Worthy upgrade?

[dalta centauri]

Hello, I've been running an Athlon IIx3 OC@3.6GHz for some time now, I used to have it at 4 cores, but problems have arisen after restarting the mobo. So I have a tricore Athlon II that's been overclocked relatively nice, but I think it might be time to upgrade.

So, what is a decent upgrade? I was thinking about the Phenom 965, along with extra ram(2x4gb) to match my 4gb(2x2gb) G.Skill RAM. Is the Phenom going to be noticably faster then the Athlon II, and does it have decent overclocking potential? Because I would like to get a heat sink for it as well, but I can't find too many on Newegg that fits an AM3 board(I assume AM2 works on AM3 boards as well.)

Current Build---------

Rosewill Wind Knight w/5 Fans(1x120mm/4x140mm)
Rosewill 500w psu(I may upgrade this later on, because it seems to have short cables)
Sapphire 5770 1gb (885/1200 Normally|950/1300 Gaming)
G.Skill 4gb DDR3 RAM
500gb Black Caviar/200gbx2/120gb SSD OCZ/160gb External
Athlon IIx3 OC@ 3.6GHz (Stock Heat sink)
ASUS 22" 1680x1050 2ms

 

[kovaxo]

i would say Six cores CPU will be great investment like Phenom II X6 1090T or 1050 T for long term pc , but you must insure your mobo support Six core
other wise stick with Phenom II 965 and oh yea its worthy

 

[enzo matrix]

The 965 would be a good upgrade but I recommend the 955 if you plan to be overclocking. save a bit of money.
If you do want to do "all out" kindof, you could get a phenom IIx6 1055t and overclock it to 3.6-4.0GHz.

 

[thechief73]

Hi dalta centauri,

I have a few links here for you to check out the benchmarks between a few different CPU's you may be interested in getting. I figured this could help you put the performance they will provide into perspective.

Without knowing what AMD Athlon II X3 you have I chose the 440 to use in the comparison.

AMD Athlon II X3 440 vs. AMD Phenom II X4 955

AMD Athlon II X3 440 vs. AMD Phenom II X6 1055T

You can compair any other AMD CPU's you want or Intel as long as they are on the list at the top of the charts.

 

[enzo matrix]

i say keep it and run it as is..
don't get me wrong, I love upgrades too and if you can get upgrades for cheap... hell ya.!
your unit is still kick-ass and the newer technology is coming out at the beginning of the year.
AMD/Bulldozer and Intel/SandyBridge
unless you a heavy gamer who doesn't want to come out of his room or running some heavy threaded server type unit,
then you would already have a system like that.
the Bulldozer and SandyBridge are to be a considerable upgrade, more than jumping from Athlon ii x3 to phenom ii x4 (that's a good upgrade too...)

This is very true.

 

[dalta centauri]

MSI 870-G45
Cheap ass mobo that is capable of 6 core processors, but I wasn't very interested in the 6 core cpu's that are out right now. I use Maya and Revit for my Architecture classes, along with Cinema 4D for some edits/effects/and modeling.
Not so much of gaming besides Settlers 7, Starcraft II, Battlefield Bad Company 2, and I've recently become interested in the SIMS 3 game, although I play it maybe 2 hours a whole week. Newest games I would like to play would be Portal 2, Batman Arkham Asylum 2, Diablo 3, Tropico, Crysis 2, Duke Nukem Forever, Brink, and Dead space 2...

So I should wait, but I probably will end up buying the extra bit of ram, go from 4gb to 12 for around 150$.

 

[dalta centauri]

Best answer selected by dalta centauri.