E6700 to Phenom II X4 965

S

skruideli

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 25, 2010
Messages
176
Hey guys,
I am currently looking at my newegg shopping cart where I have a Phenom II X4 965 + an Asus mobo to go with it (AMD 770 chipset) for around $240 and I am debating on if I should do it or not.

Currently I have a Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 and a Asus P5Q (P45 chipset) mobo with a radeon 5770. What kind of an improvement should I expect in gaming with this upgrade?

thanks

edit: To elaborate further. I am debating this mostly because of what I kind of want to wait for bulldozer. At the same time, this upgrade would be more convenient as I can keep my current RAM (8 gigs).
 
Well, that is where it gets complicated. I have been wanting to upgrade for more than a year now and finally have the funds for this. Now, if I was to wait around for bulldozer, I would have the funds for it then. I have been using this current setup for over 2 years now and am starting to feel limited by it (however true this may be, I do not know). I have no immediate *need* to upgrade as everything I currently have works, but I am starting to feel like I should be upgrading.
 
I went from an e6550 @ 2.8GHz and there was a mild improvement in somethings and an extreme performance increase in other things. It mostly depends on what you do the most, for me it is encoding and the e6550 was kinda slow. The phenom 965 is much faster for me, It is 1000x more stable also. My e6550 crashed all the time even at stock speeds, For whatever reason it was most stable at 2.8ghz.
 
I mostly play games and only do occasional encoding. Mostly I have noticed some issues with more recent games like Dragon Age and Alpha protocol (DA supposively loves quad over dual core). I mostly play at 1680x1050.
 
i have a phenom x2 545 castillo that unlocks to a quad-core @ 3.5ghz easy. i have tested games like Bad comany 2,counter strike source, and GTA:4. when i switch to stock (dual core) and play those games, i see a huge downgrade over the quadcore even with it still @ 3.5ghz. so i say go for the upgrade and you will see a nice gain in preformance.
 
I would probably upgrade, but of course I did. It was just that time for me, I had my system about two years. Built the new one and traded the old one for a fairly new asus laptop.
 
Why not just get a Core 2 Quad instead of jumping to an entirely different platform that will only yield similar results?
 
fochkoph said:
Why not just get a Core 2 Quad instead of jumping to an entirely different platform that will only yield similar results?
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Mostly because a core 2 quad has no upgrade path available, with a Phenom 2 I can later on purchase a AM3 mobo and ddr3 RAM and later on purchase a newer CPU, with core 2 quad I would eventually be forced in purchasing a new mobo, ram and cpu all at once.
 
skruideli said:
Mostly because a core 2 quad has no upgrade path available, with a Phenom 2 I can later on purchase a AM3 mobo and ddr3 RAM and later on purchase a newer CPU, with core 2 quad I would eventually be forced in purchasing a new mobo, ram and cpu all at once.
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AM3 is a dead end platform as well, Bulldozer will not run on current AM3 mobos. Just a heads up, better to know now than 12 months down the track.
 
Did you know that that BD will not work in AM3 boards? Buldozer will require AM3+ which will also support current AM3 cpus. And I agree AM3 boards and cpus do have a better upgrade path (X6 cpus) than core2.
 
My reasoning went more along the lines of:
New board and CPU (the 965) and I get to keep the RAM as is. Later on I get a AM3+ board, I get to keep the CPU and my wife inherits the RAM and gets to keep the board as a spare for her computer. Then when the time is right, I just replace my current CPU with the appropriate BD part.
 
AFAIK the entire P5Q series supports Core 2 Quad. If not all you need is a BIOS update. Just pull out your current E6000 series chip and plop in a Q9550 or the like. This chip is still fairly mighty, comparable to i5 750s, and will do just about everything you want until Bulldozer comes out. Not sure why you think you have to get a new motherboard and ram as these things run on identical hardware as the as E6700. Just seems like a more sensible approach to me. Pick up and Q9550 and skip AM3 all together then adopt Bulldozer the day it comes out. :)
 
fochkoph said:
AFAIK the entire P5Q series supports Core 2 Quad. If not all you need is a BIOS update. Just pull out your current E6000 series chip and plop in a Q9550 or the like. This chip is still fairly mighty, comparable to i5 750s, and will do just about everything you want until Bulldozer comes out. Not sure why you think you have to get a new motherboard and ram as these things run on identical hardware as the as E6700. Just seems like a more sensible approach to me. Pick up and Q9550 and skip AM3 all together then adopt Bulldozer the day it comes out. :)
Click to expand...

I'd recommend this path only if the Q9550 costs the OP $150 to $170. Unfortunately, many resellers still want more than $200 for that CPU (for example, Newegg charges a whopping $275 for that CPU). At that price, fuhgeddaboudit.
 
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Agreed. Microcenter used to have a great deal on the 9550. Now they only have the q9400 for 140. For $169 you can get a Phenom II 965 with a motherboard. The end result is the whole system upgrade is only around $100 more than dropping in a 9400, which is definitely inferior. For the present costs of the 9550, I don't see it as worth it.

I just did the same thing, and will be using the old system as a backup/family pc (finally retiring an ancient Dell P4 basesd system).
 
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