I'd get the Phenom IIX6 1100T or 1090T. Your Mobo supports it My mate has the 1090T and it runs the game just fine, though he does have a 670 as well am I'm sure that helps lol. I had one in 2011 and it was a fine CPU, could overclock really nicely and never got too hot.
Oh it's a 785, the spare PC I took along with me on the road also uses a Gigabyte 785 motherboard and I'm using a X4 955 on it OC'd to 3.8GHz (can do up to 4.1GHz if I wanted but don't have adequate cooling atm). But yeah be careful with the voltage, X6's will do 1.475 on auto and will be slightly unforgiving when OC'ing on the 785 (I previously used a X6 1090T OC'd to 3.8GHz on that mobo), the X4's will usually do 1.375 and can OC a bit higher. Coolermaster Hyper 212+/EVO or TX3 are decent and cheap.
Only problem is, I don't have a very large tower so I'm not sure if that large of a cooler will fit in my rig.
Then water cooling is the way to go. The self contained water coolers are actually very good. Corsair has some nice ones
let me see if some large text will make it clear enough because the op is asking for trouble and some of the people here really don't have a clue -.- YOU CAN NOT _safely_(at least according to MY book) OVERCLOCK AT 125WATT CPU ON THAT MOBO ITS CHEAP JUNK IT WILL KILL IT(emphasis on the WILL)_ In reality it there is _only_ a 60% chance that it will fry it but when the vrm's go pop they have a habit of turning everything else into a smoldering paper-weight The power draw on AMD's Phenom II's jumps from manageable to INSANE once you pass about 1.48v/3.8Ghz with pretty much all there deb/thuban cores its just a nature of the chip/process. the cheaper boards can't handle the (sustained)strain and usually the VRM's blow off them if you don't provide some active cooling to them (IE fit them with heat-sinks and a fan) even if you can keep them cool (under 110c ((yes one hundred and ten degrees Celsius )) yes they get that hot because they handle loads in-excess of 80 Amps 125WATT's@1.4250v=87.7AMP's so if you overclock a 965 to say 3.8Ghz you are gonna be drawing close to a 100AMP's `though` the VRM's now said VRM's are probably rated for 95 Amps for short bursts and 80 Amps sustained and there are gonna get hotter then the fires of hell at trying to sustain that much current flow now here is where the Horse-crap comes in when they said it supports 125Wat cpus they mean that it will run and work but MAY or may not last when put though heavy loads I dun-this-dance with many a RMA dept claiming that I "over-stressed" the machine because there boards could not handle the sustained load
First of all i wouldn't recommend that you spend to much money on that rig, it is time to upgrade it soon anyway. If you do decide to upgrade i would strongly recommend that you avoid the X6 series and go for a regular X4. They are cheaper and consume less power, in games with poor multi-core optimization they perform the same. PS2 is one of those games poorly optimized for multi-cores. While we are talking about PS2, I expect you can get 20-30 fps with a phenom X4 and your gpu. Personally I wouldn't consider that playable anyway so I do not see the reason to spend money on it. Wait a little longer, get a new motherboard AM3+ or Intel with a new CPU. If you only intend to play games i suggest you go for an intel build. The i5 3470 is a nifty one, cheap and good performance. Also, by upgrading your mobo + CPU you can bring all the other hardware over and wait with upgrading your GPU/RAM if you cant afford it. There is probably many people with old phenom II X4/X6 that is willing to donate one to your cause. I have one laying in the shed..
Oh and a quick google search came up with this result: "I was Ocing my PII 955B to 3.4ghz and I clicked save and exit, it then rebooted and went to a black screen like it does when a OC fails. I shut it off then on again which should reset the failled oc, and it doesn't. I have tried taking out the Cmos battery, and resetting the CMOS and nothing seems to help. Anyone have some Ideas" That was with your current MB btw.
Get rid of AMD as fast as you can, their brand new processor FX is not even on par with a 1.5 year dated I5 2500K.... Abandon ship and do like most AMD users do and buy Intel. With that said i have 2 comps i7920 and i52500K iam using 8 GB corsair vengeance + a old timer Asus radeon 4850, with tuned user.ini file i sport 40/50 fps in large battles with settings adjusted. Remember the videocard i use is the bare minimum and my CPU is doing most of the work and it does it perfectly, by a simple and cheap intel cpu o.c. to 4500mhz. Seriously brother iam not here to bash AMD or act like a fanboy, but AMD is slipping away and their chips new top of the line chips arent even on par with almost 2 year old intel chips when it comes to gaming... Do yourself a favor and forget AMD untill they produce alot better quality chips for gamers.
