Phenom 2 and 690g?

I'm curious of how much of a bottleneck running a Phenom 2 in my Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H would be? It's a socket AM2 motherboard but Gigabyte seems to be pretty decent with processor support and the latest bios that I'm running supports the Phenom 2.

It would be nice to be able to just upgrade the processor and add memory for now and then upgrade the video card. I'm hoping that the slower bus speed would be too bad but I'll see what you guys have to say.

Link to motherboard
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2579

I don't know too much about the technical know-how, but I think it'll be a good upgrade regardless of that slower bus speed. Anyone want to correct me? XD

Phenom II or Athlon II? How much are you planning on spending for this upgrade? Depending on that I might recommend an Athlon II instead. Either way it will be a massive improvement over a X2 4000+. The biggest differences versus a AM2+/AM3 motherboard will be in the overclocking ability, Overdrive support, general motherboard features, etc.

dont forget it also has a slower hypertransport clock as well dedembryonicce11.. but overall it will have little effect on the performance.. but if your going phenom II ya might as well upgrade the motherboard.. but i agree with ded.. you may want to look into the athlon II's..

My 690V board worked fine with a Phenom I. There was only a small performance difference when I switched to a 790FX board. I think it's most important if you run more than one video card or maybe one of the latest high-end cards.

The athtlon 2 might be perfect. I'll have to take a look at them.

You need an AMD 790FX/GX nb-SB750 sb to really bring out a Phenom 2. AMD recommends you run phenom2's with these chipsets, its part of its "dragon" phenom2 platform. Other chipsets can work, but performance will be lacking with them.

I highly highly suggest spending the 100-120 dollars on a 790gx/sb750 mobo for your ph2, they are fast and downright rock stable (AMDs best chipsets to date imo, so glad that via crap we used to have to settle for is long dead), you will not be disappointed. I say sb750 for southbridge, because it is the most modern sb amd has to date, great sata/ahci/raid controllers and all the bells and whistles of an intel chipset, minus the largely unneeded dual gigabit lan connections some of the most expensive i7 boards come with.

So yeah, my rec is to get a 790gx/sb750 board, they are quite affordable, fast, and come with onboard dx10 graphics which make a fine backup solution if your main card dies, I mean you will have a dx10 vista/7 desktop while waiting on your rma, very cool.

GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P is a decent MoBo if you only need one PCIe and are gonna use DDR3 for 80.00, not a bad deal at all. 770/710 chipsets and can unlock.

i run my Phenom II in a GA-MA790XT-UD4P and its nice. 790/750 chipsets with crossfire for around 120. there is another variant of this board for around 110, i think its the GA-MA790X (No "T") thats just Gigabyte too...other flavors if you have a preference. of course there are options for DDR2 as well if you already have the RAM and want to keep the costs down.

Malakai said:

You need an AMD 790FX/GX nb-SB750 sb to really bring out a Phenom 2. AMD recommends you run phenom2's with these chipsets, its part of its "dragon" phenom2 platform. Other chipsets can work, but performance will be lacking with them.

I highly highly suggest spending the 100-120 dollars on a 790gx/sb750 mobo for your ph2, they are fast and downright rock stable (AMDs best chipsets to date imo, so glad that via crap we used to have to settle for is long dead), you will not be disappointed. I say sb750 for southbridge, because it is the most modern sb amd has to date, great sata/ahci/raid controllers and all the bells and whistles of an intel chipset, minus the largely unneeded dual gigabit lan connections some of the most expensive i7 boards come with.

So yeah, my rec is to get a 790gx/sb750 board, they are quite affordable, fast, and come with onboard dx10 graphics which make a fine backup solution if your main card dies, I mean you will have a dx10 vista/7 desktop while waiting on your rma, very cool.

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the chipsets and southbridges dont really make that much of a difference in phenom II performance.. i can match any phenom II clock for clock with my 780g motherboard that isnt even rated to run a phenom II 940 let alone overclocked.. the SB750 southbridge only effects data transfer performance between hard drives.. and really only has a drastic performance difference when using RAID 0, 1, or 5.. the 790GX and FX only effects graphic performance between the CPU and gfx cards and unless you are running crossfire you wont see a difference between the same cpu and same graphics card on a 770, 780g, 790gx, or 790FX..

the dragon platform is a marketing thing and doesnt mean that they must be paired together to get the best performance..

the primary thing that effects the performance of a phenom II is the hypertransport clock.. am2 has a max HT of 1ghz(2ghz) while am2+ has a max HT of 2.6ghz(5.2ghz) and am3 has a max of 3.2ghz(6.4ghz)(while AMD doesnt currently use that in a stock platform that is the highest its rated for)..
though most can argue that there is actually very little real world performance loss between 1ghz HT and 2.6ghz HT.. but what you cant argue is the performance effect it has when running crossfire and it definitely has an effect..

I agree with the Athlon II recommendation. Anandtech.com/bench shows the performance of the x4's very similar clock for clock with the phenom 1, although you will use much less power and get the high clocking ability of the 45nm process. For under 100 it just makes a lot of sense for your situation, even if you bought one of the cheap 770 boards you would be doubling your expense for little gain.

SB750 has ACC which SB600 lacks. However this only really matters when over-clocking Phenom I's (or when trying to unlock X2/3's...) AHCI support still isn't perfect with any AMD chipset, but the SB750 is better than the SB600.

While it's always nice to buy a brand new mobo with all the latest technologies, the backwards compatibility is what makes the latest AMD processors so attractive. If you're going to get a new mobo anyway, you might as well go with Intel since most of the cost savings from staying with AMD comes from the ability to do a drop-in upgrade.

In pure performance benchmarks there might be a couple percentage points of difference between 790 series boards and older boards. I wouldn't expect the difference to be huge and unless you really want the newer SB750/SB710 features like ACC, there's really no reason to get a new board. I would look into Athlon II however since that would be a more appropriate pairing for your existing equipment.

I had that board paired with a AMD4600+ and I was NOT impressed with the performance at all. So, I upped the cpu to a 6400+ and while there was an increase in benchmarks, the performance difference in Windows was only marginal. It wasn't until I swapped out the board to an Asus M3A78-T ( 790GX ) that I noticed an appreciable all around difference. Even though I've had several Phenoms, I never tried one on the GA-MA69GM-S2H because of my experience with the 4600+ and 6400+.

There are better platforms for AM2+/AM3.

What a coincidence! My dad's PC has this motherboard, and I've been wanting to upgrade the CPU. The possibility of supporting Phenom II leads me to wonder, can it support the Athlon II X4 620?

It will probably handle the dual and triple core chip well (provided it is supported by the bios). I would be weary of the quad cores, due to the high wattage requirement they have.