# EDIT



## MilkyWay (Jul 7, 2009)

I have a friend who wants a new pc i got him to settle on a 4850 1gb for graphics all we need to settle is the cpu.

He watched a video on youtube of someone claiming to run crysis on very high at 60fps with a x4 9950 and a 4850

I kept saying get a phenom II x3 710 or a x4 810 or something similar.

I mean come on if my hardware cant run crysis well on high then how is a phenom 1 and a 4850 going too.


I recommended a quad because he does video editing and dosnt want to oc yes i had a lengthy discussion about it and he think it might break his whole system so let not try persuade anyone.


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## MilkyWay (Jul 7, 2009)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih8W0l2QDKw&fmt=22

he wants it because of this video too


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## Darknova (Jul 7, 2009)

No. Never was IMO. The only Phenoms worth buying were the Tri-cores because they were 95W chips instead of 140W chips, and could overclock to 3Ghz to give half-decent performance. 9950 was very poor performance per watt, plus it blew a lot of motherboards as they didn't support 140W chips back then.

Don't even bother with a Phenom.

Also, tell him that if he uses YouTube for PC advice he deserves to waste his money on shit.


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## MilkyWay (Jul 7, 2009)

Darknova said:


> No. Never was IMO. The only Phenoms worth buying were the Tri-cores because they were 95W chips instead of 140W chips, and could overclock to 3Ghz to give half-decent performance. 9950 was very poor performance per watt, plus it blew a lot of motherboards as they didn't support 140W chips back then.
> 
> Don't even bother with a Phenom.
> 
> Also, tell him that if he uses YouTube for PC advice he deserves to waste his money on shit.



thanks now someone else backs me up hopefully he wont waste his cash

oh and now it has to be one of these pc http://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/r03/ri03.asp

he wont build either turning all im trying to do is get him to spend his cash properly so he dosnt waste it

"no no no i am not a hardcore gamer" "but this one runs crysis full max"


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## MRCL (Jul 7, 2009)

60 FPS on Crysis I was barely able to obtain such rates with a C2D on 4GHz and two 4890s, so no God damn way.


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## MilkyWay (Jul 7, 2009)

MRCL said:


> 60 FPS on Crysis I was barely able to obtain such rates with a C2D on 4GHz and two 4890s, so no God damn way.



i know i wonder if he would join the forums to join in on this thread himself


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## Darknova (Jul 7, 2009)

MRCL said:


> 60 FPS on Crysis I was barely able to obtain such rates with a C2D on 4GHz and two 4890s, so no God damn way.



Even on my 4870 I'm having trouble getting FPS above 45 on the max settings, which is why I don't use YouTube....


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## MilkyWay (Jul 7, 2009)

youtube is fake they dont even prove they are using that hardware it could be anything much more powerful

and i bet it was jerky before fraps was used


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## MRCL (Jul 7, 2009)

MilkyWay said:


> i know i wonder if he would join the forums to join in on this thread himself



I should have screenshots even with a quad core and two 4890s to prove that his desired configuration won't do the job.


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## MilkyWay (Jul 7, 2009)

what should he be looking to get then like a Phenom II x3 720 or something like that?
what about the intel side of things?


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## MRCL (Jul 7, 2009)

MilkyWay said:


> what should he be looking to get then like a Phenom II x3 720 or something like that?
> what about the intel side of things?



AMD wise I have no clue. Intel wise, if he wants to play on very high, it needs to be a fairly powerful quad core. I had a E8400 on friggin 4500MHz and still it lagged sometimes.


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## MilkyWay (Jul 7, 2009)

Q8200 but its like 2.3ghz stock and he wont oc it at all

at those speeds it would get beat by other cpu i think


nah most he can realistically hope for is like medium/high like everyone else


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## kid41212003 (Jul 7, 2009)

I advise him get the fastest Core 2 duo, and the fastest single graphic card, that he can affords.

