Phenom X4 970 @ 4.1GHz still decent?

U

UMASS

Gawd
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Hi All: I usually build a new rig every 24 months or so. My current build is @ 27 months old. I would like to squeeze another 12-14 months out of my computer. I just bought a 7950 video card & upgraded to 8GB of RAM (from 4GB) Purchased the 7950 because I had 2 each $50.00 NewEgg gift cards & I'm selling my Gigabyte 6870 to offset my 7950 purchase.

Do you think a Deneb X4 970 (stepping 3 Rev. RB-C3) @ 4.1GHz is still soild? I'm not a hardcore tech person. My currect rig was my 2nd build. I have general knowledge over the years, but I'm by no means a "techie" person.

I play mostly strategy games like Heroes of Might & Magic VI, CIV series & Starcraft etc. I would like to hold out for the next-generation AMD boards.
 
Sounds solid to me. It would probably be on par or beat the FX 8350 in gaming. I don't think it would be a good use of your money to upgrade now. Maybe you could get a nice new monitor or something? :D
 
Are you running the NB at 2.4GHz? Otherwise 4.1 is great -- mine is stuck at 4.0 (it's a voltage mountain after that.) Your graphics seem fine too. Rate of PC progress isn't as exciting these days.
 
Moosh said:
Sounds solid to me. It would probably be on par or beat the FX 8350 in gaming. I don't think it would be a good use of your money to upgrade now. Maybe you could get a nice new monitor or something? :D
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My FX-8350 which turbos to 4.2 is slower than his 4.1 Deneb?
 
Mr. Stryker said:
My FX-8350 which turbos to 4.2 is slower than his 4.1 Deneb?
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His is 4.1 all the time, yours is 4.2 in only certain situations. There is a difference. Yours will own threaded applications for sure if they can use more than 4 cores.
 
Get yourself a solid state drive and you'll be set for a while, I imagine.
 
As long as you are happy with your CPU, I would stay with that. Steamroller is supposed to be out in early 2014 and should be significantly better than what we have today. (I think what we have today is good though but, you may not see enough difference to warrant the cost.):D
 
stealthy123 said:
Nah, the piledriver FX cpus finally passed the phenoms in IPC.

I doubt there is any scenario where deneb is close to beating you.
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IPC, instructions per clock - I have not seen much improvment there. Most of the improvement is from increase clock speeds.
 
ManofGod said:
As long as you are happy with your CPU, I would stay with that. Steamroller is supposed to be out in early 2014 and should be significantly better than what we have today. (I think what we have today is good though but, you may not see enough difference to warrant the cost.):D
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To this date we don't know what has happened to Steamroller it would have made it's appearance 2013, but why , are they going to gamble on producing it on a lower nm ?

What is happening after Steamroller that is also unclear at this point in time, with AMD management going bold and doing crazy stuff, which doesn't bode well.
 
Thanks everyone for your replies. To get to 4.1GHz wasn't a big deal with my Corsair H50 water cooler & decent Mushkin RAM. Tweaked multiplier & voltage. I'm thinking the 7950 will hold me over for another year. I wish AMD could "really" get closer to Intel on the higher-end CPU's. Still...I have always supported them & will continues to do so unless they really fall of the cliff.
 
With my Phenom II at 4.2 ghz I'm planning to get another 12 months out of it, it's an old chip but it still shines at really high clock speeds. It was sufficient for Crossfired 6970's so it'll handle a 8970 or 780 if those were to come out within that frame time.
 
From my own personal experience with a Phenom II 965 @ 4009 MHz and my FX-8350, I found that there was a definite improvement in gaming.

-F1 2012 and DIRT Showdown were averaging 40-50 FPS and now I'm at a steady 60 FPS (I play with V-sync on);
-As I posted in another thread my score on 3D Mark went from around P7700 to over 9000.
-In games like Blacklight Retribution and Planetside 2, it was nearly unplayable with my Phenom II but not they run like butter (this was before OC'ing and upgrading my GPUs from 470s to 670s).
-For 95% of the games out there, the Phenom II is sufficient but you will see it holding back FPS in some newer titles.

