whats the best athlon am2 ? with crossfire

[weebroonie]

my mates given me his old amd am2 cpu cant remember the model number i have it in an

GIGABYTE GA-MA785GM-US2H AM2+/AM3 4XDDRII D/CHN GLAN F/HD

that i just bought but i think i want to spend a bit more on a really good board that can take the cpu

i want to add one of the radeon hd5850 cards or the like an do this hybrid crossfire stuff

what i need to know is will the system use only the built in igp unless i startup a game for noise and power reasons or will it always be on in idle ?

it will be rigged upto my my 52inch 1080 samsung so i want to be able to play some fps or whatever games with my mate and i need a big screen as i need every advantage i can get over him lol so hopefully a 5850 would provide enough power for most games at 1080p resolution



i like a board with lots of cool features and toys , lots of sata and esata ports and good clock control chips as i want it to be able to over and underclock automatically according to the load on the system either by 1st or 3rd party software

and if its possible how does the discrete gpu send it power through the mainboards hdmi port for when gaming / do the boards do this automatically or is it not possible

thanks for reading this far guys

[QuietOC]

That motherboard is nice, you wouldn't be getting anything better with another one. 1080p is not a challenge for video cards--the 5850 is mostly overkill at that resolution. The IGP is not switchable without removing the video card. You can run the IGP with a Radeon card to drive another monitor for 2D stuff (SurroundView). Hybrid Crossfire is pointless, since it only works with worthless video cards.

Personally I wouldn't keep the old AM2 CPU your friend gave you. Sell it and buy all new components. I have one of the fastest AM2 CPUs the X2 5800+ and even overclocked to a max of 3.2GHz it limits the performance of a 5770. For the same cost my AMD Athlon II X2 240 runs fine at 3.7GHz at stock voltage.

An AM2 CPU is an especially bad choice when using the IGP. The X2 5800+ scores around 4000 on 3DMark03. The overclocked X2 240 scores about 6000. while a 4.2GHz X2 555 scores about 7000. This is on an overclocked 785G with a 128MB DDR3 Sideport.

[weebroonie]

cheers for the advice mate ,

so to clarify , could i use the hdmi on the board and the radeon would pass through its power when gaming or would i plug my hdmi cable into the radeon and it will stay low powered untill required eg gaming ?

what would you say is the best choice i buy for the socket , i dont want to overclock too much iv done that for years i want a really quiet system

i have just knocked up this system quicky in my old antec p180 case but want to buy a smaller case for having in the living room and build a seperate windows home server stuffed with drives and just use a ssd for the media center for silence and system responsivness

also what card do you recommend for decent gaming of the latest radeons


so for all the questions directed at you but u seem to have been where i am in this sort of build

my usual build are the most expensive motherboards ram and best oc'able cpu and some serious watercooling , time to have a smart win7mc system for all my media needs and a spot of gaming on the big telly

cheers for your input !

[QuietOC]

so to clarify , could i use the hdmi on the board and the radeon would pass through its power when gaming or would i plug my hdmi cable into the radeon and it will stay low powered untill required eg gaming ?

No, there's no pass through from any video card to the built-in HDMI except when using Hybrid Crossfire--which is useless. You will be plugging the TV into the HDMI port on the video card, and the only way to switch off the video card is to unplug it from the motherboard, and then switch the HDMI cable to the motherboard.

what would you say is the best choice i buy for the socket , i dont want to overclock too much iv done that for years i want a really quiet system

Any of the AM3 CPUs

Single Core: Sempron 140
Dual Core: AMD Athlon II X2 240

I haven't tried the X3 or X4 chips. The AMD Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition is not worth much over the cheap Athlon II X2 240. The latest "C3" / "GM" stepping is nice on the Phenom IIs. I am thinking of getting a AMD Phenom II X4 955 "C3" Black Edition. It isn't that much more expensive than the AMD Athlon II X4 620.

also what card do you recommend for decent gaming of the latest radeons

The 5770 is fine for 1080p gaming. Mine works pretty well driving 3 1280x1024 displays. The 5850 is likely overkill.