E8500 + GTX275

Crysis doesn't use 4 cores.


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## MilkyWay (Jul 7, 2009)

an E8200 and a 4850 would be okay but then i had that choice and went for a x3 720 and a gtx 260 hmmmn he does loads of video editing for a clan


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## MilkyWay (Jul 7, 2009)

Phenom x4 9950 is not worth buying!

it dosnt matter, he will find out that whatever he buys cannot play crysis or gta even on a decent frame rate, he will find out oc'ing is needed for any cpu and that custom built is shit

the price of a custom built is ridiculous

hes off msn and i think ill just let him find a pc and let him discover all the bad things himself


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## MRCL (Jul 7, 2009)

MilkyWay said:


> Phenom x4 9950 is not worth buying!
> 
> it dosnt matter, he will find out that whatever he buys cannot play crysis or gta even on a decent frame rate, he will find out oc'ing is needed for any cpu and that custom built is shit
> 
> ...



Learning the hard way. Sometimes the best option. I went thru that, too. Bought a prebuilt rig for 2500 bucks, WAY overpriced. I learned from my mistakes.


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## filip007 (Jul 7, 2009)

Only *Phenom II* can run as fast as Intel Quad...







http://www.techspot.com/review/162-amd-phenom2-x4-955/page11.html


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## MilkyWay (Jul 7, 2009)

MRCL said:


> Learning the hard way. Sometimes the best option. I went thru that, too. Bought a prebuilt rig for 2500 bucks, WAY overpriced. I learned from my mistakes.



well the other thing is he might actually be happy with his crap pre built thinking its the best


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## DrPepper (Jul 7, 2009)

kid41212003 said:


> I advise him get the fastest Core 2 duo, and the fastest single graphic card, that he can affords.
> 
> E8500 + GTX275
> 
> Crysis doesn't use 4 cores.



Second the E8500 and 275 

Although I'm quite sure crysis does use 4 cores.


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## Icewind31 (Jul 7, 2009)

MRCL said:


> 60 FPS on Crysis I was barely able to obtain such rates with a C2D on 4GHz and two 4890s, so no God damn way.



Maybe on 1024x768... w/ the quality of youtube videos you can never tell 

*note I've noticed that the GTA4 video was only done in 1280x1024


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## HalfAHertz (Jul 7, 2009)

Well the Phenom is really not that bad. If the price is right, then go for it. As long as he doesn't play on something like 1280x1024, he'll be ok. For any resolution over 16xx performance is almost entirely GPU based. Also check out some reviews, in video encoding the 9950 beats the stock 720 in everything that can utilize 4 cores. 4 > 3


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## MilkyWay (Jul 7, 2009)

he has a budget of £500 thats why i recommended some of the stuff i did and a brand new phenom x4 9950 is a custom built pre built pc is going to cost full price like £120 or whatever it is these days and for that you can get a superior phenom 2


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## HalfAHertz (Jul 7, 2009)

then just show him some of the gajilion reviews out there e.g. :

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3512&p=8


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## MilkyWay (Jul 7, 2009)

that x4 810 would suit him, but he dosnt overclock he said it will burn his cpu like only a retard could burn a cpu its not like he would be doing major clocks but he WONT listen

the gajilion of reviews show that at medium to high on a decent resolution the x4 9950 falls behind sure the extra core never hurts but its not worth the extra core to go back a step in tech


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## Velvet Wafer (Jul 7, 2009)

why does he fear it will kill his whole rig?
cant you just show him the tdp for both chips and a few reports about blewn mosfets on some boards (for the Phenom 1)? The thought of crackling and an open Flame in his rig will surely have its effect


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## Darknova (Jul 7, 2009)

Velvet Wafer said:


> why does he fear it will kill his whole rig?
> cant you just show him the tdp for both chips and a few reports about blewn mosfets on some boards (for the Phenom 1)? The thought of crackling and an open Flame in his rig will surely have its effect



Actually, that's a good idea.

