upgrade from phenom II x4 965 BE

[rebelpatriot]

i was wondering if anyone can suggest a good upgrade from my current cpu. Phenom II x4 965 BE. My mobo is an MSI 970A-G46. The mobo only supports AMD and please dont post comparisons to Intel chips, im on a budget and intel is not for a budget.

 

[alannm37]

What is your budget? I suggest the AMD FX-8350, that can be as good as an i5 and is excellent for overclocking + has 8 cores.

If it's out of your budget then go for the AMD FX-6300, which is 6 cores and is also easily overclockable also. (Have this CPU myself!)

 

[i9-9999k]

take a look at this post http://www.overclock.net/t/1352370/just-overclocked-for-the-first-time/10#post_19114472

your motherboard has a 4+1 vrm setup. meaning 4 phases for the cpu power and one for the IMC (integrated memory controller). so, if you do end up getting one of the new fx chips, don't plan on overclocking/overvolting unless you want to kill the vrm mosfets

i recommend the fx-6300, your current phenom is rated at 125 watt tdp, the fx-8350 is as well. the fx-6300 is 95 watt. you're prolly pushing the vrms overboard already with the phenom chip and if you continue to load that thing to 100% for any extended period of time you're gonna have to buy a new mobo soon

the fx-6300 is a good chip and if you get some better cooling around the vrm heatsink (put a fan blowing on it or something), you may be able to overclock it a little bit

 

[WhiteSnake91]

well, I know you didn't want to hear it, but you're not going to get any better single thread performance upgrading to a 6 or 8 core cpu, your motherboard is also widely known for overheating/throttling when trying to overclock, so don't try that either. What's your current gpu and what games are you trying to play? A used locked i5 sandy bridge on ebay is often times the same price or cheaper than a fx6300 or 8320/8350, yet nobody ever talks about them, if you don't care about usb 3.0, h61 motherboards are also cheap on there, although a b85 shouldn't cost much either.

Many people "upgraded" to the 6300 from the phenom 965 and they said it wasn't that big of an improvement at all, so I'd say just save up for intel, it would be the same price or cheaper looking for a locked i5 on ebay anyway