this system, so it looks like the X2 chip would be the way to go. Thanks for the help, I greatly appreciate it!!!