Athlon II X4 and Phenom II X4 still good enough

OFaceSIG said:
As I stated earlier, 4GB is just fine for 1080p. Every reviewer on the planet has called the 480/580 4gb just fine for 1080p. But I guess expert reviewers, who do this day in and day out, don't quite know what they're talking about. You know, like pairing a 1080 Ti with a quad core Ivy bridge.
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Its ok to like shit hardware if that's your thing. Difference between you and me is I'll admit my Ivy Bridge is shit, especially by todays standards.

The 1080Ti exists solely because I was able sell my 980Ti for a premium during the mining craze.
 
I am actually upgrading the inlaw's computer in a couple of weeks, they have an AM3 socketed mobo with an Athlon II X2 250 with 4GB of 1066Mhz RAM and and IGP on the mobo.

The upgrade?

A Phenom II X4 645 and 8GB of 1333Mhz Ram and and R7 250, total outlay $65.

They will think they've been transported to the 22nd century and my nephews will be able to play old games with decent fps to pass the time when they visit Grama and Pap.
 
TBH, I'd try and buy one of those dual core later model Phenom II's for cheap. They should almost always unlock to quad core.

Or you can try your luck with a Thuban-4C to 6C unlock.
 
I wouldn't bet too heavily on the unlocking of cores. In my experience (Phenom IIX3 and Phenom IIX4) it will unlock and -mostly- work but end up with intermittent issues like random freezing and memory corruption.
 
ochadd said:
I bought several outlet Athlon II and Phenom II machines around 2009-2010 for family and friends. I'm impressed how well they've hung in there. Windows 7 was brand new and the whole computer was < $450. All received Samsung SSD upgrades and some memory during the free Windows 10 upgrade period in 2015.

All of them were Dell Inspiron 570s and initially failed to take a direct Windows 10 upgrade. An error I can't remember then it would roll back to Windows 7. Finally 1809 allowed the upgrade to work so I got my hands on all of them and for the update. These machines are still decent internet and office home solutions. I get a kick out of seeing all four cores maxed the entire time during hands on maintenance. Day to day the owners are happy with them.

It makes me wonder what the slowest CPUs are today that still run Windows 10 quickly enough to be a good basic home computer? I know this is [H] but I love seeing old hardware running well.
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I think it's [H] to see old hw still chewing through modern content so I'm fully with you on this. I've got a 2gb ram core duo laptop running Linux and it's honestly fine.
 
grim4593 said:
I wouldn't bet too heavily on the unlocking of cores. In my experience (Phenom IIX3 and Phenom IIX4) it will unlock and -mostly- work but end up with intermittent issues like random freezing and memory corruption.
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Just get a later manufactured chip. For instance, the Phenom X2 B59, is pretty much a sure shot at 4 cores.
 
dexvx said:
TBH, I'd try and buy one of those dual core later model Phenom II's for cheap. They should almost always unlock to quad core.

Or you can try your luck with a Thuban-4C to 6C unlock.
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The Phenom II X4 645 looks to go for within a dollar or two of the dual cores on ebay, and there is a seller who is trying to sell a stack of Phenom X2 B59s that wouldn't unlock... I'll stick with the factory quad core.
 
OhSigmaChi said:
The Phenom II X4 645 looks to go for within a dollar or two of the dual cores on ebay, and there is a seller who is trying to sell a stack of Phenom X2 B59s that wouldn't unlock... I'll stick with the factory quad core.
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Guess the price fluctuates on these things. I bought a B59 for $10 landed.
 
Fascinating to see the longevity of the topic.

I know some have posted what a POS such older chips are, but that's really a judgement call based on expectations. For example, 1080p video on a 3.2 Ghz Athlon 2 quad core consumes maybe 30% of one core with a really modest GPU (I mean, something under $40 - maybe even an IGP). That was one of the "lines" drawn in observations above.

Now, 1080p on something this side of an Ivy Bridge might not drain even 10%, but then that demonstrates just how modest that work really is. It might depend on the player/code/file format, too.
 
JVene said:
Fascinating to see the longevity of the topic.

I know some have posted what a POS such older chips are, but that's really a judgement call based on expectations. For example, 1080p video on a 3.2 Ghz Athlon 2 quad core consumes maybe 30% of one core with a really modest GPU (I mean, something under $40 - maybe even an IGP). That was one of the "lines" drawn in observations above.

