Customer Reviews

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ Processor Socket 939

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I just built a computer using this processor and the following specs:

AMD Athlon X2 4600+
eVGA GeForce 7800GT 256mb video card
DFI LanParty SLI-DR mainboard
Corsair XMS DDR 184-pin 2x1gb dimms
Western Digital Caviar 320gb SATAII hdd

The setup can max out fps for Quake 4 / Doom 3, FEAR, and I run WoW on highest settings without a problem. I keep Outlook, IE, Photoshop and Dreamweaver open while gaming with no detrimental framerate effect. iTunes is also usually open as well, and sometimes MSTSC and a chat program.

I couldn't be happier. Building it myself I spent about $1,800 for a system that would cost about $7,000 from Alienware or about $5,000 from Dell (keep in mind, Dell doesn't currently offer this processor or this RAM, but a similarly configured FX -- single core -- processor configured this way costs about $5g).

My only gripe is with the included heatsink. The fan is noisy and it isn't entirely made of copper. You may want to try Thermaltake's heatsink... my favorite is the one without the overhang. Also, to ensure cooling you will want to grab Arctic Silver thermal grease.

I found myself in the dubious situation of having to look for a replacement for an older PC that bit the dust. It was an HP a1230n which was a nice enough machine and did everything that I needed, but alas, the motherboard croaked. After looking and deciding I could spend 600-800 and up for a replacement, I decided to venture into the world of computer repair. After some power supply, RAM and processor swapping I determined the motherboard was bad. Browsed through the net and found a perfect factory replacement through an Amazon Marketplace affiliate. I ordered the board and received it promptly, installed it and now I have life. I then decided to go one step further and upgrade the processor. I again found a dual core on Amazon and now the PC has a 4400+ instead of the orginal 3800+. However, the 3800+ is going to give a new breath of life to another machine that currently has a 3300+. It took some searching to make sense of the AMD Socket 939 Athlon 64 X2 family, but this is a quick synopsis:

4200+.....2.2G with 512K L2 Cache (the larger the L2 cache the faster the response)
4400+.....2.2G with 1M L2 Cache (much better)
4600+.....2.4G with 512K L2 Cache
4800+.....2.4G with 1M L2 Cache.......(the best available for an ASUS A8AE-LE board.

I determined that this board can support anything from the 3300 to 3800 up to the 4800 and in my case, due to the costs for these rare as henteeth socket 939 dual core processors I opted for the 4400+. The 1M L2 cache makes the processor work much faster than the actual 4600+ with a slightly higher speed, but less cache.

Finally, running CPUBenchmark shows that the resultant system is almost as fast as the current dual core processors available, yet with the ease of keeping my existing configuration, hard drive, currently installed programs such as Norton and numerous others that would have been a real nuisance to reacquire copies and licenses............now, I have an almost new computer for a fraction of the cost and none of the hassle. (The total cost for the cpu and motherboard was roughly 2 bills.) Thanks to Amazon and their affiliates. Hope this helps others who are debating the merits or upgrading.

I bought this to upgrade my existing computer. I did the research to find out if my motherboard would take a faster processor and this came up as the second from the fastest CPU for my system so I bought it. It showed an inprovement but not enough to justify the change for me. It is still working and I have had no problems with it. It is hard to find these older CPU's now and the prices are just going up. You should probably just buy a new computer instead!