AMD Phenom X4 9850 Support

  1. #1
    PlatinumMoto is offline Senior Member

    AMD Phenom X4 9850 Support

    Will an Asus M2a-vm support a Phenom X4 Black Edition 9850 125w without melting? or bottlenecking the video Card?
    Last edited by PlatinumMoto; 19-12-2008 at 08:13 AM.


  2. #2
    Digerati is offline Senior Quiquagenarian
    If you check your manual, it will say to check the website. And if you check the website, you find, ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Support-

  3. #3
    PlatinumMoto is offline Senior Member
    yeah it says it supports it but it says a 95w version not the 125w I'm going to get.

  4. #4
    Digerati is offline Senior Quiquagenarian
    it says it supports it but it says a 95w version not the 125w I'm going to get.
    Then don't get it! Not until you have contacted the motherboard maker's tech support and ask them, or see if any BIOS updates adds that CPU support. Or hope someone else with that exact board and CPU comes in and says it works for him.

  5. #5
    PlatinumMoto is offline Senior Member
    there is a bios update for it does that mean it will work?

  6. #6
    Digerati is offline Senior Quiquagenarian
    there is a bios update for it does that mean it will work?
    I wish it were that simple. The good news is ASUS is a major, and very reputable maker. If their website says that upgrade supports something, there is an excellent chance they actually tested and verified it, before saying it. So it means it works "in theory" and testing, and "should" work in your real-world application. But since ASUS did not test with that exact board, PSU, RAM, graphics card, etc. there is no 100% iron-clan certainty.

    But - if me, I would look for a CPU that is a bit more efficient. Understand that 125W is not a measure of CPU quality or performance, but power consumption - and 125w is a lot - and not very efficient. This means you must have a heftier power supply to support it, and your case MUST be able to expel all that extra heat being generated by the CPU, then tossed about by the CPU fan. Then of course, it cost more to run a CPU that consumes more power, and the added heat pumped out of the case and into the room places a greater demand on facility air conditioning. While a hot CPU will not melt the CPU socket, long term exposure to high heat can prematurely age the socket materials, and the motherboard underneath, causing "fatigue" resulting in microfractures, and eventual failure. Therefore, it is imperative you ensure proper cooling for ANY CPU used. This can easily be achieved with the 125W CPU, but it means it will likely come with a bigger heatsink and/or a fan capable of moving more air. Bigger heatsinks weigh more, which can cause added stress when "hanging" on a tower mounted motherboard. And While larger fans are typically quieter, fans that have to spin faster to move more air, are not. Things to keep in mind.

    In refreshing my mind, I reread your original post and note you asked if the hotter CPU will run without...
    ...bottlenecking the video Card?
    Understand that in the vast majority of cases, next to RAM, it is the graphics solution (on-board or card) that is the greater bottleneck, and not the CPU, which is typically down the list a bit. The better the graphics solution, the more tasks the CPU can "hand-off" to the graphics processing unit (GPU) for crunching. And it takes little CPU horsepower to hand off tasks to another processor. This is why the latest GPUs have more, WAY more transistors. Intels new Core i7 CPU, for example, has 731 million transistors on die, which includes large chunks of on-die cache while Nvidia's GT200 GPU comes with 1.4 billion transistors, and no on-die cache.

    So, if you are looking to boost performance, you need to make sure you have lots of RAM first - at least 2Gb. Then look at your graphics solution. Make sure you have plenty of free disk space, and then look at your CPU. AND, before adding or upgrading ANY new hardware, make sure your power supply is from a reputable maker, and of adequate power, in particular, has enough +12V current to meets demands.

    BTW, I often recommend MWave's Motherboard Wizard to find compatible CPUs and RAM for a given motherboard. See here for a list of CPUs they have tested with that board.
    ***

    Side note - Intel's new Montecito CPUs have 1.7 Billion, but again, a huge majority of that goes to on-die L3 cache - not used for actual processing tasks.
    Last edited by Digerati; 12-01-2009 at 03:09 PM.

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