AMD Phenom 9500 upgrade - lots of questions!

Belisarius · 1 Mar 2008 at 20:21

Oh well, all change on the upgrade front

As I've posted before I currently have:

Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra 939 with AMD64 and 2GB(4x512) of DDR400
1x250GB IDE
1x40GB IDE (for windows I'm afraid)
2x80GB SATA
CD-Writer
DVD-Writer
AGP NVIDIA 6600GT Dual DVI connected to 2 Iiyama Prolite E431s @ 1280x1024
Elsa Synergy 2 PCI connect to another Iiyama Prolite E431S
600W PSU - Zalman

I intended buying a Q6600 and the Asrock DualSATA2 775 mobo. Keep my 6600GT and sell the DDR and buy 2GB of DDR2. And basically keep the rest as is.

Now... I may be able to pick up a Phenom 9500 for £30. So I'm thinking of picking up the Asrock AM2NF3-VSTA mobo, still get 2gb of DDR2 and go that route. This way I still get a good boost over what I have for half the price.

Questions are:

1. What do people think?

2. Is there a performance hit using the Phenom in a AM2 mobo as opposed to AM2+?

3. Is the 'bug' in the Phenoms fixable as I've heard? I plan on doing a fair bit of virtualisation stuff but have the heard the bug is only an issue in VERY heavy loads?

4. Any other suitable mobos for this setup?

5. Any suggestions on a cheap PCI-E card (nVidia) and mobo in case I need to get a new mobo instead? Need dual DVI.

Main pluses for me here are I get a reasonable quad system for minimal outlay. I know the Q6600 is a great chip. I just can't really push the budget too much at the moment. If I get the Phenom at that price I can then afford to put an extra 2GB in which will help the VM stuff.

Thoughts and comments much appreciated, guys.

Cheers

Andy

spicypixel · 2 Mar 2008 at 07:33

For £30?! I'd give you £40 for it if you did go down the intel route, HOWEVER you'd be damn silly to sell it on, It's a good CPU FOR £30! Not all AM2 motherboards support phenom, its pin for pin compatible but relies on companys making BIOS upgrades for it. The bug manifests itself @ 100% load on all cores and its not even definite then, though most AM2+ BIOS's do provide a TLB errata work around giving you a 10% loss of speed for it. In my opinion I'd pick up the cheapest 7xx series motherboard and a ATI 3850. Sure you could do nvidia but its a crossfire board and allows you to upgrade later (and yes 3850 should have 2x DVI)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-094-MS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=808
or
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-141-AB&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=808

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-083-PC

@ those prices for 3850's you'd have to be insane to take nvidia on a crossfire board + phenom.

Enjoy.

spicypixel · 2 Mar 2008 at 07:35

Oh and forgot to mention you'll get PCIe 2.0 slots on the new boards and for cheap compared to the X38 intel boards.

Belisarius · 2 Mar 2008 at 13:15

Thanks for the info.

I've tended to avoid ATI in the past as I pretty well exclusively run Linux and the ATI support isn't as good. As I don't play much in the way of games I was also going to look for a passively cooled card. If I had to go PCI-E and get rid of my 6600 I'd really like to consider that option and cut down the noise. The mobo I've suggested does have a Phenom compatible bios.

I really hate buying a new kit! I can never decide and there's always a slightly better but more expensive but soon to be cheaper option just around the corner!

Cheers

Andy

Outcast · 2 Mar 2008 at 13:47

Build you r rig with that phenom then install the Boincs (ubuntu) Rosetta client ( and crunch for team 3cag !!) that'll test the bugger out !!

spicypixel · 2 Mar 2008 at 14:10

ATI's new drivers support compositing for compiz fusion or so ive heard. And their openly documented now so its all cool on that front. Though a 8600GT on the cheap would suffice as a linux orientated card.

Grumpy · 2 Mar 2008 at 14:46

The Asrock board mentioned by the OP is AGP so no crossfire or pci-e 2.0, also the above cards are all pci-e.

These are AGP, although neither are passive cooled ;

ATI http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-137-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=403

Nvidia http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-016-BG&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=411

I cannot find a crossfire board that accepts 2 IDE so if you wanted to go this way you would need to budget for additional Sata drives.

Personally I prefer ATI to Nvidia, but that's only because I had a major conflict problem with my first build which was only fixed by installing ATI.