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What is the best AMD PII

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mother242   10-30-2009 at 11:44:36 AM

What is the best AMD Phenom II. I am looking at the X3 or X4 but am not sure which to use. I don't want to overclock straight away. so something that will run say GTA 4 with good specs no overclock. what should i use?

AMD PII
GA-790GPT-UD3H/GA-790XT-UD4P
6gb RAM
ATI HD4870
C/M Elite 335 600watt

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Daggs   10-30-2009 at 01:34:10 PM

depends on your budget, you can get the x3 720 or the x4 955

Reply to Daggs
Herr_Koos   10-30-2009 at 01:36:08 PM

It depends on budget, I suppose. If you can afford it, the 945 or 955 would be a good bet. The 965 is just an overclocked 955 and definitely not worth the extra cost.

Just be aware that GTA 4 on the PC is notorious for its poor performance. So if that's the game you most look forward to playing, you may be disappointed.

Message quoted 1 times
Reply to Herr_Koos
xaira   10-30-2009 at 04:51:04 PM

i personally believe that the 925 and the 945 95w are the best choices in the pii line, if however heat and power draw is not a concern of yours, the 965 can be had for
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103692

sad isnt it

------------------------------ "Envy is ignorance" - Henry Thoreau : Best quote ever.

http://www.pingtest.net/result/3022953.png
 Reply to xaira
shubham1401   10-30-2009 at 06:36:27 PM

According to me the best is PII 955BE.

Reply to shubham1401
loneninja   10-30-2009 at 07:08:54 PM

I would say the 955 is the best because all you need to do is go into the bios and adjust the cpu multiplier and you have yourself a 965, or you can overclock even further. 965 is pointless to anyone who overclocks.

Reply to loneninja
El_Capitan   10-30-2009 at 07:36:28 PM

No overclock? Why? If you apply Arctic Silver with the STOCK cpu cooler, you can overclock safely to 1.44V, which can get you up to 3.4 GHz with safe temps on the Phenom II x3 720 BE. If all you're doing is playing GTA4, then no need for a quad core (you can always unlock the 4th core with a motherboard that will support it - though stability will be an issue).

Still, if you're not going to overclock, get the Phenom II x4 955 or 965 for speed. It's not too much more expensive, though your max operating temperature will be be 61C compared to the Phenom II x3 720's 73C. You would definitely want some after market cooling.

------------------------------ Win 7 x64 | ASRock M3A780GXH/128M | Phenom II x720 BE 3.7GHz at 1.525V | 45C Idle - 61C Max | 4GB Crucial DDR3 1333 RAM at 1600 w/8-7-7-18 timings | GTS 250 512MB OC'd | $470 Total price of entire system.
 Reply to El_Capitan
wisecracker   10-30-2009 at 07:48:44 PM

I think you just missed the combo deals on that Gigabyte mobo --- I imagine they will come back around. The best buck-bangin' looks to be the Phenom 720BE/Asus 790X Evo AM3 for $201 AR (the 955BE combo is $256 AR - 945 125w combo = $246).

The 'other' combos are within shouting distance of the Phenom 720BE / MSI 790FX-GD70 AM3 790FX combo since the mobo has free shipping.

I think you should drop 2Gb of RAMs and put the $$$ toward your vid card. If you snag the 720BE/Asus 790X combo that equals the cash difference to the HD5850 (when you can snag one).

If your ultimate plan is to Crossfire the HD4870 I think that is great BUT those puppies may well be gone sooner than you think!

Message quoted 1 times
Reply to wisecracker
mrcrybaby   10-30-2009 at 08:30:10 PM

+1 for the 955BE for sure. 955BE and the 790 boards are magical AND cheap :] Also, I would opt for a 4890 vs 4870... i think it's usually a $20ish difference? But the value in the 4890 is better since it can overclock it quite well hehe. Just a thought!

~mrcrybaby

Reply to mrcrybaby
dark_lord69   10-30-2009 at 09:30:43 PM

Phenom II X4 945

Although the Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition can very easily be overclocked by simply making 1 change in the BIOS. You can take this CPU to 3.4 easily with no voltage changes or custom coolers. With the right cooling you can take it to 3.8 Ghz without a voltage change.

