Upgrade from 720be to 965be?

[brownstone]

I'm currently sporting the 720be with a mild OC to 3.1. Would it be worth upgrading to the 965 or should I just be happy with what I have? Currently, I primarily use my system for gaming.

Thanks in advance!

 

[alyarb]

your 720 should be able to go to at least 3.6 with stock volts, beyond which point there are very diminishing returns for gamers. if you have $170+ to spend on a CPU, just get a radeon 4890 or 5770. Your games will be faster. and overclock that 720. 3.1 GHz is so mild it's not even worth mentioning.

what kind of motherboard do you have? have you tried unlocking it? what GPU?

 

[brownstone]

3.6 on stock volts? That would be pretty sweet, unfortunately I could not get much above 3.1 without failure, but I'm guessing that a large part of that is my motherboard. I am unable to try and unlock it because I'm sporting the amd 780g?? chipset. Would one extra core really make a noticeable difference at 2.8?

A video card upgrade is in the works if the 5850 ever drops in price. I currently have the 4830 running 1920x1200 and surprisingly it does ok...most of the time.

 

[alyarb]

well i'd say the 5850 is worth the wait for 19x12. triple-core at 3.1 is still nothing to snub your nose at. moving up to a 965BE is not worth the money for you.

 

[brownstone]

Maybe I'll try and squeeze some more out of my CPU while I wait. Just out of curiosity, do you have any recommendations for boards that would allow me to 1) attempt an unlock of the fourth core or 2) be good for OC'ing 3) not break the bank (~100)

Also, would the move from DDR2 to DDR3 be worthwhile in your opinion?

 

[alyarb]

nah, don't go with DDR3. your CPU supports it, but memory is expensive right now and you'd have to go through selling your DDR2.

if you just want to experiment with overclocking your config, don't overspend, just get this.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-177-_-Product

you should have no problem unlocking and overclocking the 720 *IF* it's a good chip. if you got a bad sample then you should just sell it on ebay and get a Athlon II X3 or X4 and try again. newer specimens are better overclockers. what you have now should be considered fast enough, so i would only spend ~$60 on a good overclocking motherboard to see if you can get 600-700 more MHz and thats it.

 

[brownstone]

Thanks, I may try that. Overall though, I get the idea that it may be best to just upgrade the video card and see how that does.

 

[konakona]

for what it's worth, I went from my stubborn 710 (no higher than 3.18/2.5 at high volts, no unlock) to 965BE (3.8/2.8, 4 working cores) just because it was a cheap upgrade. The catch was selling off 8gigs of ddr2 to settle with half that amount of ddr3. The system feels 'snappier', though I am currently stuck with the IGP to do any real testing on the gaming capability or improvement of thereof.

 

[brownstone]

What M/B are you sporting kona? Did you get a new board at the same time you got your 965 then?

 

[konakona]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2044273&highlight=965

Yeah, I got a pretty decent combo deal at my local fry's. The mobo was Biostar TA790GX A3+ - probably not the 790gx board out there, but I had no problems at all with the AM2+ version of it; so far so good with the new mobo, I kinda dig the bios save/load feature I didn't see on some of the other mobo brands

 

[brownstone]

Every time I see a Fry's deal I curse them! Sure it was nice when I lived closer to one, but now it really sucks. How much did you get for your 710?

 

[konakona]

hah! sorry for rubbing it in but there are two fry's near where I live, not just one

The 710 was again from a combo deal (egg, early feb), $170 for the am2+ version of the biostar mobo and the cpu.

 

[edplayer]

I would say it is worth it but only at a low price (for me at least). I think they should sell for maybe $100~120 by Christmas

don't bother upgrading motherboards