CPU/Mobo Suggest Mobo for Phenom II X4 925

[Spectre]

Guys,
I have planned to go in for Phenom II X4 925. It will be used for running SAP and gaming
Is it a worthy upgrade for E8400

I need a decent overclocking mobo with DDR2 support. I dont want to shell extra 3K for the DDR3 upgrade

I have shortlisted the two mobos, both are based on 785. Suggest any other options as well if available

GA-MA785G-UD3H ( Full ATX preferred)
OR
GA-MA785GM-US2H

What are the market prices for these boards
I am getting CM 690 II and Noctua NH-U12P SE2 cooler. How much I can push this proccy with this combo
Also, how to find if the mobo has a backplate, Noctua needs it

TIA
Spectre

 

[DarkAngel]

Guess u would OC the 925 to arnd 3.5Ghz.

Bench - CPU - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

Still the E8600 at stock clocks of 3.33GHz beats the PII X4 965 in most games. So urs at 3.8Ghz will yield even better results. If u play games that uses all 4 cores available and the apps that u plan to use is threaded well then go for the PII X4 and O.C to ~3.5GHz.

IMO unless u dont use a lot of perpherials there is little to differentiate between a m-ATX and ATX mobo. GA-MA785GM-US2H has wide availabilty and is cheaper too at 4.3k.
But i just feel that u should go for a socket upgrade too. The AM2+ mobo supports AM3 proccies but then it may not perform to full potential IINM. The GA-MA785GMT-US2H costs just 4.6k from SMC.

As urs is a XMS2 kit i guess u can sell it for ~3.8-4k and get a GSkill Ripjaws 4GB 1600MHz GBRL kit for 6.2k.

 

[Spectre]

Thanks DA

I wanted to go for Quad Core mainly for installing SAP.
Can the above combo i have chosen can push clocks to 3.5 with XMS2 RAM

Also, any idea on the backplate

 

[DarkAngel]

Phenom II is advancing on Core 2 Quad. The latter does not have mainstream models (in terms of price and positioning) left in the series that would look better at least in terms of performance in modern applications (even if we discard the issue of platform prospectivity and price). Besides, Phenom II processors benefit from the upgrade to DDR3 memory. It's not very noticeable with low-clocked models. But as their clock rate grows, the effect becomes more prominent (that's a strong trump card for overclockers even now). Besides, even top Core 2 Quad models do not gain that much from this upgrade, even if we compare with DDR2-800 (not with DDR2-1066 with as low timings as possible like here). Our tests illustrate it very well. And considering that the future Core i5 will replace the cheaper i7 models at first instead of bringing Nehalem to the mass segment, we don't predict any radical changes until the end of the year.

iXBT Labs - AMD Phenom II 9xx CPUs With DDR3 Support

As u push the clock higher there is a advantage of going for DDRIII. Ya u should be able to push the PII X4 925 to 3.4-3.5GHz with that cooler. No idea about the back plate though.

But just adding 1k more and going for the 955BE(the newer 95w version) should make O.C a breeze and would let u go till 3.8-4GHz when needed.