Legit Reviews

If you had to choose between these two previous generation cpus for a budget build, which would you choose? The slightly newer Athlon IIx4 Propus or the older Phenom x4 9850 with L3?

Propus, I built a few machines with that CPU and was never let down on the performance.

the Athlon II X4 is a great CPU, Phenom I not so much at all..

skier wrote:the Athlon II X4 is a great CPU, Phenom I not so much at all..

I guess the extra L3 Cache on the Phenom I still doesn't make it as good as the newer tech without the extra cache. I had asked because there is a A2x4 635 on my local CL for only $40 which sounds like an excellent deal. This ended up being a moot point though since upon further research the narra3 mobo that I wanted to install it in (working pull from a Compaq SR5550F) doesn't show support for Phenom I over 9600 Agenas and no support for A2x4s at all, and the only other mobo I could use it in is the one that has your old PIIx2 550 unlocked to 3 cores, so I doubt the performance would improve enough (or at all) to make the purchase worthwhile. I may just sell the Narra3 with the A64x2 5400+ AM2 CPU that it came with since it is among the weakest of my components.
Thanks for the replies and advice.

Kaos Kid wrote:

skier wrote:the Athlon II X4 is a great CPU, Phenom I not so much at all..

I guess the extra L3 Cache on the Phenom I still doesn't make it as good as the newer tech without the extra cache. I had asked because there is a A2x4 635 on my local CL for only $40 which sounds like an excellent deal. This ended up being a moot point though since upon further research the narra3 mobo that I wanted to install it in (working pull from a Compaq SR5550F) doesn't show support for Phenom I over 9600 Agenas and no support for A2x4s at all, and the only other mobo I could use it in is the one that has your old PIIx2 550 unlocked to 3 cores, so I doubt the performance would improve enough (or at all) to make the purchase worthwhile. I may just sell the Narra3 with the A64x2 5400+ AM2 CPU that it came with since it is among the weakest of my components.
Thanks for the replies and advice.

well, a Pi would be better than an original athlon for sure, but Cache just isn't something you can notice with day-to-day use- benchmarks occasionally show a difference with cache between the same architecture, but architecture and frequency are the most important factor (and core count obviously for multithreaded use)