Phenom II 955 BE or FX 4100

[drea.drechsler]

Hello... I've come across parts to assemble a complete system that would consist of an M5a88M motherboard (AM3+ socket) and EITHER a Phenom ii x4 955BE OR an FX-4100 (true Bulldozer). Both can be overclocked I'd like to know which processor would be better though.

I know this motherboard can support FX processors as I had a 6 core FX-6300 OC'd to 4.4 or 4.5G (at 4.5 it would throttle when VRM overheated in a video encoding). I figure the 4 core 4100 should OC to 4.5 easily, maybe even more.

I remember I had to use this FXTweak utility to disable APM since the BIOS didn't do it properly but Win10's power plans didn't like the tweaks so I had to run it everytime I'd do anything processor intensive or it would just throttle back to keep within it's TDP. So I'd rather run the PhenomII as I think BIOS will properly disable APM, and keep it disabled, but want to know whether I might be giving up performance for it.

Second part of question: what should I expect for an overclock on PhenomII x955BE? I think about 3.8G, just dunno.
What is a safe Max Voltage? This MoBo does have an LLC, if somewhat limited.

I've always understood PhenomII to have superior IPC to Bulldozer and this one has 4 true cores vs. 4 cores sharing resources in the FX BD modules. I just don't know which will be better: 4 BD cores@4.5g or 4 PhII cores at 3.8G or higher if possible.

Thanks for advice or pointers/links!

 

[salgado18]

I'd say get the Phenom. In threaded work, both are good, and the FX may be a bit faster. But in other tasks, the Phenom will be way faster and more predictable. I had an FX-8120, and single-core performance was definitely not good, even though it beat a higher-clocked i5 while rendering.