Upgrade from Phenom 550 to 1090t?

[natos17]

Hey everyone,

I'm just having a moment of indecision about upgrading my processor.
I've got a Phenom x2 550 at the moment (which I can't unlock btw) and I'm looking at moving up to a x6 1090t.
Would this be worthwhile?
I've got a GTX550Ti and 4gb DDR3 ram, and I mainly use my comp for games (Crysis 2, Deus Ex, etc) but also general music, videos, web etc.
I'm mainly upgrading now to get ready for Skyrim
Oh and I can't really afford a new motherboard to switch to Intel and mine's an AM3 so it would be a hassle moving to the new bulldozers too.

Any help would be much, much, much appreciated!

 

[rolli59]

It is not a bad upgrade but a faster X4 would be better for gaming.

 

[sinfulpotato]

Can you unlock the extra cores? Also, building a new rig is a waste of money. You'll be spending way to much for a new mobo+CPU to make it worth it, you'll notice hardly any gains.

The only thing you'd gain is high benchmarks for the epeen.

 

[natos17]

Yeah a quad core phenom like the 980 was another option actually.
But wouldn't the turbo boost on the 1090t pump it up to 3.6ghz and make it just as good when using 3 or less cores anyway? Seems like the best of both worlds? I could be wrong on that though.

Oh and thanks for the answers

 

[rolli59]

The turbo would be just for a little bit at a time as load increases it will slow down.

 

[holdingholder]

Jut buy the 955 and overclock it, most phenoms hit the wall at around 4 ghz anyway, so it's not really worth it to buy the 980. However there is this - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103995
which can possibly be unlocked to a six core and would be a great deal at any rate.

 

[DodSno]

If you're considering the 1090t or 960t, be aware that the turbo core feature is, near as makes no difference, useless. I'm speaking from experience with my own 1090t. Although it will turbo to the advertised frequency it will only do so for a very short period of time (have a look at anandtech's coverage of the Bulldozer release). A mild overclock would more than out-do any benefit gained from turbo.

If you're focus is primarily gaming then I agree with the above, the 955 would be the best choice because, assuming you're overclocking it, it will likely hit higher frequencies than a 1090t with much less power draw and heat. The 1090t overclocked and overvolted is a challenge to cool, (one of the benefits of a Canadian winter )

 

[natos17]

Oh right, that's good to know. I didn't realize the boost was only temporary.
I hardly know anything about OCing at the moment, but I'm getting keen to do some simple stuff.
Maybe I will go for the 955 and try to overclock it. Would that produce much benefit over my current 550 though?
Oh and I'm in New Zealand, so unfortunately can't go for the newegg deals or anything like that...

 

[rolli59]

The only benefit you will see is when more than 2 cores get used, more and more games are coming out that will do that. You will not see any improvements in single threaded apps.

 

[Ahelpinghand]

I personally ended up getting the 1090T after research, because it's future-proof (Quads are standard now, six cores will be implented in later years). It overclocks great even on air. (Though I reccomend after market cooling)
http://www.pureoverclock.com/review.php?id=966&page=5

It also allows great multitasking even while in-game. Also, they both run at the same speed, so gaming performance will be almost the exact same.

 

[Ahelpinghand]

Forgot link for benchmarks
http://www.guru3d.com/article/phenom-ii-x6-1055t-1090t-review/1
performance is so similar that it's not worth defining

 

[Ahelpinghand]

As AMD has suggested Windows 8 (which is in it's beta) will fully implement the power of BD, which says the same for the 1090T, Intel has no plans to implement reasonably priced six cores, nor is AMD reinforcing six cores either. It's going to be coming soon that once new software kicks into gear all six cores will be implemented, I plan to keep the 1090T for years, because inevitably it will last longer than any quad core you can buy now. Might as well pay an extra... 30 for 1055t, or 50 for 1090t to implement 2 more cores

 

[rolli59]

As AMD has suggested Windows 8 (which is in it's beta) will fully implement the power of BD, which says the same for the 1090T, Intel has no plans to implement reasonably priced six cores, nor is AMD reinforcing six cores either. It's going to be coming soon that once new software kicks into gear all six cores will be implemented, I plan to keep the 1090T for years, because inevitably it will last longer than any quad core you can buy now. Might as well pay an extra... 30 for 1055t, or 50 for 1090t to implement 2 more cores

The win 8 improvement for the FX will not do anything for the Phenom X6 since they do not have the shared resource issue that the FX CPU's have because of different architecture.

 

[natos17]

I'm leaning towards the 980 now (i don't really need to save money from the 955). I've been looking at benchmarks which show it being considerably better at gaming than the 1090t, but worse at pretty much everything else. So I had two questions,

1. How would the quad-core 980 handle having itunes, chrome, and a game open at the same time?

2. It sounds pretty easy to overclock the 1090t. If I overclocked it to 3.5 - 3.7 GHZ, would it match the 980 for gaming?


Still loving the help guys, cheers!

 

[Ahelpinghand]

Huh my bad xD, but I still hold to the fact that it is more future proof, and you also keep looking at the past supposing the same thing will happen over and over. Also, same thing...1090t would match 980 if it was same clock speed for gaming.

 

[natos17]

Best answer selected by Natos17.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey