Hi all I recently purchased an ASUS M3A78 PRO 780G Socket AM2+, and put back into it my old AMD 64 X2 3800+. Now I am in a position to but a new CPU and was wondering what you would suggest I put in it? Am running Win 7 with 2 gig OCZ DDR2 PC2-5400 / 667MHz / Special Ops Edition, but am planning on replacing these as well at some point, so potentially need a processor that is compatible with these but can also take much better RAM as well. I don't do anything too hardcore on my machine, play WoW, occasional photo and video editing (very occasional though) Thanks in advance for your help
We need your whole rig before we can tell what you need! Also, if you're planning on slinging more parts into the rig in the future, we can give you advice there. *thumbs up* EDIT: By whole rig, I mean any GPUs, anything complicated like that. Or is this just an onboard graphics jobbie?
OK so currently just using the onboard graphics as its 'ok' for WoW, planning on getting a 4770 at some point. Rest of rig as follows: Crappy 400w power supply came with the original Mesh PC that I still use the case of. 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1 SATA2 7200RPM 32MB cache AMD athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2 gig OCZ DDR2 PC2-5400 / 667MHz / Special Ops Edition Windows 7 64 bit
IIRC, OCZ ModstreamX 550W won a CPC recommendation about 2 weeks ago for "stable budget good PSU". Think that was it, anyway. Anyone to clarify? As long as you know the difference between that PSU and "Crappy power supply Mesh gave me", you're halfway there, my son. Out of interest, why 64-bit Win7 with only 2GB of RAM? You're better with 32-bit, IIRC. 64-bit could mean some programs swallow all that RAM whole!
Bugger now you see this is where I am a complete noob!!!!! My original question should have been CPU not PSU Sorry for the complete and utter noobishness
The 550 BE is a b*stardised 940 BE, with 2 cores disabled. It's got DDR2 and DDR3 support, so it's technically a AM2+/AM3 chip. So, you can stick it in an AM3 board when you feel like an upgrade!
Yes, you can. M3A78 is a very capable MB and if you're adventurer you might try one of the black edition Phenoms II - X3 720 BE or X2 550 BE are good overclockers and powerful enough for gaming. If you need something for heavy multithreading, Phenom II X4 is better option(you'll need a decent PSU for 125W CPUs). But you'll have to upgrade RAM as well. 667MHz RAM is seriously limiting for any CPU faster than X2 4800+. You should also check CPU support on Asus website, because you might need to update BIOS to support newer CPUs(but it's pretty easy and safe these days)
OK brilliant thanks all Think I will go for the Phenom X2 550 BE one and also get some new Memory as well to match its speed. Now the next question is what speed to go for? Is this a good choice, its suggested in this months best buys.