Now, 1080p on something this side of an Ivy Bridge might not drain even 10%, but then that demonstrates just how modest that work really is. It might depend on the player/code/file format, too.
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I take full blame for keeping this alive. I don't know what it is about these old AMD processors, but I just always circle back around to them. If you need to scrape by on a shoe string budget, they're tough to beat nowadays.
 
I had another one of these machines come in recently. 3.1 ghz Phenom II quad core, 4 GB of ram, HDD, and Windows 7. Person thought it probably needed to be scrapped. I added 4 GB of RAM, 128 GB boot SSD, and a Windows 10 key. $49 in total all purchased on [H]. They are plenty happy with it now. Quickbooks, pictures, web surfing, kids homework, kids playing some kind of small learning games. They did get free labor since it was a home machine and I do their business's IT support.
 
ochadd said:
I had another one of these machines come in recently. 3.1 ghz Phenom II quad core, 4 GB of ram, HDD, and Windows 7. Person thought it probably needed to be scrapped. I added 4 GB of RAM, 128 GB boot SSD, and a Windows 10 key. $49 in total all purchased on [H]. They are plenty happy with it now. Quickbooks, pictures, web surfing, kids homework, kids playing some kind of small learning games. They did get free labor since it was a home machine and I do their business's IT support.
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Those are way below Xhamster's minimum specs...
 
I still have a core 2 duo Dell with ddr2 that seems to run just find with Windows 10. I was using it to play around as a server for Minecraft and some other things (using proxmox).
 
Ready4Dis said:
I still have a core 2 duo Dell with ddr2 that seems to run just find with Windows 10. I was using it to play around as a server for Minecraft and some other things (using proxmox).
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My Brother-in-law just got an old Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 machine in trade for doing some artwork, looks like it was some kind of server in the past as well. DDR2 and the biggest case and case fan I have ever seen!
 
Mine is a SFF type optiplex. I did recently upgrade it to a quad core but haven't used it much since I got my R710 server.
 
installed a 1055T in the garage, working gloriously still.
surprised how well it runs, I imagined slow hell and 720 p limited with the 785G chipset igp and so on.

There's a reason why anything before Core 2xxx is practical free.
before sucks, PHII, Core I7 1st gen and god forbid Core 2.
Phenom II 6 core is decent in windows, nothing more. 125W cpu for web browsing! but yes, it works surprisingly well if you power it on with not hopes and dreams.
 
This reminds me I must cajole my brother to replace his Phenom II 965x4 HD7850 rig sometime.

Not built a Ryzen setup yet.
 
Honestly never liked these chips
they where nice cheap for office machiens the used mostly interger math and could use he buildt in GPU.
Buth the horrible half amount of FPU cores and low FPUs performance pipelines made them horrible for anything gaming
and got beaten by cheaper CPU's from intel at the time.

Some of the gaming missing gamming perfomance could be gained by avoid SMT/CMT thread conflicts with Project mercury but still the performance was just not there for gaming

Hoewever for 7-zip and my PNG bruteforce scripting they did really nice pricewise compared
 
ole-m said:
installed a 1055T in the garage, working gloriously still.
surprised how well it runs, I imagined slow hell and 720 p limited with the 785G chipset igp and so on.

There's a reason why anything before Core 2xxx is practical free.
before sucks, PHII, Core I7 1st gen and god forbid Core 2.
Phenom II 6 core is decent in windows, nothing more. 125W cpu for web browsing! but yes, it works surprisingly well if you power it on with not hopes and dreams.
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I have a friend who still rocks a Phenom II 1055 rig I built him ~2010 for gaming and it does surprisingly well. He's upgraded the SSD for more space and the GPU to a GTX 970 over the years, but we play Division, PUBG, Vermintide 2, etc together without any trouble.
 
grim4593 said:
I wouldn't bet too heavily on the unlocking of cores. In my experience (Phenom IIX3 and Phenom IIX4) it will unlock and -mostly- work but end up with intermittent issues like random freezing and memory corruption.
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I has an x3 720 and an x2 555 unlock one core each with little issue.

OhSigmaChi said:
I take full blame for keeping this alive. I don't know what it is about these old AMD processors, but I just always circle back around to them. If you need to scrape by on a shoe string budget, they're tough to beat nowadays.
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Like you said, within a specific budget they are still hard to beat.
 
I still have my GD70 790FX and Phenom II 980 BE setup in my office. My 980 is quite golden as it does 4.4Ghz on air.
 

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