<3 for the Phenom II X2 550 BE

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erf

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 13, 2005
Messages
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I think for the price/performance/overclocking/unlocking ratios this has got to be one of the hottest chips ever released.

I feel like I stole something only paying $100 dollars for this thing...I remember paying over $450 for my 939 X2 4200 back in '05.....LOL.

Anyhow, being on a budget and trying to build a gaming rig can be disheartening...thanks to AMD and this chip it wasn't all that bad this time around. :)
 
agreed. just picked one up a couple months ago and have been pretty happy.

never tried any of the unlocking features on this chip - hell, i haven't tried to even overclock it...
 
love this chip, would love it more if:

1) it made me breakfast
2) it would unlock(i think its a mobo issue, i have a batch that is on known lists to unlock)


but seriously it OCs like a beast, and even at stock speeds it smoks most of what i do.
 
Yeah I have this chip and its great. One of the best dual core processors I've owned. I love how AMD makes great budget chips like these. Would like to see a C3 revision of this chip.
 
I need to build a budget rig for a friend within two weeks...I will take a look at this.

Though OC'ing is not in the cards here.
 
i got the x2 545 castillo today. getting the motherboard and ram tomorrow. i cant wait to fire this thing up. im coming from a Skt 939, AMD 3700+ so this is gonna be a huge upgrade considersing ive never had a dual core before. hope i can unlock it to a quad and have some fun with overclocking!!

so far im in <3 just looking at the box!
 
I went from a 4400+ X2 S939 to this, haven't tried unlocking anything, It's a beast as it is. Great bang for the buck IMHO!
 
xSnip3rMaNx said:
i got the x2 545 castillo today. getting the motherboard and ram tomorrow. i cant wait to fire this thing up. im coming from a Skt 939, AMD 3700+ so this is gonna be a huge upgrade considersing ive never had a dual core before. hope i can unlock it to a quad and have some fun with overclocking!!

so far im in <3 just looking at the box!
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Good luck with the unlock...don't think you have to worry about overclocking, most of these chips will reach atleast 3.8.
 
erf said:
Good luck with the unlock...don't think you have to worry about overclocking, most of these chips will reach atleast 3.8.
Click to expand...


well thats great news!

Anyone know if the old Zalman CNPS 7700 cooler will work with AM3 socket? If not im going to have to use the stock heatsink for a little bit.
 
for 100 i actually prefer the athlon II x4 620. I mean its hard to go wrong with either, and if u dont plan on oc'ing the 2.6ghz default speed on the 620 is pretty meh. But id rather a 3.2-3.5ghz athlon II x4 over a slightly higher clocked PhII X2 personally. If purely gaming the x2 might be a hair better but most things I do that actually require cpu power in addition to gaming love the extra 2 cores, and once you fall in love with the responsiveness of a quad core sys with gobs of fast ram you can never go back imo =)
 
Bought my 550be from newegg @release will do 3.8 as a dual,and it unlockes to quad and has been running flawlessly @ 3.2 1.35v 24 hour occt stable.i paid $102
 
got my PII X2 545 a month ago from newegg, it unlocked all 4 cores and OC up to 3.6G without a issue..

:D
 
I've been following that thread at XS, looking good

That X2 545 is looking good too
 
AMDx2_545_UNLOCKED-1.jpg

Looks like i got a good one. all i did was turn on ACC, unleashing,all cores,then 0%. It booted right up no error's or BSOD's. I just have the stock cooler on but i have slight overclock @ 3.2Ghz.I only had time to do a 3hour run of prime95, but i will try to let it run longer tonight.
 
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xSnip3rMaNx said:
Snip3rMaN

Looks like i got a good one. all i did was turn on ACC, unleashing,all cores,then 0%. It booted right up no error's or BSOD's. I just have the stock cooler on but i have slight overclock @ 3.2Ghz.I only had time to do a 3hour run of prime95, but i will try to let it run longer tonight.
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Awesome. It's a lovely chip...all the hate that AMD has taken over the last few years can now be cooled somewhat.
 
Have any of you tested the x4 620/x4 955 against the x2 550? I realize the former processors are quad cores, but I'm curious how the x2 550 would size up in games that are largely optimized for two cores(and I want the opinion of the [H]ard community!).
 
xSnip3rMaNx said:
AMDx2_545_UNLOCKED-1.jpg

Looks like i got a good one. all i did was turn on ACC, unleashing,all cores,then 0%. It booted right up no error's or BSOD's. I just have the stock cooler on but i have slight overclock @ 3.2Ghz.I only had time to do a 3hour run of prime95, but i will try to let it run longer tonight.
Click to expand...


Any updates on how your coming with the Ocing or are you still waiting on better cooling
 
tried to unlock my 550 when I first got it to no avail but really didn't press the matter. Don't remember which set of instructions I was using...

any updated guides or how-to's on unlocking this thing step-by-step?

