Hello, I am planning on buying an Asus M3A78-T mainboard as well as a Phenom 9550 4 GBs of Ram , a 650 W PSU. 1) Can i run smoothly Windows Vista Ultimate x64 bit with all its features ? ( aero,dashboard,etc). Will i need to change the maiboard's heatsink ? does it get very hot ? 2) What voltages should the Ram sticks be for the 9550 ? 3) Is the PSU sufficient for adding one or two 4670s in the near future ?
Why AMD may I ask? The M3A78 will work with x64, the ram voltage will be on the side of the sticks and a 650W is sufficient, but again, why a 4670? What's your budget?
How much are you getting the mobo and 9550 for? Unless they are both well under £100 I'd get an intel q6600 with a decent Asus board. The Phenoms really aren't able to stand up to the intel quads.
118 euros 9550 and 125 the board. I really want AMD system. I have bad memories from intel and plus AMd platform is upgradable for a low budget user like me so... Well i ve read good reviews about 4670 and for its price it is very good.
What do you plan on using the pc for? Thats a decent price for the 9550. With that board you can use AMD overdrive and Advanced Clock Calibration to overclock the Phenom I suppose. They do overclock better than the older phenoms on the sb600 boards. I have a Phenom 9600 BE on a DFI Lanparty DK 790FX board and it only goes to 2.6GHz from 2.3Ghz. Not exactly fantastic.
ACC is specifically tailored for Black Edition CPUs to increase the multiplier with but does work for non-BE CPUs too. A 9600 B2 at 2.6GHz is impressive tbh Nicolee - If you can, stretch for a cheap 4850, you'll be thankful if you're a gamer.
Well so with the integrated Vcard i can run all vista features ? Well i am not demanding... i just Play games like World Of warcraft which is quite old.moreover i surf on the net i download stuff and i think i'll try out "Dreamscenes" for Vista. I am a huge overclocker i am planning to get it from 2,5 to 2,7 just to see how it feels . For CPU cooler i have an ASUS TRITON 77 . Will that be ok ?? Can the IGP run at 1600 x 1025 resolution withotu lags ? thanks for your precious time and have a nice day !
If your a keen overclocker, honestly get a q6600 and a decent board and you can get it from 2.4ghz to 3.4ghz on a decent air cooler. I'm sure if you did that you'd feel better than trying to overclock an AMD chip, which will have you tearing your hair out in frustration and cursing AMD for their rubbishy quads. Thats what I did after buying the 9600 BE!
Its still disappointing though. With a DFI enthusiast board I was hoping for better. I even tried the advanced multiplier settings on the board. I used the CPU-NB DID and CPU-NB FID to take the hypertransport up to 2.2ghz and tried using the CPU DID and CPU FID to get the multiplier at 13.25 instead of the usual intervals of 0.5 increments but 2.6ghz was still the wall!
And im guessing 2.6ghz aint going to set any speed records either Ive recently gone back to ati but i can see it being a while before i venture back to AMD
I wouldn't recommend AMD too, You can find low budget Intel too with even better performance. And I would never get back even to ATI - NvidiA Rocks
See it for yourself: http://game.amd.com/us-en/unlock_radeonhd4870x2.aspx?p=4 I have bad experiences with Intel in overclocking, When I Overclock my Q6600 on DFI DK X48 T2RS beyond 1600 FSB, it runs fine and without error in all application @ 3.4Ghz, Air cooled, for 8 hours. After that, i swiched the thing off to go for work. Later when I'm back, Expected to on my computer for the first time, ****!!!!!!!!!! It wouldn't boot, I get a BLANK screen. Fan is all running. Then I need to reset the bios in the M/B to boot. Have to reset all the overclocked settings again. Damm, tried all stuff and nothing works for me. I still experience this. It runs fine in 3.0Ghz, but beyond that, even 3.1 this problem persists. Damm, I've made a wrong move, having have to reset the bios again and again and again. This is crap ****. I hate this, if Intel can solve this, it would be a great stuff. If not I'll be back on AMD again cause I never experience this on AMD before. And 1 more thing, I've tried NVidia 9800GX2 on Crysis, damm the picture quality of the leaves sux bigtime!!! Looks square even on ultra high settings. Switched to ATI 4850 CF, The picture improved a lot. And I've noticed that the graphics quality of crysis running on my friend's AMD Phenom BE9950 rig is better than my Q6600 with the same graphics card same settings!!!!! Why is this happening??? Can anyone explain?
Interesting. I've got a Phenom 9850 which I can push to 3.0Ghz stable and a 4870 1GB. I'm pretty sure I've seen much better performance from the Q6600. Likely he's overclocked his graphics card or if that isn't the case the AMD platform is just better suited for ATI cards.
