Phenom 9950 X4 Question

[Torgoe]

I'd like to upgrade my CPU pretty soon, especially since the Phenoms are coming down in price. I'm debating on the Athlon X2 6000+ versus the Phenom 9950 X4 Black Ed. My concern is that my chipset will not be able to keep up with processor. Any advice?

My system:
ASUS M2N SLI Deluxe, Nvidia 570 chipset
Athlon X2 5000+
Zalman 9500 heatsink
8800 GT's in SLI
2gb XMS2 Corsair
650watt Thermaltake psu
160gb HD
75gb Raptor
ASUS SATA optical drive

 

[myocardia]

Welcome to anandtech. You're right about that nVidia chipset, unfortunately. If you aren't planning on also changing motherboards, I'd recommend either the 6000 or the 6400, since you don't seem to be an overclocker. You definitely do need alot more CPU horsepower, since you have SLI'd 8800GT's.

 

[Sylvanas]

I would not be getting a Phenom with a 570 chipset, you'd need a BIOS update for it to run and even then it can be flaky. If you want a Quad X4 then you'd be better off getting a new mobo like the new SB750 boards or if you want to keep the current mobo- better off getting 6000+ but you are not going to notice any difference between that and you're 5000+.

 

[JavaMomma]

I know for a fact that the 9850BE does work without problems... my work just upgraded a batch of old X2 3800+ machines to that CPU (9850) with your exact board. The users of the machines (VMWare, QA people) seem happy with the upgrade... What is the performance penalty over say an AMD790FX ... I'd imagine the old 570/590 chipsets wouldn't be very good for overclocking, but is the performance that bad that an X2 is a better upgrade?

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: JavaMomma
I'd imagine the old 570/590 chipsets wouldn't be very good for overclocking, but is the performance that bad that an X2 is a better upgrade?

No, it's not the performance, it's the stability. If you want a Phenom, you really need an AM2+ motherboard, it seems. Just take a look at all of the not so happy Phenom users, using his exact motherboard: http://www.google.com/search?h...deluxe+Phenom&aq=1&oq= Everyone I've seen, who's happy with their Phenom, is using an AM2+ chipset with it, and nearly all of them are using one of the AMD chipsets.