Will my AM2+ Phenom II X4 920 work on an AM3 Mobo?

[FragTek]

I have been seeing mixed reviews on this issue.

I am wishing to upgrade my motherboard to a mobo that supports SATA 6gbps but will let me use my current processor and DDR2 (if not, I can deal with upgrading to DDR3).

Can you give me some mobo suggestions that my proc will work on that will give me SATA 6gbps. Not looking for an ultra gaming or OC'ing board either, the cheaper the better as long as it works.

Thanks y'all.

 

[dugdiamond]

the Phenom II X4 920 is an AM3 chip

 

[FragTek]

It's listed by AMD as an AM2+ ?

 

[I Hunta x]

Check in CPU-Z, if it is AM2+ then it wont work in an AM3 board due to not having the DDR3 controller on chip.

 

[FragTek]

Yeah it says AM2+....

Ok so I just ordered an Asus M5A97 mobo and a new Phenom II X6 1090T w/ 16gb of DDR3 and a Patriot 60gb SATA3 SSD for my OS. Should be pretty quick?

 

[KaraMurat]

Phenom II X4 920 is an AM2+ chip and only has a DDR2 memory controller, it will only work on an AM2+ board with DDR2 memory.

 

[FragTek]

Ok thanks, that's what I had been reading but I wanted to make sure as I had seen some boards advertised as AM2+/AM3 which made me scratch my head.

Hoping the new setup will give me a nice bump in speed. Excited to try an SSD on SATA III!

 

[I Hunta x]

Why 16gb ram

.

You can use am3 in am2+ boards as am3 chips have both dd2 and ddr3 memory controllers on chip, the boards you mentioned would be am2+ boards but with the bios updated/made to accommodate am3.

AM2 cpu = AM2/AM2+ boards

AM3 cpu = AM2+/AM3/AM3+ boards

 

[FragTek]

16gb is for Adobe Premier.... It pwns my 8gb really fast, so hoping 16 will make it faster.

To add to that I usually also have Photoshop, Lightroom, and After Effects open at the same time with open projects in all of them.

I also don't plan to overclock this rig so as long as all of that memory is stable at stock speeds I won't be complaining.

 

[dugdiamond]

the Phenom II X4 920 is an AM3 chip

i stand corrected - i had a very long day (and night) coding, and my braincells were fried.

i apologise for giving you the wrong info, in bad haste

it is only an AM2+

 

[FragTek]

i stand corrected - i had a very long day (and night) coding, and my braincells were fried.

i apologise for giving you the wrong info, in bad haste

it is only an AM2+

It's all good man, I get the same way when slaving on a database for 40 hours, lol.

 

[Hippie Tech]

Why 16gb ram

.

You can use am3 in am2+ boards as am3 chips have both dd2 and ddr3 memory controllers on chip, the boards you mentioned would be am2+ boards but with the bios updated/made to accommodate am3.

AM2 cpu = AM2/AM2+ boards

AM3 cpu = AM2+/AM3/AM3+ boards

With ram prices so low.. why not ? I paid $90 for the Ripjaws, then $60 two months later for the sniper set. Combined, thats $20 more than my original 1yr old 4gb kit cost lol...

Btw, I noticed a nice boost after adding the 2nd 8gb kit. Then after seeing this, it was easy to see why.



Now both Windows and the gpu have their own 8gb pool to splash around in.

Thus making disc thrashing/pagefile use a thing of the past.

 

[FragTek]

Yup, I cut my pagefile down to 500mb and completely disabled my hibernation file to save space on my SSD.

16gb works great for me, now After Effects has some memory to play with when rendering, woohoo!

 

[Hippie Tech]

Yup, I cut my pagefile down to 500mb and completely disabled my hibernation file to save space on my SSD.

16gb works great for me, now After Effects has some memory to play with when rendering, woohoo!

Hmm.. I have never tested it out that way lol.. My pagefile is dialed in manually at 16gb min/max... brb after I chop it down and then run some AVP or Unigine benchies.

Are you using this dos command ? "powercfg.exe hibernate off"

edit..

I set the pagefile to 800mb (b/c windows warned me not to go lower lol) and although the AVP benchmark took a sec or two longer to load, it did not affect performance.

Now lets see how it games...

AvP D3D11 Benchmark Report

==========================

**************************************************

* Report Created: 2011-09-24 @ 19:40:22

**************************************************

* Executable Build: V1.03, Apr 19 2010

**************************************************

*DX11 Hardware Detected*

Using Default Video Settings:

Resolution: 1600 x 900

Texture Quality: 2

Shadow Quality: 3

Anisotropic Filtering: 16

SSAO: ON

Vertical Sync: OFF

DX11 Tessellation: ON

DX11 Advanced Shadows: ON

DX11 MSAA Samples: 1

Benchmark Summary:

Number of frames: 6719

Average Frame Time: 15.6ms

Average FPS: 64.1

 

[FragTek]

powercfg -hibernate off