Upgrading from Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition

[Raxes]

Good afternoon everyone, I've currently got a Phenom II X2 555 BE in my desktop at home, with 4gbs of ram and an ati 5850, all on a 500w power supply. I can run most games full settings, but I've got an eyefinity setup that could use a boost. It might also be worth mentioning that I've got a CoolIT ECO ALC cooling my cpu - as I intend to do some overclocking here.

On my lunch break today I stopped into the local computer shop - and asked for their opinions on my upgrade, they advised to upgrade the cpu - so I picked up an X6 1090T 3.2ghz to replace my 555. They advised I could easily get it to 4.0ghz on stock cooling. I've been doing some reading and have learned I might not even see a difference from 2 to 6 cores - is this true?

I play a lot of Rift/Wow, work with photoshop/visual studio 2010 every day, and just picked up Crysis 2. While I can run it on max settings - there is some visible slowdown. Should I take the 1090T back, and pick up another 5850 + crossfire board + psu (~$570)? Or will I see enough of a boost to justify the $230 I just spent (cpu + Arctic MX4).

In the short term, the less money I spend the better, but I don't wanna get this out of the box, set up - and find I get NO performance increase in anything but photoshop, that would just be disappointing. I've been out of the game for a while...back in my day it was AMD/Nvidia as the popular choice, but AMD appears to have lost it to Intel. Your advice is appreciated.

 

[Vette73]

You don't want a 6core but a high speed BE Quad core.

You live near a microcenter?

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Question : Did you unlock your 555 BE?

The 1090T just has more cores, so you won't see much benefit in gaming, especially if your 555 BE is already unlocked to a quad.
While there is no equivocation that my OC'ed i7 920 destroys my OC'ed and unlocked X3 740 BE, it is more than sufficient for gaming.

 

[OCGuy]

The "4ghz on stock cooling easy" should be a red flag.

 

[Raxes]

No, I haven't unlocked it - I was under the impression the black editions came unlocked. I am running the lowest end am3 board, I don't know the model off hand - i spent around $60 on it. But if I can get 4 cores out of my 555, should I take this processor back and grab a nice top end am3 board? I'm right next door to a Memory Express www.memoryexpress.com

 

[Vette73]

What board do you have?

 

[Raxes]

I'm at work so I'm not 100%, but this looks like the same board, and is around the price I paid. Very basic:

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Product...8%28ME%29.aspx

 

[Vette73]

^

That board has the 710 soiuthbridge and can unlock other cores. So if your board has a 710 or higher southbridge make sure you have the newwest BIOs, set the cpu to default speed, and then try to unlock the other cores. Do 1 core at a time. Sometimes 1 will open but the other will not.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

No, I haven't unlocked it - I was under the impression the black editions came unlocked. I am running the lowest end am3 board, I don't know the model off hand - i spent around $60 on it. But if I can get 4 cores out of my 555, should I take this processor back and grab a nice top end am3 board? I'm right next door to a Memory Express www.memoryexpress.com

Well, the Black Eds do come with unlocked multipliers, but not unlocked cores.
Any mobo that supports ACC should be good to go. Also watch out if you're using a wimpier mobo, since a fair number of them don't have enough VRM phases to safely handle the power requirements of hex-cores, especially if OCed.

 

[Raxes]

Honestly the OC remark was what prompted me to do the research.

 

[Arkaign]

Honestly at this point, before doing all of the work to get this done, it would be best to try to return what you can, trade/sell your existing stuff, and build a new SB box. You don't have to go all out or anything, even the i2300 would be pretty far ahead of the X6 in basically everything but *some* encoding scenarios, and you'll have a new mobo, usb 3, etc, etc.

Edit : to put a bullet on the point, look at this :

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/20

The X6-1090T loses even to the i3-2100 most of the time. The i5 2300 and above will be no contest. Obviously it would be even better if you could swing an unlocked 2500K or 2600K, but that might be a little overkill.

Fwiw, I'm a happy owner of a 955BE, but if I had the $ to spend today, it wouldn't be on AM3.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Honestly, unlocking the additional cores and OCing the 555 BE only costs a few hours and $0, so that might count heavily in favor of the OP's existing setup.

 

[Arkaign]

Honestly, unlocking the additional cores and OCing the 555 BE only costs a few hours and $0, so that might count heavily in favor of the OP's existing setup.

Yep, that does make sense as a first step. If that is no good, then SB with that kind of budget.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Yep, that does make sense as a first step. If that is no good, then SB with that kind of budget.

Definitely. I tells ya, it's frickin' Conroe all over again (~10% IPC gain, more OC headroom). The Penryns were nice but not nice enough to justify dumping my E6600 @ 3.6 + P965. Same with the i7 920 @ 4.1 and X58

 

[richierich1212]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/20

The X6-1090T loses even to the i3-2100 most of the time. The i5 2300 and above will be no contest. Obviously it would be even better if you could swing an unlocked 2500K or 2600K, but that might be a little overkill.

I guess, but you can't really overclock the non-K SB cpus. You can easily overclock an X6 to 4GHz and higher, and their IMC is stronger than the Denebs, easily clocking 3GHz Northbridge speeds. Reviews don't show that fact.

Heck, even depending on what motherboard the OP has, if he's lucky he has a 8-series chipset and could upgrade to BD later on.

What operating system are you using, OP?

 

[dawp]

I'm at work so I'm not 100%, but this looks like the same board, and is around the price I paid. Very basic:

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Product...8%28ME%29.aspx

if that is the board you have, it does not support the PII x6, the highest wattage it supports is 95w and the 1090T is a 125w chip, there is a good chance you will blow your board if you try to use it. I'd shy away from that store from now on if they did not verify what board you had and if it can support a 125w chip. I would return it unopened, get a better heatsink and try to unlock the other cores.

 

[richierich1212]

^^^^^

This.

 

[richierich1212]

duplicate

 

[nanaki333]

if that is the board you have, it does not support the PII x6, the highest wattage it supports is 95w and the 1090T is a 125w chip, there is a good chance you will blow your board if you try to use it. I'd shy away from that store from now on if they did not verify what board you had and if it can support a 125w chip. I would return it unopened, get a better heatsink and try to unlock the other cores.

nah.. he won't blow his board. the most that will happen is it'll run at like 1.6ghz on all 6 cores. i put an x6 in to a board i thought supported 125W and it just crippled the speed. i got through the whole windows install and didn't notice until after i ran the windows index :\