Upgrading CPU and probably Mobo, should I go haswell?

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Kosmonaut

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Jun 21, 2013
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I'm upgrading my cpu to get with the times, my current cpu is an Athlon II x4 640, which is most likely bottle-necking my 7950 big time. Assuming no AM3 cpu would be sufficient(?) I will presumably have to upgrade my motherboard as well. The question is, is it worth upgrading to a haswell socket so that I will have an upgrade path in the future, or should I just get ivy bridge mobo with i5 3570k, despite it being a dead socket? I'm on a somewhat limited budget so would like to get the best value for money.
 
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Eximo
Well for $90 and adding a decent after market heatsink ($40) you should be able to push the Phenom II 965 to something like 4Ghz or more. Core for core intel is still faster, but you can get like %80 the performance for about a third the price of an intel setup. (Since you already have the board)

I checked a few US suppliers and couldn't find any new Thubans, except a 2.6Ghz on tigerdirect. Probably get one on Ebay though if you wanted. Though the extra cores wouldn't really help in most games.
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Eximo

Eximo

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Well that leaves open the Phenom II 965 unlocked edition which is readily available.

And if you can find one out there the Phenom II x6 Thuban series. All you need is a bios update to run those 125W chips.

But Ivy bridge is certainly an option, but you would be looking at $300 just for chip and board.
 
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Kosmonaut

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Would a Phenom II 965 or Thuban not bottleneck my gpu (Gigabyte Windforce AMD Radeon 7950)? How would that cpu + my graphics card perform on a game like Planetside 2?
 
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Kosmonaut

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I'm also worried about power consumption, I've heard phenom uses a very high amount that could show up in electricity bills, and I'm unsure how long that cpu will last.
 
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Eximo

Eximo

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May 27, 2010
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Well for $90 and adding a decent after market heatsink ($40) you should be able to push the Phenom II 965 to something like 4Ghz or more. Core for core intel is still faster, but you can get like %80 the performance for about a third the price of an intel setup. (Since you already have the board)

I checked a few US suppliers and couldn't find any new Thubans, except a 2.6Ghz on tigerdirect. Probably get one on Ebay though if you wanted. Though the extra cores wouldn't really help in most games.
 
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Kosmonaut

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Jun 21, 2013
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I'm actually from the UK, I can get a Phenom II X4 965 Black for around £70, an AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition on ebay for £114, an ASRock Z77 pro3 + 3570k will set me back £244, and a Z87 Pro3 + 4670K will cost me £278.15.
 
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