Want to upgrade my AMD CPU

[voodoo_papa]

its not much, its an AMD 64 X2 4600+ windsor. My motherboard is a MSI K9N-Neo-F V3 and only supports Hypertransport 1.0 and 2.0, not 3.0.

It can take a Phenom processor, but without Hypertransport 3 how much will it be gimped?

This PC is specifically for gaming and right now I dont want to fork out the cash for a serious upgrade, just something to get me by for the next year or so.

Im looking at two options:
Phenom 9650+
Athlon 64 X2 6400+

the money I'll save by going with the X2 is minimal compared to the Phenom 9650. I just want to know what makes the most sense for my motherboard and if the Phenom would a be a waste of money (performance difference negated by hypertransport)

Im not too familiar with how the quad cores work with games, but judging by frequency alone it seems the X2 may have some advantage in just games being a ghz faster than the Phenom.

thoughts?

 

[EXT64]

Well, I think this is more of a quad vs. duals decision. How does your computer run? Is it fairly clean (processes wise)? Do you run stuff in the background? Is this only a gaming computer? In MOST games the 6400+ will beat the Phenom. Very few games are optimized for >2 cores.

 

[voodoo_papa]

ya its fairly clean aside from antivirus and my input device loaders (g5, g15, n52)

after doing some research I think im gonna stick with the 6400+.

 

[rethdog]

games.... forget you CPU upgrade, buy the best video card you can

 

[asdasd123123]

I upgraded from 2,5ghz opteron dual core, 2gb 500mhz ram, into 3ghz amd black ed, 2gb 667mhz ram.
Difference in performance in games is tremendous.. Don't underestimate the cpu upgrade

 

[spuddyt]

if your favourite game is supreme commander go phenom, everything else, go 6400

 

[englandr753]

What kind of a video card do you have? That would be the question to ask to weigh out the best upgrade approach.


The CPU will make a difference but if your video is lacking you will be bottlenecked with the card even if you upgrade your CPU.

Give us that info and we can take a second pop shot at a good answer...

 

[invisik]

yup your graphic card comes usually first for gaming perspective.

 

[yipsl]

Im looking at two options:
Phenom 9650+
Athlon 64 X2 6400+

the money I'll save by going with the X2 is minimal compared to the Phenom 9650. I just want to know what makes the most sense for my motherboard and if the Phenom would a be a waste of money (performance difference negated by hypertransport)

Im not too familiar with how the quad cores work with games, but judging by frequency alone it seems the X2 may have some advantage in just games being a ghz faster than the Phenom.

thoughts?

The quad core has longer shelf life because more games are arriving that support 2+ cores. Supreme Commander and Lost Planet seem to do well with quads. I don't think that you'll do badly with a Phenom on an AM2 board. If you decide on a new board, you can't go wrong with a 780G; and that should position you for Deneb in December or thereabouts.

 

[epsilon84]

Hmm, with the increased overclocking headroom from B3, I'll be leaning towards the Phenom 9650 at this point. You should be able to overclock it to around 2.7 - 2.8GHz, at which point it would be a good match for an X2 6400+ even in single/dual threaded performance, and it'll totally blow the X2 away in multithreaded performance.

I wouldn't worry about lack of HT3 support, a single Phenom doesn't even come close to saturating the HT2 bus. HT3 is only useful for multi CPU server setups, for desktops HT2 is more than enough.