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Thinking of going AM3 or i5

I to is in the same boat, however I will be clocking the thing :p or it will bottleneck me :(


I like AM3 a lot consdering its 16/16x on the chip set I would most certainly get, however the i5 in multi card is a cracker too.

bare in mind, this won't be till next year unless something blows its top IE my mobo or CPU
 
Intel cpus are faster in most things, except the gap narrows considerably if you just take into account gaming.

But for some reason cheap am3 motherboards and cpus with the option of unlocking a core or 2 with some overclocking, make am3 a little bit more fun imo.
 
I have this same question, cant deside which to get. The only thing Im unsure about at the moment is which generally gives the better overclock? If the AM3 chips clock well I will gfo with that and save a few pounds, but I was really wanting to hit 4 GHz with the i5.
 
pkcan30 said:
Phenom 2 955 Just built one and love it.
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Would i see much of an improvement over a q9550 though? I've got the opportunity to change my current spec as i'll be handing down some of my pc components to upgrade our old family one. I'd like to see an improvement over what ive got though.
 
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By the sounds of it I don't think AM3 or an i5 750 will really show you a big difference. Most likely be a benchmark difference, but not very noticeable when actually playing.

I presume you are ignoring RAM as both boards are DDR3 so would be needed for both or already have one of the DDR3 775 boards.

In terms of future upgrades, there will still be a 1156 i7 series providing quad core upgrades from the i5 series.

AM3 will also have faster CPU's released to compete with faster i5/i7 however they will also be launching the 800 series chipset, then again there is already talk of the P57 chipset for 1156. At that point are you going to want to change your MB anyway.

Personally with your rig I would just get a new 58x0 series card and keep the Q9550, unless you simply must do an upgrade because you want new parts.
 
mdjmcnally said:
By the sounds of it I don't think AM3 or an i5 750 will really show you a big difference. Most likely be a benchmark difference, but not very noticeable when actually playing.

I presume you are ignoring RAM as both boards are DDR3 so would be needed for both or already have one of the DDR3 775 boards.

In terms of future upgrades, there will still be a 1156 i7 series providing quad core upgrades from the i5 series.

AM3 will also have faster CPU's released to compete with faster i5/i7 however they will also be launching the 800 series chipset, then again there is already talk of the P57 chipset for 1156. At that point are you going to want to change your MB anyway.

Personally with your rig I would just get a new 58x0 series card and keep the Q9550, unless you simply must do an upgrade because you want new parts.
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Yeh again this was what i was thinking, the market seems to be changing a lot and hasn't settled down yet so i don't really i know what to do for the best especially with die shrinks and new chipsets coming up. Either way the old pc needs an upgrade so i might just upgrade it with an am3 dual core setup maybe, either that or go for a full blown oc'ed i7 upgrade.
 
Nocky24 said:
Yeh again this was what i was thinking, the market seems to be changing a lot and hasn't settled down yet so i don't really i know what to do for the best especially with die shrinks and new chipsets coming up. Either way the old pc needs an upgrade so i might just upgrade it with an am3 dual core setup maybe, either that or go for a full blown oc'ed i7 upgrade.
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There is also another option: you could go for a cheap AM2+ upgrade to keep the existing DDR2 RAM on the old machne (I'm assuming it's DDR2) then put in either a 955BE quad (a steal at £135ish if you know where to look) or if the southbridge is SB710 or SB750 then you could take a chance on unlocking the extra two cores on an X2 550BE... and either way there is a future upgrade path for future AM3 CPU's including possible six cores next year.
 
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Hades said:
There is also another option: you could go for a cheap AM2+ upgrade to keep the existing DDR2 RAM on the old machne (I'm assuming it's DDR2) then put in either a 955BE quad (a steal at £135ish if you know where to look) or if the southbridge is SB710 or SB750 then you could take a chance on unlocking the extra two cores on an X2 550BE... and either way there is a future upgrade path for future AM3 CPU's including possible six cores next year.
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Well its actually a ddr3 775 mobo with 2 sticks of 2GB Corsair xms3 1600mhz (a waste i know but hey it was prebuilt when i got it). So yeh going am3 isn't a problem or any more expensive to me as i'll just use my current memory for now.
 
I don't see the point yet, but when I do which lol

they look even particularly if you clock the hell out of them
 
mdjmcnally said:
I presume you are ignoring RAM as both boards are DDR3 so would be needed for both or already have one of the DDR3 775 boards.
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Even then LGA775 used higher voltage DDR3 which supposedly isn't compatable with i5/i7 boards. At least I remember reading that somewhere.

Hades said:
There is also another option: you could go for a cheap AM2+ upgrade to keep the existing DDR2 RAM on the old machne
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Thats spending money on a sidewards move at best

Personally I would stick with the Q9550 and upgrade something else. AM3 gives similar performance so its a sidways move at best. LGA1156 is 10%-40% improvement over the Q9650 but unless your using a multi GPU setup you still won't gain that much switching for games. Your best bet is to stick with the Q9550 and upgrade to a SSD or something. that would give noticable improvement.
 
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