Phenom II motherboards CPUs and memory

mutantaxe

Junior Member
Mar 2, 2001
17
0
0
Going to get a Phenom II .... its either the X4 955 BE or the cheaper option of a X2 550.

Now whats a good value motherboard .... dont need multiple PCE express as will only ever run one GPU. Dont want anything cheap/nasty but neither something bloated and overpriced. Want a good reliable performer.

Does a DDR2 mobo suffer against a DDR3 mobo ? Do the 955 or 550 lose much on a DDR2 motherboard? Would the difference be noticeable other then benchmarking ?

I have about 6gig of DDR2 so thats why I am asking . Use this or get DDR3 is something I havent decided upon.

 

monovillage

Diamond Member
Jul 3, 2008
8,444
1
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I've done 2 AMD builds in the last week. Used a Gigabyte MA-790X -UD4P on one $110
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813128387
and an Asrock micro ATX A780GMH/128M $72 on the other.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813157154
Quite frankly i was surprised at the quality of the Asrock board, i'll use them again. I got a reply back from Asrocks tech support just hours after i sent it about a windows7 driver issue....try that with Gigabyte.
Look at the PhenomII x3 720 BE, at $140 it's a good budget CPU, and not much more then the X2 550.
If you have the DDR2, then use it. Benchmarks i've seen don't give a big enough boost to performance to lay out the $80 or so for 6 GB of DDR3 and real world performance it'll be unnoticeable.

*disclaimer* these are the opinions of this poster, YMMV and I may be full of BS.
 

poohbear

Platinum Member
Mar 11, 2003
2,284
5
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i'd consider the x4 955 BE and the X3 720 BE, forget the x2 550. DDR2 @ tight timings & DDR3 at the looser timings show no difference in performance in real world apps.