Are you really 100% sure about that? I mean did the devs ever confirm that replays work like this?
Because IMHO that wouldn't work - at least for MPRs. Since an internet connection is not always 100% stable you can never be sure to receive all the input data from all clients. So if you only use the input data to re-play the race it would go OOS everytime somebody lags or a packet loss occurs or something. And if you ever looked from the cockpit view in an MPR you will have seen that the steering wheel doesn't move smooth like in SPRs but in steps. And if this represents the input data used to re-create the path everybody was driving it would go OOS at once since you don't have all the input you would need for the "real" way that was driven.
So if my assumption (and remember, it's nothing more than that) is right it seems logical to me, that a replay can only be replayed correctly if you use the location- and direction-data of the whole car to re-create the driving path and the input-data to simulate the appropriate steering wheel movement and such. In this case, even when a lag occurs the replayed car can be placed correctly again after the lag which wouldn't be possible with only the input data since the game cannot know what the driver was doing during the lag. And I saw lagging cars not going OOS in replays. And another consequence would be that as long as the 3D-data of the track and the car doesn't change, the replays would still work.
Just my thoughts - tell me if you know that I'm wrong.
Hehehe...
I also know some people who never had any problems with one of the worst reviewed mainboards I remember. I'm speaking about the Elitegroup K7S5A (and also its derivates). But these people bought this mainboard as part of a complete PC in which the manufacturer only used parts that are known to work with it.
Cheapie mainboards are always a bit of a gamble if you buy them seperately. IMHO at least...
I also know some people who never had any problems with one of the worst reviewed mainboards I remember. I'm speaking about the Elitegroup K7S5A (and also its derivates). But these people bought this mainboard as part of a complete PC in which the manufacturer only used parts that are known to work with it.
Cheapie mainboards are always a bit of a gamble if you buy them seperately. IMHO at least...
As I said: maybe you won't have any problems.
Unfortunately I can't read the article since I always get an error message when trying to open it. I even looked on anandtech for the article and found it but the error remains - so there is no problem with the link you provided.
But to be more specific: with performance I didn't only mean the performance of the CPU. Since the Athlon 64 has its own memory-controller on-chip there are no big diferences in performance on this side on all socket 939 mainboards. But there are also other components to be considered. I mean for example ATA/SATA controllers, USB controllers and NICs and such stuff. Or how good the connection to the PCI slots is or how good the onboard sound is. In these terms you find very big differences between various mainboards. But such things are usually not tested in anandtech reviews. Also the compatibility to different hardware like various gfx-cards or RAM-modules of different manufacturers is usually not tested or at least not mentioned. But the c't (a german IT-mag which has a very high reputation over here) does these kinds of tests. And in their tests the ULi-chipset Asrock boards usually fail a lot of the mentioned points.
So maybe you're lucky, but don't blame me if you're not...
If you want to estimate the performance gain of your old to your new processor you should take into account what exactly the numbers apply to.
First of all the numbers of the Semprons apply to a similar powerful Intel Celeron, while the Athlons apply to the Pentium 4s.
Furthermore the Athlon 64 CPUs apply to newer versions of Intel CPUs which are more powerful. So an Athlon 64 3200+ is already slightly faster than an Athlon XP 3200+.
Taking all of this into consideration you should have a pretty good performance-gain by upgrading from a socket A Sempron 2800+ to a socket 939 Athlon 3200+.
About the Asrock mainboards...
They are not very good in general. Asrock is the cheapie-brand of Asus and so they are mostly low quality. If you are lucky you won't have any problems with it, but the probability of incompatibilities or other problems with different hardware is way bigger than with a good Asus board. And you are talking about a mainboard with AGP and PCIe and AFAIK these boards have an ULI-chipset. These chipsets are widely known to be crap in terms of performance, stability and compatibility.
An Asus mainboard with an nForce chipset or at least a chipset of VIA or SiS may be a bit more expensive but it pays off in the end. The mainboard is one of the parts in a computer you should always buy with good quality. The mainboard is the part that connects all the different hardware and peripherals of a computer and regulates their communication with each other. A bad layot or cheap parts there can make the whole computer a pure pain in the a**.
And about dual core:
Dual core is the future - no doubt about that. But if you are on a low budget it might still be a bit too early for them. But that depends on what software you want to run on them. Most software still doesn't make any use of the second core. I must admit that I don't know about LFS exactly, but I highly doubt, that it can use the second core. But I can't give you any good suggestions in this part as I don't know what software apart from LFS you are running or are willing to run in the future. And I also can't foresee how quickly the software industry will adapt dual core in the near future. I just wanted to give you a hint on the advantages of dual core and the use of it for your personal needs.
I hope I could help you to make a good decision.
First of all the numbers of the Semprons apply to a similar powerful Intel Celeron, while the Athlons apply to the Pentium 4s.
Furthermore the Athlon 64 CPUs apply to newer versions of Intel CPUs which are more powerful. So an Athlon 64 3200+ is already slightly faster than an Athlon XP 3200+.
Taking all of this into consideration you should have a pretty good performance-gain by upgrading from a socket A Sempron 2800+ to a socket 939 Athlon 3200+.
About the Asrock mainboards...
They are not very good in general. Asrock is the cheapie-brand of Asus and so they are mostly low quality. If you are lucky you won't have any problems with it, but the probability of incompatibilities or other problems with different hardware is way bigger than with a good Asus board. And you are talking about a mainboard with AGP and PCIe and AFAIK these boards have an ULI-chipset. These chipsets are widely known to be crap in terms of performance, stability and compatibility.
An Asus mainboard with an nForce chipset or at least a chipset of VIA or SiS may be a bit more expensive but it pays off in the end. The mainboard is one of the parts in a computer you should always buy with good quality. The mainboard is the part that connects all the different hardware and peripherals of a computer and regulates their communication with each other. A bad layot or cheap parts there can make the whole computer a pure pain in the a**.
And about dual core:
Dual core is the future - no doubt about that. But if you are on a low budget it might still be a bit too early for them. But that depends on what software you want to run on them. Most software still doesn't make any use of the second core. I must admit that I don't know about LFS exactly, but I highly doubt, that it can use the second core. But I can't give you any good suggestions in this part as I don't know what software apart from LFS you are running or are willing to run in the future. And I also can't foresee how quickly the software industry will adapt dual core in the near future. I just wanted to give you a hint on the advantages of dual core and the use of it for your personal needs.
I hope I could help you to make a good decision.
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