Does my motherboard support AM3+ piledriver?

[simon12]

I have an Asrock 880G Extreme 3 board I bought years ago before anyone had heard of AM3+ bulldozer or piledriver and my understanding was AM3+ has different pins so old AM3 boards would never be able to use AM3+ chips but according to Asrock there are some piledriver CPUs that work on it see http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/880G%20Extreme3/?cat=CPU is this just for later versions of the board or should my board run them with a bios update?

Also I have a Phenom x4 at 3.7GHz (unlocked Phenom x2) and a Radeon 6950 2Gb would a piledriver FX 6300 be a big upgrade (gaming only).

 

[hytecgowthaman]

mobo Support am3+ but bios update is required. Phenom to fx good upgrade for gaming.

 

[hytecgowthaman]

use 8100 Or 8120 better then 6300.

 

[simon12]

Thanks for the answers do you or anyone else know are there any limitations or performance issues running a piledriver chip in this board all I can find seems to be speculation around when bulldozer was released that says about power saving issues and other stuff.

 

[noidea_77]

Sorry, but a Google search with "Asrock 880G Extreme 3" gets you directly to the CPU support list of your mobo on the Asrock site. That list tells you which CPU is (fully) supported and the bios version you need.

 

[satyamdubey]

first up a comparison of bulldozer 8 core with a Vishera 6 core looks like this: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=699
if you focus on games, you would see the 6300 trumping the 8150 simply because the vishera is more powerful and better tweaked core than bulldozer. the only reason the 6300 gets trumped at times is a comparatively lower clock and the obvious lack of a compute module (which AMD call "two cores").

Now it is safe to run AM3+ cpu's on AM3 boards but you must remember that AM3+ cpu's and sockets are designed for higher peak currents @ 145 amps compared to 110 amps that AM3 socket can supply. This will all mostly translate to the limit of OC'ing your board may permit.

to use a 6300, you must update to BIOS version P 2.10 as suggested here: http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?cat=CPU&Model=880G Extreme3

use your older phenom and update the BIOS from here: http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?cat=Download&os=BIOS&Model=880G Extreme3

Go ahead and get that 6300 and enjoy a great gaming build.

good luck
-Satyam

 

[pat]

only 95W parts, according to the chart for FX. So, forget the high end 8 cores one, as they are 125W.