They are compatible even with AM2+ boards and DDR2 if BIOS update is available. My two ASUS M4A77D boards are compatible! Their performance shines especially with multithreaded applications. Frankly, primitive single-threaded applications are not hardware selection criteria for me. Seems that I will be a happy camper on the AMD side for a while.
My only concern would be the memory bandwidth. Memory controller is still dual-channel and it may starve the additoinal two cores. I wish someone had a scaling and comparison test for 2, 4, and 6 cores for Phenom II X6 with multithreaded applications such as video encoding or 3D rendering. I want to see if the additional two cores are starving for memory bandwidth by comparing the performance scaling with 2, 4, and 6 cores.
Thrax
🐌Austin, TX Icrontian
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My only concern would be the memory bandwidth. Memory controller is still dual-channel and it may starve the additoinal two cores. I wish someone had a scaling and comparison test for 2, 4, and 6 cores for Phenom II X6 with multithreaded applications such as video encoding or 3D rendering. I want to see if the additional two cores are starving for memory bandwidth by comparing the performance scaling with 2, 4, and 6 cores.
I have not tested. But if you check core unlocking in the latest BIOS (v. 2004), options for six cores are there.