x2, x3, x4? Advice needed.

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WintersFury

Gawd
Joined
May 19, 2007
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Hey all,

I'm building a system for a friend of mine and AM3 seems like the best choice in keeping a good upgrade path and having $ for a good video card or heck even saving some $.

It's looking like the best bet for what I'm doing will be one of the BE chips as they are easy to OC so I don't have to play with it for weeks as I OC it. So I'm looking at the Egg for BE chips and we don't seem to have much of a selection.

It looks like the x3 is the best value as you get the extra core for just a bit more than the x2. But I also know that a x4 will give a bit more futureproofing and more power to his digital art stuff. But I also know that AMD will eventually release cheaper x4 BE chips that can be plugged into the MoBo so swapping out the chip later is an option especially with AMD making their chips backwards compatible and all now.


So I'll try and be a bit more to the point at this point...

1) Is it worth going from the x3 BE @ $120 to the x4 BE @ $240?

2) Would I have to play around with a non BE x4 for weeks to get a good OC out of it?

Thanks!
 
If you're buying from newegg there are quite a few combo deals for cpu and motherboard with the x4 955
 
Thanks again Shadow, however the only interesting board is the ASUS up top and that's $40 more than the Gigabyte I was looking at (And just reading the thread in the general MoBo area about ASUS's horrible customer service makes me wary).

So it'd only be saving $45 (Subtracting the $40 from the difference in MoBo cost) which still isn't shabby.

Though they also have a few deals on the x3 as well, but nowhere near as much in the way of savings.


To go a bit off topic since I'm seeing the board you have in your sig in the combo deals for both of them. What do you think of it? I'm not seeing much in the way of reviews on it when I googled for em.
 
I'm actually wondering the same thing, between the 550x2, 720x3, and the 955x4. Which would be the best price/performance with respect to just regular computer usage and some gaming? And how well does each overclock?
 
crazjayz I'd guess the x3 is the best as far as price to performance goes. It's $10 more than the x2 (At least at newegg) and is way cheaper ($120) than the x4 which seems a bit overpriced. And while I could be wrong, I doubt the x4 is much better of an overclocker than the x3.

I'm thinking I'm going to get the x3 for the build I'm doing and get my buddy to upgrade to a x4 at some point once the price on a BE chip drops to a more reasonable level. And hopefully it'll be a newer higher clocking silicon on that point.


I just checked out HWBot to see what their average OCing is, the x3 according to them is 3988MHz however the 710 has an average of 4590. The x4 has an average of 4562Mhz. It might just be me, but those numbers seem rather high for an AMD chip. Do they really OC into that range on a regular basis?? Or are we just looking at people posting the highest numbers they could get with only limited stability?
 
Just two weeks ago the X3 720BE was $150. $120 is a pretty nice price.
 
WintersFury said:
I just checked out HWBot to see what their average OCing is, the x3 according to them is 3988MHz however the 710 has an average of 4590. The x4 has an average of 4562Mhz. It might just be me, but those numbers seem rather high for an AMD chip. Do they really OC into that range on a regular basis?? Or are we just looking at people posting the highest numbers they could get with only limited stability?
Click to expand...

What kind of cooling are you planning on using, those averages seem really high for air cooling. On decent air cooling I would say the average oc for most of the PhenomIIBEs would be 3.6-3.9ghz with a quality mobo.
 
WintersFury said:
I just checked out HWBot to see what their average OCing is, the x3 according to them is 3988MHz however the 710 has an average of 4590. The x4 has an average of 4562Mhz. It might just be me, but those numbers seem rather high for an AMD chip. Do they really OC into that range on a regular basis?? Or are we just looking at people posting the highest numbers they could get with only limited stability?
Click to expand...


Average overclocks for x3 is 3.6-3.7ghz with pretty good cooling. x4 Average is 3.8-3.9ghz again with good air cooling. Some overclock better but over 4ghz its water or dry ice with maybe a bench or two stable for the 4.5ghz ones.
 
The x3 BE had a great combo with the asus 790gx board for roughly $190 shipped fyi. I'd get that.
 
Damn, I kinda figured that the HWBot numbers were from people doing crazy stuff but was hoping that wasn't the case anyways. Guess regular people don't post their OC's there much anymore.

As for cooling, it's going to have a TR Ultra-120, non extreme version that I have sitting around on it. While not top of the line anymore, I'm pretty sure it's still pretty high up there.

But heck, upper 3Ghz range is still pretty darn nice!

Thanks for the tip Christobevii3, but I have a thing against boards with integrated graphics held over from the days when integrated graphics equaled poor performing chipsets with no OC potential. I know that isn't the case anymore but I have to admit I'm still somewhat biased :rolleyes:

And I tend to get Gigabyte or DFI boards, their the only ones I've had 0 problems with. Had some problems with an ASUS board a while back and I've seen a heck of a lot of complaints about their customer service / RMA department to make me really want to use one again. *shrug* It'll wind up costing a bit more but I'm more for feeling that I can trust my system 100% than saving a bit and worrying about it.
 
The GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P looks to be a nice mix. Affordable price with nice oc potential. Seems to be very popular for unlocking 550s&720s.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128392

Here's a really good price on some ddr3 1600.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231193

Should be able to hit 3.6. It seems its up to your voltage and ability to keep it cool enough. I'll have hands on experience with it friday :). Gonna use my freezer64pro currently in use, hoping for atleast 3.6.
 
You can get away without getting a BE if you want. I just have a 945 and got it up to 3.5GHz on Air no changes to voltage at all, took me all of one night, and an all night stability temps. Temps idle around 36C max load 51C for gaming stays around 45C.
I know I could get more out of this chip maybe 3.6+ just haven't got around to pushing it yet.
 
