I have a system I built about two years ago. It has an MSI K8T Neo2-FIR mainboard, Athlon64 3000+ Winchester CPU, two sticks of 512MB Corsair PC3200 memory, Windows XP. I use this system primarily for audio and graphics editing. With Cubase and some plug-ins running the CPU utilization sometimes peaks and I have noise in the audio because of this. So I have to upgrade my system. I'm thinking about upgrading the CPU and memory for now, and in about 6 months I will build a new system. What Athlon CPU should I upgrade to that has the most value and performance for the money? According to MSI's website these are the CPU's this mainboard supports:

MSI K8T-Neo2 CPU Support List

I would like an FX series processor but those are out of my price range. I want something for under $200. Is there a big difference between the single core and dual core CPU's?

Also if I add two more identical sticks of Corsair PC3200 memory will the mainboard still run the memory in DDR mode or will it switch to single channel?

Thanks in advance for the replies!

You may want to try a X2 cpu like the 4600+, currently they offer much bang for the buck.
Btw does Cubase support dualcore systems?

About the memory, it depends. You may want to read the motherboard manual, some boards clock down to DDR333 if all the slots are filled.

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AMD Athlon X2 4600+ @ 2.8Ghz
DFI Lanparty NF4 Ultra-D
2x 1GB G.Skill PC4000
XFX GeForce 7900GT
Antec TrueBlue 480w PSU
Thermaltake Xaser III case

quote:

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Originally posted by: MadMarky
You may want to try a X2 cpu like the 4600+, currently they offer much bang for the buck.
Btw does Cubase support dualcore systems?

About the memory, it depends. You may want to read the motherboard manual, some boards clock down to DDR333 if all the slots are filled.

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I bought an Opteron 165 on newegg for $160 and hopefully I can overclock it to about 2.4Ghz. I also have a Big Typhoon heatsink.