Question For Hardware Experts

mulldoonuk

Which of these CPUs would you opt for in a new build ?

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?AMD-P2940

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?AMD-P2955

and could you recommend a (hopefully not to pricey ) motherboard for each CPU.

Thanks :beer:

fwor

The choice of which CPU depends I guess on what you want to do with it - if you're running lots of CPU-intensive tasks then you may notice a difference, but otherwise I doubt you will.

The problem with top-end products is that you end up paying a big premium for a relatively small gain - in this case around a third more for six or seven percent higher clock speed and a bit more L3 cache.

MaverickWill

The 940 is for a Socket AM2+ motherboard, using DDR2 memory.
The 955 is for a Socket AM3 motherboard, using DDR3 memory.

What are you upgrading from? And is there any particular reason for going down the AMD route? You can out-pace both with some of the sub-£100 Intel chips (in particular, the E5200, with a £15 heat-sink attached, can rival £150-£200 processors).

There's a £70-£80 Biostar board that does the job for AM2+ - if I find out the name, I'll let you know. As for AM3, I've got no idea. Sorry.

Hope that helps,

WIll

DatabaseError

do you need a quad? are you running any apps that will make use of the 2 extra processors?
if it's a 'money no object' build then I'd be going i7 ....from over 10 years of AMD use i've now gone over to the other side..only 1 of my 5 is still AMD...and if I could justify it I'd be changing that to a E5200 (got 1 ...love it!).

Anyway...to answer your original question...the phenom 2 black is the better of the 2...but it's quite a high price difference for .2Ghz...motherboards for AMD I can't help with...but I wouldn't consider spending ~£200 on a cpu to shove it in a £50 mobo...I'd also be looking for a decent heatsink + fan...maybe another £40 or so.

....then I'd be thinking about overclocking...and lapping...and...

[Deleted User]

The choice of Motherboard really depends on what RAM you want to go for. If you want to stick with the cheaper, DDR2 then an AM2+ board like the Asus M3A78 Pro will be a good match with the quads, or the better value Phenom II X3 Tri Core processors, the 710 or the better suited to overclocking 720BE.

I don't think DDR3 is worth the premium at the moment unless you are willing to spend serious money on the rest of the computer, which in that case you'd be better off making the purchase on the higher end of the i7 range.

What do you want to use the computer for? If it's gaming, then you'd be better off saving on the CPU and putting that money towards a better GPU and/or faster/more memory.

mulldoonuk

My budget is £650 - £700 ish
Not a Gamer!!
The CPU will be doing a lot of video work...editing/converting etc.
Spent the last week looking into this..
the general consensus in the places i have visited is..
DC for Gamers
QC for Video work
Couldn't build the system myself...but the guy building it said i could help him with the build :j
Don't mind paying a little over the odds for the cpu and mobo
A 250Gb hard drive would do me ...have plenty of external storage
500w - 600w PSU?
Mid range GFX card?
DVD drive?
Cooling?
Pc Case?
Ram?
OS...have Vista OEM 32bit with disk in this Pc....and very happy with it .:o
would i not be able to use it in any new build?
Would i have to buy a new OS?

Anything i have forgotten?

Any help or advice would be very much appreciated.:beer:

DatabaseError

you shouldn't be able to use the OEM vista disk

...plus...I'd have though for video work you'd want lots of RAM....over ~3gb you'll need a 64 bit OS anyway...I'd suggest getting hold of a copy of the Win7 64 bit release candidate for now (free), and purchasing a copy when released.