I could use a little Athlon 64 era advice (Yes, you read that right)

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ChRoNo16

[H]ard|Gawd
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Feb 3, 2011
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So I am building a classic gaming machine, and during the time the athlon 64's were the hot technology, the best thing I could afford was a single core 3500+. I picked up a motherboard off eBay, Asus M2NPV-VM, and I am wondering what is the best CPU option for it? Whats going to give me better performance, an Opteron or a Phenom?
 
That Phenom is part of the Deneb architecture. Anyone else think of Freespace when they hear Deneb?
 
definitely phenom II but sadly doesn't support the 940 which i still have laying around some where. the 945 is likely at the very edge of what it'll support if it doesn't support the 940 so likely no overclocking and definitely make sure you have decent case cooling.
 
here is the cpu support list for that board https://www.asus.com/supportonly/m2npv-vm/helpdesk_cpu/

looks like someone else said the phenomII X4 945 and most of the pII X2 550 or 555 can unlock to quad but i'm wondering why it wouldn't support the 965 unless either it wasn't out yet or the vrm can't handle it?

actually i just looked it up and it looks like it's a vrm issue. the 945 and every other proc on the support list is 95w or less and the 965 is 125w. I also just looked up that board and it doesn't have a vrm heatsink so if you do go with a 95w proc i would just make sure you use it in a case with good airflow and don't try to OC it to hard. (unless you go with a lower wattage chip)

and really there's a chance you could go with a higher wattage chip or OC because i did a build a long time ago that has been my parents computer till this day that i used an asrock A785GXH/128M which is paired with a PII X6 1090t and that board doesn't have a vrm heatsink but really the only thing i could oc on it was the memory controller (which is big performance increase for those gen amd procs) and i think 133mhz on cpu

edit: just looked it up and the asrock board i used was certified for 140w processors so maybe even though it didnt' have a heatsink it had a descent vrm? either way it's always had good airflow so i'm sure that's helped but it's over 12yrs old at this point and still kickin.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
definitely phenom II but sadly doesn't support the 940 which i still have laying around some where. the 945 is likely at the very edge of what it'll support if it doesn't support the 940 so likely no overclocking and definitely make sure you have decent case cooling.
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if it supports the 945 it should also support the 940 (which technically isn't on the cpu support list) the only difference was the 940 used 1800mhz HT and the 945 used 2000mhz and the 940 came out first so i'm sure it would work especially since some of the 1st gen phenoms are on the list. UNLESS the 940 was 125w?? which may be why it's not on the list?
 
I ended up with an X4 930. Had actually bought what I thought (and was listed as) a 940 off the bay, but either the seller fat fingered the model, or sent me the wrong one. I got it for 11 bucks and its faster than the 3000+ single core the guy i bought the board from sent in it.
 
d3athf1sh said:
if it supports the 945 it should also support the 940 (which technically isn't on the cpu support list) the only difference was the 940 used 1800mhz HT and the 945 used 2000mhz and the 940 came out first so i'm sure it would work especially since some of the 1st gen phenoms are on the list. UNLESS the 940 was 125w?? which may be why it's not on the list?
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the 940 was a 125w chip while the 945 was a 95w chip. when it comes to the difference between them and whether boards support it or not actually mattered at that time. i killed a quite a few border line boards with my 940 that on paper didn't support it but the microcode was still included in the bios to run the chip as long as you put heatsinks on the VRM's but even that didn't help long term, lol. it's also quite interesting seeing the way boards slowly die as the vrm's start failing.
 
ChRoNo16 said:
I ended up with an X4 930. Had actually bought what I thought (and was listed as) a 940 off the bay, but either the seller fat fingered the model, or sent me the wrong one. I got it for 11 bucks and its faster than the 3000+ single core the guy i bought the board from sent in it.
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you sure you got a 930? i didn't know they made one? i saw something about 830's that were an obsecure model that only came in a few oem HP desktops. if it's a 920 though be careful because that is most likely a 125w cpu and your vrm isn't designed to handle that load.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Phenom_processors
https://www.cpu-world.com/news_2010/2010102601_Obscure_CPUs_AMD_Phenom_II_X4_830.html
 
Used to use this exact motherboard around a decade ago, and it will serve you well.
I remember using IP over Firewire for 400Mbps connection speeds for certain applications back then, those were good times.
 
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