Tell him that you've heard lots or reports that the 9950 causes the MOSFETs to blow on motherboards under extended heavy load.

For a guy who is so afraid of overclocking that should scare the hell out of him.


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## MilkyWay (Jul 7, 2009)

Velvet Wafer said:


> why does he fear it will kill his whole rig?
> cant you just show him the tdp for both chips and a few reports about blewn mosfets on some boards (for the Phenom 1)? The thought of crackling and an open Flame in his rig will surely have its effect



he thinks that overclocking will burn his cpu out or something like that and yes he is starting to sound like a retard


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## Ketxxx (Jul 7, 2009)

AMD: Phenom X4 & HD4850 with the snot OCd out of it if he hopes to play Crysis maxed out.

Intel: Q8400 (£137 off ebuyer, lambatek has it for £141) with a HD4850 and the snot OCd out of it.

Tell him if he ever uses youtube for PC advice again I will slap him senceless with a frozen fish.


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## Darren (Jul 7, 2009)

MilkyWay said:


> I kept saying get a phenom II x3 710 or a x4 810 or something similar.
> 
> I mean come on if my hardware cant run crysis well on high then how is a phenom 1 and a 4850 going too.



The Phenom 9950 BE is the same speed as the Q6600, so accross the board the Phenom 9950 BE would be faster than the Phenom II X3 710 in majority of real world and artificial benchmarks. The X3 might win in games by a few frames per second but overall its the slower processor due to lacking that extra core. So indeed the Phenom 9950 BE can max out Crysis, although for games the X3 would have the advantage as most games only supporting 2 threads and hence the X3 might pull ahead, also four threads are generally unsupported and because of the superior Deneb architecture in the X3 wins clock for clock. But certainly even in games the difference between the two processors are small.

I agree a Phenom II series would be better e.g. Phenom II 720, 810 920, 940, 955 etc and you should encourage him to get one, but the 9950 is no slouch, its last year's high end X4.


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## boomstik360 (Jul 7, 2009)

Simply put. No, not worth it, You can get a 720BE possibly unlock it, or overclock it and have way better performance. I mean they are alright CPU's but there are better ones for just alittle more money.


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## Velvet Wafer (Jul 7, 2009)

Darknova said:


> Actually, that's a good idea.
> 
> Tell him that you've heard lots or reports that the 9950 causes the MOSFETs to blow on motherboards under extended heavy load.
> 
> For a guy who is so afraid of overclocking that should scare the hell out of him.



that happened. my actual board gets delivered without mosfet-cooling, so under 140w tdp the board went in flames more than just a few times...  (just google my board + mosfet exploded)

the phenom 1 is a defect product series in my eyes. it was born to fail.


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## MilkyWay (Jul 7, 2009)

Darren said:


> The Phenom 9950 BE is the same speed as the Q6600, so accross the board the Phenom 9950 BE would be faster than the Phenom II X3 710 in majority of real world and artificial benchmarks. The X3 might win in games by a few frames per second but overall its the slower processor due to lacking that extra core. So indeed the Phenom 9950 BE can max out Crysis, although for games the X3 would have the advantage as most games only supporting 2 threads and hence the X3 might pull ahead, also four threads are generally unsupported and because of the superior Deneb architecture in the X3 wins clock for clock. But certainly even in games the difference between the two processors are small.
> 
> I agree a Phenom II series would be better e.g. Phenom II 720, 810 920, 940, 955 etc and you should encourage him to get one, but the 9950 is no slouch, its last year's high end X4.



the x3 720 pulls ahead of the x4 9950 by at least 10frames per second at my res 1680x1050 not to mention at higher res it starts to pull away

at stock a q6600 will get beat by a x4 9950 but clock the cpu to 3.6ghz and the q6600 eats it for breakfast

there to me isnt any point getting a brand new socket 775 rig as its starting to get old and has less upgrade options than say a phenom II or intel core i5/i7 rig, if you had a board then sure get a better cpu but a brand new rig for me no


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## Flyordie (Jul 7, 2009)

kid41212003 said:


> I advise him get the fastest Core 2 duo, and the fastest single graphic card, that he can affords.
> 
> E8500 + GTX275
> 
> Crysis doesn't use 4 cores.



