New Cpu

[xtal191]

Would going from a phenom ii x3 720 to a phenom x4 965 be much of a jump? Or would I be better off going for an x6??

[Pob255]

What's the rest of your system?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What motherboard do you have??

If your motherboard has ACC you can try unlocking the third core. The X3 720BE has an unlocked multiplier so you should be able to overclock the CPU a bit.

[xtal191]

AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3
MSI 770-C45, Socket-AM3
Crucial DDR3 1333MHz 4GB KIT
Corsair Powersupply 550W

[aonali6]

Would going from a phenom ii x3 720 to a phenom x4 965 be much of a jump? Or would I be better off going for an x6??

It's no secret that AMD has its work cut out for it right now. The company's top-of-the-line flagship Phenom II X4 965 isn't in the same league as Intel's premium Core i7. Even Intel's mid-range Core i5-750 CPU is a powerful adversary for the similarly-priced Phenom II X4 965, and while it puts up a decent fight, AMD's champion is bested far more often than not.... Now you should think.........!

[Rob_B]

Yes, AMDs "top-of-the-line" CPU released in 2009....

[shaithis]

With a 4850 I suspect you won't see a huge benefit from either CPU in most games. Tasks like video encoding on the 6 core would obviously be noticeably faster though.

I find few games that take advantage of the 4th core. 3 seems to be a good sweet spot for many titles (call me cynical but I suspect it has something to do with the XBox360 having 3 cores...) - give it a good overclock and see how it goes.

If you do want to upgrade though, I would wait. I suspect that there will be a LOT of AM3 CPUs being dumped both new and second-hand in the coming weeks if the BD release dates are to be believed.

[xtal191]

Yeah I was thinking i might be better off waiting, I'm in no rush anyway. In the mean time I'll prob just order myself a 6870 and upgrade the cpu in a few months or so. Thanks for the replies.

[scaryjim]

... The company's top-of-the-line flagship Phenom II X4 965 ...

Sorry, did you stop reading the technology press a year ago? In September last year AMD released the X4 970, and have since released an X4 980 as well, so the 965 isn't even the top of the Phenom II X4 line.

But then, the Phenom II X4 hasn't been the flagship range for AMD since April 2010, when they released the Phenom II X6 range.

Given that you're out of date with AMD processors, it's no surprise that you're quoting the aging i5 750 as Intel's mid-range chip - I assume you also failed to read about the launch of Sandy Bridge, so you won't have heard of the i5-2500(k).

To the OP: how much of a jump it would be depends on what you use your computer for. As shaithis says, if it's just for gaming you're unlikely to see much of a difference as your CPU is unlikely to be a major bottleneck. If it's for video transcoding or some other heavily threaded task, then your best bet would be a Phenom II X6, which are in the £115 - £140 price range. For heavily threaded workloads a Phenom II X6 often has comparable performance to an i7 920.

If you just think you need a general upgrade, I'd wait a couple of weeks as AMDs new Bulldozer CPUs will be launching soon...

[Wolfsbane2k]

AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3
MSI 770-C45, Socket-AM3
Crucial DDR3 1333MHz 4GB KIT
Corsair Powersupply 550W

I'm in this exact boat with an unlocked 4th core phenom II 720BE running at 3.3 ghz, and recon the only way really to upgrade is to junk it all and start again.

Sorry