Is the 960T or 10xxT still a good upgrade for an AM3 system?

[Zorander]

I've been toying with the idea of upgrading the CPU in my parents' system (just for the sake of it). Below is the system specification:

AMD Phenom II X2 550 (one extra core unlocked, i.e. Tri-core)
(there is an aftermarket CPU HSF -can't remember exactly what-)
Gigabyte GA-MA785GT-UD3H
2x4GB DDR3 RAM
128GB Samsung 840 SSD & 500GB HDD
HIS HD5750 1GB GPU
E-MU 0404 Soundcard
450W Antec VP PSU
Windows 7 Home Premium

The 960T and some X6s sometimes appear on Ebay for around $80-$110. Are those prices ok or should I not bother given their age?

I'm also concerned if there is going to be any power delivery or heat dissipation issue if I went with a, say, 1090T.

Thanks.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I ran a 1090T for a long time, even overclocked to 4GHz on a crappy 4+1 power phase motherboard. If you run lower clocks and voltages, it should be fine with a Radeon 5750 on that power supply, in my opinion. But, the problem with those CPU's is the current cost. They typically seem to go for $100+, not sure I'd spend that on a 1090T. Also a good chance that, depending on what they use the machine for, they'd benefit more from a higher clock / better IPC vs. more cores. There's a good chance that, if you're spending $100+, they'd get more out of an overclocked G3258.

With all that said, an overclocked PhII and SSD should make for a pleasant experience for light use like email, youtube, flash games, etc.

 

[Jovec]

I've been toying with the idea of upgrading the CPU in my parents' system (just for the sake of it).

Based on this alone, no. Probably the best move would be to switch them to a new AMD APU platform or Intel Celeron/i3 system, using the IGP. You could ditch the GPU and sound card and get a modern platform with about half the idle power usage. A Celeron CPU/mobo can be had for around $100-$125, while the APU or i3 setup would be around $200 for anything worthwhile (A8 or better).

If they need the cores, then sure an x6 is a nice bump.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If they need the cores, then sure an x6 is a nice bump.

Exactly. If they are editing / encoding video, then I would say yes. Anything else, and I don't think that they would see much of a difference.

A G3258 combo might be a good option for $100 though.

 

[Zorander]

Thanks for confirming it's not a worthwhile upgrade. I'll look at a complete mobo+cpu package when the need actually arrives.

Cheers!

 

[bbhaag]

I ran a 1090T for a long time, even overclocked to 4GHz on a crappy 4+1 power phase motherboard. If you run lower clocks and voltages, it should be fine with a Radeon 5750 on that power supply, in my opinion. But, the problem with those CPU's is the current cost. They typically seem to go for $100+, not sure I'd spend that on a 1090T. Also a good chance that, depending on what they use the machine for, they'd benefit more from a higher clock / better IPC vs. more cores. There's a good chance that, if you're spending $100+, they'd get more out of an overclocked G3258.

With all that said, an overclocked PhII and SSD should make for a pleasant experience for light use like email, youtube, flash games, etc.

This is the issue I keep running into. I want too upgrade my x4 965 to a x6 but pricing on the x6's are insane. It just doesn't make sense for me to upgrade. I guess it's a supply vs demand issue. Not many x6's were sold so there aren't many around so they still demand a decent price for people looking to upgrade the older AM3 platform....sigh.

I feel your pain Zorander.

 

[Zorander]

Quite surprised at the resell values they fetch. I remember putting up my A64 4600+ (s939) on Ebay years ago and selling it for much higher than expected. It paid for about half the cost of the i7 CPU I upgraded to.

P.s. I did spot a 960T for about $70-80 months ago. Ibpassed on it but not sure if that was a good decision.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

I do have several 1045t X6s here that are lying around unused.

 

[Erenhardt]

Well... you can dig some and maybe you will find a custom bios that support FX cpus

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2175079/amd-4130-compatibility-reaction-ma785gt-ud3h.html

That would be a major upgrade for very little dollar

 

[bbhaag]

Well... you can dig some and maybe you will find a custom bios that support FX cpus

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2175079/amd-4130-compatibility-reaction-ma785gt-ud3h.html

That would be a major upgrade for very little dollar

Were do you even begin to look for a custom bios or do you need to create your own? I tried googling but I don't even know what search terms to use. Is there a forum that you would recommend as a place to start?

 

[Justinbaileyman]

I say if you already have a AM3+ Motherboard then heck ya go for it. More cores and more cache cant hurt anything.Besides there isn't anything new coming out that would be worthwhile for buying an all out new computer.Besides $100 upgrade beats an $600-1000 one right??

 

[Abwx]

I guess it's a supply vs demand issue.

Rather price/perf, a X6 1100T keep up with a 4670k in heavily multithreaded tasks, so 100$ is not inadequate in respect of this metric.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Were do you even begin to look for a custom bios or do you need to create your own? I tried googling but I don't even know what search terms to use. Is there a forum that you would recommend as a place to start?

