upgrading my computer

The main difference is pipelines, which affect graphic display a lot... and the differnce between 128 bit processing and 256bit processingg. No, graphic cards can't be dual channel, at least to my understanding.
 
Well, you'd have to buy a new mobo and a cpu... so quite a lot... lol. Totally different stuff. You could use the same hd and ram, I'm sure, but the mobo and cpu'll have to be amd. The performance would be incredible... you'd notice... ohhhhhhh yeah.
 
How about instead of upgrading, you just build a new gaming system? If you plan on buying a new CPU, memory, and motherboard, I'd say go all out and get the computer built.
 
That's what I'm thinking, although I'd rather keep the hard drive, video card, sound card, and case for now. I can't afford to buy it all right now.

How many PCI slots and PCI express things would I need on a motherboard?
 
PCI express or PCIe is the next generation bus to succeed the older PCI slots. It is faster than PCI and most newer motherboards have PCIe depend if their chipsets support it. Most PCIe comes with a single PCIex16 for your video card, a PCIex1 slot, and like 3 regular PCI slots.
 
Is it worth paying a bunch of money for the AMD 3700+ just for the 1mb L2 cache, or would I get similar performance out of a cheaper one with 512kb?

I don't know how important L2 cache is, but IIRC it helps information go between the processor and the RAM so it's probably important. I'd rather improve on the 512k that I already have but the 3700+ is the cheapest AMD that is any higher.

Also, newegg only sells the 3700 with 1GHz fsb, but I found one on another site with 2GHz FSB. Would it be worth the extra $50 to double the FSB, and what does the FSB effect?

Does the FSB on the mobo need to match the CPU? I don't think I've ever seen a mobo with more than 1000MHz fsb.
 
Well, unless you go sli you only need one pci ex. Or one agp, rather... pci slots are usually three spaces. I think I've seen four... so yeah. Three or four.
 
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