AM3 Processor on AM2+ Motherboard

[bedouinrising]

Will i notice a difference in performance if i put my socket AM3 Phenom II x3 720 BE processor on a socket AM2+ Gigabyte motherboard?

 

[red1776]

Hi bedouinrising,
what are you comparing it to? what do you have your x3 720 in now?

 

[bedouinrising]

nothing i'm building a pc and just recently bought a bundle of parts from tigerdirect.ca. i saw that the socket AM3 phenom II x3 is backwards compatible with AM2+ mobos, but i wanna know if there will be a significant difference in performance,(or if it will work at all)

 

[bedouinrising]

im comparing to AM3 motherboards in general

 

[bedouinrising]

like what will be the difference if i put my x3 in an AM2+ socket or AM3?

 

[red1776]

got ya, yes the vast majority of AM2+ boards are backwards compatible with AM3 cpu's usually needing a bios update. what you lose in using a a AM2+ board is support for DDR3. however DDR3 is twice the cost and performance increase is minimal at this time. if your going to have the machine for a couple years it may be worth the 'future proof' investment. (notice the quotes around that phrase) LOL.

I guess i should have said 'forward compatible" to be more accurate.

 

[bedouinrising]

yeah i realized that the DDR3 was the biggest difference i could find. But concerning the BIOS update, my AM2+ motherboard wouldnt come with that?

 

[red1776]

depends on when it was manufactured, you may need to update it yourself as the phenom II are rather new cpu's.to answer your question about the performance difference between DDR2 and DDR3 the answer is negligible. nothing that you would notice in real world applications 1% territory. here is a review with benchmarks comparing the performance of the two
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1782/amd_phenom_ii_ddr2_vs_ddr3_performance/index.html

 

[bedouinrising]

wow thanks - thats just what i was looking for. The DDR3 performance will only go up in time though, and since my CPU supports AM3 as well, i guess it worked out pretty well that i got an AM2+ motherboard for now withh DDR2 since there isn't a huge difference in performance yet, but if i ever wanted to upgrade my mobo, i could.

Thanks again that benchmark was just what i googled for!

 

[dmurray19]

If my board does not say it supports AM3, could I hurt my hardware at all by attempting to update my bios and installing my Phenom II x4 965?

 

[red1776]

Hi Dmurray,
lets see if we can find an answer to that first. what board do you have?

 

[dmurray19]

I have a Biostar TA780g M2+

 

[red1776]

the spec page @ biostar says it supports all of the Phenom II x4's with latest bios. they don't always update the cpu support list in a timely manner, and the x4 965 did just come out. the reason i said that is because its not a good idea to just flash the bios"just in case' , there is a certain amount of risk if it doesn't go well, or the power is interrupted or such. you can end up with a very expensive bookend.

 

[dmurray19]

I have found that others have gotten the 9950BE to work, but there is a 15w difference from the 9950BE to the 965BE.

Others have complained that with new bios updates that they get a error during post for any processors over 95w and that there is no fix or ability to roll back to previous bios.

Would it be safe to run with same bios? (stock bios)

 

[red1776]

yeah i know, i was looking for the wattage rating, and cant find it anywhere. the updated bios is backward compatible though.

 

[red1776]

is this your mobo?
http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/cpu_support.php?S_ID=372
see the cpu support list here http://www.biostar-usa.com/app/en-us/t-series/content.php?S_ID=344
no wattage rating anywhere, kind of strange

 

[dmurray19]

I have the

"BIOSTAR TFORCE TA780G M2+ AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard"

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138105

No where on my box or manual does it say SE.

I would have posted the link but I don't have enough posts to do so.

 

[dmurray19]

Also on the "CPU support" section for that board all the processors it says it supports except one, the "AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 6000+" at 125w, are 95w or under. Makes me wonder.. Maybe that's why people have been getting that post error message and power off?

 

[red1776]

when I entered the board on biostars own site, it comes back no data....nice support, but from what i can find it doesn't support 125w CPU's. like i said, i just am not a big fan of flashing the bios,just to try something out, cause if something goes wrong , you can trash the whole thing

 

[dmurray19]

If something goes wrong I would be out a 965BE..


Well.. I won it so it's not like I would be out much. I'll let you know in 30 min or so how it goes.

Thanks!

 

[dmurray19]

Ok so ftw. This is new, never seen something like this before..

 

[red1776]

that's the maximum underclock for 965....or would it be the minimum underclock?

 

[red1776]

check this out from guru 3D review