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Comment by neogodless | Hacker News Reader

I agree. Still running a Phenom XII 940. Of course I've been upgrading the HDD all along (went through a Raptor, a VelociRaptor, an early 80GB SSD and finally a 256GB Samsung), and put in a new video card about four years ago (don't play latest games, anyway.)

The Phenom cost me... $220. So the Ryzen 5 1600 has my name written all over it. But really, it would just make some things I do on my computer a little quicker. It would not have the profound effect that switching to an SSD did, in my opinion. I'll let the idea bake for a while.

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I'm the same - Phenom II, upgraded to SSD and new graphics but that's it.

When you say this has your name written on it, are they socket compatible? The idea of changing motherboards/ memory etc isn't compelling - I'd just get a new system - but if you can drop these in then it's really tempting.

Nope, Phenom II could work in an AM3 or AM3+ socket (depending on whether your particular model supported DDR3 RAM) but AM4 doesn't physically fit. Plus the new CPUs don't have DDR3 controllers so they couldn't use your RAM anyway.

Nope, I mean, spending the same amount as I did 8 years ago, and getting 8 years out of this new CPU sounds appealing to me! But I've got a uATX case, so my motherboard selection is mildly limited. I don't mind swapping out a motherboard. I used to do it rather frequently, for myself and for others.

I believe the socket I have now is AM2+, which is not at all compatible with AM4. I'd also need new RAM. Overall, I'd expect to spend close to $400.

You mean Phenom II right? I have Phenom II X4 925 from 6 years ago. On the same boat. To think that I worked on Ryzen performance while it was being developed/brought up. I'm a bit emotional but still not pulling the trigger.

Yes, Phenom II X4 940. (I called it a Phenom II 940 in my previous post.)

I'm running a Phenom II 1055T (x6). It actually seems to be ok for pretty much everything, including gaming at 1440p (I've upgraded the GPU 3 times and am currently running a GTX 1070, 16GB of RAM, and an SSD). Not bad for a system that's almost 7 years old.

The only issue is that I tried using the Oculus, and it won't work. Apparently the CPU doesn't have some instructions required for VR. I tried using a hacked version of the Oculus setup program that bypasses the CPU check, but it still won't work.

Which is why I've been thinking about a Ryzen 5...

I had a similar chip since 2011 and only recently upgraded. For thread-heavy workloads even one of the fastest E3 Xeons is only like 40-50 % faster (if no special insns like AES can be used).

Safe to say it had superb price/performance (IIRC paid like 150 € for it).

I'm running a Phenom II X4 965 and I have yet to feel limited by CPU speed. Really snappy for everything I do. This is a 2009 CPU. To put that in perspective, that is like using a 486 DX4/100 in 2002, when the state of the art was Pentium 4's at 3 GHz. Pretty amazing, actually.

>To put that in perspective, that is like using a 486 DX4/100 in 2002, when the state of the art was Pentium 4's at 3 GHz. Pretty amazing, actually.

Stagnation in improvements is amazing ? :\

Yeah I upgraded other parts of my machine as well - just did not feel the need to touch the CPU. And actually, I had 8GB of RAM when it started out and I did not change that either. 8GB still runs fine for me.

I should switch to a 256GB SSD as well though, that is on my list of things I want to upgrade.

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