camaro_dude15 Posted June 4, 2014 Posted June 4, 2014 i'm building a pc for my father and i have a athlonII x4 620 2.6 and i have a phenomII x2 550 or 545 i cant remember but i think its 3.0 i have an asus m4a78lt mobo 8gb ocz ram gtx 660 which i know is overkill and a pny 120gb ssd my father has always had a slow pc im planning to blow his mind with how snappy this pc will be my question is the athlon or phenom, he uses powerpoint, word, excel and basic web browsing Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ir_cow Posted June 4, 2014 Posted June 4, 2014 quad core would be better . it doesn't really matter since it's just basic work computer . that ssd will be a nice boost if you have anti-virus software , otherwise 1 minute boot time vs 15 second isn't much of a problem . Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
camaro_dude15 Posted June 4, 2014 Posted June 4, 2014 thats what i was thinking was go with the quad, this is mostly folding farm leftovers i'm considering digging out a 965 or 1055, from back when i thought cpu folding was worth it, but still leaning towards the x4 athlon ive gotten past the denial stage and now i know im an am3 fanboy Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpikeSoprano Posted June 4, 2014 Posted June 4, 2014 If you could unlock the 550 it would be faster, if not the Athlon is the faster cpu, I had both so I speak from experience. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
camaro_dude15 Posted June 4, 2014 Posted June 4, 2014 hmm forgot about that, we shall try that Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
IVIYTH0S Posted June 4, 2014 Posted June 4, 2014 Those Athlons are beast! Use the quad! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpikeSoprano Posted June 4, 2014 Posted June 4, 2014 Those Athlons are beast! Use the quad! Not as fast as the Phenom if he can unlock it to 3 or 4 cores, also the phenon will oc higher, had my old phenom2 550 running at 3.7 ghz 24/7 for 3 years and now it's in wife's pc doing the same. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
El_Capitan Posted June 4, 2014 Posted June 4, 2014 Generally, slower quad > faster dual due to multi-tasking. You would want the faster dual (and depends on how much faster), if your dad was working with a specific application that he wanted to get something done faster, and it wasn't fully optimized for multi-threading. Some applications were optimized for just a single core, but nowadays, it's 2 cores, or 4 cores, or sometimes all cores. For example, Excel utilizes multi-threading, but some operations aren't, like sorting (uses a single core). Anyways, I would just recommend the quad core over the dual core anyway. You could always set Excel to run at most, 2 cores for all operations, then have 2 cores used for all other applications for multi-tasking. Multi-tasking is the key word. If you had a single core, and it was tasked with something, you wouldn't be able to do anything else until that task was finished. With more cores, you can work on other things while the first task was still running (as long as it wasn't utilizing all the cores). Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bosco Posted June 4, 2014 Posted June 4, 2014 I vote for the Quad Core over the Dual as well. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
camaro_dude15 Posted June 5, 2014 Posted June 5, 2014 quad it is, got the machine all built, loaded windows, office, and a few other things, pops got on the internet first thing and it fell on its face and crashed. failed memtest after about a minute, lol nothing like talking dad into a new computer, then talking him into me building it just for it to fail. He said well at least it turns on quick i have my old mushkin sticks i had after occ and kingston hooked me up i was going to try to unlock the phenom but i decided not to because i didnt want instabilities, but i got them anyways Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Locutus Posted June 5, 2014 Posted June 5, 2014 quad it is, got the machine all built, loaded windows, office, and a few other things, pops got on the internet first thing and it fell on its face and crashed. failed memtest after about a minute, lol nothing like talking dad into a new computer, then talking him into me building it just for it to fail. He said well at least it turns on quick i have my old mushkin sticks i had after occ and kingston hooked me up i was going to try to unlock the phenom but i decided not to because i didnt want instabilities, but i got them anyways RMA the bad RAM! Also, did you try unlocking the phenom? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
camaro_dude15 Posted June 5, 2014 Posted June 5, 2014 i bought that ram from hornybluecow over 3 years ago, and i didnt try to unlock it because i wanted to not have to stability test it, go figure i had a problem anyway Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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