Tbird87 said:
The GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P looks to be a nice mix. Affordable price with nice oc potential. Seems to be very popular for unlocking 550s&720s.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128392

Here's a really good price on some ddr3 1600.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231193

Should be able to hit 3.6. It seems its up to your voltage and ability to keep it cool enough. I'll have hands on experience with it friday :). Gonna use my freezer64pro currently in use, hoping for atleast 3.6.
Click to expand...

with x2 550, I got to 3.7 GHz with Quiet and Cool enable 15.5 x 238 @ 1.325v
 
Tbird87 said:
The GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P looks to be a nice mix. Affordable price with nice oc potential. Seems to be very popular for unlocking 550s&720s.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128392
Click to expand...
I hope you don't mind my asking a few questions of my own OP. I also was wondering what the norm oc for the X3 720 is and what is the norm for the X2 550. Reading the 'egg reviews for the 550, it seems a lot of people have gotten the 550 up to 3.7-3.8 Ghz. I'm looking at that exact mobo paired with either the x2 550, or x3 720 btw. I'm really just wondering if it's worth the extra $20 for the 720 or if I can get just as good performance from the 550.
 
^
That is about right. 3.7~3.8GHz. You can hit 4.0GHz but it would require a bit of high volts (1.5V+). But I can't remember where I read it from but Phenom IIs are ok taking high volts.

If you plan on not unlocking cores then go for the X3 720BE.

If you do plan on unlocking go for the X2 550BE.
 
DTN107 said:
^
That is about right. 3.7~3.8GHz. You can hit 4.0GHz but it would require a bit of high volts (1.5V+). But I can't remember where I read it from but Phenom IIs are ok taking high volts.

If you plan on not unlocking cores then go for the X3 720BE.

If you do plan on unlocking go for the X2 550BE.
Click to expand...
With that Gigabyte board, I'll be able to unlock them, correct? How difficult is that to do? If can I save the $20 for now and upgrade to the X4 at a later time when there's a price drop, that would be great!
 
I hope this isn't too much of a threadjack, I think it's fairly relevent, but how about the x3 720 vs the x4 810??
The x3 is BE and has more cache, higher clock, but the x4 has an extra (guaranteed working) core.
They're around the same price on newegg.
 
ajhodges said:
I hope this isn't too much of a threadjack, I think it's fairly relevent, but how about the x3 720 vs the x4 810??
The x3 is BE and has more cache, higher clock, but the x4 has an extra (guaranteed working) core.
They're around the same price on newegg.
Click to expand...

If the application you are using doesn't support four cores than it won't matter.
 
rage4order said:
With that Gigabyte board, I'll be able to unlock them, correct? How difficult is that to do? If can I save the $20 for now and upgrade to the X4 at a later time when there's a price drop, that would be great!
Click to expand...

That is the exact board I am using right now. Just update the bios to F2c, enable hybrid mode & ACC, and increase the CPU volts to 1.40~1.45V.
 
Tbird87 said:
The GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P looks to be a nice mix. Affordable price with nice oc potential. Seems to be very popular for unlocking 550s&720s.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128392

Here's a really good price on some ddr3 1600.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231193

Should be able to hit 3.6. It seems its up to your voltage and ability to keep it cool enough. I'll have hands on experience with it friday :). Gonna use my freezer64pro currently in use, hoping for atleast 3.6.
Click to expand...

And if you go with that board, Gigabyte is doing some BIOS trickery to allow even the most updated BIOSes to unlock dormant cores. I have the DDR2 version, MA770-UD3, and I just unlocked my X2 550 tonight. It's just finished an hour running Orthos at the default (3.1GHz) speed on all 4 cores at 1.45v (the default is 1.30, so you have to bump the voltage in the BIOS). I'm going to pronounce that good and solid and see how games play. If I need to I'll OC via the multiplier a bit, but a $100 quad with an unlocked multi (on the right mobo) is hot damn fantastic.
 
It isn't about a game or application using the extra cores as much as it is having extra thread handlers to take care of IRQ interupts and background processes. Benchmarks are practically useless other than comparing similar family devices because no one formats their computer each time before they use it.
 
all the reviews and benchmarks i've seen suggest the motherboard effects the voltage you will use with the 720be, check this out -> http://techreport.com/articles.x/16702. i myself was able to hit 3.750 at 1.55V, but i didn't want to raise the voltage anymore. my cpu cores hit 39-41C when at full load. i dropped it down to 3.5 @ 1.45V, i have a crappy mobo though, asus m3a78 770/sb700. i think i could do much better with a 790fx chipset. i've got my nb up to 2500 mhz and it showed a significant increase in my minimum fps for crysis warhead.

 
ya it would be nice if i could keep the voltage down :(, then i would be getting somewhere. i'm using a coolermaster n620, i kinda took a chance on it b/c i hadn't read any reviews, but it seems to work well.
 
^
Yea the ASUS M3 series are not one of Asus better boards. You might take up this chance to grab a new board and sell off the M3 board and unlock that X3 into an X4.
 
Just a little heads up. Here's a pretty good combo deal for the X4 945 and 4 Gb OCZ memory at Newegg- Combo Deal-$200 .
So now, back to the original op's question- these are the numbers from Newegg for a mobo, RAM, gpu, and cpu: X2 550 $300; X3 720 $320; X4 945 $330. Which is the better buy- the 550 which apparently oc's really well without unlocking, or the 945 at stock with 4 cores? Basically, what are the advantages of a higher clock speed w/ dual core over a 3.0 GHz Quad core at stock(which I'm sure can/will be overclocked also)? A $30 difference doesn't seem like a bad deal to get a quad core.
 
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