AM3 processor on AM2/AM2+ board, DDR2

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singe_101

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I know this is kind of the gimped setup, but I want to tinker. Did anyone test it out back in the day? I was surprised by the compatible processors for an old, reliable board and want to see for myself.

Or does it cause stuttering and crashes?
 
I 've run an Athlon II 605e as well as the 1090T on AM2+ board with DDR2 RAM and all was fine.
 
No problems.... I've run X6's just fine on a Biostar 785 DDR2 board.

But as mentioned above.... be wary of the CPU wattage limit of your particular board. Which one are you using, by the way?
 
One of my older AMD systems was a Socket AM2+ board from Gigabyte with an AMD Athlon64 X2 5000+ Black Edition Processor. I later replaced the AM2+ board with another MSI AM2+ board and a Phenom II X4 805 processor. (The Gigabyte board died during a BIOS update.)

The Phenom II X4 worked perfectly fine on the AM2+ board. I never had an issue.

Like what was said above, be wary of the maximum wattage limit of the board itself. The MSI board I had did not support 125W Socket AM3 processors. The final BIOS update it had supported up to an AMD Phenom II X6 1065T (95W). If you tried to put a 125W processor in there, you risked burning up the board, and that has happened to some users.

So, double check two things:
  1. Processor AND wattage compatibility.
  2. BIOS support. The later and final BIOS updates will support the latest AM3 processors.
 
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I have ran a phenom II 955 on a Biostar AM2+ with DDR2 for 3 or 4 years now and am only now starting have issues with it but I don't think its the board/processor. Think its either the ram or the hardrive which is from an even older PC show 6-7 years ago.
 
When I upgraded to DDR3 from DDR2 on my Athlon II X4 the performance increase was tiny in games. I got 2 extra FPS in the GTAIV benchmark.
 
ZodaEX said:
When I upgraded to DDR3 from DDR2 on my Athlon II X4 the performance increase was tiny in games. I got 2 extra FPS in the GTAIV benchmark.
Click to expand...

With the same amount of RAM, right? I'd think the difference would be larger going from 4gb of DDR2 to 8gb of DDR3.

I'm running an AM2+ board now with a Phenom X2 B93 (830/925), recently upgrading from a 7750. My board can handle up to a 140W processor, so the B93 is absolutely fine with room for overclocking.

I'd upgrade, but I'm undecided on which way to go. As long as that persists, it's doing just fine, though I would like more RAM.
 
gilby said:
With the same amount of RAM, right? I'd think the difference would be larger going from 4gb of DDR2 to 8gb of DDR3.

I'm running an AM2+ board now with a Phenom X2 B93 (830/925), recently upgrading from a 7750. My board can handle up to a 140W processor, so the B93 is absolutely fine with room for overclocking.

I'd upgrade, but I'm undecided on which way to go. As long as that persists, it's doing just fine, though I would like more RAM.
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I actually did move from 4gb to 8gb, only cause the 8gb was so so cheap heh. GTAIV is a 32-bit app so i'm sure it would never benefit form more than 4gb anyways. And I know i'm cpu limited for sure in this game and with this CPU.
 
ZodaEX said:
I actually did move from 4gb to 8gb, only cause the 8gb was so so cheap heh. GTAIV is a 32-bit app so i'm sure it would never benefit form more than 4gb anyways. And I know i'm cpu limited for sure in this game and with this CPU.
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8gb of DDR3 is cheap. 8gb of DDR2 is not cheap, especially if you want that as 2 4gb sticks.
 
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My board, Gigabyte MA790X supposedly can handle the 6 cores, but I already have a P2 940, doubt a 1090t is even worth the upgrade.
 
My Asus M2NPV-VM (old AM2) has a BIOS update that makes it compatible with most Phenom II CPUs. But why bother, you can buy a new mobo for ~$50.
 
reb00tin said:
My Asus M2NPV-VM (old AM2) has a BIOS update that makes it compatible with most Phenom II CPUs. But why bother, you can buy a new mobo for ~$50.
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That's still $50 more than the $0 keeping the old motherboard will cost.
 
L4d said:
What do you think of the following linked article?
http://tomshardware.com/reviews/ram-memory-upgrade,2778-6.html

It shows a noticeable difference between 4GB and 8GB for GTA4.
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If i leave task manager open for hours my GTAIV will never use more than 1.2 GB of ram max. Even in multiplayer free mode with 20+ people running around doing stuff. More importantly though how is 8GB of ram supposed to help an app that can not address more than 4GB of memory? (can't get that toms link to work)
 
My HTPC is using an XFX MI-A78S-8209 w/Phenom II x4 910 (not e) running at 3.0ghz using 8gb (4x2gb) Crucial PC2-6400. Very stable system.
 
ZodaEX said:
If i leave task manager open for hours my GTAIV will never use more than 1.2 GB of ram max. Even in multiplayer free mode with 20+ people running around doing stuff. More importantly though how is 8GB of ram supposed to help an app that can not address more than 4GB of memory? (can't get that toms link to work)
Click to expand...
Tom's was showing that cards would probably want more R.A.M. to be allocated to store unused textures and/or etc. "The consequences of reduced assignments are late details that pop up out of the blue, lower texture resolutions, and even artifacts."

I suppose that you might have had enough free R.A.M. for your previous settings and 4GB of R.A.M. so that GTA4 would not require more system resources, but, if you had upgraded your G.P.U., C.P.U., and/or monitor, not R.A.M., to allow for higher settings, you might have experienced Tom's reported problems?
 
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ZodaEX said:
how is 8GB of ram supposed to help an app that can not address more than 4GB of memory? (can't get that toms link to work)
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because when you are playing GTA4, or any game or program there are other programs running that need/use resources, by the example you gave why would you even need to use more than 2GB or ram for your system
 
Using that exact sort of setup right now, works great, have had the board since 2009, was running an X2 5200 for a while on it. The only thing it leaves me wanting is more RAM
 
I've been gradually upgrading my AM2+ setup over the past few years. 4870 to unlocked 6950, added an additional 4gigs of ram, swapped in a 7970, added a couple of SSD's.

I'm sure that I'm giving up a little performance vs a low latency DDR3 setup, and certainly vs a nice i7 setup. But enough of my components will swap when I do decide to upgrade that I don't worry.

On the plus side, my board is rock solid. I honestly can't find more than a handful of newer boards without blah reviews, lots of durability/stability issues.
 
I have 2 AM2+ rigs running as crunchers. One is based around a Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P board running a 970BE cpu and the other is based around a Msi 790XT-G45 running a 1055t clocked at 3.2.
 
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