I thought they paraded around the "We support quads!" parade.
I know Crysis Warhead uses 3 for Physics with the 4th doing "Texture Mounting" for the GPU.
Just funky they wouldn't pass the benefits to the original Crysis via an update pack.


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## Darren (Jul 7, 2009)

MilkyWay said:


> the x3 720 pulls ahead of the x4 9950 by at least 10frames per second at my res 1680x1050 not to mention at higher res it starts to pull away



It really depends on the game, but up to 10 FPS in games is believable the X3s are monsters in games we've seen them take on the i7s in games before. But as I said before the Phenom 9950 is just as powerful overall, if we were to factor in encoding, Photoshop etc the Phenom 9950 would have a huge advantage due to the extra core, in the next generation of games when 4 cores can be utilized you'll see those 10 FPS benefiting the 9950 instead.



MilkyWay said:


> at stock a q6600 will get beat by a x4 9950 but clock the cpu to 3.6ghz and the q6600 eats it for breakfast



I'm not talking about overclocked, I'm just saying the Q6600 and Phenom II 9950 are around the same speed, so to say the Agena's can not handle Crysis is like saying the Kentfield's can not either.



MilkyWay said:


> there to me isnt any point getting a brand new socket 775 rig as its starting to get old and has less upgrade options than say a phenom II or intel core i5/i7 rig, if you had a board then sure get a better cpu but a brand new rig for me no



I agree, socket 775 is dead, the board should be abandoned completely for new builds.


Edit:




tastegw said:


> i disagree with that last part,  budget builds + E5200 make a good pair.



Remember I'm talking about new builds specifically,

The Phenom II X2 550 and Athlon II X2 250 nullifies the E5200 build whilst still benefiting from the ability to drop in AMDs new 6 core desktop CPUs in an ancient AM2/AM2+ board and hence upgrability isn't as dormant as socket 775.


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## tastegw (Jul 7, 2009)

Darren said:


> It really depends on the game, but up to 10 FPS in games is believable the X3s are monsters in games we've seen them take on the i7s in games before. But as I said before the Phenom 9950 is just as powerful overall, if we were to factor in encoding, Photoshop etc the Phenom 9950 would have a huge advantage due to the extra core, in the next generation of games when 4 cores can be utilized you'll see those 10 FPS benefiting the 9950 instead.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




i disagree with that last part,  budget builds + E5200 make a good pair.


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## Darren (Jul 8, 2009)

Just to add a bit of reality to our humble debate, putting gaming aside. I would like to illustrate advantage of the Agena Phenom X4 9950's additional core in comparison to the Deneb Phenom II X3 710 - I would like to also remind you that both CPUs are clocked at 2.6 GHz by default.
_
Lower is better_

