Phenom 9550 to Phenom 2 945

[TheCommander]

Before I go ahead with it, I was just wondering if it is a big jump to go from a Phenom 9550 to a Phenom 2 945?

 

[Bladestorm]

Absolutely! I went from a 8750 X3 to a 720 X3 and it was a substantial increase in performance for me. I say go for it.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

yes for sure.. its a huge performance increase between the 9550 and the 945.. i went from an x2 6400+ to a phenom II x4 940.. on single core performance alone the 940 is 3-4 times faster then the 6400+ 3.2ghz vs 3.0ghz.. and even worse with the phenom I's they are gimped by the lack of L3 cache..

 

[ManOfKnight]

The noticeable jump is not THAT great...were you two looking at benches or actual performance? I have a 9550 and will upgrade to a Phenom II shortly, but that is because I like newer items. If the 9550 is working for what you need...stay with it. While the Phenom II does increase performance it will not be "noticeable" unless you are encoding.

 

[JimmiG]

http://anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=23&p2=80

You're looking at about 16% - 40% better performance depending on the application. That is of course without taking overclocking into account. The 9550 is locked, so if you find a Black Edition unlocked Phenom II, you will be able to overclock for another 20% increase or so.

on single core performance alone the 940 is 3-4 times faster then the 6400+ 3.2ghz vs 3.0ghz.. and even worse with the phenom I's they are gimped by the lack of L3 cache..

I doubt a 940 is 3-4x faster than an Athlon X2 per clock, per core. If that was the case it would dominate the i7 in benchmarks. Also the Phenom I does not lack L3 cache, they have 2MB of L3 cache (vs 6MB on the Phenom II). Both the Phenom I and Phenom II are however significantly faster than the K8 Athlon X2's clock for clock. The Phenom II tends to be about 10% to 20% faster than the Phenom I at the same clock speed (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3492&p=9).

 

[LAiN_OfTheWired]

Clock-per-clock improvement between the original athlon x2s and the new phenom II is roughly 21%, not 300%. Improvement over the first phenoms is roughly 10% clock-per-clock. This has been stated several times, why are people still spouting nonsense?

So if you combine the clock-per-clock advantage with the higher stock clock speed, less energy+heat, and the better OCing ability, does it justify the out-of-pocket cost? That depends on you.

 

[SicKlown42012]

When working with high-performance applications, the difference will be very noticeable. If you just use your computer for basic task such as only internet browsing, word processing, and media playback, then you won't feel much of a difference if at all.