Mobo - Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H
 
I agree this is a great chip. Was able to get it to 3.6GHz on stock voltage.
 
zero940 said:
Have any of you tested the x4 620/x4 955 against the x2 550? I realize the former processors are quad cores, but I'm curious how the x2 550 would size up in games that are largely optimized for two cores(and I want the opinion of the [H]ard community!).
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I'm not sure about posting links to other sites so I won't but the reviews aren't hard to find. In short the X2 550 is as fast if not faster than its X3 and X4 big brothers in most games. If you're in the market for a straight gaming chip you won't find a better deal right now.
 
I really like the X2 550. It's such a great bargain. I hope to build a system over the summer with one of these. They seem to be great even at stock, but it's cool since you have a chance of unlocking the other two cores.
 
RookieCAF said:
I went from a 4400+ X2 S939 to this, haven't tried unlocking anything, It's a beast as it is. Great bang for the buck IMHO!
Click to expand...

I went from one of those to the first Phenom II X4, the 940BE. Let me tell you for the first few months my jaw was frequently on the floor cuz of how fast it was.


Might I suggest however, at the 100 dollar price range, going for a Athlon II X4 620 Propus? For gaming alone, the X2 might be better as they are known to oc a bit higher, but 620's on good cooling will hit at least 3.2-3.4ghz, and you are getting 4 cores out of the box guaranteed. The loss of cache compared to a PhII is really not that huge. It should give very similar performance to a PhII X2 in games (obviously a PhII X2 @4ghz will outperform it, but the vid card is usually the bottleneck in games, so it still wont be much of a difference), but kick major butt over the X2 anywhere all 4 threads are put to use.

I encode video a lot and could never imagine being on anything less than a quad anymore.

Both chips are fantastic for the money no doubt, its just personal preference, I prefer 4 cores with no L3 over 2 with.

Also, if you want max gaming performance on a budget, the Phenom II X3's are really great. Gaming performance coparisons done by tomshardware showed that 3 cores and 4 cores, without a bunch of apps running in the background, perform very similarly; while 3 cores will outperform 2 sometimes significantly, most of the time. So with a PhII X3 for 10-20 bucks more than either the 620 x4 or ph2 x2, you get gaming performance nearly identical to a phenom2 x4, incl the benefit of a full 6mb l3 cache, and another core to use in multi-threaded non-gaming applications. Many think the PhII X3's are the best budget gaming cpu for above reasons.

Go with a black edition for the X2 or the X3 for sure. There is no black 620 x4 propus, but I have built 4 boxes with them now, and all did 3ghz easily on the stock hsf. WIth a good one I imagine significantly more is possible; I did not even try to push em past 3 as they were for customers and not hardcore gaming boxes or anything heh.
 
Malakai said:
I went from one of those to the first Phenom II X4, the 940BE. Let me tell you for the first few months my jaw was frequently on the floor cuz of how fast it was.


Might I suggest however, at the 100 dollar price range, going for a Athlon II X4 620 Propus? For gaming alone, the X2 might be better as they are known to oc a bit higher, but 620's on good cooling will hit at least 3.2-3.4ghz, and you are getting 4 cores out of the box guaranteed. The loss of cache compared to a PhII is really not that huge. It should give very similar performance to a PhII X2 in games (obviously a PhII X2 @4ghz will outperform it, but the vid card is usually the bottleneck in games, so it still wont be much of a difference), but kick major butt over the X2 anywhere all 4 threads are put to use.

I encode video a lot and could never imagine being on anything less than a quad anymore.

Both chips are fantastic for the money no doubt, its just personal preference, I prefer 4 cores with no L3 over 2 with.

Also, if you want max gaming performance on a budget, the Phenom II X3's are really great. Gaming performance coparisons done by tomshardware showed that 3 cores and 4 cores, without a bunch of apps running in the background, perform very similarly; while 3 cores will outperform 2 sometimes significantly, most of the time. So with a PhII X3 for 10-20 bucks more than either the 620 x4 or ph2 x2, you get gaming performance nearly identical to a phenom2 x4, incl the benefit of a full 6mb l3 cache, and another core to use in multi-threaded non-gaming applications. Many think the PhII X3's are the best budget gaming cpu for above reasons.

Go with a black edition for the X2 or the X3 for sure. There is no black 620 x4 propus, but I have built 4 boxes with them now, and all did 3ghz easily on the stock hsf. WIth a good one I imagine significantly more is possible; I did not even try to push em past 3 as they were for customers and not hardcore gaming boxes or anything heh.
Click to expand...

I thought the title of this thread was "<3 for the Phenom II X2 550 BE" :confused:
 
douglasb said:
I thought the title of this thread was "<3 for the Phenom II X2 550 BE" :confused:
Click to expand...

+1 :p

the 550 is awsome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


on the topic of OC....the HSF that comes with the 550 sucks...could get 3.5 GHz on it stable in normal operating temps...(i did get to 3.6 or so when my room was ~32 F...lol).....however with the Phenom I HSF(has some copper atleast) it hits 3.5 at normal room temps and has lower idle than the stock at same temps and lower speed....


just wish i could unlock my cores ;(...o well, still rips through what i give it
 
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