1.) Adobe Photoshop CS3

Phenom X4 9950: 28.6
Phenom II X3 710: 30.9

2.) DivX 8.5.3 with Xmpeg 5.0.3

Phenom X4 9950: 60.8
Phenom II X3 710: 62.8 


_Higher is better_

3.) x264 HD Video Encoding first pass

Phenom X4 9950: 57.5 
Phenom II X3 710: 48.8 

5.) x264 HD Video Encoding first pass

Phenom X4 9950: 14.9
Phenom II X3 710: 11 


_Lower is better_

6.) Windows Media Encoder 9 x64 Advanced 

Phenom X4 9950: 38 
Phenom II X3 710: 54 

_Higher is better_

3dsmax 9 - SPECapc 3dsmax CPU Rendering 

Phenom X4 9950: 9
Phenom II X3 710: 7.4

7.) Cinebench R10 *single thread*

Phenom X4 9950: 2764
Phenom II X3 710: 3041


8.) Cinebench R10* Multi-threaded*

Phenom X4 9950: 10252
Phenom II X3 710: 8128


9.) POV-Ray 3.73 beta 23 Ray Tracing

Phenom X4 9950: 1760
Phenom II X3 710: 1546


_Lower is better_

10.) PAR2 Multithreaded Archive Recovery

Phenom X4 9950: 41.4
Phenom II X3 710: 50.6


11.) Blender 2.48a

Phenom X4 9950: 75.5
Phenom II X3 710: 86

12.) Microsoft Excel 2007

Phenom X4 9950: 45.3
Phenom II X3 710: 43.1

13.) Sony Vegas Pro 8: Blu-ray Disc Creation

Phenom X4 9950: 300
Phenom II X3 710:319.8

14.) Sorenson Squeeze: FLV Creation

Phenom X4 9950: 175.1
Phenom II X3 710: 220.7

15.) WinRAR - Archive Creation

Phenom X4 9950: 151.9
Phenom II X3 710: 138


So to conclude, the Phenom X4 9550 wins 12 out of 15 in the benchmarks, this shows that although the Deneb core is faster than the Agena core, the Deneb X3s lack of third core makes it slower than the Agena with 4 cores overall. (Although in gaming the Deneb X3s might appear faster than the Agena in reality its because the majorty of games are not multi-threaded, however as more games become multi-threaded we'll see the X4 Agena defeating the X3 Deneb in games in addition as proven in the encoding, rendering, and compression benchmarks which are multi-threaded.

Review from Anantech


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## Deleted member 67555 (Jul 8, 2009)

Look at my specs: their ok,not so bad huh, a little better than a 9950 and a 4850 and uh I CAN"T FUCKING PLAY CRYSIS AT 60FPS at HIGH SETTINGS Maybe an average of 30 MAYBE...... and maybe 10 FUCKING frames PER SECOND at highest
EDIT: not sure but last i heard and i could be wrong but CRYSIS does not support cross fire
60 fps WTF!!! yeah that's BULLSHIT


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## Darren (Jul 8, 2009)

jmcslob said:


> Look at my specs: their ok,not so bad huh, a little better than a 9950 and a 4850 and uh I CAN"T FUCKING PLAY CRYSIS AT 60FPS at HIGH SETTINGS Maybe an average of 30 MAYBE...... and maybe 10 FUCKING frames PER SECOND at highest



If you want 60 FPS or higher on Crysis all max'd out you'd need more than a ATI 4850. Although I do not believe you get only 10 FPS, you'd get around 30-45 FPS.

To be honest Crysis is just poorly optimised I wouldn't cry about it I've read threads on other forums where people with i7s and 4870X2s are crying over Crysis's shoddy frame rates, its not the hardwares fault its Crysis's crack smoking development team.

Edit:

mcslob, it is possible to get 60 FPS with a 9950, unfortunately the threadstarter didn't state the resolution, on a smaller monitor 17' or 19' one can achieve 60 FPS with most of the detail if not all at high.

Edit 2:




jmcslob said:


> Until i am surrounded by like 50 koreans than it's down to 25fps IT"S not that bad but I really want this guy to KNOW a 9950 may not be worth it unless his budget requires it,then by all means it is better than the 720 but not the 810



I agree the Phenom X4 810 is a better choice for a quad core, the X3s may be faster in games, but only by a few frame rates in games, read my above post where I compare the Agena's X4 to the Deneb X3!


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## Deleted member 67555 (Jul 8, 2009)

> If you want 60 FPS or higher on Crysis all max'd out you'd need more than a ATI 4850. Although I do not blieve you get only 10 FPS, you'd get around 30-45 FPS.


