What speed DDR2 for a Phenom II x4 x945 CPU?

[Gregg Eshelman]

I want to max out a two DIMM board to 8 gig without breaking the bank buying RAM the CPU can't run at its maximum speed.

The board is a Biostar N68S+ Says it supports DDR2-1066 but do any of the supported CPUs actually benefit from that high (and high priced!) speed RAM? DDR2-800 is much lower price.

http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=498#cpusupport

Note that the BIOS it shipped with is the only BIOS ever released for the board. No updates, no new CPU support, so no Bulldozer, Zambezi or Vishera for this AM2+ board.

Picked it up, new in box, for $5. Had some random Athlon 64 dual core and a pair of 1 gig DDR2-667 sticks I plugged in, just to see if it worked. May plug my GeForce 9800GT into it when I get a newer GPU. It's going to be a "theft proof" PC, built in a Dell Dimension 2400 case. Who would steal an old Socket 478 Celeron? 😉

 

[frostedtim]

You might see a little benefit to having the higher clocked memory, but it is still fairly old tech. It all depends on what you intend to do with it.

You do want to make sure you install a 64bit version of Windows, otherwise it wont see all 8GB that you install. 32bit Windows can only see up to 4GB of total memory: thats both RAM and what is on your video card.

 

[Viking2121]

There is hardly any difference between DDR2 800 and 1066, at least on the Phenom II line. Also DDR2 1066 will have a higher latency than DDR2 800 so its going to be a trade off unless you find some really good DDR2 1066 which it will not be cheap. I'd personally go with DDR2 800 and call it a day. and can maybe even get 1066 speeds by overclocking some. I got my cheap PNY DDR2 kit to 1205mhz.

If you do try to overclock it, I suggest to read up about it, there are many guides for the phenom II's, Unfortunately yours is locked or its not the black edition so you are limited to FSB overclock.

 

[Gregg Eshelman]

I'm going to have to pick up a real 4 core Phenom II for it. I have a x2 555 Black Edition that's unlockable to x4 - but not on this board.

 

[Viking2121]

I'm going to have to pick up a real 4 core Phenom II for it. I have a x2 555 Black Edition that's unlockable to x4 - but not on this board.

You can probably pick up a AM3+ board 2nd hand for cheap since Ryzen is out, You 945 will work in a AM3+ board, all you'd need to do is get some DDR3 memory, And can later buy an AM3+ CPU like a FX 8 core for cheap. just make sure the board you are looking at is able to handle an 8 core, some can't even though they say they can.

 

[Gregg Eshelman]

I have an FX6100 on an Asrock 770 Extreme 3, the board on which I had the Phenom II x2 555 unlocked to 4 cores. Performance of the FX 6 core is very underwhelming. On multithread it has only a tiny boost over the Phenom II. On single thread it's slower. A dual core i5, probably even an i3, will run rings around this AMD, possibly even at lower Ghz. i7 will burn it to the ground. 🙁 As yet nobody has taken the plunge to see if any Vishera CPU will work with the final beta BIOS on this Asrock board.

If I get another AM3+ board it'll be one that can take the fastest Vishera core, but even those aren't much faster than the Phenom II.

Ah well, I'll put the plain old Athlon 64 x2 back on the Biostar and call it good enough in the old Dell. It's to be a dirt cheap box for general use, not a screaming game machine.

I've built many "theft proof" PCs over the years, starting with shoehorning a standard AT style 80486 board into a proprietary WANG 286 case over 20 years ago.

 

[Viking2121]

I have an FX6100 on an Asrock 770 Extreme 3, the board on which I had the Phenom II x2 555 unlocked to 4 cores. Performance of the FX 6 core is very underwhelming. On multithread it has only a tiny boost over the Phenom II. On single thread it's slower. A dual core i5, probably even an i3, will run rings around this AMD, possibly even at lower Ghz. i7 will burn it to the ground. 🙁 As yet nobody has taken the plunge to see if any Vishera CPU will work with the final beta BIOS on this Asrock board.

If I get another AM3+ board it'll be one that can take the fastest Vishera core, but even those aren't much faster than the Phenom II.

Ah well, I'll put the plain old Athlon 64 x2 back on the Biostar and call it good enough in the old Dell. It's to be a dirt cheap box for general use, not a screaming game machine.

I've built many "theft proof" PCs over the years, starting with shoehorning a standard AT style 80486 board into a proprietary WANG 286 case over 20 years ago.

I know what you mean, I've sold my Phenom II x6 1100T for more than what the FX 8350's were going for, I upgraded to well side grade to the FX8320 at the time, It took the FX 8320 4.6ghz to beat my 1100T at 4.4ghz. But I was able to get upwards of 5Ghz out of that 8320, I still have it but its on a cooler that can't handle a high overclock like that.

For gaming, there really is not much difference, but for some newer games the FX8 core would be worth it over a a Phenom quad core such at BF1 or even GTA5 and a few other CPU heavy titles.

GTA5 was getting low 20s on a Phenom II x4 940 at 3.8ghz 8GB of DDR2 800mhz ram and with a GTX 760, it wasn't much better than my q6600 system with a HD5850, Settings were on low or off at 1080p. BF1 was lucky to get more than 40fps on low, Black ops 3 was ok but it often dropped below 60fps. Switching over the FX8320 at stock BF1 would stay above 60 same with GTA5 with high graphics and Black ops was well into the 80s, only things that changed was the RAM and Mobo and of course CPU. (Slowly building my brother a system).

So the FX8 core will do better in newer games than any Phenom out there, now little games or games that don;t need a whole lot of CPU Phenoms easily match the FX.

I mean its your choice, I'd build a Sand or ivy bridge i5 or i7 or Xeon system and be done, You can find x58 Xeons or i7 920's for cheap that would out perform the FX problem is finding a board that don't cost an arm and a leg.