CPU Upgrade help

Elimination

Alright, right now i have an old AMD 9750 Phenom x4 2.4 ghz. It is starting to show a bottleneck with my recent video card purchase (Nvidia GTX 560 TI.) and i would love to upgrade. I am on a budget, so nothing over $160 or so (before tax.).

I saw this and it looks like a decent deal, but no L3 Cache...not sure if that makes a big difference or not. Computer used almost 100% for gaming just FYI.

Was also looking at this, as well as the Phenom II x6 1055t.

I already have the motherboard for this, so dont need any help with that. My new mobo can handle all the latest AM3's up to the 1100t, but i am not looking to spend that much. How much of a difference would the x6 make over the x4's? Would it really make any difference in gaming? Its the max im willing to spend. Looking to spend as little as possible but get a decent performance boost past my old CPU.

Scosglen

A Phenom II 955 BE is probably the reigning champ in that price range for AM3 chips. You can easily bump up the multiplier to match or beat 965/975 speeds, and it will be a better proposition for gaming than a 1055t. Nobody is threading games for hexacore chips right now and we're in a largely GPU bound hardware era.

Elimination

Scosglen wrote: »

A Phenom II 955 BE is probably the reigning champ in that price range for AM3 chips. You can easily bump up the multiplier to match or beat 965/975 speeds, and it will be a better proposition for gaming than a 1055t. Nobody is threading games for hexacore chips right now and we're in a largely GPU bound hardware era.

The 955 is $1 less than the 965 on newegg.ca so i dont really see the point in that one.

Eidt: NCIX has it for $119. Now thats more of a price difference.

Edit 2: Betwen that an the 965, adding everything up, the price difference ends up being $16, at which point may as well just go for the 965

Scosglen

Realize that the main difference between the two chips is that AMD has gone in and moved the multiplier and voltage up one notch, which is something you can do in your bios in 30 seconds. You won't notice a difference unless you plan on doing some extreme overclocking.

Elimination

Scosglen wrote: »

Realize that the main difference between the two chips is that AMD has gone in and moved the multiplier and voltage up one notch, which is something you can do in your bios in 30 seconds. You won't notice a difference unless you plan on doing some extreme overclocking.

So basically you are saying may as well save myself the $16, even if it is just $16.

Powerpuppies

You may also profit from asking this question in the Computer Build Thread in Moe's Stupid Technology Tavern

Elimination

I also talked to some friends outside of here, just wanted to make sure i was correct mostly on assuming a higher powered quad core will out perform the 1055t hexa core for gaming. I ended up going with the 965 as it appeared to be the best deal around.

splash

Definitely the AMD Phenom II X4 965 or 955 as suggested over the AMD Athlon II X4 640. As I've learned, even though they are both quad core and somewhat around the same speed in Ghz, the better architecture of something like 955 is going to be much more powerful for running your games.

DanMach

To be fair about the hexacore chips.. they can 'turbo boost' quite nicely. The 1100t goes from like 3.2ghz(approx) to 3.9ghz(approx) on a few of its cores if they are being utilized and others aren't. Its a sweet chip.

corky842

Just wait a month or so. AMD is supposed to be releasing their new CPUs June 7.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/AMD-Llano-AMD-Sabine-AMD-Bulldozer-AMD-Fusion,12688.html