Looking for help on Socket AM2

[Arrunas]

Hello fellow forum dwellers.
before i start i would say that what i am asking here isn't my main pc and so i would appreciate people not replying with something along the lines of "get a better mobo"

its not for me, its for a friend that i am trying to help out so i'm looking for an answer where the answers live

I haven't got his details at hand so i don't know what specific motherboard he is using, I do know that he is currently running an athlon 64 4400+ which is running at 2.2ghz.

so what i'm trying to find now is what is the most powerful cpu he can get without having to upgrade his motherboard, hes not after a major performance boost but i'm sure a better processor could be bought that would fit that (oldish) motherboard.

i've had a look around but the specifics of these things elude me, for example some places people say that all processors up to socket AM3+ would run in a socket AM2, albeit in a reduced fashion.

thanks for any help that people can give me.

TL;DR dont know what motherboard, currently using an athlon 64 4400+ on socket AM2, whats the best can get without upgrading motherboard.

 

[Hagar]

Depends largely on whether there has been a bios update to support AM2+ procesors. The early phenom x3 and x4 were AM2 I believe and some AM2 motherboards could support later phenom processors which specified AM2+ motherboards. AM2 and AM2+ were largely compatible except for being limited to the specifications of the AM2 socket when later processors were used with the AM2 board.

Ask him to download and run CPUz and check the motherboard page then you can check for cpu compatibility and bios version required.

Also worth considering is increasing the ram if he has only 1-2Gb. It will be DDR2

 

[Arrunas]

Ask him to download and run CPUz and check the motherboard page then you can check for cpu compatibility and bios version required.

didnt know it had this function, this should solve my problems. thanks for this

 

[cats_five]

What problems are you seeking to address? Maybe what he needs is more memory.