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Athlon X2 5200+ 45nm AM3 may unlock to Phenom FX5200

Yeah, I now have something of an irrational attachment to this CPU. Chances are if I'd just got an equivalent Phenom II x4 I might have upgraded by now.

I'm reasonably tolerant of dips in framerate into the 30s though and I'm quite happy to turn the framerate limiter on to make a more consistent experience (the CPU bottleneck rarely gets any worse than that and in many games I'm still getting 60fps+ minimum framerates). For cross platform games, the consoles are running comparatively weak CPUs and I reckon I'm getting a similar or better experience as someone with a PS4 in the same games (but of course I'll be running at full HD with extra eye candy). Of course I'd be doing better with an I5 or I7 - but if gameplay isn't significantly compromised - who cares?

As for upgrades - well I can't see another CPU for £30ish that outperforms mine yet (well aside from 2nd hand LGA2011 Xeons but the motherboards are quite expensive).
 
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That's certainly paid for itself and as you said if you're happy with how your games run there's no need to upgrade. I often wonder how the Phenom II quad core I sold about 4 years ago would handle today's games with the right gpu.
 
Uriel said:
Yeah, I now have something of an irrational attachment to this CPU. Chances are if I'd just got an equivalent Phenom II x4 I might have upgraded by now.

I'm reasonably tolerant of dips in framerate into the 30s though and I'm quite happy to turn the framerate limiter on to make a more consistent experience (the CPU bottleneck rarely gets any worse than that and in many games I'm still getting 60fps+ minimum framerates). For cross platform games, the consoles are running comparatively weak CPUs and I reckon I'm getting a similar or better experience as someone with a PS4 in the same games (but of course I'll be running at full HD with extra eye candy). Of course I'd be doing better with an I5 or I7 - but if gameplay isn't significantly compromised - who cares?

As for upgrades - well I can't see another CPU for £30ish that outperforms mine yet (well aside from 2nd hand LGA2011 Xeons but the motherboards are quite expensive).
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you must keep this system well cleaned and use fresh thermal paste. a cpu can live for ever, the most impressive thing i think is the motherboard.
 
Not much cleaning to do. I made sure there was a filter over every intake and planned for a slight positive pressure with the fans so it shouldn't come in from elsewhere. Other than blowing a bit of dust off the filters I haven't really had to do much.
 
Being as it's the 6th anniversary of this thread starting, and I'm feeling a bit gung ho with all the kaby lake and ryzen talk, I decided to see if I could squeeze a bit more out of it.

tkJTy8m.png

Got past my 287 bus limit by dropping TRFC timings from the SPD rated 110ns to 160ns and setting the core and CPU nb voltages to stock for a Phenom II 980.

Didn't really do any stability testing to speak of. Just pushed up the bus in small increments and ran some benchmarks every 100mhz. Maybe one or two signs of flakiness upwards of 3.6GHz. Last successful set of benchmarks at 3.7GHz. Took the CPU-Z shot just before it BSODed on me running Fritz.

Maybe there's life in the old dog yet - but I don't really have time for a proper OCing and stability testing session at the moment.
 
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I still run an old 1090T in my desktop and although it wasn't as much of a bargain at the time its still going strong some 6 or so years later as well. I am thinking that I will upgrade it some time soon but it still plays everything more than well enough.
 
Annual check-in. :cool:

That unlocked FX-5200 is still doing what I need it to, while I have a GTX 970. According to the adjustable benchmarks at gamegpu.com they're remarkably well balanced. In the majority of new games, if I turn on all the eye candy at 1080p (which I usually do), I'm still GPU bottlenecked. Sure, in older games or low resolutions, there would be a substantial framerate boost in upgrading platform but it's not something that would improve gameplay much. If I bother upgrading, it'll need to be both GPU and CPU (realistically, platform) as either would cause a bottleneck in the newest games if I only upgraded one.

More of an issue is I can't add or change RAM without upsetting the overclocked applecart (bus limited due to the very low max multiplier on the CPU) and that's sometimes becoming a productivity problem. If I want to go above 8GB (I have some spare sitting unused) it'll mean a platform change - or an AM3 CPU with a more favourable multiplier.

As I'm back to being a full time student due to a career change, with finances further constrained by a new baby, don't think I'll be spending much any time soon.

Most of the gaming this machine does is Lego franchise for my kids, which isn't too demanding anyway.
 
