advice please for cpu/ram upgrade

liamjrobertson · 24 Mar 2011 at 11:46

I'm upgrading my rig eventually to am3 platform using asus m4n98td evo board, which I have already bought. I use my pc mostly for gaming but I also do some sound production/recording work on it aswell. I initially wanted to get the new phenom II x4 975 but recently after reading some reviews it might not be the best choice ( I was hoping to do a slight oc on it to bring it over 4ghz but reviews say the chip is practically an overclocked original deneb core in essence and is difficult to oc further) This leads me to my first question- is it worth looking at the new phenom x6 ( think its the 1100 ) and does that oc well ( is it poss to get 4ghz from it ) or should I stick with my original choice of the 975?
My second question is regarding which/how much ram I should get. The board supports 1066/1333/2000mhz but the phenom x4 only supports up to 1333mhz. Also am I right in saying I will achieve a better, more stable oc with only 2 sticks of ram rather than 4 sticks?
Huge thanks in advance for any help.

Redmint · 24 Mar 2011 at 12:32

Phenom 1090T

GSkill Ripjaw 8GB

These get my vote, the 1100T isn't worth the extra £22 considering you can easily get either chip to 4GHz with decent cooling. If you're doing RAM intensive work (even for gaming) 8GB seems best these days according to a recent bit-tech article.

liamjrobertson · 24 Mar 2011 at 13:50

Just so happens I was considering the ripjaw ram, I'm confused though as most of them say they have been optimized for Intel or sandybridge- does this mean they are still as good with an amd cpu?

liamjrobertson · 25 Mar 2011 at 12:28

Anyone else like to add? Any more advice would be greatly appreciated as I'm gonna be getting these upgrades next week. Thanks guys :-)

Redmint · 25 Mar 2011 at 13:34

They're fine with AMD boards, they're just lower voltage which means they're compatible with Intel chips/motherboards.

liamjrobertson · 25 Mar 2011 at 14:33

thanks mint, I had been wondering about that for a while :-)

I'm thinking I'm probably going to go for Tuephenom 1100 over the 975 or 1090, I know its like 30 quid more but I read that it uses less voltage at high overclocks than the 1090, can anyone confirm this or would I be better off posting in the cpu specific forum?

eddyc · 25 Mar 2011 at 14:54

For what its worth my 1090T can happily hit 4GHz with 8GB of RAM the vcore is 1.45v (1.3 is stock). Not sure about whether a 1100 would do better.