The official website says even though 7850 runs on AM2 + slot , it is compatible with AM2 Motherboards as well.I want to ask if it really works. Anyone having a personal experience with this ?

And what is going to be the performance decrease since it will not be working in HT 3.0 Mode.


My second question
I currently have AM2 slot motherboard , DDR2 1 GIG Ram 667 Mhz, Sempron 3200+ Processor.
I would also like to ask if its really worth it to upgrade motherboard which has AM2 + slot, since i will install DDR2 2 gig ram 800 Mhz .

Third question is:
Is Am2 slot motherboard + DDR2 2 GIG 800 MHZ RAM + AMD 7850 Black edition
Better or
AM2 plus motherboard + DDR2 2 gig 800 MHZ RAM + aMD 7850 Black edition ?

Fourth question
Does Upgrading from a RAM speed of 667 MHZ to 800 MHz increases system performance ?


Thanks in advance, i will really appreciate you folks if you answer all these question that i have.

It should work, but I'm not sure. AM2/AM2+/AM3 are pretty much the same I think, when it comes to pins & fit. I have an old motherboard that was compatable with AM2/AM2+ CPU's, but now with a new BIOS update it supports AM3.

Again, not to sure but might be worth trying at least.

Damon Mac said:

The question is not if the CPU supports your motherboard... its does your motherboard support the CPU? You may need to goto your motherboard manufacturer's website and update the BIOS to gain support for the newer CPU.




The one thing AMD does very well is over engineer their platforms... There will be little or no decrease in performance running the CPU on a board with older versions of hyper transport. AMD's CPUs even on the older boards are not at all bandwidth starved thanks to their integrated memory controller.



The speed of the RAM will have less of an impact than quantity... 1GB is not enough for a modern operating system... it works okay for XP if you're primarily doing productivity type tasks but any kind of gaming and you really need at least 2GB.




I'd rather have the AM2+ board because its going to be newer and will have things like PCIe 2.0 slots... but from a CPU speed perspective there really is not going to be much of a difference.



It will a little... but as I said earlier you should be more concearned with quantity than speed... I'd rather have 2GB of 667MHz RAM than 1GB of 800MHz or even 1066MHz RAM.

First of all MrBungle thanks for such a elaborate reply.

I have decided to upgrade both the processor and motherboard. I am going for

AMD 7750 , 2.7 GHZ processor
Motherboard am2+ (I dont know which model im a get, but it has am2+ slot and 1ghz fsb)

My GPU is ATI 4650

Now i do have one GIG 667 MHZ Ram, based on your suggestion since the RAM speed isnt much of importance than the quantity i want to ask you if should get another

2 Gig RAM 667 MHZ + my old 1 GIG 667 MHZ ram Totalling 3 GIG RAM

Or i should get 2 Gig 800 Mhz RAM (Now in this case total ram my system will have is 2 GIG 800 Mhz)

I am asking this because OS doesnt utilizes all of this 2 gig ram, And i am mostly upgrading for Gaming ( Well thats all my budget allows ) , so from gaming point is quantity still the factor or speed, and as in my case the latter case will benefit or the 3 gig case ?

If you're commiting to buying a new motherboard, RAM, and CPU then I would suggest you buy an AM3 based motherboard, a Phenom II or Athlon II CPU, and DDR3 RAM.

Most of the time you can get into current generation parts for just a little more than some of the upper tier last gen parts. AM2+, Athlon X2's, and DDR2 are all legacy (obsolete) hardware now.

Getting into the newer platform will give you longevity that you just can't get out of AM2+ parts. DDR3 is quickly becoming mainstream, the prices have come down, and this is going to put pressure on RAM manufacturers to start switching their production over to the newer standard... DDR2 prices are going to go up and the parts will become scarce on the market making it harder and more expensive to upgrade later. The same is true for AM2+ CPU's, sure AM3 CPU's are backwards compatible but what about AM3+ or AM4 chips when they come out? who knows. One thing is for sure AM3 has alot more life ahead of it than AM2+.



2GB DDR2 800 (2x 1GBsticks) + 1GB DDR2 667 (1x 1GBstick) = single channel RAM (bad)
in this case I would probably just run the 2x 1GB sticks and leave out the 1GB of DDR667

2GB DDR2 800 (2X 1GBsticks) + 1GB DDR2 667 (2x 512MB sticks) = Dual Channel RAM (good)
in this case I would probably run all the RAM in the system and have 3GB.

if you follow my suggestion above and go AM3 you should shoot for 4GB of DDR3 1333 (or better)