9850 @ 3.2GHz -> 940/955 - is it a worthwhile upgrade?

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m0unds

[H]ard|Gawd
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The title says it all. I'm currently running a 9850 @ 3.2GHz in an A79A-S with 4GB of 1066.

Typically, I do a full new build every 2 years or so with a few upgrades every 6-12 months in between. I'm planning on getting another 4GB of RAM, but I was wondering if the upgrade of the CPU from an Agena 9850 to a Phenom II 940 or 955 would be worthwhile enough to pursue (speaking purely from a general standpoint, not citing specific tasks, games or applications.) I'd probably push the OC as far as I could on air cooling. My other thought was that I could possibly wait for Thuban, but at that point I might already be considering a new build.
 
I just retired my 9850BE @3.37Ghz on an Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe. It was my daily pc. My gamer is a 940BE @3.69Ghz on an Asus M3A79-T. The 940 feels snappier and is quicker by a noticeable amount.

A buddy of mine has the 955BE @3.8Ghz, and while at a LAN he let me mess with it. In Windows, it seemed about the same as my 940 but when loading games his 955 beat my 940 by a touch.... just a touch. He's also running DDR3 while I'm DDR2. The difference in our Super Pii scores is about .2 of a second.

So, I'd say it's worthwhile IF.... you get can either a 940 or 955 cheap enough, or you feel the need to upgrade. Yes, either will be faster "clock for clock" than the 9850. My 9850 did everything I could ask of it and more. But, I couldn't pass up the $199 i7 deal at Microcenter.

Sometimes it really sucks being a hardware junkie.
 
It's tempting because it's so cheap and easy to upgrade AMD systems because of the backwards compatibility.

I went from a 9650 at 2.7 GHz to my 955BE running at default for now. With my video card, the difference wasn't that significant, but in a few cases where I was CPU limited, there was a noticeable difference. I'd say it was worth it, especially since I bought a used CPU to save money, and I'll be able to sell the 9650 to get even more cash back :)

Contrary to what many believe, the Phenom I isn't that far behind the Phenom II per clock - in many cases it's less than 10%. So a Phenom I at 3.2 GHz is still very fast by AMD standards. Just make sure you disable Cool n Quiet as it's broken on the Ph-I - it can cause up to a 50% performance hit, especially in Windows where CPU usage tends to be all over the place, causing the CPU to jump in and out of power save mode in the middle of executing threads.

Don't think it's worth waiting for a six-core desktop CPU unless you use apps that you know will benefit from more cores. Games still only take advantage of 2.5 cores at best - some new releases still seem to be pretty much single-threaded. What matters for games seems to be the clock speed and the size and speed of the cache.
 
Thanks for the replies -- the reason I mentioned Thuban is that I run a lot of tasks that benefit a ton from extra cores. The way AMD seems to be headed at the moment, I might end up with an Intel rig come June/July of 2010. Boo.
 
m0unds said:
Thanks for the replies -- the reason I mentioned Thuban is that I run a lot of tasks that benefit a ton from extra cores. The way AMD seems to be headed at the moment, I might end up with an Intel rig come June/July of 2010. Boo.
Click to expand...

Then Thuban will make sense. On the other hand Intel offers CPUs that can execute 8 threads today so...
 
JimmiG said:
Then Thuban will make sense. On the other hand Intel offers CPUs that can execute 8 threads today so...
Click to expand...

well, if i were interested in buying a new motherboard, cpu and ram that'd be great :)

at any rate, i'll probably just keep the 9850 until i do a full build next summer since it seems like thuban won't hit til around then anyway and will likely be another instance of too little too late. boo.
 
You'll defiantly get better clocks with less heat/power consumption by switching to a 940/955/965 however a 3.2Ghz Phenom 1 is still going to be plenty for most games, encording, etc. From a performance standpoint I would not upgrade unless you are throwing a lot of volts at it to reach 3.2Ghz. From a viewpoint of computers of fun to screw with, I would upgrade in a heartbeat :)
 
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