How will upgrading to a 64-bit CPU improve my PC's performance?

[dan_esf_fanatic]

Well, I got some money for my birthday, so I thought I'd buy myself a new CPU, since almost all the new games I buy lag. I don't think it's in my RAM, I have 512 MB of RAM, and I think that isn't too little for games. I'm currently using AMD Athlon 2200+ 32-bit, so how much will game performance improve if I were to get a AMD Athlon 3000+ 64-bit CPU?

 

[Pemalite]

At lower resolutions you should notice quite a bit, And note that the 64bit goodness can only be tapped to its full potential with 64 bit Operating system, Drivers etc.
And if your just doing a processor upgrade, and keeping that motherboard, your also out of luck, The Athlon 2200+ was a socket A platform, which went right up to the Athlon XP 3200+ and then the Athlon 64 took over on socket 754 and 939.
And if you have anything less than say a Radeon 9800/Geforce 6600 Then you need to upgrade that as well, And 1gb is about the standard these days with memory.

And it also depends on the games you wish to run

 

[Smith]

You're not going to see any performance difference just because of the 64bit capabilities, not until you're using an OS capable of handling 64bit operations and programs designed with 64bit in mind. What Pemalite said semi-correct: "And note that the 64bit goodness can only be tapped to its full potential with 64 bit Operating system, Drivers etc." Change "tapped to its full potential" to "used at all".

 

[Barney's_Soul]

Well, I got some money for my birthday, so I thought I'd buy myself a new CPU, since almost all the new games I buy lag. I don't think it's in my RAM, I have 512 MB of RAM, and I think that isn't too little for games. I'm currently using AMD Athlon 2200+ 32-bit, so how much will game performance improve if I were to get a AMD Athlon 3000+ 64-bit CPU?

It won't improve your performance at all unless you are running games designed for 64 bit. Don't worry about 64 bit, the new craze is on multi-core CPUS, so try getting a AM2 (as I belive AMD moterboards support all the CPUS since AMD hasen't upgraded the core architecture since the relase of Athlon XP)

Also state your other specs, as even that 2200 should be alright for games, maybe its your grfx card thats bottlenecking.....?

 

[Pemalite]

Well the Athlon 2200+ is about the equivalent to a single core Pentium 4 2.2ghz I think some benchmarks showed it slightly slower.
The Athlon XP used socket A, If you grab a cheap socket 939 Motherboard, you can pick up a cheap dual core Athlon 64 X2.
Even if you did get a 64 bit processor, operating system etc. I think you will find that the drivers are pretty immature.
But the Athlon 64 still has allot more power than what you currently have.
And 64 bit processors can be used in games that support the processors, As in optimized, I downloaded some ATI/AMD tech demo's which required a 64 bit processor (There were 32 bit versions). And the frame rate increased. So an operating system and drivers can be 32 bit, But if a program designed for a 64bit processor wants to do so, It can use all the 64bit integers and 64bit floating point numbers. There is more to 64bit than just being able to use more than 4gb of ram. Another case in point, remember the FarCry 64bit patch, Another aftermarker patch allowed it to be used on 32bit OSes, It was a patch so you could use the 64bit processors more extensively, But note you wont get all the performance benefits if you don't use 64bit drivers, and OS.
It allmost reminds me of graphics acceleration before Direct X came around, where game developers designed they're games directly for the cards back then.

 

[dan_esf_fanatic]

It won't improve your performance at all unless you are running games designed for 64 bit. Don't worry about 64 bit, the new craze is on multi-core CPUS, so try getting a AM2 (as I belive AMD moterboards support all the CPUS since AMD hasen't upgraded the core architecture since the relase of Athlon XP)

Also state your other specs, as even that 2200 should be alright for games, maybe its your grfx card thats bottlenecking.....?

Specs:
AMD Athlon 2200+
512 MB of RAM
ATI RADEON 9200 Series 128 MB GFX Card

Any more you need?

 

[Pemalite]

For a decent performance increase, I would probably keep the motherboard, and grab an Athlon XP 2800-3200+ Barton processor, Another 512mb of ram, and a Radeon 9800Pro or a Geforce 7300 (Non turbo cache). Most of that can be picked up rather cheaply now-a-days!

 

[Ravendust]

Unless you have (and plan on using) 4gb+ of RAM, there's no current advantage to 64-bit. Drivers are much harder to find and program/backwards compatibility is a nightmare.

If you are going to get a 64-bit processor, use a 32-bit OS (like standard XP) on it. That way you can upgrade to a 64-bit OS in the distant future with your current hardware. Unless you upgrade again before then ;o

 

[dan_esf_fanatic]

Meh, I've decided to use my money to buy a new monitor. So I guess I'm not getting that 64-bit. Not that I would get it anyway after hearing about the compatibility problems and special drivers needed and other ****. So, no. xD

 

[Barney's_Soul]

Specs:
AMD Athlon 2200+
512 MB of RAM
ATI RADEON 9200 Series 128 MB GFX Card

Any more you need?

With those specs a new CPU won't benifit you. Go get a 7300GT or a 7600GT, both will run fine under that CPU, are cheap, and will run a lot better, more then a 64bit upgrade ever would.

 

[Barney's_Soul]

Meh, I've decided to use my money to buy a new monitor. So I guess I'm not getting that 64-bit. Not that I would get it anyway after hearing about the compatibility problems and special drivers needed and other ****. So, no. xD

Cool, but I hope you didn't choose LCD.....your current graphics card might struggle in games under the Native Resolution.