Which AMD Athlon/Phenom

[dlknight]

Hey,

I'm upgrading my home server CPU as I have now sold the existing CPU (Opteron 1212). I'm running an Asus M4A78L-M LE AMD 760G motherboard with 4GB OCZ RAM.

Its used for running 3-4 VM's on KVM on top of Fedora 12 (Firewall VM - Linux, Openfiler - Linux and Windows XP).

I've seen the Phenom II X2 555BE on special offer here at OCUK but it is stretching the budget slightly. Also the Athlon II X3 440 which is £10 cheaper at £60. Then I have seen some older Phenom X3/X4 for £40-£50 on the bay such as the X3 8450 and X4 9650.

• Phenom II X2 555BE
• Athlon II X3 440
• Phenom X3 8450
• Phenom X4 9650

Just wondering what my best option is, I also like to keep the overall power consumption for the system down.

Cheers

Dave K.

 

[Trunks9486]

Its a toss up between Athlon X3 and Phenom II.

For heavy multi tasking the best guaranteed solution is the Athlon though.

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

I'd go for the AthlonII X3 based on the power consumption bit in the OP. It'd be a decent upgrade also.
However, it'd maybe be worth picking up a cheap Phenom X4 9x50 (not the initial 9x00 chips) and undervolting/underclocking it slightly?

 

[dlknight]

Thanks Guys,

Ordered an Athlon II X3 445 in the end for the same price OCUK are selling the 440

Fingers crossed it will unlock either L3 cache or 4th core - but not overly fussed as I will still have the 3 cores

 

[jack.mitchell]

A touch late now, but I ordered the X2 555 a few days ago and it unlocked to the 4 cores, which makes it terrific bang for buck.

 

[dlknight]

I had considered the X2 555BE but didn't want to take the gamble and be stuck with a dual core. I'll be happy with 3 cores

 

[Pulseammo]

Interested to hear if you reckon its a pretty decent CPU and if it unlocks to 4 cores, post back if you try please!

 

[dlknight]

My server is now like a rocket ship - unfortunately I could unlock and BIOS showed a Phenom II X4 B45 with 6MB L3 Cache but it wouldn't boot at all even with 1.5v (CPU) and 1.4v (NB)...

But I'm happy with the Athlon II X3 445

If you are using virtualisation just remember to turn on "SVM - Secure Virtual Machine" otherwise you will be scratching your head wondering why your VM's run like poo...