Athlon ii x3 450 upgrade or not?

[huizcomedy]

Hi all. I was wondering if upgrading my athlon ii x3 would be worth it at this point. I'm thinking either phenom ii x4 965 or fx 6200. It will be for gaming and I play wow, diablo 3 and black ops. Wow seems to suffer the most since mop patch came out, and this game is my concern.

I noticed that since the new wow patch 5.0 that fps has suffered quite a bit in more intensive settings like heavy bg's. And I noticed through task manager that all 3 cores are being used idling at 40% and maxing out at close to 80%, whereas before 5.0 I was getting 30-60% respectively using only 2 cores. I don't see much a difference in d3 and black ops.

Phenom ii is 109$ us with 20$ promo till the tenth and 6200 is 139$ all on newegg. Would it be worth to upgrade to either? Or should I wait a couple years for new mobo/cpu upgrade? Would like some fast input and as much as possible.

asrock 970 extreme 3
gigabyte hd 6850 (oc'd to 990 core and 1150 mem)
athlon ii x3 (oc'd from 3.2 to 3.6)
antec earthwatts 430w
ddr3 1300 g.skills @1.5 (memory lowered during overclock)

 

[simon12]

Its really up to you if you think you can live with it for a bit then why not but the 965 if you overclock to 4GHz which should be no problem (if you have or buy a 212 evo or similar) is a good upgrade for the price.
Have you tried to unlock the 4th core on your Athlon? My brother did on his and got L3 cache as well making it a Phenom Quad for free.

 

[huizcomedy]

Its really up to you if you think you can live with it for a bit then why not but the 965 if you overclock to 4GHz which should be no problem (if you have or buy a 212 evo or similar) is a good upgrade for the price.
Have you tried to unlock the 4th core on your Athlon? My brother did on his and got L3 cache as well making it a Phenom Quad for free.

I have a hyper 212+ currently on the athlon. I have tried to unlock and it will not boot into windows though bios will read it as phenom ii quad processor.

 

[saint7269]

I went from a Athlon II x4 630 to a Phenom II 960T. It was a nice jump up for me. So getting a Phenom II 965 and over clocking is a good buy. Or you can wait a little bit for Piledriver.

450 vs 965
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/189?vs=102

 

[quilciri]

the x3's aren't worth unlocking for games. You'll get better game performance by overclocking the processor than by unlocking the last core. Despite being a multiplier-locked CPU, you can get some nice overclocks with these chips on just FSB frequency. With the 4th core disabled, you'll get higher overclocks than with all four cores running (better thermals). My 455 is stable @ 4.0 ghz with 3 cores.

grab a decent aftermarket cooler if you don't already have one (coolermaster hyper 212 plus is the cheapest standby @ ~$30), the mugen I use is a step up from that, but the CM is good.

Since you have an AM3+ board, I'd advise waiting a bit. The first piledriver chip (fx 4130) shipped last week. I'm waiting to see how the reviews (particularly the overclockability). If they turn out good I'm going for that. If they don't live up to expectations, I'm ditching the platform entirely and going with intel >.<.

good luck!

 

[huizcomedy]

the x3's aren't worth unlocking for games. You'll get better game performance by overclocking the processor than by unlocking the last core. Despite being a multiplier-locked CPU, you can get some nice overclocks with these chips on just FSB frequency. With the 4th core disabled, you'll get higher overclocks than with all four cores running (better thermals). My 455 is stable @ 4.0 ghz with 3 cores.

grab a decent aftermarket cooler if you don't already have one (coolermaster hyper 212 plus is the cheapest standby @ ~$30), the mugen I use is a step up from that, but the CM is good.

Since you have an AM3+ board, I'd advise waiting a bit. The first piledriver chip (fx 4130) shipped last week. I'm waiting to see how the reviews (particularly the overclockability). If they turn out good I'm going for that. If they don't live up to expectations, I'm ditching the platform entirely and going with intel >.<.

good luck!

wow, you really lucked out. My 450 hits the ceiling at 3.6ish, i can get it to 3.68 but prime reports errors and after 2-6 hours i get a crash. I know this is off topic but what are your nb/cpu volts and frequencies? I have the 212+ already. Intel is def worth the money if you want to spend it but buying a new mobo/cpu combo vs upgrading cpu for alot less and getting decent performance is what I am trying to weigh and balance.

 

[huizcomedy]

I went from a Athlon II x4 630 to a Phenom II 960T. It was a nice jump up for me. So getting a Phenom II 965 and over clocking is a good buy. Or you can wait a little bit for Piledriver.

450 vs 965
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/189?vs=102

Thanks for reply. Too bad they don't sell phenom ii x 6 anymore or at least I cannot find any. Yes, it will be interesting to see how piledriver will do and too bad bulldozer doesn't offer much more gaming performance than am3 cpu's.

 

[obsama1]

FX 4130 isn't PD. Just a lower binned 4170.

 

[popatim]

3.6? even my 1055t hits 3.8 on all 6 cores. try stepping the HT bus down a little.

 

[huizcomedy]

3.6? even my 1055t hits 3.8 on all 6 cores. try stepping the HT bus down a little.

I kept ht link and nb at stock 2000 to establish the 3.6 ceiling. then i raised them as far as they would go after that. It will boot all the way 'til ~3.9 with memory, ht and nb at stock, but it will not run p95 for more than a couple hours. FSB is 250 and ht and nb are @ 2500mhz and that is as high as they go before crashes. I think I have this athlon oc'd as much as possible. Might just be a low end chip.

 

[huizcomedy]

I just ordered the 965 and plan to have the athlon as backup. I hope I get a good chip that oc's like a beast!! So thanks all for replies.

 

[huizcomedy]

Best answer selected by huizcomedy.

 

[Mousemonkey]

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