Swap to AMD setup?

Scougar

Scougar

Scougar

Soldato
Joined
30 Jan 2007
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PA, USA (Orig UK)
I currently have an:

e4300 @ 3.2Ghz with a CM Hyper 212 (2 Sickleflow fans), seems like pretty much the stable limit of the chip.
Asus X48 RoG Rampage Formula, but only 1 gfx card at present so a bit wasted.
4GB (4 X 1GB) GEIL DDR2 6400


I was thinking of trying to get either a Q6600 or somehow stretch for a Q9450/Q9550 to get better performance in games like BFBC2 (that use quads), but a friend suggested that perhaps I might do better by swapping to an AMD board/chip, and either getting a quad or getting one to try and unlock. I have really stayed out of the AMD loop for the past few year’s and don’t know what is possible. I was hoping to keep my budget to whatever I can get for my existing bits (Board/chip/ram(?)) and go quad with AMD, maybe plus a little bit more.

Is this sensible if I get second hand parts, I really don’t have a clue about what chips I should be looking at beyond maybe the Phenom II ? I have even less idea about AMD motherboard chipset’s and what will unlock or not etc?

Usage: Mainly only use the PC for web browsing, general work and gaming. Gaming with FPS's is the main reason for wanting a quad and high performance.


Any solid advice appreciated, thanks J
 
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get a quad for your curent set up. If you sell your parts your only going to have the money from that, so that would mean that you could only afford stuff that will equal it. Just get yourself a Q6600 for like £75 or something.
 
I sold off my old Intel dual core setup a while back to upgrade to an AMD quad core, mainly due to a little slow down in BFBC2.

Still managed to get £55 for 4 x 1GB DDR2 800Mhz ram (sold as 2 seperate matched pairs), £20 for my E5200, and £15 for my MSI P35 mobo.

Then bought 4GB DDR3 Kingston 1333Mhz for £40, motherboard for £45, and CPU on top for £65 so basically all I ended up paying for was a new CPU yet I upgraded the whole lot, AND managed to get a cheeky cache unlock to a Phenom II to top it all off nicely.

The easy route for you is obviously a Q6600 for your current setup, but if your prepared to split your current build you could upgrade to a DDR3 build for the price of a CPU basically, a Phenom II quad could be picked up for just over £100 I think.
 
Just get a Core2Quad CPU since you have a decent board.

Phenom II X4 is basically same tier as Core2Quad in terms of performance, but came one gen late (which gave the wrong impression of it being "newer tech" than the Core2Quad) at a lower price point...

The only real (and only) edge that Phenom II has over the Core2Quad is that it has x6/Hex core...but we all know that having 5th and 6th core don't really help with increasing frame rate for games.
 
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SouthEastBlue said:
I sold off my old Intel dual core setup a while back to upgrade to an AMD quad core, mainly due to a little slow down in BFBC2
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Was it worth it? Did you see any improvement? What frame rate improvement did you see?

Can see the general consensus is going towards C2Q, and it's what I would like to do, just Q6600 don't seem like very good value to me at the moment, almost the same price as the Q9xxx stuff, which is almost guaranteed to get to at least 3.6Ghz, where for a Q6600 that's it's upper limit for most :-(

Only benefit would be possibly getting a higher overclock with a phenom II quad, but I'm still left wondering about performance overclocked of a P2 quad vs a C2Q.
 
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It is poor value and performance gain to go from what you current have to a AM3 build (which you have to get CPU, board, and RAMs)...it's more trouble and cost than its worth.

Q6600 G0 would hit 3.6GHz no problem...most of the time when it doesn't it is due to motherboard chipset limitation. The X48 chipset is not as great as the P45 chipset for overclocking Core2Quad, but a Q6600 G0 should still hit 3.4-3.5GHz no problem, and wouldn't be bottleneck for a single 5850 in games that that are optimised for Quad. Q9550/Q9650 would generally hit 4.0-4.2GHz no problem on a decent P45 chipset board, but on X48 chipet board, it would probably be limited to 3.8GHz ish max.

Either go for Core2Quad CPU, or if you have to get CPU, board, and RAM...forget AMD build, just stretch your budget and go for a Sandybridge build.
 
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Scougar said:
Was it worth it? Did you see any improvement? What frame rate improvement did you see?
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From an E5200 @ 3.2Ghz to an unlocked Phenom II X4 @ 3.2Ghz using my old 4870 1GB I saw the mimum FPS rise from about 20 something to 30 something on big explosions and when a lot is happening on screen, although average number from FRAPS I could see was from 30 - 45 FPS on the dual core, and 40 - 60 FPS on the quad.

