Will Phenom work on my AM2 Mobo??

BloodSugarWilksM

BloodSugarWilksM

E.M.I.
Hey Guys!
I built a pretty fast AMD based system back in January. My mobo is an ASUS M2N-E with an AM2 CPU socket. Right now I have an Athlon 64 X2 4600+ in there.

I'm just wondering, even though my mobo rating won't say Phenom, when AMD comes out with their new chips, will I be able to put an AM2 socket based Phenom processor in my motherboard??

Let me know what you think. Thanks!
 
Greg King

Greg King

I just kinda show up...
Staff member
Providing Asus releases a BIOS update for your board, and I am sure they will, you will not have a problem.
 
b1lk1

b1lk1

Tech Monkey
Just remember though, you won't get some of the architectural benefits of AM2+ since you board is only capable of AM2 specs. HTT 3.0 and the dual plane power features are the big ones that come to mind that current AM2 boards cannot support.
 
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BloodSugarWilksM

BloodSugarWilksM

E.M.I.
Great insight guys. So my next question...

Would it be worth it for me to buy a phenom cpu and upgrade to that arch? Or would I be better off upgrading to the fastest Athlon X2? Or Athlon FX?

I am trying to make the decision. Of course, I was excited about Phenom, but with this new information - I'm learning towards upgrading to a high performance Athlon X2 or FX.

Thoughts??
 
BloodSugarWilksM

BloodSugarWilksM

E.M.I.
For instance I am thinking about upgrading to one of these two CPU's. These seem to be the best CPU's NewEgg has to offer in the Athlon X2 and FX platforms. Here's what I'm thinking about:

Athlon FX

Athlon X2

The alternative, like I said in my previous post, is to wait until ASUS releases Phenom BIOS updates and then buy a Phenom Quad Core.

My thoughts are leaning towards buying the Athlon X2 6400+ since it's virtually the same as the FX except it has higher clock speed. I would love comments.
 
Rob Williams

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
Depends on what you want, really. Do you, or do you not want a Quad-Core? If you don't need/want a QC, then there is no real sense of upgrading at all. If you do want a Quad-Core, then by all means pick up a Phenom if it's supported in your motherboard.

I really wouldn't bother upgrading to a dual-core AMD... unless you just want to try to push as much power from a dual-core as you can. If you are going to purchase a new CPU of any kind, you might as well either move to Phenom or get one of Intel's offerings.
 
BloodSugarWilksM

BloodSugarWilksM

E.M.I.
Okay so what I'm hearing is that if I'm going to upgrade at all, I should go ahead and get Phenom instead of a powerhouse X2 or FX, despite the the few shortcomings of the AM2 architecture.

Do you think I will see a significant performance increase if I upgrade to Phenom? As some were saying, some applications and processes don't even address the features of the 4 cores, so I'm wondering if I will see a marked difference in speed and responsiveness with a Phenom chip.

My machine is pretty fast and it has Vista. I have no complaints, but I want to squeeze every bit of power I can out of my current setup, so if Phenom is the way to do that over X2/FX I'll do it.
 
Rob Williams

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
If you don't run applications that will use all four cores (such as video encoding, multi-media rendering, 3D model rendering, etc) then upgrading to a Quad-Core is not a necessity. Do you find your current CPU to be a bottleneck in anything you are doing right now? If not, then there is absolutely no sense of upgrading. Moving to Phenom might allow some small increases across single-threaded applications, but if you are not going to use applications that take advantage of more than one core, then upgrading is a waste.

If speed is your only concern, then picking up a faster AMD chip would make sense. However, if speed + overclocking is the goal, you might as well spend more money for an Intel mobo and Intel CPU and get something that actually overclocks and that you'd notice a difference from. $450 will get you an Intel Quad-Core that will overclock to 3.0GHz and blow away any AMD upgrade you will get.
 
b1lk1

b1lk1

Tech Monkey
I would personally advise against any Phenom upgrades running an AM2 board until some bios revisions come out and it is really proven to run well on one. As it is, Phenom is struggling on proper AM2+ motherboards. You're only asking for heartache jumping on a Phenom right now. Please note, this is advice coming from a die hard AMD fanboy from hell.........
 
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