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Can a Phenom II 955 work with DDR2?

BS Dave

BS Dave

BS Dave

Soldato
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As title - mate wants to upgrade but he's as tight as.

We've persuaded him to get a 955 (he hates overclocking but is ok with the unlocked muli and it'll mostly be for games)

He thinks he can save a wedge by using DDR2 and a cheap motherboard.

Can it be done??
 
After having a quick check of the AM2+ DDR2 boards available on here most seem to support the 95W version of the Phenom 955 (standard version is 125W I think). No idea if the 95W version is even available atm. He may be better off looking for a Phenom 925/945 if he really wants to stick with DDR2. However I think any of the AM2+ boards available on OCuk should support the 925/945.

Just check the motherboard info on the manufacturers websites if you aren't sure.
 
Phenom 955s - All of them, have memory controllers for both DDR2 and DDR3 on board.

Which they use depends on what motherboard you put them in.
In an AM2+ they will use DDR2 & in an AM3+ they will use DDR3. The type of RAM is the exact thing that defines whether a board is AM2+ or AM3.
There are many, many AM2+ boards which support Phenom 955, just check the CPU support list. The only thing is if the board only supports 95w chips, it's best avoided especially if you intend to overclock.

A perfectly good qaulity AM2+ motherboard can be bought for about £55 and 4GB of decent DDR2 for about £75.
It's slightly cheaper than going AM3 with DDR3 and performance is about the same. If he already has DDR2 to re-use, then I'd say go for it but if buying new there is very little in it price wise.
 
thanks for these replies fellas, must admit i forgot about this thread for a bit. he has only 2 gigs of DDR2 so would probably want to just gets 2x2gig sticks...of either DDR2 or DDR3 depending on which board he goes for.
 
If he'll start from fresh on the RAM then get DDR3. There's no longer a premium on either the RAM or the associated motherboards.
Only reason to go DDR2 on AMD nowadays is to re-use RAM or if you pick up a bargain since it performs the same.
 
darrenbe said:
Are folks still using PC's for gaming these days?

Havent consoles like PS3 taken over the old PC games market to a large degree?
Click to expand...

Games consoles have taken a wedge out of C gaming, but nothing is more versitile than a PC. i.e you can game, encode video/audio, do work, browse net, and a whole lot more from 1 machine what console can do even a couple of these.

back on topic, would work on right board as the Phenom II's have both DDR2 and DDR3 ram controllers on them.
 
As your mate is tight as, why don't you opt for the phenom II X2 555BE with the asus M4A785D-M Pro mentioned above you can unlock cores. Possibly making this dual core a tri or quad. And besides for gaming a quad isn't really necessary very few games use more than two cores.

The money saved on the cpu would be better put to more ram or even a better graphics card. Good luck with the build
 
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