CPU and Mobo upgrade?

[Mobius1]

Hi there,

I'm looking to upgrade both my (slow) CPU and bog-standard motherboard.

I've been looking at the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition but I can't decide on the the motherboard.

Any suggestions?


EDIT: my budget for both is £500

[Domestic_Ginger]

Hex core thuban or quad phenomII with speedboost (this may unlock) for CPU.

If you get a 8xx series chipset you will need DDR3. If you want to reuse your DDR2 you'll need a 7xx chipset that supports DDR2.

You'll need DDR3 at some point if you upgrade in the future but ram is expensive atm. Not sure if the 8xx series mobo will be bulldozer compatable so you'll probably have to upgrade again anyway. I would go for the DFI lanparty jr AM2+ on scan for £50 and reuse my DDR2.

No idea what 8xx boards are any good but I imagine xfire is no good to you. How important are USB3 and SATA3?

[kalniel]

Hi there,

I'm looking to upgrade both my (slow) CPU and bog-standard motherboard.

I've been looking at the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition but I can't decide on the the motherboard.

Any suggestions?


EDIT: my budget for both is £500

That's a huge budget, you can get anything from AMD hex core to Intel lynnfield or bloomsfield.

[Iron Sights]

First things first it would be handy to find out what you will be doing on this new pc

[Mobius1]

I should have mentioned this in the op but what I'm looking for is a decent CPU/mobo combination to give me better performance for gaming. I'm only getting 20-25fps on some of the more CPU intensive games (10-15 on some games).


- I don't mind upgrading the RAM to DDR3.

- SATA3 and USB3 aren't hugely important at the mo (unless theres any improvement in gaming performance with SATA3)


My graphics card is obviously being bottlenecked?

[Iron Sights]

its just a thought but with that kind of budget you might want to consider an SSD this will greatly improve game loading times and faster performance.

Also I can see that you do a bit of overclocking too, mobos are not my area tbh so perhaps someone else can recommend one


Phenom 965 @ £142.34
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/186428

or if you want to save a little

Phenom955 @ £123.24

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/190673

[Iron Sights]

btw

They also have the phenom 965 at scan for £136.25 but with the delivery cost it works out about the same as ebuyer. However if you post 20 constructive posts here at hexus, then you may qualify for free shipping at scan.

http://forums.hexus.net/scan-care-he...0-07-08-a.html

http://forums.hexus.net/scan-care-he...tup-guide.html

[kalniel]

I should have mentioned this in the op but what I'm looking for is a decent CPU/mobo combination to give me better performance for gaming. I'm only getting 20-25fps on some of the more CPU intensive games (10-15 on some games).


- I don't mind upgrading the RAM to DDR3.

- SATA3 and USB3 aren't hugely important at the mo (unless theres any improvement in gaming performance with SATA3)


My graphics card is obviously being bottlenecked?

Why obviously bottlenecked? What's the card, what's the current CPU/Mobo combination, and what game and resolution are you playing at?

Changing CPU/mobo is usually near the last thing you do to improve gaming.

[Mobius1]

Why obviously bottlenecked? What's the card, what's the current CPU/Mobo combination, and what game and resolution are you playing at?

Changing CPU/mobo is usually near the last thing you do to improve gaming.

CPU: AMD Phenom X3 8650 @ 2.3GHz - OC'd to 2.7GHz
Motherboard: Foxconn A7VMX-K AM2/AM2+
RAM: 4GB DDR2
Storage: 2 x 320GB WD Caviar Blue 16MB Cache
Graphics card(s): Sapphire ATI Radeon 5870 HD 1GB DDR5 Vapor-X (10.4 Drivers)
PSU: 500w ATX12V V2.3


Resolution: 1920x1080 (monitor's native res)


FPS examples:

- Crysis: Warhead (15-20) Gamer Settings (10-15 on enthusiast)
- Assassin's Creed I & II (10-15!) Max Settings
- Splinter Cell: Conviction (15-20!) Max Settings
- NFS: Shift (10-15) Max Settings)
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (60+) Max Settings
- F.E.A.R 2 (80+) Max Settings

[kalniel]

What's the game/resolution that you're struggling with? Do you get any improvement in performance if you drop the resolution?

Post edit: hmm, unusual to be CPU limited at that resolution - check by dropping the res - if you see an improvement in performance then you weren't CPU limited.

[Mobius1]

Same problems at lower res unfortunately - even at 800x600!!

Is the Phenom X3 good enough for modern gaming?

[kalniel]

Same problems at lower res unfortunately - even at 800x600!!

Is the Phenom X3 good enough for modern gaming?

In most cases, certainly* - gaming is about 99% GPU. However there are some oddities sometimes - Crysis, GTA4 for eg, Assassin's Creed looks like another, though I would be wary of expecting much improvement - some of these games just have strange engine behaviour and poor performance at extreme resolution which improved hardware doesn't do much to help.

*I'm on a skt 939 X2 4400 and I'm not CPU bottlenecked at 1680x1050 for modern games, but I don't play many console ports.

[scaryjim]

From the OP's system, it's a Phenom X3 8650 @ 2.7GHz and a 5870!

So yes, the CPU is almost certainly bottlenecking the graphics. Pretty much any Phenom II is going to be an upgrade, and with £500 for CPU, Mobo and RAM you've got plenty of options.

The only thing I would say, is that since you have a 780 chipset mobo with the SB700, you might be as well off just upgrading the CPU now. Your mobo and RAM probably aren't a problem, and if you can get a 2.3GHz Phenom to 2.7GHz it's obviously a decent overclocking mobo anyway.

With the rest of the money, you could pop it in a high interest savings account for 18months, then look at Sandy Bridge and Bulldozer, or as Iron Sights has suggested, you could think about switching your system drive to an SSD which should make your computer generally more responsive. But with your current mobo (it looks like, with a BIOS update, it'll support AM3 CPUs) and RAM I don't think I'd be looking to upgrade anything apart from your CPU.

[Mobius1]

Hmmm... I suppose I could just do a CPU upgrade for now (I've just grabbed the bios update for AM3 support you spoke of) and then see what happens.


EDIT: is it worth chucking my budget at this: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...source=froogle

[Iron Sights]

Just a quick question what is the brand of your psu. Tbh if your running a 5870 it should be ok but it was just a thought.

As for the bundle imho forget it you can buy them cheaper seperately, you could put the money you save towards a better case with good cooling but if your currently happy with your temps then it should be fine

[scaryjim]

re: the bundle. If your mobo is running the X3 8650 (2.3GHz) at 2.7GHz, you must be clocking the fsb at around 234MHz. That'd take a 965BE to almost 4GHz - it'd take the cheaper 3GHz 945 to around 3.5GHz. And let's remember that first-gen Phenoms were notoriously bad overclockers, so you may find your board will take a Phenom II further than that.

Based on your existing overclock you already have a decent base system, and I really don't think it's worth doing a complete upgrade. As I said, both Intel and AMD have major changes to their architectures coming up next year, and at this point I wouldn't replace a system that can be easily upgraded. If you were still stuck on an early Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 it might be worth it, but since you can just drop a Phenom II into your existing system I'd strongly recommend that...