x2 555 vs x4 quad 965

Big red · 12 Jan 2011 at 15:57

hi i was looking at both these chips and thought the 555 would be a good buy at £67 compared to the 965 at £112 , i also hoped the the 555 would unlock to quad with a bit of luck with the ga-880gm any advise guys ?

the1gooner · 12 Jan 2011 at 16:02

Or for £88.79 there is the Athlon II X4 Quad Core 645 3.10GHz

Amazing value for money.

Mr Krugga · 12 Jan 2011 at 16:19

Buy the X2 555, if it unlocks, you'll be more than happy.

Cooper · 12 Jan 2011 at 16:46

Mr Krugga said:
Buy the X2 555, if it unlocks, you'll be more than happy.

And if it doesnt?.....

Buying a 555 with the hope of getting a free Quad is a road to dissapointment...

The vast majority of 555 do not successfully unlock to stable, and stable is the key part, to Quads...

You may get into Windows and everything may seem ok, but the newer batch 555's are duals for a reason, long gone are the days when full on quads were disabled to meet dual core sales demand, and sooner or later the faults on those 2 extra cores will show up...

If you want a quad, buy a quad, if you can only afford a dual 555, save up for longer....

Mr Krugga · 12 Jan 2011 at 17:19

Dunno, got the 555 just before Christmas for another build and unlocked successfully without any problems to Quad the minute I went to BIOS. Did 12 hours of prime95 stable, got all the benchmarks I wanted and played many games to find out how much better it is. The only think you could complain about is much higher prime load temps with 2 other cores unlocked. The stock HSF does it's job fairly well anyway. Core temp readings are also borked and Windows Experience Index will crash upon running. It might be fixed with a clean Windows install though.

The build cost me like £170 for mobo with 8x/8x Crossfire/X2 555 (now B55)/Corsair 2x2GB DDR3 RAM.

For me it was the biggest bargain of the year, even better than my Samsung Galaxy S for less than £12.50 a month

The OP can always send the CPU back under DSR and get a used Phenom X4 955/965 for less than £100 if the X2 fails to deliver (which is unlikely afaik). Dunno about that Gigabyte board though.

Cooper · 12 Jan 2011 at 18:37

Mr Krugga said:
Did 12 hours of prime95 stable, got all the benchmarks I wanted and played many games to find out how much better it is.

But you see the thing is, my 550 will unlock to a quad and be stable in prime and any other benchmark you could name, but....run a HD 720p flash video, on youtube or any other site, or my Sega Saturn emulator SSF,and Hardlock crash here we come...reset to dual core and no problem.

So, a lot of these unlocks will probably have a stability issue of one sort or another, if your lucky, the stuff you use the cpu for may never use that part of the chip which is borked, and so appears stable and you'll be none the wiser...

Luckily however my 550 is 100% stable in Triple Core mode, (flash video and Saturn Emulator included)[email protected]...which pretty much makes it as fast as a full blown Quad @3.2GHZ (in games), so im happy...

Mr Krugga · 12 Jan 2011 at 18:42

Yep, triple core is a sweet-spot for games nowadays. Especially if you overclock it

Mine does flash videos fine, cannot finish WEI benches for some reason though? :confused:

Saving £50 is well worth it though, especially if you consider the cost of the entire platform. You can get the board that is able to unlock, the X2 555 and 4GB RAM for just a tad above £150 these days. An average gamer should be more than happy with this setup plus a capable graphics card for £130 or so.

LiamJ · 12 Jan 2011 at 18:43

I would get the 955 to be honest.

If your CPU fails to deliver on the unlocking front, then even a significant overclock will still bottleneck anything more powerful than a GTX460. Mine currently bottlenecks my HD6850, and I will be spending more to upgrade to a 955 or maybe a 1055t when I have the money.

SL1CHAOS · 12 Jan 2011 at 18:58

I personally suggest going for the AMD PHENOM || x2 555, I know 3 people with the same cpu and all of theres unlocked, thers a 89% chance it will so if I was you I would take the risk. And also you'll have a black edition cpu all for £67!

LiamJ · 12 Jan 2011 at 18:59

Did you just pluck that 89% figure out of thin air?

nitram100 · 12 Jan 2011 at 19:02

Just get a 955, they can be had for just over a ton on some special deals

Mr Krugga · 12 Jan 2011 at 19:08

LiamJ said:
I would get the 955 to be honest.

If your CPU fails to deliver on the unlocking front, then even a significant overclock will still bottleneck anything more powerful than a GTX460. Mine currently bottlenecks my HD6850, and I will be spending more to upgrade to a 955 or maybe a 1055t when I have the money.

Phenom II X6 1055T gains no benefit over the 955 in games.

SouthEastBlue · 12 Jan 2011 at 19:25

It's a slightly longer shot, but you can also get lucky with the Phenom II X4 'unlock' on Athlon II X4s too.

To be honest though, if I had the money (speaking generally if I was making a new build) I would opt for the Phenom II 955 anyway just to skip out the being disappointed when something doesn't unlock how you thought it might and being stuck with a dual core. While dual core is fine in most games, everyone knows these days there's more titles taking advantage of 3 or 4 cores and it will make a difference.

Uriel · 12 Jan 2011 at 21:04

LiamJ said:
If your CPU fails to deliver on the unlocking front, then even a significant overclock will still bottleneck anything more powerful than a GTX460. Mine currently bottlenecks my HD6850, and I will be spending more to upgrade to a 955 or maybe a 1055t when I have the money.

The bottlenecking is game dependent more than GPU dependent. Pleanty of games where an X2 Phenom II won't hurt.

Having said that, for games that do need multi-core you'll see a bottleneck on much worse GPUs than a GTX 460. I have an unlockable dual core Athlon (on my second actually). Unlocking to a Phenom II X4 equivalent makes an enormous difference with an HD4850 in some games and not at all in others.

There is an extra 6MB cache unlocked on mine and that will have some effect too.

LiamJ · 12 Jan 2011 at 21:12

Yes, in most games, my CPU ran at an average of 80-90% just to keep up with my GTS250.

And Mr Krugga, I do more than just play games on my pc.

Mr Krugga · 12 Jan 2011 at 21:48

LiamJ said:
Yes, in most games, my CPU ran at an average of 80-90% just to keep up with my GTS250.

And Mr Krugga, I do more than just play games on my pc.

CPU utilisation has nothing to do with CPU bottlenecking. You'd ideally want your CPU to be maxed out all the time anyway.

Big red · 12 Jan 2011 at 21:51

i would be a bit disappointed if the 555 did not unlock , so i might spend a bit more and go for a quad with a decent board

LiamJ · 12 Jan 2011 at 21:53

If your CPU is maxed out, your GPU is not working to it's full potential, as it cannot use all the power it has.

For example, in my own system, I upgraded from a GTS250 to a HD 6850. With the new card, depending on the game, my CPU is always maxed out. I made a thread on this a few days ago which contained a few graphs showing GPU and CPU utilisation in two games and 3DMark 11.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18227916

Uriel · 12 Jan 2011 at 21:56

LiamJ said:
If your CPU is maxed out, your GPU is not working to it's full potential, as it cannot use all the power it has.

But if the framerate is smooth enough - who cares?

Mr Krugga · 12 Jan 2011 at 22:01

LiamJ said:
If your CPU is maxed out, your GPU is not working to it's full potential, as it cannot use all the power it has.

For example, in my own system, I upgraded from a GTS250 to a HD 6850. With the new card, depending on the game, my CPU is always maxed out. I made a thread on this a few days ago which contained a few graphs showing GPU and CPU utilisation in two games and 3DMark 11.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18227916

So you posted 3D Mark benchmark to prove that GPU isn't fully utilised and yet it is in the GPU benchmark (as it should be).

And two graphs from Call of Duty games that rarely max out the GPU due to them being CPU bound? I bet V-sync was on.