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I just upgraded my brothers PC which had my hand down phenom II x2 550 unlocked to a phenom II x4 B50 and clocked at 3.2GHz. It could theoretically go up to 3.5Ghz but ran wayy too hot on the default cooler as the voltages required were very high. These parts were definitely binned lower than the ones sold as phenom x4's so i'm surprised to see you got 3.8Ghz! Well done!

He's now sporting a 2500k, which is probably twice as fast running at 4.3Ghz. Suits his needs fine - the Phenom was starting to struggle with the likes of cities skylines and just cause 3. He's only running a r9 270 but there was a significant improvement in framerates (especially minimum) in the afformentioned games. Just Cause 3 for instance was dropping down to 20fps regularly and averaging around 35fps, while with the 2500k it doesn't go below 35fps, and averages around 45fps. I think you'd notice a big improvement upgrading to something newer with a GTX970, but if you're getting decent framerates in the games you play maybe you can hold out a bit longer!

I think the 2500k is an excellent upgrade from a phenom x4 and only cost £60 after selling his old gear.
 
It helps that I'm fairly tolerant of low framerates, as long as they're fairly consistent. For games that get twitchy I enable vsync or a FPS limit (as long as it's higher than 30fps).

Just Cause 3 isn't really new enough. It's only really the latest games that hammer the GTX 970 hard enough for it to be the bottleneck in this system at 1080p. I've struggled to find many easily comparable benchmarks for Cities.

Below is an example where the CPU is probably the bottleneck - just:
mqmT3XD.gif

I know it's not an exact science, but an AMD FX-4300 gets 44% in userbenchmark for gaming, which is the same score my Phenom FX-5200 gets. Aditionally the A6-5200 (4 Jaguar Cores at 2.2 GHz - half an Xbox One X CPU - gets exactly half that).

What I suggest I've got, given the low power of Jaguar cores, is a system that may (in the right circumstances with a suitably well-coded cross platform game) perform very similarly to a PS4 Pro or Xbox One S.

The other thing is, nVIDIA drivers are a lot more friendly towards low-end CPUs. Here's that same Assassin's Creed Origins benchmark with a R9-290:
1lG332Y.gif
It does suggest that if anyone else is still rocking an older AMD CPU & GPU, it may be worthwhile sidegrading the graphics card to something by nVIDIA.

Edit:
To demonstrate - you can adjust the benchmark scores to show Graphics card scores for a given CPU. The nVIDIA vs AMD CPU-bound driver bottleneck (which is quite well known but disappears once you move up to a CPU with enough grunt - it's the same with lower end Intel Chips like early i3s, rather than an AMD CPU issue - is there for all to see:
rNl1NWE.gif
 
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Ahh the old amd duals that unlocked to quads :) I remember reading a thread where someone unlocked their Phenom II x2 to a quad and overclocked to 4.2 astonishing value for money :D
 
Had to back down to 3.2 GHz this week, as the heat had been causing some crashes. Not sure what's heat sensitive and don't have time to do proper diagnostics. I suspect the motherboard might be starting to feel the strain after all these years.

Picked up a Athlon x4 for loose change that will supposedly unlock to a Phenom II X6 but haven't had time to play with it yet. On the other hand I don't have the money for a new rig and there are situations where the higher multiplier and two extra cores might help. That's on the back-burner for now.
 
Uriel said:
Had to back down to 3.2 GHz this week, as the heat had been causing some crashes. Not sure what's heat sensitive and don't have time to do proper diagnostics. I suspect the motherboard might be starting to feel the strain after all these years.

Picked up a Athlon x4 for loose change that will supposedly unlock to a Phenom II X6 but haven't had time to play with it yet. On the other hand I don't have the money for a new rig and there are situations where the higher multiplier and two extra cores might help. That's on the back-burner for now.
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I don't remember any Athlons unlocking to hex core phenom ii s. Is it 960t pII?
 
So 9 1/2 years later I finally retired the FX5200 yesterday.

Replaced with a Ryzen 2700x and Asus Prime B450 Plus bundle (new) I got for about £220. Not quite the same category of bargain as the previous CPU but not bad I guess. However - I ordered a bundle with a 2700 and it's turned up with a 2700x in it. Can't complain for the money.

Edit: Never got around to trying the Athlon X4 640 - but my oldest son would like me to teach him how to build a computer. Not sure where my spare PSU is but the unlocking temptation is still strong...
 
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