Advice about upgrading from a 7750

[ntg]

Hello,

As you may be able to see in my sig my setup is this:

7750 Black Edition :
Arctic Cooler Freezer Pro 64 :
DFI DK 790GX-M2RS :
4GB Corsair TwinX 8500 :
2x 1TB F1 Spinpoint :
1x 1.5TB Seagate :
Asus 4850 512mb :
850w CoolerMaster :
Antec 1200

I use the pc mostly for office work but with heavy spreadsheets (and I mean really heavy). I also like to play the occasional game and I got a 2709w Dell screen so HD gaming is something I'd like to play but I'm not too fussed about this.

Anyway, this is a question about CPU, so considering my board what is the best CPU upgrade I could make and what are other near-best alternatives that could cost less. I'm really looking for a cheap upgrade that will give me a bit more processing power.

I believe my board is able to take the AM3 processors.


Cheers,

kgi

 

[Marine-RX179]

I believe your motherboard should be a am2+ board. While I am not sure if you can really use am3 CPU on it, the fastest/best official CPU for the am2+ should be a Phenom II X4 940 (a Quad-core).

With that said, for occasional gaming I think your current CPU (Athlon X2 7750 BE) should still be more than capable in most games (except games like Flight Simulator or newer demanding games like Battlefield BC 2), as it is newer architecture (Kuma) with 2MB L3 cache unlike the other Athlon X2 of the old architecture (Brisbane) with only 2xL2=512KB cache. Also, your CPU should be overclockable from the stock speed 2.7GHz to 3.1 GHz (according to review). So I think before you decide to open up your wallet to buy yourself a new CPU, you should try overclocking your Athlon X2 7750 BE first (especailly since you got a decent CPU cooler).

 

[Grimley]

According to DFI's support site your board will take the latest AMD Phenoms if you flash your board to the latest bios.

proof:

http://www.dfi.com.tw/portal/CM/cmp...sWindow?action=e&windowstate=normal&mode=view

The board being AM2+ may hold the new CPU (whatever you put in it) back a bit but I don't think notice much difference if you put the same CPU in a AM3 board later on.

 

[ntg]

excellent pieces of advice!

it makes me feel better about my 7750 already.

thank you very much folks.