Phenom II X2 550 BE

[the_leander]

I have classes on Second Life and it hits 100 percent on my cpu meter more than I care for it too.

Tbh I'd be more inclined to look toward your graphics card if you were having slow down issues.

If not this one, which quad core do you think I should get?
I am wondering if my MainBoard is the culprit. It is an AM2+ ,I think.

Thing is, most games don't really take much advantage of multicores, so going quadcore probably won't make a huge amount of difference, especially given that second life is several years old (yes, I know it's not a game but the same principles apply).

The computer is an Emachines ET 1331 G 03w.
I like this little machine,
it came with 6 gigs of ram, that rarely gets fully used,
a 650 gig hd.
I adda Geforce GT240, I like card, but want to get the software to over clock some day.
I also added a 400 Watt PS.
I will probably add a 650-700 watt ps when I go to Phenom.
Thanks.

Regardless of Phenom, you're going to get a fairly decent speed bump over your current processor. Be aware however that the black editions use a truly staggering amount of juice to get to the speeds they do. So heat dissipation really aught to come into consideration if you've got a smaller case.

[the_leander]

Why would you upgrade the PSU? You could fit 2 Phenoms X4 into 400W...

EDIT: @ the_leander: Actually, Black editions use the same amount of juice as the non BE versions, they only have unlocked multiplier. It's when you start overclocking, potential heat-related problems might appear, but that's what you meant, I guess...

The last BE chip I saw reviewed on el reg had a draw of 160W at full tilt in order to punch it up to the speeds it was running at. Going from ~45W up to that, especially in a small case, means checking and double checking that the case can supply enough airflow to keep the beast from burning.

The regular chips which actually use less juice then my old Athlon64 (socket 754?) from back in the day.

[the_leander]

I'm positive that those 160W was the full system, the BE editions really have the same rating as the regular Phenoms.
Of course, I totally agree with the cooling being a possible problem when going from a lower CPU to a more powerful one.

I'll dig up the review if I can find it, though thinking about it I believe it was an AM3 part so possibly not applicable.

It was "AMD's fastest ever processor" (aren't they all?) and looked to be able to go toe to toe with i5's. Only using about double the power of the regular part...

[the_leander]

Well, if it was "AMD's fastest ever processor" then you're probably right and 160W sounds not so unrealistic. I though we were mostly still speaking about the Phenom II X2 550 BE

Looking over the specs of that particular part it's clearly not the one I read about on el reg. Probably some limited edition part that just happened to have the BE as part of its name.

Ho hum.

[the_leander]

Bear in mind that the latter-day Pentium 4s (around the 3GHz mark, before and during prescott core) were a tactical disaster for Intel, and finally brought to an end the idea that the higher the GHz, the faster the processor.  I think it needs Intel to make a mistake of that magnitude again for them to lose the performance crown a second time.

The only other factor that might make a difference is how Intel's anti-competitive behaviour against AMD has been brought to an end, for now.  However, that end would have been to AMD's greatest advantage when the Athlon 64 was ruling the roost.

AMD buying ATi has proved to be an advantage for AMD since they started putting discrete graphics chipsets on-board, it helps them sell their wares as the value-for-money choice, but considering that the Intel Core 2 Quad still gives the best AMD has a run for their money, AMD has a lot of catching up to do.

Their 12 core chips however are something else altogether though. So far as I can see, Intel has nothing that can touch them in terms of raw processing power at anything like the price.