No he uses a custom Heatsink but isn't using any water cooling, should be fine on Air. I clocked mine when I hade one to 3.8 using the stock and a cheap mobo and everything was fine. It's the best CPU you'll be getting anyways and you can probably pick one up for mega cheap on ebay.
Ok I see. Sorry I'm so slow at this guys but I don't know as much about this stuff as I should but I'm learning. Going to take every ones advice and just save a little bit more money. Should I go with a Intel mobo/CPU combo? I see those on newegg but don't know how good they are. Thanks again for schooling me guys.
What? I've been using the Phenom II X6 1090T clocked to 3.8GHz (and voltage was rated 1.475) for almost 2 years on the GA-MA785GM-US2H motherboard before I upgraded. It's 1.5v you don't want to go over. The X4 955 or 965 can go to 4.0 at 1.41v on the 785 providing it's being cooled. The heatsinks I mentioned aren't THAT big, they'll go over 2 memory slots if you use tall sticks though so that might be a problem if you only have 2 ram slots- I put the ram in the last 3 and 4 slot. Granted overclocking isn't something new users should be doing, overclockers.com and tomshardware.com provides lots of information and help on overclocking.
I really like AMD... the problem with PS2 is going to simply be the fact it only really pushes one core. If the game was totally optimized for multi-threading then it would be a different story... You could get a Bulldozer or the newer 8320/8350 but their performance still isn't going to be that great with the way the game currently works. I have an 8320 with an Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z... and my Intel 3570K just eats it alive in this game. You'd probably get just as good of performance with the last lines AMD had before the FX series becuase their single threaded performance didn't really improve. Now if you do CAD or use certain ART related programs outside of gaming... I could see going with an FX. I understand if you have financial constraints that prevent you from upgrading your mobo AND cpu. However, if you can float it and this is your game of choice... atm Intel is the way to go. With either the 2500/2600 type cpus or the newer IB aka 3570/3770
Yes, between the Phenom II X6 1090T and the FX 8320 systems I have, PS2 performs better on the X6 1090T. The Phenom II's are very good chips, I tend to skip first generation AMD's (after experience with AMD MP, AMD XP, and AMD Slot A).
AMD has stated a bunch of times they have no Intention of making chips that compete with intels EVER AGAIN and the reality is that on avg AMD's chips are only about 15FPS slower at most if you are already running over 100FPS why would you care ? and the GA-MA785GM-US2H while it is a 4+1 it also has higher quality MOFSETS c and a 8PIN power connector so it splits the load better
Id stay away from Amd tbh (atleast older ones and for PS2) i used a 1055T mildly overclocked back at beta. I had like 5-20 fps in big battles. I have about 40 fps in the biggest battles after going intel. Depends on ur budget but i would not settle for less then i5 ivy Ill add that i run on max graphics and i did on my old system to. Lowering the graphics did not give me more fps, thats why i went and bought a new i7, guess i was cpu bound. So it depends on what you will expect. But for me, personally, i belive that PS2 is actually pritty ugly if not maxed.
Jeez guys stand back I got this. Look I have am AMD speced PC and I was in the same situation you where in. In fact I got worse frames than you did and I was on the exact same budget. Old Rig: AMD Phenom 9600 Quad Core 2.3ghz HD 6570 6GB RAM Win 7 64bit With this set up I got 25 frames in warp gate and 7 frames in battles on low settings. New Upgrade AMD Phenom II X4 3.4ghz Quad Core HD 6570 6GB RAM Win 7 64bit With this set up I get no less than 33 frames in all situations on Ultra settings. Least to say the game is completely playable and I have no once complained that I got killed do to low frames. The processor was on sale for $85, but checkign it now it's back to $99. According to experts this processor out preforms other AMD processors above it's class. As you will see int he reviews. Do your own homework because most you will get here is "get an intel end of story". If you want some real PC advice I suggest you ask them on TomsHardware.com . They will give you all the info you need. On a note for flashing BIOS. I was also worried about the process because I had never done it before. It's very simple to do and the only thing that will mess it up is the following: Getting the wrong bios version Turning off the PC while it's updating. If you have an ASUS mother board it should come equipped with an EZ flash program that does all the work for you and makes sure the BIOS version you are trying to install is compatible. All you need to do is make sure the power doesn't mysteriously goes out in the 20 seconds it takes to update. Yes the update only takes 20 seconds.
That 3.4ghz Phenom II looks like a great idea. Any thoughts on me switching to that from a Phenom 9850 2.49ghz? Sounds like the best path to take if I want to hold off on a major overhaul upgrade until the next tech generation (DDR4, next gen procs)