They do modded BIOSes at wimsbios forums. I don't know if they are still around or not.

 

[nenforcer]

I've upgraded both my mom and my niece computer to a AMD Phenom II X4 840T for about $60. At 2.9GHz it's only 100MHz less than the 960T Black Edition but with the same 6MB of L3 Cache. Anything above this just isn't worth it to me used starting with the 960T at $90 or so.

 

[jhu]

Rather price/perf, a X6 1100T keep up with a 4670k in heavily multithreaded tasks, so 100$ is not inadequate in respect of this metric.

anandtech begs to differ

 

[Abwx]

anandtech begs to differ

And he ll be left to beg, for this one at least..

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/913-7/cpu-performances-applicatives.html

No mysterious benches there, although their 2 threaded 4.1 Winrar is as outdated as Anand s 3.8 iteration....

 

[Yuriman]

And he ll be left to beg, for this one at least..

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/913-7/cpu-performances-applicatives.html

No mysterious benches there, although their 2 threaded 4.1 Winrar is as outdated as Anand s 3.8 iteration....

Seems to depend on the particular test. The i5-K varies from ~5% behind to 40% ahead, with an average somewhere in the 20's ahead. Looks like on average the Phenom is about equal to an i5 4430, which is still pretty impressive. The i5 will win any workload that takes advantage of AVX, of course, and has quicksync, but there's definitely some value in the Phenom, considering it's a dropin upgrade for such an old platform.

 

[Abwx]

Seems to depend on the particular test. The i5-K varies from ~5% behind to 40% ahead, with an average somewhere in the 20's ahead. Looks like on average the Phenom is about equal to an i5 4430, which is still pretty impressive. The i5 will win any workload that takes advantage of AVX, of course, and has quicksync, but there's definitely some value in the Phenom, considering it's a dropin upgrade for such an old platform.

Hardware.fr old tests has benches that are lowly threaded, like Winrar 4.1, wich will disadvantage the Phenom, hence numbers like 40% in favour of the i5, you re right that new instructions give a boost to new uarches but at the same time thoses new apps are likely to be better Mthreaded and in that case the 50% more cores often more than compensate for the ISA, FWIW the CPUs with more than 4 threads gained over the 4T siblings in their updated benches, 12% and 6% more for the 8350 and 4770K in respect of the 4670K.

On the perfs it is as good as a FX6XXX and if one s MB is not FX compatible it s a decent upgrade for whom is starting from a Phenom X2, even a 2.8-3.0 X6 is already stellar in such a case, for those whose MB is compatible a 120$ FX8320 is a better deal since it ranks 5% above the i5 and has also recent ISA.

 

[jhu]

And he ll be left to beg, for this one at least..

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/913-7/cpu-performances-applicatives.html

No mysterious benches there, although their 2 threaded 4.1 Winrar is as outdated as Anand s 3.8 iteration....

That link shows the 4670k faster than the 1100T in most of the apps. I guess if you use 7-zip all day, sure the 1100T is a little faster. But also for varying degrees of "keeps up", it's not bad for a drop in replacement. It's certainly less time consuming than replacing an entire motherboard.

Otherwise the 4670k is faster in rendering and transcoding. This is the conclusion I came to with my tests on Povray and Blender:

BMW Benchmark scene
Core i5 2400S, 2.5 GHz
Ubuntu 14.04, Blender 2.71, custom Blender binary
Time: 3 minutes 15.67 seconds
1059743 samples/s, 423897 samples/s/GHz, 264936 samples/s/core, 105974 samples/s/core/GHz

Phenom II x6 (1090T stock, 3.2 GHz)
Ubuntu 14.04, Blender 2.71, custom Blender binary
Time: 2 minutes 32.26 seconds
1361881 samples/s, 425587 samples/s/GHz, 226980 samples/s/core, 70931 samples/s/core/GHz

Note that a 1100T (3.3 GHz) would be able to do 1404433 samples/s and a Sandy Bridge at 3.4 GHz, which is the 4670k's stock speed, would be able to do 1441246 samples/s. That's already higher than the 1100T. In addition, Haswell has a higher performance/clock than Sandy Bridge (I don't have a proper Haswell setup to test Blender with).

 

[Abwx]

Overall the perfs are not much better, i wouldnt call thoses CPUs frankly unequal, using Hardwre.fr recent suite the 4670K would be 10-15% better while the 4770K would get 40%, i dont find those differences impressive, moreover in respect of thoses CPUs costs.

Otherwise nice Povray benches, just that the FX8350 score with 4M/1T is not a score per module but per core, a single core is not powerfull enough to extract all of a FPU throughput, otherwise it wouldnt scale at all with two threads on the module.

 

[bbhaag]

They do modded BIOSes at wimsbios forums. I don't know if they are still around or not.

Thanks, I'll check it out and see what I can find. I have a budget MB though so I doubt there is a custom bios out there. Never hurts to look though!