I've definitely seen an improvement, although obviously it was a pain selling all my bits to upgrade but I sold everything fast so it was a fairly easy swap over and I'm glad I jumped over the AMD for a small price.

I don't suppose there would be a huge difference from a Q6600 at 3.2Ghz to a Phenom II at 3.2ghz though, so it would be mainly down to your preference.
 
Great responses, thanks gents :-)

I'll try and keep my eye's peeled for a C2Q, and consider again selling the X48 as I'm unlikely to use Crossfire.
 
Scougar said:
I'll try and keep my eye's peeled for a C2Q, and consider again selling the X48 as I'm unlikely to use Crossfire.
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I used to use my Q6600 G0 with a crappy nforce board, which would become unstable if I overclock to beyond 3.0GHz. I later managed to pick up and Asus P5Q Deluxe (board only) from MM for £30 inc., and now I have my Q6600 G0 at 3.6GHz stable as a rock :D
 
Q6600. Like Marine, I had the same problem with mine (on a P5N-E SLI) and couldn't get it beyond 3GHZ. It was annoying to say the least.

I'd say grab a Q6600... then again, a nice cheap AMD CPU and unlock it wouldn't be a terrible upgrade, but really depends on how much cash you've got spare.
 
You can't rely on unlocking.

Here's a little benchie comparing PII X4 and Q6600.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/88?vs=53

It's worth bearing in mind that the PII I'd running 0.8GHz faster than the Q6600, which will ofc make it perform better.

Also worth bearing in mind that the PII X4 easily plays every game out there ATM - so Q6600 will do the same.

Only reason for moving the AMD would be the upgrade routes, imho.
 
Less hassle to get a Q6600, that's what I would do if I had your rig, would cost around £50 after selling your E4300.

Although say you get around £40 for X48 motherboard, £30 for DDR2, £25 for E4300 a new rig would cost you £68 and then you got 3 years warranty on the new items.

I wonder what the success rate is of unlocking the AMD dual cores is . . . . .

amdtemprig.jpg
 
Whilst I shouldn't take this on just one results, the thing that stood out to me and has done for a while with the C2Q vs PII is the Far Cry 2 result. Why is the PII so poor compared to the C2Q ?

Whilst overclocking is not guaranteed, I WILL be overclocking where possible, as I always have. I chose my current chip purely for it's value vs overclocking ability, as it's an awful chip at stock settings lol (well not really, just not good enough for games like BFBC2 @ stock 1.8Ghz).


Nelly> It is certainly something to think about! I'd not be keen to spend the money on a dual chip, then be stuck with a dual chip, where as the other route of getting a C2Q is guaranteed for number of cores. Being stuck with a dual chip at that point would be a waste of money changing from an e4300. Earlier today I worked out a price of about £110-£125 for my current stuff to sell, and had considered exactly what you are suggesting, just with second hand parts.
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
If it is Hex-core you are talking about, forget it...the two extra cores over a Quad don't offer any benefit in 99% of the games.
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Yeah I was hoping with DX11 that it would be more beneficial, although from benchmarks it would seem the 1090T seems to benefit with mininum and maxmum framerate's in Metro 2033 compared to a Quad X4 955 at 3.2GHz stock speed.

I read that Crysis 2 will use upto 8 cores, not sure about other games well anything reletively new I haven't checked.
 
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Results look much closer in the Tom's Hardware benches, whilst the Anandtech the PII X4 seems to be doing very poorly in comparison to a chip that is 800Mhz slower, and loses out to a chip that is about 400Mhz slower. I actual wonder if something odd is going on and they have used different gfx hardware or something (like a patch).

Anyway.. X4 seems to do OK in general, better than I expected tbh.

I'm still thinking that for any swap/upgrade to be worthwhile I'd have to get the following.

Q6600 at least 3.4Ghz, target 3.6Ghz on decent air.
PII X4 at least 3.8Ghz, target 4Ghz on decent air.
 
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Scougar said:
Q6600 at least 3.4Ghz, target 3.6Ghz on decent air.
PII X4 at least 3.8Ghz, target 4Ghz on decent air.
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A Q6600 G0 CPU would cost average £70-£80 and all you have to do is swap out the CPU. Going AMD...you would have a hard time finding 2nd hand Phenom II X4 955BE CPU at reasonable price, so you would most likely be looking at buying new at £110~£117, plus motherboard costing around another £50-£60, plus 4GB DDR3 ram costing another £40-£50, plus a Window reinstall because of motherboard change (and if you have a OEM Window, then that's binded to your current motherboard as well).
 
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