Another CPU help thread

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TheBlackAngel

Limp Gawd
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Jun 3, 2004
Messages
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Hey everyone, needing some CPU upgrade advice. I'm mainly looking to improve photo and video editing using lightroom 2.2 and handbrake. I am currently running this MB http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2539#ov and have 3x1GB RAM in it (had 4x1 but 1 stick went bad), and running an Athlon 64 X2 4000+ with Win 7 64bit. I was looking at these 2 CPUs as options

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103809
and
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103702

I was also thinking of getting 2x2 or 2x1 GB RAM (for either 4 or 6 GB total) sticks to go with it. Which of the 2 CPUs would be better for editing photos? They look the same to me except the 6MB of L3 cache, is that going to help what i want to do at all?

1 other option i could do is get a 1055T and swap parts with my WHS as the MB in it would support it. With that option i wouldn't be able to get anymore RAM though (can't spend that much), so not sure if it would be worth it without more RAM.
 
it depends on how heavy of video editing/transcoding.....

the photo will require RAM, and the video will require CPU speed......

personally I would say grab a 1055T, and add more RAM later.....but between those two CPU's, the Phenom is the better CPU.....however, you may want to double check to make sure that your board will handle it(its an AM2 board, those are both AM3 chips, some AM2 boards did get updates to work with AM3 though)......in either case, you may see a small gain using the Phenom, but it will shine if you decide to game ever


needless to say, either way you look at it, your getting a large jump in performance
 
I would get the 1055t. They are on ebay for 169 shipped which makes getting the phenom x4 seem not much worth it, otherwise go for the athlon x4 for a hundred bucks.

A quad is always a nice upgrade from a dual, but if you plan on doing lots of encoding, more cores will always make you smile bigger.
 
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The reason I said you don't need a 1055T is because I don't think your motherboard will support it,I noticed there is no BIOS update for the new Phenom II x6 CPU's
 
AMOCO said:
The reason I said you don't need a 1055T is because I don't think your motherboard will support it,I noticed there is no BIOS update for the new Phenom II x6 CPU's
Click to expand...

if you read the OP, he said if he went the X6 route he would use his WHS mobo to use the X6....
 
so everyone voting for the phenom over the athlon 2, is it because of the L3 cache that it performs better or are there other differences that i'm not seeing/know about?
 
The architecture is somewhat better, and the L3 cache may make a difference(ive never actually looked at the difference it makes in video/picture editing)....I do know that as a whole the chip is better stock all around, overclock either and they are both excellent chips.....regardless of your choice, it will be a huge improvment
 
The Phenom and Athlon 2 have exactly same architecture as far as i know, the Athlons simply lack L3 cache, which makes them ~10% worse than similarly clocked Phenom 2s.
So the 635 should perform ~15% worse than the 945 at stock, but you could always OC.

But the 635 is a great deal if you are on a budget, get more RAM with the $30.
 
Timonthy said:
The Phenom and Athlon 2 have exactly same architecture as far as i know, the Athlons simply lack L3 cache, which makes them ~10% worse than similarly clocked Phenom 2s.
So the 635 should perform ~15% worse than the 945 at stock, but you could always OC.

But the 635 is a great deal if you are on a budget, get more RAM with the $30.
Click to expand...

sort of....the initial Athlon II's used neutered Deneb cores, however, the recent(and pretty much any retail one now) uses the Propus core, not the same, but similar if i remember
 
W.Feather said:
sort of....the initial Athlon II's used neutered Deneb cores, however, the recent(and pretty much any retail one now) uses the Propus core, not the same, but similar if i remember
Click to expand...

Well, the die-shots of Deneb and Propus shows Propus is just missing the chunk with the L3. So architecturally its is pretty much identical as they are both K10(Stars) cores.

Regor is slightly different however, due to the 1MB of L2 compared to the 512KB L2 on the quads, but still very similar in design and performance.

Pic: http://img252.imageshack.us/i/amdcpus2009.jpg/
 
So I was going through all the info and looking at my MB again and noticed this little tidbit at the end of the CPU support list.....
If you install an AMD AM3/AM2+ CPU on AM2 motherboard, the system bus speed will downgrade from HT3.0(5200 MT/s) to HT1.0 (2000 MT/s); however, the frequency of AM2+ CPU will not be impacted.
Click to expand...
Is that going to majorly affect the performance of a new CPU?
 
TheBlackAngel said:
So I was going through all the info and looking at my MB again and noticed this little tidbit at the end of the CPU support list.....

Is that going to majorly affect the performance of a new CPU?
Click to expand...

Extremely little, if any. Even at HT 1.0, you have more than enough bandwidth. I did some HyperTransort scaling tests with my 940, from 1000 to 2000Mhz and I didn't see any negative impact except for SuperPI. Super-fast HT only really matters when you're talking about mult-socket systems.
 
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