Upgrading my processor

[Rainbow Dash]

I've got a pretty dated Amd phenom I x3 and I've got a fair bit of cash just lying around so I was browsing through newegg for a newer amd Phenom II, since they're pretty cheap, and (apparently?) backwards compatible with the AM2+ socket (Which would save me upgrading my motherboard).

Anyway, I've been eying the AMD Phenom X6 (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103849) and X4 (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103727) but I've been wondering which is more fitting for my needs. I play games a fair bit, nothing too demanding usually, and from what I've been reading the quad core would offer a better performance for those, what with the higher clock speed and whatnot.

But I do a fair bit of high end modeling too, baking normals/ao, texturing which from what I understand the X6 would be better suited for, and the X6 offers some turbo core feature that cuts half the cores and increases the clocks of the other three by 500 ish mhz. So what I'm wondering is if it'd be better to just go with that for best of both worlds, or stick with the quad core.

Also if someone could confirm that the AM3 Processors work in the Am2+ socket that'd be great!

[Zeph]

If it's a different socket, it's not compatible.

[Phopojijo]

Actually that's oddly enough not true -- SOME AM2+ boards will accept (at least some) AM3 processors with a BIOS update (though throttled down to DDR2 -- not that it really matters too much).

You will need the old AM2 processor to do the BIOS update, however.

What mobo do you have?

[Rainbow Dash]

I believe it's this (http://ca.asus.com/en/Motherboards/AMD_AM2Plus/M3A78/), but I'm in another province at the moment, so I don't know for sure, I'll get someone back home to check for me when I get a chance.

The page says it supports the Phenom II series, so I guess I should be good if this is the right one.

[Amit]

AM3+ Mobos are cheap. Get one and be ready for Bulldozer.

EDIT: Bulldozer fails? http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-20119226-92/amd-debuts-long-awaited-bulldozer-desktop-cpus/

[Cortexian]

Ypu Bulldozer sucks, long live Chipzilla.

[Warsaw]

Yeah, I'm extremely disappointed. Bulldozer sucks because most applications can't take full advantage of it, otherwise the FX-8150 would be right in between the i5-2500K and i7-2600K. As it is, you're better off buying a Phenom II X4 970 than you are a Bulldozer CPU.

Next build will be an Intel i7-2600K for me. So disappointed.

[Cortexian]

Honestly, for gaming, there's no real difference between the 8150 and the 2500k or 2600k. Games are mostly GPU dependent now, and decent processor will run them.

[Warsaw]

True. But for productivity and things like video decoding, you'd better go Intel.

[Amit]

Well if you want affordable productivity, go Phenom II X6. I still don't know what to do. Now that Bulldozer has failed I'm reluctant to buy an AM3+ Phenom II X4 setup. I was thinking about going with a 1155 i3-2100 setup, but it'll be quite a bit more expensive and there zero potential for useful overclocking and I'll lose the good productivity that the X4 955 BE provides. So, as Samwise Gamgee said, I'm torn in two.

[Warsaw]

On the bright side, Bulldozer was built with the intention of attaining higher performance from super clock speeds. In short, they are taking the Pentium 4 route this time. If you were to get an AM3+ system now, you would be able to install some of the promised high-frequency Bulldozer chips later. If you go Intel, you do so knowing full well that Intel will be releasing Socket 2011 before the end of Q2 2012.

[Rainbow Dash]

I'm in no hurry to go and buy a new motherboard anyway, so just gonna go with one of the phenom 2s.

Just wanna know whether I'd see a huge productivity boost in modeling/drawing/texturing if I went with the x6 over the x4 :3

[Warsaw]

Yes (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8150-zambezi-bulldozer-990fx,3043-15.html) and no. (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8150-zambezi-bulldozer-990fx,3043-16.html)

Most productivity stuff is frequency-bound and multi-threading is not well-supported. If you look at all of the charts, the tests where the X4 pulls ahead of the X6 are always in favour of clock frequency, which you can compensate for by increasing the X6's clocks. The X6 series has much better overclocking headroom than the X4 series, oddly enough.

E: Saw this comment on AnandTech, and now all of a sudden Bulldozer doesn't look so bad:

Consider what AMD is and what AMD isn't and where computing is headed and this chip is really beginning to make sense. While these benches seem frustrating to those of us on a desktop today I think a slightly deeper dive shows that there is a whole world of hope here...with these chips, not something later.

I dug into the deal with Cray and Oak Ridge, and Cray is selling ORNL massively powerful computers (think petaflops) using Bulldozer CPUs controlling Nvidia Tesla GPUs which perform the bulk of the processing. The GPUs do vastly more and faster FPU calculations and the CPU is vastly better at dishing out the grunt work and processing the results for use by humans or software or other hardware. This is the future of High Performance Computing, today, but on a government scale. OK, so what? I'm a client user.

Here's what: AMD is actually best at making GPUs...no question. They have been in the GPGPU space as long as Nvidia...except the AMD engineers can collaborate on both CPU and GPU projects simultaneously without a bunch of awkward NDAs and antitrust BS getting in the way. That means that while they obviously can turn humble server chips into supercomputers by harnessing the many cores on a graphics card, how much more than we've seen is possible on our lowly desktops when this rebranded server chip enslaves the Ferraris on the PCI bus next door...the GPUs.

I get it...it makes perfect sense now. Don't waste real estate on FPU dies when the one's next door are hundreds or thousands of times better and faster too. This is not the beginning of the end of AMD, but the end of the beginning (to shamlessely quote Churchill). Now all that cryptic talk about a supercomputer in your tablet makes sense...think Llano with a so-so CPU and a big GPU on the same die with some code tweaks to schedule the GPU as a massive FPU and the picture starts taking shape.

Now imagine a full blown server chip (BD) harnessing full blown GPUs...Radeon 6XXX or 7XXX and we are talking about performance improvements in the orders of magnitude, not percentage points. Is AMD crazy? I'm thinking crazy like a fox.

Oh..as a disclaimer, while I'm long AMD...I'm just an enthusiast like the rest of you and not a shill...I want both companies to make fast chips that I can use to do Monte Carlos and linear regressions...it just looks like AMD seems to have figured out how to play the hand they're holding for change...here's to the future for us all.

[Amit]

It's too bad I don't understand half of what he said. It sounded inspiring.

[Warsaw]

The just of it is that Bulldozer's poor single-thread performance is irrelevant because AMD will essentially offload such tasks to the GPU in a future firmware and/or driver update.

[Amit]

:iamafag: