AMD Phenom II X6 1055T and AM2+ mobo?

[Rainmaker]

Hi guys,

I'll try to keep this as brief as I can, while still giving you the facts. Basically I need some advice before I save towards upgrading my rig (see details on left). I'm currently with Intel and have 4GB of excellent RAM, however my CPU is "only" an E8600 dual core. Since I spend my life hammering multi-threaded downloads and FTP servers, encoding video and running virtual machine servers (all at the same time!), a dual core is limiting me quite a lot at the moment. I wish I'd gone quad to start with; live and learn!

I don't go in for games (unless you count the odd re-run of Half Life 2) so that's not important. With that in mind I was thinking of going back to the dark side (AMD) as an upgrade. The six core (hexacore) Phenom II X6 1055T fares very well in the types of benchmarks I'd be running it for (encoding etc) - matching most of the Core i5 and i7 chips in those fields for a fraction of the price.

It'd be silly to upgrade this s775 Intel rig to a quad now, as even a Q9550 would cost more than a six core AMD and is only about half as fast in encoding benchmarks. I was thinking if I grabbed the AMD I could basically transplant my current Intel mobo and E8600 into my fiancée's PC to give her a much needed speed boost, and end up with six cores of pure win in my own machine.

That's basically two upgrades for ~£250, as AM2+ mobos support DDR2 RAM - meaning I can keep my Reapers. However, despite reading around the net that the Phenom II X6 chips will run on BIOS-updated AM2+ boards, I've been told it's not worth running such a CPU on anything bar an AM3 board with an 800 series chipset with DDR3 RAM.

Can anyone confirm/deny this? I thought half the advantage of AMD (aside from the price/performance trade off compared to Intel) was the fact they rarely change sockets compared to Intel. Or put another way, new chips often tend to be backwards compatible.

If I could grab a decent-ish AM2+ board for about £40 (easily do-able), plug in my existing RAM and drop in a hexacore chip, I'd be in heaven for very little outlay. Does anyone have any experiences/knowledge of these chips yet? I can upgrade either way, but AM2+ is obviously much cheaper... meaning I can upgrade sooner.

Thanks for reading.

[jim]

Since you've got the memory, I wouldn't bother swapping to DDR3.

You can get AM3 boards with DDR2 if you wanted to do that, but AM2+ would be absolutely fine imo. Depends what board features you want/need.

[Rainmaker]

Since you've got the memory, I wouldn't bother swapping to DDR3.

You can get AM3 boards with DDR2 if you wanted to do that, but AM2+ would be absolutely fine imo. Depends what board features you want/need.

Basically provided it can run more than one hdd in RAID0, has gigabit ethernet, USB2 and at least one PCI-e slot for gfx, that's all I need. I was looking at the Gigabyte GA-M720-US3 mobo (full ATX), which seems to fit the bill perfectly. It's AM2+, supports the Phenom X6, and has everything else I need.

The only thing I'm absolutely clueless on these days is chipset. Nvidia versus AMD 600, 700 or 800 chipset. I have no clue. Some reading required, me thinks. Since I have Nvidia gfx I dare say the Nvidia chipset won't do any harm, making the above board a good buy?

EDIT: From the Gigabyte site direct (which loads very slowly, and Scan don't have this info on the link above, so I thought I'd add it here). Seems to fit the bill quite nicely 'on paper', but of course "supporting" and "running well" can be two very different things indeed. Hence this thread!

1. Supports new generation of AMD Phenom™II X6 processors
2. Ultra Durable 3 Classic Technology with copper cooled quality for lower working temperature
3. Revolution energy saving design with Easy Energy Saver technology
4. Supports AMD AM3 Phenom II/ Phenom/ Athlon series processors
5. Solid capacitors design for CPU VRM
6. Dual Channel DDR2 1200+ for remarkable system performance
7. Ultimate graphics performance with PCI-E 2.0 x16 interface
8. Integrated SATA 3Gb/s with RAID function
9. Features high speed Gigabit Ethernet and IEEE1394
10. Integrated 8-Channel High Definition audio
11. Patented DualBIOS with dual hardware BIOS protection
12. Support NVIDIA NVCC (NVIDIA Clock Calibration) feature
13. Compatible with Window 7 to deliver the best operation experience

[Domestic_Ginger]

You won't need nvcc imo.

I think all your requirements are pretty much made up. The nV chips are meant to ok. Wrt to the AMD the 700 nb chips are the hotter 65nm ones; from what I remember. The wiki page is quite good on these.

Watch out for some of the older NF chipsets as a few are really old. Make sure you get HT 3.0; it pretty seperates them.

Can't really understand that DDR3 is that much better; it was not far ahead when AMD started using it iirc.

[Rainmaker]

You won't need nvcc imo.

I think all your requirements are pretty much made up. The nV chips are meant to ok. Wrt to the AMD the 700 nb chips are the hotter 65nm ones; from what I remember. The wiki page is quite good on these.

Watch out for some of the older NF chipsets as a few are really old. Make sure you get HT 3.0; it pretty seperates them.

Can't really understand that DDR3 is that much better; it was not far ahead when AMD started using it iirc.

Thanks very much for the replies so far guys.

As far as I can see, the Gigabyte board I'm looking at comes in two versions. The old rev 1, which is NV chipset 720D (which is still HT3); and a newer rev 1.1 which comes with NV chipset 8200 (still HT3, with more features). So basically with HT3 and a decent-ish chipset (Nv 800 series) I should be rocking with a hexacore and not notice much by way of a performance hit compared to an AM3 board? Since I have 4GB of 1066MHz OCZ Reapers to go in there, and a GeForce 8600GT, the "bottle neck" is pretty much going to be the mobo as far as I can tell. No point spending tons though where I don't need to (I've spent £300 on mobos in the last six months, all Intel).

[Rainmaker]

Sorry to ramble on, but just as an aside... If I can sell my Reapers for around £65 to £70 (which seems very do-able looking around online), then it'll basically only cost me £50 more to go for a decent AM3 board with 4GB dual channel DDR3 ram instead of sticking to DDR2.

Keep DDR2 RAM, get a AM2+ mobo and a Phenom II X6 = £287
Sell DDR2 RAM, get an AM3 mobo and a Phenom II X6 = £342

TrustedReviews seem to indicate that the DDR2 boards aren't as impressive as DDR3 AM3 boards on the lower Phenoms, and suffer low OC headroom. For the sake of £50 and a bit of hassle selling the RAM I may as well just pay the extra. Now to save up... LOL

[ehhhhhhh]

with the same CPU, DDR2 800mhz (5-5-5-18) is pretty much equal in performance to DDR3 1333 (8-8-8-24)

I'm not sure it's a good thing to get rid of your DDR2 at this time. considering the prices and that you can overclock the cpu just as well in a good am2+ MB

[Rainmaker]

with the same CPU, DDR2 800mhz (5-5-5-18) is pretty much equal in performance to DDR3 1333 (8-8-8-24)

I'm not sure it's a good thing to get rid of your DDR2 at this time. considering the prices and that you can overclock the cpu just as well in a good am2+ MB

Thanks very much for that; it's put my mind at rest. My RAM is actually DDR2 1066MHz so hopefully I should be well away. It'll be cheaper to upgrade this way too, and since the new Bulldozer chips are also set to be AM3 socket (rather than a new one) then I may get away with a few years' upgrade-ability in the new rig after all. Excellent. I'll hopefully be able to upgrade at the end of this month; just in time for my birthday so my Mrs shouldn't moan too much haha

All the best.