I'll get straight to the point:

Is this a good AMD CPU - Phenom II X4 965 3.4GHz -, which can run most top end games with an AMD 7850 GPU?

Also, are they compatible with this motherboard - Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 - I didn't particularly choose this motherboard for any reason, but saw that it was for a reasonable price.

If any of them aren't good, is there any better alternatives?

I'd prefer to stick with AMD processors because I'm running on a budget of around £500 for my computer in total.

11 years ago*

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I can't research if that motherboard is good or not but I can tell you that phenom processor is good. I have 1 PC that its currently using phenom 965 BE oced@3.85 and its still awesome and reliable

11 years ago
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Nope, it has AM3+ Socket and this CPU is AM3 I think

11 years ago
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So it fits just fine... Am3+ can handle AM3 and FM1 cpus

11 years ago
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Oh yea, AM3+ has just one more pin... so yeah it should work

11 years ago
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http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4305

The board can handle AM3 and AM3+ cpus.

11 years ago
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I have a similair cpu (Phenom II x2 550 unlocked to a x4 B50 ). It can run any game with a 7850 pretty good. Wont need a better cpu for gaming.

11 years ago
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The Radeon 7850 is a PCI 3.0 card, and your chosen mobo has PCI 2.0 slots, so you might experience a small performance drop (not much to worry about). For your budget, you should be fine.

11 years ago
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NO

There are virtually no difference atm between pci2 vs pci3. Small is an overstatement

exception on multi card setup

11 years ago
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transfer speed. more data flow per second, but it only is a minuscule amnt. if you are using it for say a game. If you are branching trees of data over say a server room - then when you have a constant load of over 200+ gb you see an increase in speed. but for household use - close to no difference...

11 years ago
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True, also one more difference is seen for workstation cards (quadro,firepro) but still only maxes up to 30% improvement.

11 years ago
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I think you mean PCIe 3.0 rather than PCI 3.0, which is ancient and wouldn't be very suitable for modern graphics cards.

edit: still, you're spot on with your evaluation - PCIe 3.0 has about double the bandwidth of PCIe 2.0, but that shouldn't have any affect on the speed at which your card can render graphics. It's the same card with the same kind of processing power no matter whether you put it in a PCIe 2.0 or 3.0 port, and PCIe 2.0 should already give more than enough bandwidth for any game.

11 years ago
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Closed 11 years ago by Mullac.