Which CPU should i pair with the Radeon HD 6850?

[Lazar_99]

Hi guys. I need a CPU that won't bottleneck my Radeon HD 6850. My current board only supports cpu's that have a max TDP of 95W (sorry if i made a mistake on phrasing it, i don't know what TDP means) and my current CPU is an Athlon II X3 445 Rana 3.1GHz. Also will i get rid of the bottleneck if i just buy a board that supports core unlocking and unlock its 4th core or it will still bottleneck the R 6850? If yes then please tell me which CPU should i go with (if there are no processors that will work on this board and won't bottleneck my 6850 then i don't mind purchasing a new motherboard).

 

[horaciopz]

Whats your motherboard exactly? There's not many processors in the AMD side to be a huge upgrade for yours, surelly any Quad core will be a direct upgrade, something like this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113007&Tpk=phenom%20ii%20x4%2095w

Mostly any phenoms ii x4 are upgrades just because the L3 cache and will help solve your bottleneck problem, but you need at least a 125w TDP motherboard to get a real upgrade for your Athlon x3, which can be unlocked to x4 but phenmos are about 10% faster than athlons just because the L3 cache.

A real upgrade should something like an 965 or 970 BE overclocked to about 4.0ghz to take out a bottleneck.

But you can always get new mobo + cpu combo from intel or even from AMD if you want.

EDIT: This is actually the best processor for a 95W TDP motherboard you can get, its Black edition, overclockeable and also unlockable for a 6 core. Only if you mobo supports that. This has Thuban cores which are the strongest CPUs that AMD launched untill today (forget about bulldozer those are at the par of most Ahlons x4 Lol) and these are actually about 20% stronger core per core than your athlon, it will about 60% more power for the 4th core +L3 chache and a good but outdated architecture.

http://www.amazon.com/AMD-Phenom-Processor-Edition-Socket/dp/B0056D5AMY/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1338051975&sr=8-3

 

[mousseng]

That 960T is a brilliant upgrade (and the best AM2/AM3 socket upgrade for that price range, imo), but I've a question. Wouldn't overclocking and unlocking the extra 2 cores increase the TDP? I know OCing will draw more power, and I feel like adding 50% more cores will too.

Either way it's a great upgrade. Though not all 960Ts can unlock extra cores.

 

[Lazar_99]

Whats your motherboard exactly? There's not many processors in the AMD side to be a huge upgrade for yours, surelly any Quad core will be a direct upgrade, something like this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113007&Tpk=phenom%20ii%20x4%2095w

Mostly any phenoms ii x4 are upgrades just because the L3 cache and will help solve your bottleneck problem, but you need at least a 125w TDP motherboard to get a real upgrade for your Athlon x3, which can be unlocked to x4 but phenmos are about 10% faster than athlons just because the L3 cache.

A real upgrade should something like an 965 or 970 BE overclocked to about 4.0ghz to take out a bottleneck.

But you can always get new mobo + cpu combo from intel or even from AMD if you want.

EDIT: This is actually the best processor for a 95W TDP motherboard you can get, its Black edition, overclockeable and also unlockable for a 6 core. Only if you mobo supports that. This has Thuban cores which are the strongest CPUs that AMD launched untill today (forget about bulldozer those are at the par of most Ahlons x4 Lol) and these are actually about 20% stronger core per core than your athlon, it will about 60% more power for the 4th core +L3 chache and a good but outdated architecture.

http://www.amazon.com/AMD-Phenom-Processor-Edition-Socket/dp/B0056D5AMY/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1338051975&sr=8-3

My board is a Biostar N68S3+ and the best phenom II X4 it can support is the 960T you mentioned. its at the very bottom on the list of supported CPUs. it doesn't support 965 and 970 phenoms. though i had in mind purchasing a new motherboard aswell but i think intel is just too expensive for me. the best i can get for the same money as the PII 960T is a intel i3 which is a dual core cpu

 

[horaciopz]

That 960T is a brilliant upgrade (and the best AM2/AM3 socket upgrade for that price range, imo), but I've a question. Wouldn't overclocking and unlocking the extra 2 cores increase the TDP? I know OCing will draw more power, and I feel like adding 50% more cores will too.

Either way it's a great upgrade. Though not all 960Ts can unlock extra cores.

Actually, yes. TDP increses to about 111TDP being a 6 core processor as people have noted.

I would recommend you get a full upgrade of mobo+processor, because that mobo is old tech, limiting your upgradability. I mean the last upgrade that you are going to be able to do is that Phenom II x4 960t and it is an already old processor. I would recomend you getting an Intel 1155 based board with a I3 that is actually a 2 dual but with Ht works like a four core processor. Btw the i3 2100 is better for gaming and many taks than most AMD proecessors even the 4 cores ones.

Only full multi threat aplications and some games, lets say Bf3 multiplayer or some MMOS like WOW will take a full 4 core processor in action.

If you dont want to spend $200 in an intel based mobo + processor grab that phenom, overcolk it to about 3.5 in stock voltages and stock cooling and you are good to go for at least 1 year. Maybe more.

 

[Lazar_99]

Actually, yes. TDP increses to about 111TDP being a 6 core processor as people have noted.

I would recommend you get a full upgrade of mobo+processor, because that mobo is old tech, limiting your upgradability. I mean the last upgrade that you are going to be able to do is that Phenom II x4 960t and it is an already old processor. I would recomend you getting an Intel 1155 based board with a I3 that is actually a 2 dual but with Ht works like a four core processor. Btw the i3 2100 is better for gaming and many taks than most AMD proecessors even the 4 cores ones.

Only full multi threat aplications and some games, lets say Bf3 multiplayer or some MMOS like WOW will take a full 4 core processor in action.

If you dont want to spend $200 in an intel based mobo + processor grab that phenom, overcolk it to about 3.5 in stock voltages and stock cooling and you are good to go for at least 1 year. Maybe more.

You sure? is the i3 better than the 960T? And i just wanna make sure, hyperthreading means it will have 4 threads but 2 cores. threads are logical cores? So if that's correct then it works like a quad core

 

[horaciopz]

You should read this article

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-fx-pentium-apu-benchmark,3120-6.html

Any intel processor would outperform any AMD processor, sadly.

But hey ! that Phenom ii x4 960t will do wonders for the next year and so on, also with a small overclock it will not have problems with your GPU, it wont bottleneck it.

Just remember that mobo wont let you get into newer tech and stuff.

And Hyperthreading dont make 2 logical cores into logical 4 cores. It splits the core in 2, basically. So each core will be working about 30% more efetive with it than alone. But this is all theoretically, in real world performance it does nothing for gaming an at beast it helps with some FPS, but the real advantage of the I3-2100 is its sandy bridge architecture, strongest cores= better performance. Also you should note that very few games nowadays uses more than 2 cores, only the real new ones.

BTW i must add the in the near future more games will be using more cores for different task, as battlefield 3 is able to use up to 6 cores for multiplayer maps with tons of people, but not more than 2 cores for single mode/campaign.

Hope it helped dude

 

[Lazar_99]

Best answer selected by Lazar_99.