Is going DDR 3 necessary for Phenom II 720? I want to upgrade in the f

I've been thinking a lot, and after hearing a lot of good things of phenom II, I think I'm going that route.
It's cheaper (leaving more money for other parts, like GPU or HD), very powerful(better than Q6600 in loads of benchmarks) and more upgradeable.

The thing is that I'm not sure if I should go the AM3 native support and DDR 3 or it's not worth it. In my country, the price difference is 100 U$S, enough to invest in a lot of other things.

Do you know if I will be able to upgrade to future AMD top of the line processors if I go the DDR-2 route?

Is the upgrade limited by chipset, RAM type or both?

Thanks!!

The limitation is which type of RAM slot the motherboard has. The Phenom has its memory controller built into the CPU, so the chip itself works with either DDR2 or DDR3.

Hello all! Thanks so much for the responses, they helped me a lot.
I've been thinking the best might be to buy a good DDR 3 Mobo, with native AM3 support and go the 4770 solo route and add another one in crossfire in the following months, as I have a little more money.
What do you think of his config?

- Asus M4a78t-e

- Phenom II 720 BE

- DDR 3 X 4gb (2x2gb) Ocz Reaper Hpc 1333mhz Ddr3 Dual Kit

- DVD Pioneer or Asus

- HD Western Digital Caviar Black 640 GB

- Thermaltake Soprano Rs101

- Coolermaster Extreme 600W PSU

- VGA SAPPHIRE HD4770

BTW, if I buy another GPU (say another brand of HD4770 or even, a HD4890), can I crossfire them anyway?

Thanks!

I would go with a DDR2/AM2+ board, and spend the extra money on the graphics card.

You can add almost any modern AMD GPU to almost any other in crossfire but the more powerful one will be automatically downgraded to the same spec as the lower one. So if you have a HD4770 then later add a HD4890 to in in crossfire it'll be the same a just having 2*HD4770, so try to stick with matching cards else it's a waste.

Also it is generally recommended to have one powerful GPU rather that 2 less powerful ones if at all possible.

Finally are you planning to use a 32bit or 64bit operating system? If using 64bit you won't have any issues but if you use 32bit it's worth noting that you'll only get around ~3.25GB visible RAM (with one 512MB GPU) or ~2.75GB (with 2*512MB GPUs).

No, it's 4GB minus total video memory (1* or 2* 0.5GB) minus what's used for bios/caches/etc (roughly 0.25GB or so), so:

4 - 0.5 - 0.25 = 3.25GB
or
4 - 2 * 0.5 - 0.25 = 2.75GB

Possibly slightly more or slightly less depending on spec of other components.

If you are looking for a cheap AM3 motherboard, try the new Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P, as long as crossfire isn't what you're after, seriously, buy a mid range card now, if you're running a 1680x1050 Monitor or lower res monitor, get an Radeon HD4770 it'll be enough to get you through until the next generation of Direct X, ie DX11 then update to the next mid range card, or if you can hold out, to the HD6xxx/GT4xx series as it'll be a refinement of the first DX11 hardware, I'm getting a similar setup, Phenom II X3 720, previously mentioned motherboard, 4gb DDR3 1600 and a 4870 1GB (getting a 1920x1080 monitor, so need something a little better than the 4770, the 4770 according the Best GPU's for the Money will do 1920x1080 but barely.) Prices have come down considerably since your post, am just researching my rig found that going DDR 3 is only AUD$50 more than going DDR2 and at least might allow me to drop in a new CPU in the future that can actually use the DDR3 better rather than having to upgrade the whole lot next time the wife lets me spend money on the PC.