Phenom II upgrade to x6?

[Healadin]

Hello,

I have my older PC at my parents house (I usually visit them for weekend once or twice per month). PC specs are following:

 

CPU:

AMD Phenom II 550 X2 HDZ550WFGIBOX Black Edition

RAM:
4x Kingston DDR2 2GB 1066MHz

Mother Board:
Gigabyte MA770-UD3 rev2.0

GPU:
Saphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB DDR5

 

I am using usually two monitors and I noticed that both CPU cores are at 100% very often. I found used AMD Phenom II X6 1055T for 30€ and was wondering if it would help and also if the lower clock speed of cores would have bad impact on games (it is still capable to run games at medium/high settings wothout shadows and AA).

[NelizMastr]

I'd try unlocking the two extra cores on this X2 first. All Phenom II X2 chips are quad cores with 2 locked cores. Sometimes disabled, sometimes defective. Gaming wise, it's not really worth upgrading to a X6. 

[Healadin]

Just now, NelizMastr said:

I'd try unlocking the two extra cores on this X2 first. All Phenom II X2 chips are quad cores with 2 locked cores. Sometimes disabled, sometimes defective. Gaming wise, it's not really worth upgrading to a X6. 

I already tried that (had to update bios). 4th core wasn't booting at all and 3rd core was unstable, so I was unlucky with mine. Also would be good to mention that I am running win 7 there. I was wondering more if it would help with watching streams etc while playing since I am not sure if both monitors require GPU or its just games. Usually I have like messenger, youtube/twitch opened while playing and maybe for that X6 would help.

[NelizMastr]

3 minutes ago, Healadin said:

I already tried that (had to update bios). 4th core wasn't booting at all and 3rd core was unstable, so I was unlucky with mine. Also would be good to mention that I am running win 7 there. I was wondering more if it would help with watching streams etc while playing since I am not sure if both monitors require GPU or its just games. Usually I have like messenger, youtube/twitch opened while playing and maybe for that X6 would help.

Considering the HD4890 isn't exactly a beast anymore either, it's probably a good idea then to upgrade. 2 cores is definitely not enough anymore, especially considering the age.

[Healadin]

5 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

Considering the HD4890 isn't exactly a beast anymore either, it's probably a good idea then to upgrade. 2 cores is definitely not enough anymore, especially considering the age.

Yup, I mean I have notebook with GTX1060 and i7 - totally another league to play on. This PC is just my first that I build and every year I made a slight upgrade to it so it's still not that bad - I went from 4Gb to 8GB ram, bought SSD and now additional cores seemed like sensible upgrade, but probably would not be worth it .

[jaslion]

Generally I would say no but for 30€ it can still be a good general use pc with some light games. To make this pc capable of gaming 2018 games you basically need a complete new one.

 

Single core wise you won't see any improvement really but in more threaded tasks or just multitasking you'll see a nice improvement.

[Healadin]

28 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Generally I would say no but for 30€ it can still be a good general use pc with some light games. To make this pc capable of gaming 2018 games you basically need a complete new one.

 

Single core wise you won't see any improvement really but in more threaded tasks or just multitasking you'll see a nice improvement.

so basically in my case I might see some improvement if win 7 assigns browser and twitch to other cores than games are assigned to (I remember that some version of windows had problems with more than two cores but it think it was XP?)

[Aw_Ginger_Snapz]

The Phenom II X6 you mentioned was a fairly good price. If your on a budget, I suggest you upgrade your CPU. Especially since the motherboard and memory is good. Plus, there wouldn't be a lot of additional cost. 

[Healadin]

5 minutes ago, Aw_Ginger_Snapz said:

The Phenom II X6 you mentioned was a fairly good price. If your on a budget, I suggest you upgrade your CPU. Especially since the motherboard and memory is good. Plus, there wouldn't be a lot of additional cost. 

also found 1090T for same price (3,2 GHz 6 cores.. same frequency as mine just 4 more cores)

 

and ye its kind of budget pc since i use it maybe 20-30 days a year, but its not bad so I dont want to get rid of it yet