Until i am surrounded by like 50 koreans than it's down to 25fps IT"S not that bad but I really want this guy to KNOW a 9950 may not be worth it unless his budget requires it,then by all means it is better than the 720 but not the 810


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## Deleted member 67555 (Jul 8, 2009)

> mcslob, it is possible to get 60 FPS with a 9950, unfortunately the threadstarter didn't state the resolution, on a smaller monitor 17' or 19' one can achieve 60 FPS with most of the detail if not all at high.


Very true at 1368x720 or less and maybe but I dought it at 1440x900


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## Deleted member 67555 (Jul 8, 2009)

> ead my above post where I compare the Agena's X4 to the Deneb X3!


Nice! Point proven...


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## MilkyWay (Jul 8, 2009)

of course a full core is going to benefit it but its like saying a phenom x4 9950 is better than a e8200 well yeah but not really at the same time is it

i think that a x4 9950 could play crysis with a 4850 but not on a decent setting right

and max crysis is just for dual gpu cards and sli/crossfire, medium/high is the usual stuff for most people

i would take a core less because i know it will clock better and its more efficient per core, also can do AM3 but there are plenty of phenom II x4s so for his needs i recommended one of them but i dunno if he got the message he thinks like becasue one thing is a certain ghz its going to be better overall

clock for clock something can still be faster

depends a lot on the graphics card also i think


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## neatfeatguy (Jul 8, 2009)

I'd say to get the Phenom II x4 920 - it'll perform just as well as many of the Core 2 Quads and is still fairly decently priced.

If he does video editing, a quad core is the best route to go. I'd suggest staying away from the first Phenom series chips, they were kinda on the bad side of what AMD promised us....


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## Semi-Lobster (Jul 9, 2009)

neatfeatguy said:


> I'd say to get the Phenom II x4 920 - it'll perform just as well as many of the Core 2 Quads and is still fairly decently priced.
> 
> If he does video editing, a quad core is the best route to go. I'd suggest staying away from the first Phenom series chips, they were kinda on the bad side of what AMD promised us....



I agree. This all really depends on what your friend intends to use it for. For intense loads like video editing, compressing/decompressing huge files etc. then by all means a quad core is something to look into but if its just for something like gaming, than a Phenom II X3 720/Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 or Phenom II X2 550/Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 would be excellent choice, for most games the video card should be the component have the most attention paid to it (unless he loves playing Supreme Commander non-stop)


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## ShiBDiB (Jul 9, 2009)

e8400 with a gtx 275. 4gb or ram and a decent hd.... their ur not hardcore but u can game comfortably


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## troyrae360 (Jul 9, 2009)

hmmm, I play Crysis on Very high at 1920*1080 without any issues. using cat 9.6 HD3870x2 and athlon 6400+ FPS around 25-30 seems smooth enough


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## wolf (Jul 9, 2009)

I'd reccommend any phenom II chip over a gen 1 phenom anyday, slower clocks, less cache, hec even a PII tri core I would reccommend over a 9950.

and as for this crysis stuff, look at my specs, @ full settings, I cant get 60fps either, methinks teh interwebs is lying!


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## MilkyWay (Jul 10, 2009)

"its slow due to fraps" LMAO what a crap excuse


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jul 10, 2009)

ShiBDiB said:


> e8400 with a gtx 275. 4gb or ram and a decent hd.... their ur not hardcore but u can game comfortably



The guy does some video editing too, a quad core or at least tri core is a much better choice. I had a 9850 myself and OC'd it to it's brink of 322ghz nd I will tell you, the 720 is noticeably faster and OC's much better. 

The 710 would be a great choice, as would the 810, or the 920. Keep away from 1st gen Phenom's they just aren't worth it now.


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## Darren (Jul 10, 2009)

1Kurgan1 said:


> The guy does some video editing too, a quad core or at least tri core is a much better choice. I had a 9850 myself and OC'd it to it's brink of 322ghz nd I will tell you, the 720 is noticeably faster and OC's much better.




