Benchmarking Phenom II x2 550 before and after unlocking to quad core

[wowaccpass]

in Crysis it might be ur Graphics card that lets you down :/

good review! :)

[JOK3R187]

I really like your sparkly shirt you're wearing in the vid. A/S/L? LOL

[MachineDestroyer]

Didn't got mine to unlock :( Though im running Phenom II x2 550 at stock and it goes very well :)

[d3tach3d]

most games can;t even 100% utilize multi-core.

[niinja2]

nice test, i would like if people tested strategies with lots of units or games that are cpu intensive rather then FPS or something like that. I mostly play strategies and i find my cpu is the bottleneck

maybe try supreme commander 2?

[VaNgLeE24]

ey do you know is zotac 750a sli can unlock the Phenom II x2 550...

[The1PublicEnemy]

Hmm could just go straight to the phenom ii x6 from the x2 this is a dirt cheap processorand with 2 unlockable cores that's even better. What's better athlon ii x2 or phenom ii x2?

[MachineDestroyer]

@The1PublicEnemy Phenom without a doubt.

[honosuseri]

Oh nearly forgot. Any chance you could tell us what heatsink you are using? You are obviously getting good results with it......sorry if this has been asked previously

[Cruising270]

@honosuseri - At the time I shot this I was using the Zalman CPNS9700

[honosuseri]

Nice Vid boss! This is exactly what I wanted to see. I'm building a new rig and was torn between the phenom X2 555 BE and the Athlon 2 X4.

This vid confirms what i've researched, most games are only utilising the dual cores. quad cores come into their own for video editing etc etc. I'll be following in your shoes and trying to unlock the two extra cores (be silly not to!), worst case I OC the dual cores. Thanks for taking the time to upload the vid.

[YaBaDji]

Dude , if you want to compare the 2 cores against 4 cores , at least THINK and lower the resolution so that the graphics card isnt´ bottlenecking the quad core ...

Hellooooo anybody home ?

[Cruising270]

@YaBaDji yes you are correct about needing to game at a lower resolution but I was simply testing resolutions and settings typically played by someone with this or a similar graphics card showing that upgrading from a dual to a quad isn't going to help frame rates. Generally that money is better spent on upgrading video cards rather than CPU if u already have a dual core. If ur building from scratch however I would go quad simply because the prices now have dropped so much.

[Cruising270]

@YaBaDji

I did it at a resolution most people actually game at so that someone who might have been torn between a dual core versus quad core could see the difference. Why show a super low resolution and non maxed settings when that isn't what someone with this card or something comparable isn't going to be gaming at. Get it?

[YaBaDji]

@Cruising270 no one has the same graphics card, so to show the potential of the cpu (+ 600mhz + 2 cores) you have to lower the resolution, the small diference, and in some cases no diference between the red and blue bars in you graphs , is the reason why im right

[Cruising270]

@YaBaDji

I understand what you are saying but in gaming the video card is generally going to be the bottle neck not the cpu, that's what I'm trying to show. Most people who game on PC adjust the games settings to the maximum playability their graphics card allows. The only way to really eliminate that bottleneck and put it on the cpu would be to run something like a gtx480 at the lowest resolution and settings but I guarantee nobody out there with that kind of card runs games at those settings.

[jayboy81101]

Hey, great video!

Struggling to understand everything about chipsets and bios settings etc so was wondering if you can unlock the Phenom x2 550 BE to quad with the Asus M4A785TD-V EVO?

Hope you can reply, thanks!

[Docjay35]

i just order the ASUS M4A785-M will this mobo work.

[jerrodmj]

Your tests are flawed, first off all that shows is that your cpu isnt the bottleneck your video card is, so your system is only going to go as fast as your slowest part AKA your video card.

Your last test the dvd encoding is flawed that program isnt multi threaded, use mediacoder with x264 codec and see then what you get, you will definitely see a improvement like in your first 2 cpu tests where it was double.

[midnit19]

hey dude could u tell me if this motherboard would do it GA-M85M-US2H coz i wona do this as well man fuck the system ahy lol

[Cruising270]

Yes it will be about equal to a 955BE but the difference will be how far you can overclock each. Generally the 955 would overclock higher but that's not a guarantee. Even if you get it to hit 4ghz versus mine only making it to 3.7 the difference in performance would be very minimal

[BadashaZeus]

@Cruising270 PLEASE test Battlefield: Bad Company 2! It's very CPU-intensive so I wanna know how well the X4 stacks up against it. Thanks.

[Cruising270]

lmao @ comment about not answering comments. Yes the MSI 790GX does have the ability to unlock cores because it supports ACC. There are so many boards it's hard to keep track of which ones need updated bios to work so you might need to do some research but technically yours should do the trick. Good Luck!

[antibahus]

GAY!!!

[Dragst3er]

can u please test GTA 4? Cool Tests and nice cpu 5*

[raul2662x]

@Dragst3er

+1

[pcman09]

The benchmarks were similar FPS's because none of those games are super CPU heavy, relying more so on the GPU. A boost in the CPU won't boost performance that much.

[shatroghistro]

Please solve: athlon II x4 or phenom II x2 550be? Even if it can't unlock 2 cores?

[shigalbigal]

phenom

[cjgan80]

hmmmm

i dunno how to oc honestly , since im getting a new pc and using a phenom x2 cpu , i might try to unlock to quad core...

[450rracer14]

Hey man i was wondering which you think would be better keeping duel core and ocing to 3.7 or quad core 3.7 for gaming like Gmod Dragon age origins WoW and borderlands?

