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Which Phenom II?

fozzybear

fozzybear

fozzybear

Soldato
Joined
27 Mar 2004
Posts
7,653
Location
Manchester
I'm just deciding which bits to get to finally complete my build but am in two minds.

Uses will be mainly image processing and the odd bit of gaming.

AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 550 (£75) or AMD Phenom II X3 Tri Core 720 (£92)? Is the X3 worth the extra £17 for what I need it for?

I WON'T be overclocking but may have a go at unlocking any extra cores. Motherboard will be the Asus M4A785TD-V Evo.

Cheers.
 
I would Definately go for the 720.



I have the 550 which i can run as an x2,x3,x4...:)

And i can tell you for a fact that there is a BIG jump in performance going from x2 to x3 but not much of a difference going from x3 to x4.

Resident Evil 5 Fixed benchmark as an example. DX9 max settings....all @3.6Ghz

X2 58fps
X3 84fps
X4 92fps.

Of course it will vary depending on the game/app as to how well multithreaded it is.

Im so impressed by my 550x3 that i leave it running as a tri core rather than a quad core, because the extra volts and heat arent worth the slight performance advantage TBH.
 
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I would get the 720 (and did) it also has the headroom if you do decide to have a go at clocking later on in the computers life but on standard settings its a great chip for the money!
 
As a 550 owner i have to admit the 720 is AMD's best kept secret.......

3 cores really is the sweet spot ATM for all round needs, 4 cores sounds sexier, but 3 cores is where its at for current needs.

I know AMD have just launched budget quads, but the lack of L3 cache really can and does hurt it, especially in gaming.

A true comparison is the 955, and the extra £60 for 1 more core doesnt buy you £60's worth of more performance.
 
ive got mb and memory sittinng here and was deciding which to get

x3 720 or x4 955

i do quite a bit of video stuff so 955 for me but the x3 does very well in a lot of things and even gives a lot of the top end stuff a good run for its money,
 
nheather said:
Interesting comments on the tri vs quad.

I was going to get a 955 but it sounds like a 720 might be more than good enough.

Cheers,

Nigel
Click to expand...

Save yourself £60 and put it towards a better Gfx card, far bigger performance increase going down that route...

Even in the most demanding game out there which loves quad core cpus ARMAII, the difference is small on my rig..with its internal benchmark i get this in different core setup:

X2 23fps
X3 35fps
X4 38fps
 
Cooper said:
Save yourself £60 and put it towards a better Gfx card, far bigger performance increase going down that route...

Even in the most demanding game out there which loves quad core cpus ARMAII, the difference is small on my rig..with its internal benchmark i get this in different core setup:

X2 23fps
X3 35fps
X4 38fps
Click to expand...

I have seen similar results for other games using quad cores compared to dual and tri aswell.
 
Yeah, made have made an error with the graphics card. I recently bought a 4890 which I'm really pleased with. Why didn't I wait for a 5850?

(i) When I get the itch to buy I find it hard to wait

(ii) I was enticed by the recent £120 'this week only' deal

(iii) I don't want to spend a lot on my PC - although I use it a lot I don't do a huge anmount of gaming on it. I figured that the 5850 is going to be around the £180-£200 mark, that it wouldn't be as quick as the 4890 and that I'm really not that bothered about DX11. But I now realise that I might be wrong on the first two - hope not as I want to justify my 4890.

Still I suspect PSU could do with an upgrade so I could use the saving for that.

Cheers,

Nigel
 
I bought my 4890 a few months ago, part of the decision was that I didn't want to buy a cheap card then and a 5850 when they turned up (no ETA at the time) and Win7 didn't have any support for an X1000 series GPU that I was using at the time on loan from a friend!
 
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