AMD x2 7850 vs. AMD x4 9850

[perryjm]

is it worth going from a x2 7850 to a x4 9850. I have a strict budget

 

[saint19]

Hi and welcome to Tom's forum.

What's your budget? You win two more cores with the X4 9850 but lose 300MHz on frequency. The rest are the same, both have similar specs.

 

[buzznut]

is it worth going from a x2 7850 to a x4 9850. I have a strict budget

It would help to know your primary usage but for mutlitasking I'd say I would rather have the 9850. If you were overlcocking, I think the 7850 would clock higher, but myself I would use the extra cores.

 

[RazberyBandit]

What motherboard do you have? I ask because there's a chance the motherboard actually supports Phenom II or Athlon II processors, which opens up a greater selection of upgrade possibilities. Plenty of AM2 and AM2+ socket boards support AM3 CPUs with a proper BIOS update.

 

[geekapproved]

is it worth going from a x2 7850 to a x4 9850. I have a strict budget

Worth it for what? My crystal ball is not functioning at the moment and I cannot read your thoughts about what you plan to use the computer for.

Your best bet would be a Athlon II or Phenom II, not Phenom I garbage. You need to find what cpu's your mobo supports.

 

[perryjm]

Sorry for the limited info. Here are the specs. This is a gaming rig.

Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe
AMD 7850 BE
2x275 GTX running SLI
4GBs of RAM

As for the supported CPUs for this motherboard the Phenom is highest I could move up to. There are beta BIOS updates, but if I'm going to spend the money I dont want to worry about running an unsupported BIOS. I dont have the money to move to an AM3 board so I might just wait to see if the Phenom II become available. Let me know what you guys think. I tried finding reviews that compared the two side by side with benchmarks but couldn't find anything.

 

[RazberyBandit]

The release date on the 5002 beta BIOS is 5/6/2010, so there's gotta be information available somewhere regarding how well it works...

Just checked the ASUS support forums and it seems even the Phenom II 970 works on that board. Here's a post about it: http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20110621015655003&board_id=1&model=M2N32-SLI+Deluxe&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

A link to Overclock.net within the above post shows other users with 940's and 965's installed and working. Some are even OC'd to 3.8GHz, but such overclocks required voltage levels of 1.5V and above.

As best I can tell, BIOS 5002 enables use of all Phenom II and Athlon II CPUs in your motherboard.

 

[perryjm]

thanks everyone for your input and getting me on the right track. I found the following review that pretty much helps me decide that the Phenom II is the right choice.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-phenom-x4-945-and-955be-processor-review-test/11

Also I found that the x4 945 is one of the top price/preformance CPUs

 

[buzznut]

thanks everyone for your input and getting me on the right track. I found the following review that pretty much helps me decide that the Phenom II is the right choice.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-phenom-x4-945-and-955be-processor-review-test/11

Also I found that the x4 945 is one of the top price/preformance CPUs

Actually the X4 955 is a great deal under $115. I would get that.

 

[geekapproved]

Your going to see a huge increase in performance because your graphics cards are severely bottlenecked by your current cpu.

 

[perryjm]

Best answer selected by perryjm.