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How great is the Phenom X3 720?

A

Atls

Member
Here's the thing: I'll either buy a Phenom II X3 720 for $130 with the required motherboard, or go for an i5 for $220 with the appropriate motherboard for that also.

I want to ask: How much better is the i5 than the 720, and is it worth spending the extra $90 for? Note: I want to take gaming and future-safe into account.

PS: And overclocking. Oh yes, cannot forget that. But OCing aside, at the core, is it worth spending the extra for i5?
 
Why the X3 and not the X4 for $20 more? If you can afford it, the i5 is a great option...but the X3/X4 is definitely "bang for your buck". The 1156 (i5) socket probably will last longer than AM3, but I would bet these sockets have roughly the same life left in them.
 
The X4 models are about $40-$50 more expensive, well for Canada anyways. Thanks for the help on lifespan, but how much better is the i5 than the Phenoms in pure performance?
 
Quite a bit of difference. They are worth it IMO. The Phenoms are good bang/buck, if you have a very limited budget.

Get the I5.
 
Depends on what you consider substantial.

Games like this might be the future of gaming:
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...rks-75-percent-boost-for-quad-cores/Practice/

You can see there is some difference.

Some games will show more, some less.

Most of the time you will be GPU bottlenecked.

3 cores are better than 2, and 4 are better than 3 - or will be in the future.

i5 better than core 2 and phenom II.

Is it overwhelming? Not for gaming, especially if you play at 1900x1200 or higher.

Maybe in the future you will, but I bet you will be upgrading GPUs before a phenom II.

Up to you and the value you give your money.

For $20 I would go for i5.

Food for thoughts:
Part 1: Building A Balanced Gaming PC

Part 2: Building A Balanced Gaming PC

CPU Scaling With The Radeon HD 5970

EDIT: So you saying the total difference is like $90 or like $200? $200 can buy you a 5870 instead of 4890 - or buy a second 4890.
 
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Atls said:
Here's the thing: I'll either buy a Phenom II X3 720 for $130 with the required motherboard, or go for an i5 for $220 with the appropriate motherboard for that also.

I want to ask: How much better is the i5 than the 720, and is it worth spending the extra $90 for? Note: I want to take gaming and future-safe into account.

PS: And overclocking. Oh yes, cannot forget that. But OCing aside, at the core, is it worth spending the extra for i5?
Click to expand...

Save your money and use it on a good GPU.

/thread
 
Thanks for all the replies! I might as well go on with the i5, seeing as how it's more future-capable and a better performer overall.
 
Atls said:
Here's the thing: I'll either buy a Phenom II X3 720 for $130 with the required motherboard, or go for an i5 for $220 with the appropriate motherboard for that also.

I want to ask: How much better is the i5 than the 720, and is it worth spending the extra $90 for? Note: I want to take gaming and future-safe into account.

PS: And overclocking. Oh yes, cannot forget that. But OCing aside, at the core, is it worth spending the extra for i5?
Click to expand...

I would go LGA1156. This way you can choose between either Core i3 or Core i5 750.
 
I think everything depend on what you going to be doing a lot, gaming? then x3 720 be is pretty good, if you do video encoding or multitasking then x4 620s is good, if you want future proofing, get i5. if you don't upgrade often, just pay a bit more and get i5.
 
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nyker96 said:
I think everything depend on what you going to be doing a lot, gaming? then x3 720 be is pretty good, if you do video encoding or multitasking then x4 620s is good, if you want future proofing, get i5. if you don't upgrade often, just pay a bit more and get i5.
Click to expand...

That x3 is fine for multitasking
anything more than dual core is fine for multitasking.
 
As others have mentioned, the i5 is pretty sweet. If you can spare the money, and don't need to put the money elsewhere, the i5 is what I'd suggest.

However, that being said, I bought a Phenom II x3 720 BE and was able to unlock the fourth core and OC it to about 3 ghz on stock air. I bought an aftermarket heatsink and am running it at 3.4 ghz right now.

Again, i5 if you have the money, x3 if you don't.
 
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There's a good chance that you can unlock the 4th core of PII X3 CPUs when used with the appropriate MB. My PII X3 710 is running well at 3.57GHz/1.425Vcore with the Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P. Both were purchased at Fry's for $50 each. Max load temp is around 47C @ 80F ambient with a good aftermarket CPU cooler.

Use the $ saved for a better GPU.
 
E4300 said:
There's a good chance that you can unlock the 4th core of PII X3 CPUs when used with the appropriate MB. My PII X3 710 is running well at 3.57GHz/1.425Vcore with the Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P. Both were purchased at Fry's for $50 each. Max load temp is around 47C @ 80F ambient with a good aftermarket CPU cooler.

Use the $ saved for a better GPU.
Click to expand...

wow now that is awesome. What is your NB running at? If you up the FSB instead of the multi, you can get the NB running faster too. That will get you about 15% more performance.
 
soccerballtux said:
wow now that is awesome. What is your NB running at? If you up the FSB instead of the multi, you can get the NB running faster too. That will get you about 15% more performance.
Click to expand...

NB voltage +40mV. All other settings at nominal default. HT and FSB raised to about 2200MHz. Chip is locked at 13x multi. Don't want to push FSB much higher than 300 because this will require more juice at NB.

I'm not sure if higher NB speed will result in 15% boost in performance. +3.5GHz CPU core speed is already blazing fast with all the stuffs I use. These Phenom II chips already draw a lot of current. System idles around 67W. Full Prime 95 load is 210W with Radeon 4550 GPU.
 
Atls said:
I want to ask: How much better is the i5 than the 720, and is it worth spending the extra $90 for? Note: I want to take gaming and future-safe into account.
Click to expand...
They're in a whole different class.

For value for your money + limited budget, the X3 720 is a great processor.

For raw performance, the i5 is far and away better.

If you are interested in saving $90 to be able to spend it on a better GPU, then the X3 won't let you down.

If you won't miss the $90, I'd say go for the i5.
 
E4300 said:
NB voltage +40mV. All other settings at nominal default. HT and FSB raised to about 2200MHz. Chip is locked at 13x multi. Don't want to push FSB much higher than 300 because this will require more juice at NB.

I'm not sure if higher NB speed will result in 15% boost in performance. +3.5GHz CPU core speed is already blazing fast with all the stuffs I use. These Phenom II chips already draw a lot of current. System idles around 67W. Full Prime 95 load is 210W with Radeon 4550 GPU.
Click to expand...

It depends on how high you can clock it. I increased mine from 2Ghz to 2.6Ghz, a guaranteed at least 12% in all applications, most are ~15-17%. The chip really flies at the higher frequencies with the CPU-NB (not "Northbridge" but CPU-NB in BIOS) clocked up there. Otherwise the cores tend to be starved for data.
Basically, at 2.6Ghz it puts the Ph2's at 1:1 performance parity clock/clock in most applications (video encoding and synthetic "benchmarks" aside due to the not having all the SSE stuff) with the q9x50 series of chips.
There's a thread way back somewhere in my history where we all talked about this, if you're interested; probably search for cpu-nb or something.
 
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For future longevity, go with the i5. I have an x3 720 and an i7 860, and while the i7 is much faster at video and mp3 encoding, in gaming I can't tell the difference between the two.
 
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