If you got into overclocking and wanted to play with voltages and stuff AMD was able to overclock the 955 Black to a whopping 4.2Ghz!

Personally I'm not into overclocking but since I know how easy the Black edition CPUs are to overclock I plan on getting the 955 Black Edition and taking it to 3.8Ghz.

Reply to dark_lord69
xaira   10-31-2009 at 03:04:06 AM

amd cherry picks chips for its tests, if they reached 4.2, id minus 2-300mhz

------------------------------ "Envy is ignorance" - Henry Thoreau : Best quote ever.

http://www.pingtest.net/result/3022953.png
 Reply to xaira
Upendra09   10-31-2009 at 11:36:48 PM

the 945 BE

all others are OCed versions of this guy

Message quoted 1 times
Reply to Upendra09
Terry1212   10-31-2009 at 11:42:16 PM

Upendra09 wrote :

the 945 BE

all others are OCed versions of this guy



I didn't know they made a 945 BE. Could you give me a link to it please? :D

Reply to Terry1212
xaira   11-01-2009 at 12:32:22 AM

could he mean the 940BE which itself is a modified chip so the ddr3 controller doesnt work

------------------------------ "Envy is ignorance" - Henry Thoreau : Best quote ever.

http://www.pingtest.net/result/3022953.png
 Reply to xaira
jennyh   11-01-2009 at 12:35:16 AM

The 940 BE doesn't have DDR3 support. the 945 BE never existed, thought the 945 is a good chip.

The clear winner is the 955 BE however, at least at current prices.

------------------------------ AMD to make $1.5bn profit Q4, *gauranteed*
 Reply to jennyh
mother242   11-01-2009 at 07:27:42 AM

Herr_Koos wrote :

Just be aware that GTA 4 on the PC is notorious for its poor performance. So if that's the game you most look forward to playing, you may be disappointed.




yeah i know that gta 4 has bad performance. i tryed playin it on my old Dell D630 and it ran it at about 2fps so anything will be better than that hey

Reply to mother242
mother242   11-01-2009 at 07:30:40 AM

i am not quite sure how much more the X4 9xx CPU's are but i had thought of the X4 810 CPU as a posibility. what do you think? if not the 810 then probably one of the X3 CPU's should be ok.

Reply to mother242
mother242   11-01-2009 at 07:36:57 AM

wisecracker wrote :

I think you should drop 2Gb of RAMs and put the $$$ toward your vid card. If you snag the 720BE/Asus 790X combo that equals the cash difference to the HD5850 (when you can snag one).



Now i have to disagree with you there 4gb seems to be the recomended for this game, i have started an other thread on this http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] dr3-gaming and here szymek thought that 4 was to little! he reconded 6gb for gta 4.

Message quoted 1 times
Reply to mother242
wisecracker   11-01-2009 at 02:19:56 PM

mother242 wrote :

Now i have to disagree with you there 4gb seems to be the recomended for this game, i have started an other thread on this http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] dr3-gaming and here szymek thought that 4 was to little! he reconded 6gb for gta 4.



I prefer a fact-based recommendation.

The minimum system requirements for GTA are 1.5Gb of RAMS --- the recommended is 2.5Gb of RAMs. 4Gb will be fine --- as will the Phenom 720BE.

We all know what *pinions are like on the internets so you can take that for what it is worth. When someone suggests more than twice the recommended requirements without backing it up with a link or any benchmarks I would have a hard time taking that recommendation seriously.

Since you haven't offered a budget, a gaming resolution or even an OS under consideration it is really hard for us to help you --- give us some better parameters (including any components you might re-use from another system) and the folks here will find it much easier to help ...





Reply to wisecracker
mother242   11-03-2009 at 10:51:26 AM

my budget is around $700 Australian (everything is much more expensive in australia :fou: ) as for the os probably looking at one of the vista's or windows 7 running x64 bit.

Reply to mother242
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