Upgarde: phenom 955, 965, or wait for thuban

[XD_dued]

Well...i figured its probably about time to upgrade my phenom 9950, so should I get the 955, or 965 c3. I really like how the c3 looks with overclocking...or is it worth waiting for thuban?

 

[AMW1011]

Get the Phenom 955, the extra $20 MAY get you another 100 MHz in an overclock but that 100 MHz wont do much. Besides your motherboard, I assume its an AM2+, may bottleneck your overclocks anyway.

 

[welshmousepk]

i agree with above poster. its not really worth the extra cash for a 965.

thuban is a little bit pointless unless you are encoding and such. if its for gaming, its a waste of money. most games dont even use 4 cores right now, let alone 6.

 

[yannifb]

i agree with above poster. its not really worth the extra cash for a 965.

thuban is a little bit pointless unless you are encoding and such. if its for gaming, its a waste of money. most games dont even use 4 cores right now, let alone 6.

I agree, but you can make games take advantage of quads even if they dont offer the option in the graphics menu. If you've got an Nvidia card like me, go to the Nvidia control panel, go to manage 3d settings, find multi core rendering and turn it from "let the program decide" to "on." I did this and it actually increased framerates dramatically. I now get 75+ in empire total war. And just to make sure i wasnt fooling my self, i turned it back to that automatic option and fps dropped.

EDIT: ATI cards probably have the same option at the CCC

 

[loneninja]

Phenom 955 has the C3 stepping released now too, it's on newegg, still a 125W part but it is the new stepping.

 

[yannifb]

Phenom 955 has the C3 stepping released now too, it's on newegg, still a 125W part but it is the new stepping.

Are you serious? Iv'e been waiting for the 955 c3 for forever to see how it performs compared to the c2 i have

 

[warmon6]

Well...i figured its probably about time to upgrade my phenom 9950, so should I get the 955, or 965 c3. I really like how the c3 looks with overclocking...or is it worth waiting for thuban?

If you keep waiting to get something better, you'll never get anything. Get what you need now. For the cpu choices, Get the 955 as everyone else said.

 

[andy_93]

the 955 is AM3 and the 9950 is AM2+,it will work on a AM2 MB but you wont get the potential out of it,so you would real need to upgrade your MB as well.

 

[welshmousepk]

@andy93,

do you have a link to some benchies on that?
its was my understanding that the am2+ bottleneck on am3 CPUs was tiny, bordering on non-existant. i may be wrong, but i certainly had that impression.

 

[AMW1011]

@andy93,

do you have a link to some benchies on that?
its was my understanding that the am2+ bottleneck on am3 CPUs was tiny, bordering on non-existant. i may be wrong, but i certainly had that impression.

You are correct, though it can be hard to overclock an AM3 CPU over 3.6 GHz on an AM2+ board.

 

[yannifb]

@andy93,

do you have a link to some benchies on that?
its was my understanding that the am2+ bottleneck on am3 CPUs was tiny, bordering on non-existant. i may be wrong, but i certainly had that impression.

Its more noticeable the more ram you use. See the only thing thats held back is the HT link, which runs at about 2.0 GHz on an AM3 board. Im not sure the speed it runs at on a am2+, but I think its 1600 Mhz, which believe it or not on ram intensive tasks like video editing and rendering makes a difference. Other than that it shouldn't be too bad.

 

[welshmousepk]

ah i see. thought so.

i dont know about OCing on an am3 board, but as a dual i can get my 550 up to 3.92GHz on this AM2+ board. so i tihnk the OCing is pretty close too.
i certainly see no reason to upgrade to an am3 board over an am2 board, given that youd also have to replace RAM. performance is just too similar to justify it. hence why im holfing off on it.

 

[yannifb]

ah i see. thought so.

i dont know about OCing on an am3 board, but as a dual i can get my 550 up to 3.92GHz on this AM2+ board. so i tihnk the OCing is pretty close too.
i certainly see no reason to upgrade to an am3 board over an am2 board, given that youd also have to replace RAM. performance is just too similar to justify it. hence why im holfing off on it.

Yeah there isn't much of a reason for upgrading now. However i would consider upgrading to the 8xx series AM3 mobos next fall. Then you'll be ready for Bulldozer. And plus those 8xx series ones are usb 3.0 mobos.

 

[Pro Llama]

I agree with the general choice, the 955 C3. Here is the link to it on newegg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103808&cm_re=955-_-19-103-808-_-Product

 

[Atranox]

What's the differences between the 955 C2 & C3?

 

[Pro Llama]

What's the differences between the 955 C2 & C3?

The C3 uses less power, produces less heat, and can overclock a little higher.

 

[SgtUSMC]

me reading this no one here know what they are talking about AM2+ Bottle neck what a joke

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1043444 the only bottleneck is that you don't know how to Overclock