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Which Phenom II

shinester184

shinester184

shinester184

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I plan to treat myself to a Phenom II rig, and I was just wondering, should I go with the PII 920 or 940? They're only 0.2GHz difference, and there's a huge 40 quid gap between them! What am I actually paying extra for? I plan to overclock it anyway, so it shouldn't matter should it?

What would you go for? But as far as I can see I'm paying £20 per each 0.1 GHz and it doesn't seem worth it! Getting a 920 could mean getting 2 4850's in crossfire, am on a budget!

Any help would be great.
 
I wouldn't go for 2 4850's if it makes the CPU decision harder, find a 1gb 4870 for a reasonable price, they are around.

920 or 940, they're both good. You've got the unlocked multi on the 940 but that really only matters if you're going for higher OC's. I've been quite tempted to pick up a 920 myself the last couple of weeks.
 
Is it basically similar to the i7 920 v 940 just a higher clock and more attractive advertising? As long as they'll both hit around 3.8GHz I'm happy.
Any ideas?
 
shinester184 said:
Is it basically similar to the i7 920 v 940 just a higher clock and more attractive advertising? As long as they'll both hit around 3.8GHz I'm happy.
Any ideas?
Click to expand...
as Emlyn_Dewar said if your gonna do high overclocking then get a 940.

just beware not all 920/940 will hit 3.8ghz. it just depends on the chip.
 
940 has more chance of hitting the magical number due to an unlocked multiplier (you have more choice in your clocking).

Hopefully you'll get lucky like me and it'll run on stock volts too. :D

..tbh I've not even tried to push it further yet - LazyClocker™.
 
Hey guys,

First off apologies to shinester184 for going off topic - didn't wanna create a whole new thread for what could be a simple answer.

Is the 720 the same socket as the 940?

I only ask since AMD's site describes the 720 as AM3 and the 940 as AM2+ - on top of that it states that the 720 is DDR3 compatible and the 940 is DDR2? :confused:

Bit confused as you can see - can anyone shed any light on whether one or both will work on the Asus M3N-HT Deluxe AM2+ motherboard that i plan to buy?

Thanks in advance.

gt

P.S: For you i'd probably go with the 940 - just easier to get a good clock out of it from the sounds of it!
 
AM3 chips will work on BOTH AM2+ and AM3 boards, they have DDR2 and DDR3 controllers with 938 pins.

AM2+ chips such as the 920 and 940 (940 pins) will NOT work on AM3 boards.

So in other words brand new chips are backward compatible with older sockets i.e. a good thing.
 
Oh and for the Intel fanboy doubters out there, check out a few reviews with game benchmarks at 1600x + and you'll see the AMD X3 720 beating the Intel i7 920. :D At lower res of 1280x it's about equal, not bad for a bargain bucket chip. ;)
 
Edleake said:
Oh and for the Intel fanboy doubters out there, check out a few reviews with game benchmarks at 1600x + and you'll see the AMD X3 720 beating the Intel i7 920. :D At lower res of 1280x it's about equal, not bad for a bargain bucket chip. ;)
Click to expand...
Great to know! Thanks Ed. :D

Now to decide whether to go for the 940 or 720.

gt
 
Well if I'm honest I would have gone for the 720 BE if I weren't so impatient!

I'm also ashamed to admit the 'three core' idea put me off initially until I found out it retained ALL of the L3 cache!

It would be really cool if AMD released a dual core Phenom II with ALL the cache enabled, that would be a very quick gaming chip. :D
 
their arnt many phenomII chips that can do 3.8ghz at good volts. for me running at 1.55 is iffy at 3.6 ghz but i am running with 8gb of pc8500 which puts quite a strain on the cpu (officially the PII doesnt support 8gb of pc8500 only 4gb but you can get around this by tweaking the more advanced ram timings in bios), more heat generated and such, also running 64bit OS makes the chip work harder so you loose overclock there also.

I did get a chip from a god aufull batch, ironicly from here too :( shouldnt have been badged as a 940 imho.

i dont think i have seen any reports of a 920 going to 3.8ghz.

oh and if i was you i would take a 1gb 4870 over 2x 512mb 4850s and pair it with a 940. may be worth ringing to see what batch they have here b4 you buy as if its the same as mine it really isnt worth the money.
 
So let me get this straight, you're running the chip over and out of spec AND on a 64bit platform yet you can 'only' muster a 20% overclock... why are you complaining!

You're doing alright if you ask me. :)

I've seen a number of 920's at 4GHz and above, depends on the motherboard and person clocking, just check other enthusiast boards for results. Obviously the 940 with it's open multi is easier to clock, but that's a given.
 
TheMorningStar said:
their arnt many phenomII chips that can do 3.8ghz at good volts. for me running at 1.55 is iffy at 3.6 ghz but i am running with 8gb of pc8500 which puts quite a strain on the cpu (officially the PII doesnt support 8gb of pc8500 only 4gb but you can get around this by tweaking the more advanced ram timings in bios), more heat generated and such, also running 64bit OS makes the chip work harder so you loose overclock there also.

I did get a chip from a god aufull batch, ironicly from here too :( shouldnt have been badged as a 940 imho.

i dont think i have seen any reports of a 920 going to 3.8ghz.

oh and if i was you i would take a 1gb 4870 over 2x 512mb 4850s and pair it with a 940. may be worth ringing to see what batch they have here b4 you buy as if its the same as mine it really isnt worth the money.
Click to expand...

A good place to look through, not all the OC,s are in the chart on the first page tho.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=213248
 
TheMorningStar said:
their arnt many phenomII chips that can do 3.8ghz at good volts. for me running at 1.55 is iffy at 3.6 ghz but i am running with 8gb of pc8500 which puts quite a strain on the cpu (officially the PII doesnt support 8gb of pc8500 only 4gb but you can get around this by tweaking the more advanced ram timings in bios), more heat generated and such, also running 64bit OS makes the chip work harder so you loose overclock there also.

I did get a chip from a god aufull batch, ironicly from here too :( shouldnt have been badged as a 940 imho.

i dont think i have seen any reports of a 920 going to 3.8ghz.

oh and if i was you i would take a 1gb 4870 over 2x 512mb 4850s and pair it with a 940. may be worth ringing to see what batch they have here b4 you buy as if its the same as mine it really isnt worth the money.
Click to expand...
my first 940 was fault also very poor clocker too. i sent it back to amd because it was faulty but they didn't test it, they just sent a replacemeant. im not saying u can do the same because i don't know yours is faulty or not but i would say run prime95 for 8-9hours at stock to see if u get any problems if u do then maybe u can rma it.
 
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Just ordered a 720, they have flown off the shelves!

Im starting to think with all the cache avaliable to the cores (6mb) could 3 cores be the sweetspot, as stuff is starting to use 2 cores but we are a long way from 4.....
 
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