[Cruising270]

It really wont make a difference but go quad just because it's pretty much the standard now and more games in the future will take advantage of it.

[jacob5622]

Good scores. Games are GPU dependent, so you can really compare a stock 550 to a unlocked quad, but the other CPU tests did help.

I suggest doing some PCMark benchmarks. :)

[XenTheKiller]

You are right but GPU cars are dependent by the CPU, its the CPU that gives instructions to the GPU

[MARKO93DS]

i have GIGABYTE GA-MA770-UD3 mb and which bios i need to unlock forth core on amd 550.tnx

[Elmqviisten]

Thx man! Great vid! I'm thinking of getting nearly the exact system like you have. I hope I will be able to unlock the 550 BE with Asus M4A79XTD EVO DDR3 :) What do you think?

[maggoochef]

i unlocked a phenom 11x2 phenom be code name callisto when i got it first it crashed updated the bios now when i unlock it i get boot failure help have gama790xud3p mobo 2 gigs of ddr2 kingston ram 800 mhtz

[madzane94]

hav u tortured ir with prime95?

[madzane94]

holy shyt will this make more sense to get instead of the 955 cuz that is a huuuge money saver compared >.>

[goodoldjam]

Should of left it stock vs stock speed. Does it overclock better as a dualcore? I hear the phenoms are stuck around 3.8-3.9 max on air. Should perform the test max overclock on dual vs max as a quad, if there's a difference.

[Cruising270]

@goodoldjam I was able to reach 3.9 max as a dual. 4ghz would boot and run fine but wouldn't survive a prime95 stress test. I've been thinking about making another vid with benchmarks of the dual at 3.9ghz but haven't had the time to do it. I'll try to make one in the future though. Thanks for the comment

[goodoldjam]

Next one you do you should record the core utilization and see whats happening in games and apps. It maybe worth checking out Ati tools, there is a advanced tweak for multi thread support. There maybe some extra performance to gain from the quad with a single card. I tried it on a slow igp but I didn't notice much of anything. There were some other tweaks that really did push the framerates quite a bit though.

[importsXsuck]

This isn't a good comparison between dual and quad core. I'd like to see this same test without the OC when unlocked.

[lambrosgeo]

Excellent! I managed to unlock my X2 550 with ECS A780GM-A Ultra, (using unofficial BIOS though). The real benefit is not so much in gaming, as in overall system responsiveness and multitasking (unzip or virus scan operations in the background).

[Negotinus]

I got Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P and I got the phenom II X2 550 BE, can i unlock my??? And if can, Which bios to use end if it's specific, WHERE TO FIND???

[Deimon5893]

The only reason you had an increase of 5 or 10 fps is because of the extra .6GHZ it has under its belt. Most of those games wont even touch the 4th core, some times not even the third. The only reason you would want a quad core is for video rendering etc.

Dual core is enough, plus, keep the temps lower, which keeps the CPU running better, faster, and longer. And, with quad core enabled most/some people wont be able to read the temps of their CPU through the motherboard.

[GNARfreshh]

awesome, i can't wait until i get around to doing this to mine

what heatsink are you using?

[RUNAwaYD]

My dick

[GNARfreshh]

not funnnnyyyyy

[Flimsii]

lol not much difference in most games although thats due to lack of quad core support

[deepakm]

Very good review / benchmarks.

[Martiel09]

why did it get bad fps with crysis

[Cruising270]

Crysis is probably the hardest game for any GPU - these frame rates are normal for max settings on a high end gpu

[Flimsii]

because the game engine

1)(rumor but very likely)was tampered with so it would run better on nvidia (by crytek)

2)is really inefficient due to being very experimental if a few years on its still the prettiest game around then there are bound to be problems under the hood causing lack of performance

[loganwil2]

... just wonderin.. why is it close to the end you start sounding like the joker..

[thespartenkid]

u do know DX11 works on DX10.1 cards lol

this was my first old agp rig

ATi 9600 pro it was just DX 9.0 but it ran DX 10 on games and DX 9.0c

[FedoraFTW]

what is faster. the phenom x4 9950 or the 550 unlocked .

[Cruising270]

The 550 unlocked is faster. Once unlocked it's basically at Phenom II x4 940 which out performs the phenom 9950

[SensitiveBarbarian]

gr8 video thanks

[DDRR222]

thenks for the videos you have been very helpfull!

[lorikano]

good ,I think the test would have been more realistic if both cpu's were running at exact same frequency ,so the slight difference we see wouldnt have existed.Me thinks

[Abusiveteejus]

nice vid, do you thnik I could unlock my 550 with the Asus M4N78 Pro?

[AMVDawg]

It's a similar PC to that one I'm going to buy. Now I can check the benchmarks without buying, thx man.

[Cruising270]

Oh yeah, what set up are you going with?

[AMVDawg]

I'm not going to buy yet. I checked some sites and I figured out I will wait for DX11 cards.

[Cruising270]

Yeah I wanted to get another 4890 but after hearing the new ATI cards are around the corner with DX11 I'm thinking of waiting to see how they look

[AMVDawg]

I'm waiting too. But since I've upgraded my PC recently (8600GS to HD4670 (my PSU couldn't take any more it's a 350W; E4500 @ 2.20GHz to 3,00GHz overclock) I'll wait for a year or two. I'm not rich too upgrade (or buy a new one) every 6 months so... yeah I'll wait for sure.

[12GTA435]

Awesome CPU.

[Cruising270]

thx, yeah for $99 I'm quite impressed