What CPU Should I Get (if any)

So, I've habit of buying the wrong item and i'm considering upgrading my CPU and currently have "AMD HDZ555WFGMBOX Phenom II X2 555 - 3.2 Ghz AM3 Black Edition CPU"

What do I need to make sure any CPU I buy will work with the current motherboard "Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3". And any recommendations? wondering if an upgrade is even worth my money/effort.

I like to multi task so maybe watching a high res film, transferring files from one place to another, downloading something, converting something else while viewing a few webpages...this is where I 'hope' a CPU upgrade would speed things up and avoid any 'not responding' notifications.

your motherboard will support am3/+ CPu's like fx quad,six and 8 core.

What Sinned_26 wrote.

Maybe something like this depending on how much you want to spend.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/?iid=192155223663&&&adgroupid=44594567914&rlsatarget=pla-299805567048&abcId=1088856&adtype=pla&merchantid=6995734&poi=&googleloc=9046363&device=c&campaignid=805978797&crdt=0&chn=ps

Its 6 core @ 95W which is not much higher than your 2 core @ 80W so the PSU should still cope. Its what I am running at the moment and will overclock easily to 4.1Ghz although mine is running at 3.8Ghz. Would benefit from a better than stock cooler though as they tend to be a bit noisy for me when playing games.

Just checked passmarks benchmarks:

Phenom XII = 2045

AMD FX 6300 = 6354

Forgot to ask.. how much ram do you have?

Its just not worth it. Try to buy some Intel mobo with I5 CPU, (you didn't sad what ram you got, Is it ddr2, or ddr3) you could keep your ram if you find adequate mono. Any of I5 CPU is significant upgrade, while lower and older amd cpu isn't.

His Motherboard will only accept ddr3 cause it's 970 chipset. Look back at the model before asking

Sorry,. didn't catch that. Even better. Keep that ram, find some cheap Haswell, Sandy or Ivy bridge mbo and I5 CPU, and you got yourself The Machine!

Sorry,. didn't catch that. Even better. Keep that ram, find some cheap Haswell, Sandy or Ivy bridge mbo and I5 CPU, and you got yourself The Machine!

Did you actually read the first post and what the machine would be use for?

You do already have a DualCore @ 3.2Ghz - this should be fine for everything bar the 'converting' task.... A CPU Upgrade would help a little

how much RAM do you have? a RAM upgrade can also help, as well as making sure you have at least 15% HDD space available, as the drive is used as temporary storage for files while installing, and uncompressing (or encoding), also the windows swap file is on the hard drive...

Before doing ANY upgrades though, I would recommend cleaning out programs that are running in the background, temporary files and just general maintenance tasks, what version of windows are you using?

Did you actually read the first post and what the machine would be use for?

Sure, I am not suggesting gaming machine.

Just what I think is value for money.

what rev is the mobo. rev. 1.1 rev. 3.0 etc need to know for the cpu compatibility, also how much do you want to spend on the cpu?....but if you want to make your pc faster then upgrading not only the cpu but your hard drive to a SSD too if you've not already got one? that will make thing's a hell of alot faster for you. has for ram 4 gb at oh say 1333 MHz on a 64bit windows system for the thing's you have out lined is more than enough anything higher in capacity NO you will not see / feel any difference in upgrading ram, but you could upgrade your ram if you want to your mobos max speed of 1866 MHz at again 4 gb no need for higher capacity sticks you will probably never use more than 3 gb out of 4 gb ever so.

You list a few things there that might point to the bottleneck being something other than the CPU.

If your downloading and say, looking at video on Youtube, it might be the network that's causing issues.

You also mention converting. If you're converting video this will put most, if not all PC's through their paces and can cause all round slow downs.

I'm in a situation that is similar to yours although I do a lot of video converting/editing. I run a 4th gen i7, Z97 Board and 16GB RAM. It does the job well but does have times where it slows right down.

Have a good think on if it's not the network. Do you keep upgrading an older system or do you move up to a newer motherboard that has a faster chipset, RAM, and takes a modern CPU. I've used Intel for years but I like the look of AMD's new line of CPU's. The downside is that for the one I'm looking at (1700X) with the RAM and motherboard I'd like... it's just shy of £800

What Sinned_26 wrote.

 

Maybe something like this depending on how much you want to spend.

 

Forgot to ask.. how much ram do you have?

I've got 16gb DDR3 installed currently

---------- Post added 30-04-2017 at 15:12 ----------

You list a few things there that might point to the bottleneck being something other than the CPU.

 

If your downloading and say, looking at video on Youtube, it might be the network that's causing issues.

 

You also mention converting. If you're converting video this will put most, if not all PC's through their paces and can cause all round slow downs.

 

I'm in a situation that is similar to yours although I do a lot of video converting/editing. I run a 4th gen i7, Z97 Board and 16GB RAM. It does the job well but does have times where it slows right down.

 

Have a good think on if it's not the network. Do you keep upgrading an older system or do you move up to a newer motherboard that has a faster chipset, RAM, and takes a modern CPU. I've used Intel for years but I like the look of AMD's new line of CPU's. The downside is that for the one I'm looking at (1700X) with the RAM and motherboard I'd like... it's just shy of £800

Thanks, yeah i'm basically just in the position of having a bit of 'fun' money available and thought maybe I could improve computer...but i'm not sure now, it works pretty well for what I need at the moment but I like gadgets and the CPU has been installed for quite a while and on benchmarking it seems to come out as weakest element...although my graphics card isn't fantastic but I don't play many newer games.

Maybe i'll consider a new system further down the line and transfer over my RAM and HDD's (29tb and counting!) into some better system