I have yet to see a game where my FX-8350 runs worse than my Phenom II.
 
psy81 said:
I have yet to see a game where my FX-8350 runs worse than my Phenom II.
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Excellent slowly you will find games that are better suited for more cores, as it should have been from the start.
 
FX is better if you're overclocking because it's got more headroom. My 8150 at 4.63 was a nice upgrade from my X6 1090 at 4.0 GHz. A 8350 would be even better still.

That being said, a Phenom II X4 especially with that big an overclock is still an extremely capable gaming chip especially at your resolution which I'm assuming is 1920x1080 so yes, your X4 will work very well with a 7950 at 1920x1080 for another year easily.
 
psy81 said:
From my own personal experience with a Phenom II 965 @ 4009 MHz and my FX-8350, I found that there was a definite improvement in gaming.

-F1 2012 and DIRT Showdown were averaging 40-50 FPS and now I'm at a steady 60 FPS (I play with V-sync on);
-As I posted in another thread my score on 3D Mark went from around P7700 to over 9000.
-In games like Blacklight Retribution and Planetside 2, it was nearly unplayable with my Phenom II but not they run like butter (this was before OC'ing and upgrading my GPUs from 470s to 670s).
-For 95% of the games out there, the Phenom II is sufficient but you will see it holding back FPS in some newer titles.

I have yet to see a game where my FX-8350 runs worse than my Phenom II.
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My 8120 runs rings around my nephew's Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition. It's like night and day comparing how the systems run when playing games like BF3. I got the same results as you did when we compared frame rates between our systems.
 
noko said:
IPC, instructions per clock - I have not seen much improvment there. Most of the improvement is from increase clock speeds.
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that's great that you don't see it, but the piledrivers are equal to better in ipc, and got a clock speed bump.
 
Is there anyone in this thread that owns a new FX series currently and used to own a Phenom II X4? I would like to know how many of you when you use your FX think that the old Phenom you had was faster in any application. Or thought that your desktop was faster with the Phenom II when multitasking in Win 8 or 7. Or your games ran faster on the Phenom II's.

I see this posted all the time and I'm curious what you'll are doing to the Phenom II to make it run so fast. The 3 I've dealt with feel slow as molasses compared to my FX 8120.
 
I've built a few PhII pc's my view is it's still a decent chip. But then the FX ones are pretty well priced too.
Results are quite variable depending on what you do. For video/photo work FX is def better an FX6 will thump a PhII x4 no problems, for file decompressing again huge jump in performance. Games..not so big..lower threaded work again not really worth it. I can't disagree with the notion that FX is a bit hit and miss depending on what you do. On the other hand I'd not worry about a move from a PhII x4 to either an FX6 or FX8 series processor it is worthwhile, but less so for gamers.

For non gamer builds I used the Athlon II x4 (or other versions) simply because the performance difference was not enough to justify the price (for video budget builds the x4 Athlon II's were good)
Obviously if you are building an office pc even the FX4 series is overkill. You have to judge what you are doing/bang per buck/end users needs.
 
cageymaru said:
Is there anyone in this thread that owns a new FX series currently and used to own a Phenom II X4? I would like to know how many of you when you use your FX think that the old Phenom you had was faster in any application. Or thought that your desktop was faster with the Phenom II when multitasking in Win 8 or 7. Or your games ran faster on the Phenom II's.

I see this posted all the time and I'm curious what you'll are doing to the Phenom II to make it run so fast. The 3 I've dealt with feel slow as molasses compared to my FX 8120.
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I had an x4 @ 4 ghz, and I use a llano @ 3.8 for my day to day stuff. My computer I use as a testbed/play around when I get board is an fx 6300 @ 4.7ghz. It is noticeably faster than the x4 was and the llano. Though for whatever reason the llano feels zippier than the x4 ever did, and is fine, the 6300 feels much faster, both in benchmarks and cpu intensive stuff. It also has a lesser video card in it and I get higher fps in source type games like CSS.

Havent really gone crazy testing it with games and stuff, it's in my garage and it's not very comfortable out there.
 
If your keeping the same motherboard its decent. If your switching board do yourself a favor and just go ivy bridge.
 
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