Strange, the Phenom X4 Agena should have a huge advantage over the Phenom II X3 Deneb in non-gaming  applications and encoding, well according to Anantech's results. To be fair it was the Phenom 9950 BE but performance should be about the same as your overclocked 9850 BE?

Perhaps the 720 BE's being overclocked further assisted you?


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## H82LUZ73 (Jul 10, 2009)

You guys forget there was 2 9950be The 125 watt and 140watt ,The 140 was the ones blowing out the MOSFETs on cheap low end boards,Not mid to high end boards with 8+2 vmm,Hell i should know my 9950 is the 125 watt version.

As for your friend it is his money let him spend it,If i was you i would get him to buy an AM3 cpu (works with AM2+) Then when ddr3 and boards go down he can just replace the ram and board.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jul 11, 2009)

Darren said:


> Strange, the Phenom X4 Agena should have a huge advantage over the Phenom II X3 Deneb in non-gaming  applications and encoding, well according to Anantech's results. To be fair it was the Phenom 9950 BE but performance should be about the same as your overclocked 9850 BE?
> 
> Perhaps the 720 BE's being overclocked further assisted you?



My tri core scores about the same as 9850's, 9950's, and Q6600's that are clocked around 3.3ghz in wPrime 32M. And it was pretty hard to crack 3.3ghz with 9850's and 9950's, then in gaming, the difference is quiet noticeable.

At stock clocks the 9950 should have a bit of an advantage from the 4th core. But also I wouldn't say a stock clocked 9950 (2.6ghz) would have held a candle to my 9850 at 3.22ghz, thats over a 600mhz difference on basically the same CPU. The 9950's OC'd a bit better, but otherwise they were basically a 9850 with 1 higher multi, so not a huge difference.


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## eidairaman1 (Jul 11, 2009)

depends on price because performance was mediocre compared to the Core 2 at the time, Can we get some performance numbers comparing the Phenom 2 Tricore to the Phenom 9950?


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## Darren (Jul 11, 2009)

eidairaman1 said:


> Can we get some performance numbers comparing the Phenom 2 Tricore to the Phenom 9950?



One step ahead of you, post #36 on page 2 has numbers!


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## eidairaman1 (Jul 11, 2009)

ya seems the only thing the 9950 has over the P2 X3 is encoding strength, and its not by much at all, i just wonder how the pricing is between the P2 X4, P2 X3, and the P 9950.


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## Darren (Jul 11, 2009)

eidairaman1 said:


> _ya seems the only thing the 9950 has over the P2 X3 is encoding strength, and its not by much at all_, i just wonder how the pricing is between the P2 X4, P2 X3, and the P 9950.





eidairaman1, I think you might be underestimating the situation a little bit. The 9950 had an advantage in _everything_ but gaming which consisted of encoding, image editing, compression, rendering, etc. 

Even in gaming the X4 Agena is less than 10 FPS at maximum behind the tri-core, most times its only 3-5 FPS behind, but considering that the Agena X4 wins all other tasks loosing by few frame rates in just gaming is still an overall victory for the Agena X4. Alan Wake is one of the games that are setting the trend for multi-threaded games, the Agena X4 will claim the gaming victory in a year or two as more games follow the multi-threaded trends, then we'll be able to conclusively say the X3 Deneb is the slower processor all around including in gaming.

But price wise the Phenom X4 9950  is £109, considering that the Phenom II X4 810 is only  £129.97 it s only a small price that separates the old and new technology. Even the Phenom II X3 710s are £90 which is an absolute bargain. I wouldn't touch the Agena Phenoms not because of its performance just because its priced badly in comparison to its faster successors which are priced well.


Edit:




eidairaman1 said:


> And the fact the newer parts are not plagued by clock speed limits, and also have a boost in cache levels.



That too.


