Athlon X2 5200+ 45nm 2.3GHz AM3 unlocks to Phenom FX-5200

[Uriel]

Never got around to unlocking that Athlon II 640 and still rocking the FX 5200.

Phenom IIs are getting long in the tooth now though and it looks like its days are numbered. There are a handful of games that require support for SSE4.1 / 4.2 and the instructions aren't supported. And I'm feeling too skint for a new build with DDR4.

Solution? Picked up a Dell T3500 with Xeon w3565 (4 core, 8 thread 3.2 GHz Bloomfield) and 12GB DDR3 for a little under £70. It'll tide me over for a while.

[DanceswithUnix]

Solution? Picked up a Dell T3500 with Xeon w3565 (4 core, 8 thread 3.2 GHz Bloomfield) and 12GB DDR3 for a little under £70. It'll tide me over for a while.

Wow, nice price for a good machine (I used to have one a couple of jobs ago). Would have thought postage would cost that, they weigh a ton

[Uriel]

So as it happens, I didn't get around to moving to the Dell T3500 (passing that one to my oldest son). So the Phenom FX5200+ has had another year's worth of service. It can still game away happily after all these years, but tbh it's bottlenecking my GTX970 in a few games now (SSE4.1 / 4.2 limitation issues aside).

The motherboard is on its last legs though. SATA ports becoming unreliable. One has died. And other ports are intermittently having drives disappearing. It's on its way out. It's not worth spending on an AM3 platform now to replace it so time to move on.

I've bitten the bullet and picked up a Ryzen 2700 and Asus Prime B450 Plus bundle for £219. In the scheme of things it's not much but given the price I paid for the current platform, it's like a small fortune! I figured with the PS5 and Xbox Series X both being AMD 8 core 16 thread CPUs of limited clockspeed, it's probably going to be a safe bet for games for a good while.

Given my lack of time to tinker these days, I was half tempted to get a gaming laptop but you still have to spent a lot to significantly outperform the GTX 970 I have (a £100 2nd hand purchase a few years ago). And I don't like gaming bling (which all the 'affordable' gaming laptops seem to have in abundance). I confess my finger hovered over the buy button on an Asus G14 a few times (4800HS and RTX 2060 Max-Q version) but just couldn't bring myself to spend that much. I'm still attracted by cheap and cheerful - and my GTX 970 is still usually a decent 1080p card for now - just needs a better platform to do its thing for a while until the price comes down on better cards (or I'm absolutely desperate to turn up the settings on a game it can't handle).

[Uriel]

I've bitten the bullet and picked up a Ryzen 2700 and Asus Prime B450 Plus bundle for £219.

Oh well, a pleasant surprise. It's actually a 2700x.
Upgrade less straightforward than it should have been. Forgot to plug in my storage hard drive to the psu and that caused all sorts of confusion.

[Zak33]

wondefully long thread

i had a PhenomII x6 and i finally upgraded to a Ryzen1700 and it was a wonderful upgrade....guess youre even happier with a 2700X

[Uriel]

Meanwhile, I've dug out that Athlon II 640 and my oldest son has asked to learn how to build a computer. The unlocking temptation is strong...

Somewhere there's a spare PSU sitting around but the last time I remember seeing it was two house moves ago.

I guess I lucked out with the CPU again. Paid already under the odds for a 2700 and got a 2700x. Not quite as impressive as unlocking a couple of cores on a dual core CPU and overclocking by 50% though. I think I bought a £30 CPU and got the performance of a £140 CPU back in 2011!

[watercooled]

wondefully long thread

i had a PhenomII x6 and i finally upgraded to a Ryzen1700 and it was a wonderful upgrade....guess youre even happier with a 2700X

Were you by any chance the one who bought my 1055T? I seem to recall you having one at the same time as me but I believe I sold it to someone on here a while back - was a great CPU that! Outlasted many of its competitors IMO.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Were you by any chance the one who bought my 1055T? I seem to recall you having one at the same time as me but I believe I sold it to someone on here a while back - was a great CPU that! Outlasted many of its competitors IMO.

Well I built a Phenom II X6 1045T build in 2011 for one of my mates:
https://forums.hexus.net/pc-hardware...ml#post2214293

Only in the last few months was the system upgraded to a Ryzen 9 3900 non-X,so the it lasted over 8 years! Not bad for a £100 CPU,which was hammered at times(was under full load for upto a week at times) and still using the AMD stock cooler!

Meanwhile, I've dug out that Athlon II 640 and my oldest son has asked to learn how to build a computer. The unlocking temptation is strong...

Somewhere there's a spare PSU sitting around but the last time I remember seeing it was two house moves ago.

I guess I lucked out with the CPU again. Paid already under the odds for a 2700 and got a 2700x. Not quite as impressive as unlocking a couple of cores on a dual core CPU and overclocking by 50% though. I think I bought a £30 CPU and got the performance of a £140 CPU back in 2011!

You did very well with your CPU! The best I got with a mates build,was their Athlon II X3 unlocking to a Phenom II X4 with full L3 cache,but you got an Athlon II X2 to do the same!

[DanceswithUnix]

was a great CPU that! Outlasted many of its competitors IMO.

Nice chips, but in hindsite I am glad I went against common advice and got an FX8350 as that thing seemed to get faster as time went on and software got more threads and AVX support.

My X2 5200+ is in the garage but I dropped it and some of the pins bent. It hasn't been used since.

[Uriel]

IIRC there were many instances where Phenom IIs outperformed Bulldozer / Pile-driver with similar core counts and higher clocks.

Their age has caught up with them though. Lack of SSE4.1 etc means fading into obsolescence. That's probably what'll prevent me from reusing the 5200+ chip in another build.

[DanceswithUnix]

Their age has caught up with them though. Lack of SSE4.1 etc means fading into obsolescence.

I still use my old 955BE at work, for basic integer tasks it chugs a bit but works just fine.

But my daughter found drawing filters that took minutes to apply on the 955BE now take seconds on the 8350.

[Uriel]

Ahh well. Reading something like https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/pict...cking-cpu.html - this beats every CPU on that list for raw performance increase, though the Phenom II X2 550BE gets a mention. I think unlocking L3 cache on the Athlon X2 5200+ gives it the edge.

I can't see myself having the time and patience to again go through the process of unlocking, overclocking and testing for stability in the way I did with this chip. Time is rather more my limiting factor, rather than money now.