AMD Phenom II X2 B55 - How bad is it?

[cuttooth]

Hi, I have a PC that I use for modernish gaming on medium to high settings. My videocard is a GTX 560 (non ti) and I have 8 GB of ram. I'm wondering if my CPU is the bottleneck on my system. I think it was $70 when I bought it. It's the AMD Phenom II X2 B55 (with 4 cores unlocked).

At around $150 or so, what would be the best alternative? Or is it not worth trying to upgrade with that budget?

Thanks

 

[legendkiller]

it's not CPU, 4 cores at 3GHz+ will give you the same GAMING experience as a 4770k. Your better off upgrading the GPU or at least SLI them if a 560 is cheap.

 

[barto]

I disagree with Legendkiller. I do think that the CPU is the bottleneck here. The Phenom B55 is an old CPU. The 4770k is way more powerful than the B55. When it comes to CPUs, it's not always about number of cores and definitely not always about frequency. It's about efficiency. With newer generations, CPUs are more efficient. The B55 was released 4 years ago. I don't understand how a 4 year old CPU could even compare to one that's only been out a year. There's no question that is what is holding your system back.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Phenom+II+X2+B55

What motherboard do you have?

 

[bjaminnyc]

Your MB likely has an AM3 socket and hopefully a bios update to support the FX line. If so, grab an FX 8320 and your performance for everything with be considerably better. I went from a Phenom x6 @3Ghz (4 more cores than your chip) to the 8320 and it was a discernible difference in gaming and encoding.

 

[amirp]

Remember guys that he has his CPU unlocked to 4 cores.
The way I see it you have 3 options:
1) upgrade the CPU
2) upgrade the GPU
3) go for an entire rebuild

At a budget of $150 option 2 and 3 are out (there's no GPU you can get for that much that is significantly better).

What speed is your CPU running at currently? And what motherboard do you have exactly? If it will support the FX line we can explore an upgrade in that path

 

[legendkiller]

I disagree with Legendkiller. I do think that the CPU is the bottleneck here. The Phenom B55 is an old CPU. The 4770k is way more powerful than the B55. When it comes to CPUs, it's not always about number of cores and definitely not always about frequency. It's about efficiency. With newer generations, CPUs are more efficient. The B55 was released 4 years ago. I don't understand how a 4 year old CPU could even compare to one that's only been out a year. There's no question that is what is holding your system back.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Phenom+II+X2+B55

What motherboard do you have?

We are talking about gaming performance right? CPU with "4 Cores" at "3GHz" will most likely perform the same in gaming with couple frames per second differences unless the games is optimized for 8 threads. My old i7 950 at 3GHz performs similar to a 4770k awhile gaming that I wont need to upgrade for awhile and the only difference is energy efficiency.

 

[bjaminnyc]

Legendkiller - I'm going to have to disagree as well. Pretty sure you could disable 2 of the core on the 950 and still out perform the B55 unlocked to 4 cores in nearly every scenario. The IPC on the 950 or 4770 is far superior to the Phenom cores. The argument that the game is only optimized for X threads so you don't need a processor with more than X cores is only valid if your computer isn't doing anything other than running the game which is impossible. A 3.0GHZ 4770 will blow the doors off the B55 in FPS, its hard to find raw numbers comparing a chip as old as the B55 vs 4770 but I would suspect a >20% difference removing all other bottlenecks.

I have an unlocked x4 to x6 960t. The chip is perfectly stable at a decent overclock 3.4-3.6Ghz & is way slower than my FX.

 

[legendkiller]

Legendkiller - I'm going to have to disagree as well. Pretty sure you could disable 2 of the core on the 950 and still out perform the B55 unlocked to 4 cores in nearly every scenario. The IPC on the 950 or 4770 is far superior to the Phenom cores. The argument that the game is only optimized for X threads so you don't need a processor with more than X cores is only valid if your computer isn't doing anything other than running the game which is impossible. A 3.0GHZ 4770 will blow the doors off the B55 in FPS, its hard to find raw numbers comparing a chip as old as the B55 vs 4770 but I would suspect a >20% difference removing all other bottlenecks.

I have an unlocked x4 to x6 960t. The chip is perfectly stable at a decent overclock 3.4-3.6Ghz & is way slower than my FX.

Your comparing a 4 thread CPU to an 8 thread CPU, in a "gaming" base that only support max of 4 cores/thread the performance shouldn't be that much WHEN gaming...

 

[barto]

I'm just going to mark a solution considering the OP hasn't responded in a while. I also don't care to see this turn into a war. Go help others.