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## eidairaman1 (Jul 11, 2009)

And the fact the newer parts are not plagued by clock speed limits, and also have a boost in cache levels.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jul 11, 2009)

Darren said:


> eidairaman1, I think you might be underestimating the situation a little bit. The 9950 had an advantage in _everything_ but gaming which consisted of encoding, image editing, compression, rendering, etc.
> 
> Even in gaming the X4 Agena is less than 10 FPS at maximum behind the tri-core, most times its only 3-5 FPS behind, but considering that the Agena X4 wins all other tasks loosing by few frame rates in just gaming is still an overall victory for the Agena X4. Alan Wake is one of the games that are setting the trend for multi-threaded games, the Agena X4 will claim the gaming victory in a year or two as more games follow the multi-threaded trends, then we'll be able to conclusively say the X3 Deneb is the slower processor all around including in gaming.
> 
> ...



I still don't think it is slower, it's so easy to hit 3.6ghz on a 720, even 3.7 isn't that hard, 3.8+ is where it gets to be a challenge. The P 1's were just bad clockers, granted it matters if his friend OC's, which it sounds like he doesn't know a ton about PC's so then the 9950 wouldn't be a bad choice. But if OCing is going to be done, the new x3's would just be the best bet as the extra OC will make up that extra core for the most part, and on any game that doesn't use more than 2 cores, the x3 will be quiet a bit better.


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## HossHuge (Jul 11, 2009)

If I may steer this thread in another direction for a moment. I have a 9850BE right now and it's clocked at 3.0 without issue. After reading all the posts here I am reconsidering getting a 720BE cause it seems that it wouldn't be that much of an upgrade.  I game at high res (2052*1152) and edit video.  What do you think?


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## LittleLizard (Jul 11, 2009)

The 720 replaced the 9950. Permanently.


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## Darren (Jul 11, 2009)

HossHuge said:


> If I may steer this thread in another direction for a moment. I have a 9850BE right now and it's clocked at 3.0 without issue. After reading all the posts here I am reconsidering getting a 720BE cause it seems that it wouldn't be that much of an upgrade.  I game at high res (2052*1152) and edit video.  What do you think?



There is enough information in this thread to make your own educated decision. For gaming your current 9850 BE @ 3.0 GHz should be faster than the 9950 BE @ 2.6 GHZ, yet the 9950 BE @ 2.6 GHz is less than 10 FPS at maximum slower than the 720 BE with most cases it being a 1-5 FPS difference in games, this is too small to warrant changing processors to the 720 BE. However with your 9850 BE being overclocked at 3.0 GHz it would most definitely negate the 720 BE's superiority in games. Aside from gaming, you said that you also do video editing your four cores would most probably be better equipped for that as shown in Anantech's review.

If you feel the compulsion to upgrade the CPU, it makes little to no sense going from a X4 to an X3 taking into consideration the gain/performance ratio, your best bet is to buy the Phenom II X4 810/920/940/945 range for a worthwhile speed increase.

I hoped that helped


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## HossHuge (Jul 11, 2009)

Darren said:


> There is enough information in this thread to make your own educated decision. For gaming your current 9850 BE @ 3.0 GHz should be faster than the 9950 BE @ 2.6 GHZ, yet the 9950 BE @ 2.6 GHz is less than 10 FPS at maximum slower than the 720 BE with most cases it being a 1-5 FPS difference in games, this is too small to warrant changing processors to the 720 BE. However with your 9850 BE being overclocked at 3.0 GHz it would most definitely negate the 720 BE's superiority in games. Aside from gaming, you said that you also do video editing your four cores would most probably be better equipped for that as shown in Anantech's review.
> 
> If you feel the compulsion to upgrade the CPU, it makes little to no sense going from a X4 to an X3 taking into consideration the gain/performance ratio, your best bet is to buy the Phenom II X4 810/920/940/945 range for a worthwhile speed increase.
> 
> I hoped that helped



Ya, I figured as much.  Just feel the need to upgrade something.  Thanks


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