4 core OC'd PII x3 720BE vs 965BE

[alcatraz]

I know it may seem I'm being cheap to the point of stupid here, but hear me out. I have a desktop I built for gaming about 4 years ago. It has an unlocked PII x3 OC'd to 3.2ghz, 4gig ram, gigabyte 770 mb (I think) and a HIS 4870 card. I'm going to set it up as a surfing/browser gamer for my kids ages 7 & 9. I was thinking about getting a 965BE now that they're sub $100 just to have the extra OC headroom in case I end up using it should my gaming rig go down for any reason. The question, will I see $100 worth of performance gain from the swap or should I just stick with what's there?

 

[cyder]

So with what you're asking is if you will see a difference from an overclocked Pentium 11 against an AMD 965 Black edition. I would stick a leg out here and say :

YES !

Just remember though, the majority of games though are really dependant on GPU/ MoBo capabilities and PSU so there are fun days ahead of you!

Wait till you get to the 8 core FX-8350.....You're gonna want to find more kids !

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

Dude, the 720 is a black edition.

Three to four cores isn't worth that kind of coin, put in something like the 212 evo cooler if you aren't using an aftermarket one, and just get more overclocking.

By unlocked I hope you're referring to the multiplier and not the 4th core, otherwise you're asking us to compare two basically identical quad-core parts. It moves from not being worth it to being an entirely pointless venture.

 

[alcatraz]

Sorry for the ambiguity, it's a Phenom II X3 720BE. Yes, my PII X3 is OC'd and the 4th core is unlocked. However, I'm unable to get a stable OC above 3.2g with reasonable voltage. It's been a while since I"ve even messed with the unit, but I do remember cooling wasn't the problem, approaching max safe voltage was. My cousin built a similar rig with the 965BE and was getting much better performance in all types of games at stock clock speeds.

 

[cyder]

Ambiguity solved!

And yes..the 965 BE is a beast. I saw a few of those at LAN parties in college and they handled all kinds of processing (videos processing and gaming )like a champ. I have yet to see hangups due to that processor.

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

I would suspect the motherboard and ram(and obviously gpu) doing that more than the cpu. They are still the same, same architecture, everything. The like 200 megahertz is seriously not worth it. If phenom II's are the max that mobo can take then you're done.

 

[alcatraz]

That's what I figured, but with such a good price on the 965BE I wanted to be certain. Thanks for all the replies.