Upgrade the CPU?

[engrbill47]

I have a home made desk top PC. The MB is a GA-MA74GM-S2 from Gigabyte, CPU is an AMD Phenom 955, 2.2 Ghz quad core, 2 x 2 sticks of 800 Mhz RAM, video card is a Evga Nvidia 9600 GSU w 1 gig of RAM, and an ANTEC 450 watt PS. I have been told on the graphics forum that I can upgrade my CPU to a AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W. But the Gigabyte web site says the following: "If you install AMD AM3/AM2+ CPU on AM2 motherboard, the system bus speed will downgrade from HT3.0(5200MHz) to HT1.0(2000 MT/s) spec; however, the frequency of AM3/AM2+ CPU will not be impacted. Please refer "CPU Support List" for more information. ". Can someone explain what the heck this means? I want the higher speed CPU in order to make a better graphics card feasible. Also, will I have to install a higher wattage PS? And will my present MB support the 125 watt CPU? Thanks in advance

 

[-Fran-]

It means that the bandwidth (in practical terms) that the Phenom II 955 can manage will be reduced because of a different technology (HT3.0 -> HT2.0) on your motherboard, however the computational power itself that the processor has, won't be impacted.

Example: moving things around in memory won't be improved, but making calculations on the CPU will by a lot. Games could be both, since there are games which are CPU bound (core and speed) and some are more bandwith bound (use a lot of memory: Crysis).

Cheers!

EDIT: I'm sure having the PhII 955 is an upgrade that can manage a "bigger" video card. Now, some "value" oriented MoBos don't support 125W CPUs, might want to check the list and see if there's more than the standard 95W CPU support.