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Is this a worthy upgrade?

buchtis

buchtis

buchtis

Soldato
Joined
23 Oct 2009
Posts
3,997
Location
Derbyshire
Hi,

I currently have a AMD Athlon x2 64 Dual Core 3.0 Ghz, I know it's bottlenecking my 285 so i've just got a Phenom II x4 945 Quad.

Would this remove the bottle neck and will I see a good increase in performance?

Thanks.
 
I've got a 20" Dell at 1680 x 1050 and am not planning to upgrade any time soon as this screen is fine an so is the quality. Will DDR2 RAM work on it too, i've seen on the spec page that it supports DDR3 so i'm hoping it's backwards compatible.

Thanks for your help lads.
 
CPU bottlenecking is mainly game and resolution dependent.

But yes - if a few games, especially newer ones and ports from the PS3 and 360, the dual core CPU will hold you back.

I just went from an Athlon X2 5000+ Black Edition @ 3GHz to and Athlon X2 5000+ 45nm @ Phenom FX-5000 x4 3.3GHz (had to earn the unlock though), along with a motherboard upgrade. Everything else in the system is the same.

Huge difference in Ghostbusters going to quad core, which is optimised for multi-cores. Not a lot of difference in most older games but they ran fine anyway.
 
need urgent help please. just installed the x4 945 it recodnises it but then gets stuck at veryfing dmi pool data. ive updated uhe bios to f10 but it just wont go past this screen. sorry for any dodgy spelling doing this off my ps3. mobo is ga-ma69vm-s2
 
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According to this page it doesn't look like that CPU is supported by that motehrboard

Edit: I may have to take that back - I see there are two 945's listed. One is 95W and the other 125W - which one do you have?
 
UPDATE:

Took the CMOS batter out waited a wee while put it back in and it started fine. Just a quick pic, hope everything is as it should be:

untitled.jpg


One thing that worries me is the RAM, it says it's 'unganged', wtf does that mean?
 
Ganged means the RAM runs on a single 128 bit channel. Unganged runs on two 64 bit chanels.

Ganged might let you clock the CPU a bit higher and run single threaded apps a bit faster. Unganged is better for running multithreaded apps and for giving your GPU direct access to the system RAM (so newer games are generally better with unganged).
 
Thanks Uriel. How do I make it ganged? I was fine when I had my old x2 Athlon in but now it's giving me this message.

Btw, does the CPU-Z screen shot look O.K? Like, is everything as it's supposed to be?
 
I would leave it unganged if I were you. If you must change it it will probably be in the BIOS memory settings.

Edit: CPUz shot looks fine. Is your motherboard AM2 or AM2+. If it's AM2+ you can set the HT link speed higher (default for your CPU on AM2+ is 2000). If it's AM2 1000 is fine.
 
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It's an AM2 board so HT is probably maxed out. I think older games will be better ganged but newer ones (and ports from 360 / ps3) will be better with unganged.

Vegas pro 9 is also optimised for multithreading so I think that unganged will be better for the most part there too.
 
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