I setup a nice little system with AM2 and AGP, threw a nice 2.7 Ghz single core Athlon in it and 2Gb of ram and its a rock solid little system.

As for AM2 PCie .. nahhh if I'm going that route then AM3/AM3+ or LGA 775/1366 is better with a wider range of options.

This thread getting resurrected reminds me that i still need to by myself a 6400+ Windsor, while they are still available at reasonable prices...

It is a curious moment in history - outright downgrade/performance reduction from generation to generation is not a very common thing after all. And Brisbane was a downgrade, very comparable to upgrades we see nowadays from generation to generation in terms of numbers...

I'll probably build something based on AM2 at some point, i do have a few decent enough boards, it is just a bit hard to justify with LGA775 being so much superior and more easily available. AM2 simply does not have anything of value to offer compared to LGA775. Faulty chipsets exactly from bumpgate time period do not help matters either...

I didn't see any Athlon 64 X2 6400+ selling cheap on ebay. These are very rare. But I do have 6000+ (Windsor, ADA6000IAA6CZ) and another 6000+ (Brisbain, ADV6000IAA5DO) to play with in addition to the Phenom X4 9950 (HD995ZXAJ4BGH). Buy them while you still can.

The inferiority to Core2Duo doesn't matter that much these days. You can always pop in a Phenom II if you need more.

Buy at least AMD 7xx chipset with SB7xx southbridge (used in AM2+ boards). Those are less troublesome than the earlier ones. Board should have 8pin CPU connector.

I skipped the whole AM2 socket when it came out. For a short time I had a Phenom X4 9500 system which was a big let down, and technically AM2+ as well. Intel was just better at the time.

Now, years later, I'm planning on building an ASRock system with an AM2CPU card + X2 6400+. Crazy stuff.

I only build systems I never had. I had Core2Duo followed by Core2Quad back then. I skipped AM2/3 completely. The fastest CPUs for them have very high TDP, 125W+ but that is not a problem for modern large heatsinks like Scythe makes. It should be possible to cool it with 800 RPM in a modern case.

Well, even more reason to buy one then. I can still see them for reasonable prices (10-20$) locally. The boards i have are nforce4-5 based IIRC, they are working, but for how long... If i am going to build something with AM2 i'd want it to be early, not AM2+ though. I do have later phenom2 stuff and it has its own quirks, but AM2+ and AM3 are too similar to bother having both.

I did have early AM2 back when it was new, that was what i upgraded 462 to (skipping 754/939). I stayed with AMD all the way to phenom2 on AM2+/DDR2 and then went directly to LGA1155 because FX was a mess. Not that phenoms were amazing, but they at least were comparable and usually cheaper. Unlocking cores/caches was fun too, i still have phenom2 x3 720 BE which runs at 3.4Ghz with 4 cores....

So i skipped everything intel from s7 all the way to 1156...

AM2 is definitely not a priority for me though. Too new, feels almost modern. Pci-e and everything. I generally prefer messing with older stuff. My next project probably is S370 with win ME, now that i have a bunch of AGP cards and a suitable PSU the only thing that's stopping me is time. And i still need a case.

Those early AM2 boards will probably not survive an Athlon 64 X2 6400+.

Zalman Z3 Plus white (with black front) is a case very suitable for PIII / Athlon XP / P4 retro builds. It has plenty of airflow and 3.5" + 5.25" bays. For newer builds the bays will be unnecessary and a newer case can be used.

I gave up on WinME, it was too unstable, couldn't get NVidia driver working there.

Well, at least one of this boards is abit an52s i've pulled from otherwise completely gutted and destined for recycling PC at work. Along with ADX6000IAA6CZ which is 125W too. It should survive, though there obviously are no guarantees with this old hardware. I do have a late AM2+ board, IIRC with AMD 790/710, but this athlon would feel really out of place in a board like this...

And yeah, the ME is a mess, that's exactly why i want to play around with it and want a period-correct system for it in order to avoid extra issues from new hardware. I think i'll even break my own rule there and use actual IDE HDD, partly because i've ran out of IDE-SATA adapters...

a few months ago I bought some random am2 board (an asrock with the 7025 chipset) to re use my X2 4000+ which was in it's box for the past 10+ years since I had no working board anymore, I have it with a 9600GT running windows XP, the CPU is running at 2.5GHz with 1.25v it has been running pretty cool like that and stock HSF, it's solid for most games I would actually want to play on XP, but I had the 9600GT on XP before with an i3 4130 and there is definitely a difference with the consistency of FPS in some games that the 9600GT handles well. but for me it's more about the nostalgia of having the CPU going again, pretty much any core 2 duo would be nicer, but, this seems to be ok.
the board does support Phenom based CPUs and that would make it faster, but, it defeats the purpose of just re using my old CPU.

I would not recommend AM2 over lga 775, but, AM2 is ok and cheap for some k8 nostalgia.

I have a couple of AM2+ boards that I have had since 2008. I ran them myself once upon a time and then they were used by coworkers for like a decade and eventually I got them back. A Gigabyte MA78GM-S2H with AMD 780G+SB700 and a ASUS M3N78-VM with GeForce 8200. They ran Phenom II X4.

I would rather step back to Socket 939 if I'm going to play with Athlon 64 X2 or an Opteron dual core.

I intend to build a high-end AM2+ system, that should be quite competitive with lga 775 in theory

Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 rev 2.0 will be tested with various CPUs:
- Athlon 64 X2 6400+ (windsor, I managed to get one for a reasonable price)
- Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (windsor, because they are very cheap now)
- Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (brisbane)
- Phenom X4 9950 (top Phenom I)
- Phenom II X4 940 (top AM2+ only specific Phenom II)
- Phenom II X4 965 (AM3 cpu)

and various graphics cards:
- GeForce GTX 980
- GeForce GTX 780
- GeForce GTX 770 (proxy for GTX 680)
- GeForce GTX 580
- GeForce GTX 480
- GeForce GTX 260
- GeForce 9800 GTX

Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 is missing VRM heatsink, but I managed to get a VRM heatsink from a damaged modern Asus board that I will modify (ASUS PRIME B660-PLUS D4).

I considered buying better boards, but none are as numerous as GA-MA770-UD3. It's a decent enough board provided VRM cooling is added. I will have 3x GA-MA770-UD3.

Phenom II is considered only as a backup plan in case Athlon 64 X2 6400+ and Phenom X4 9950 end up being useless with GTX 980.

I am still using this system with win 7:

Also was able to grab one 6400+ for ~$20 and one for free with mangled and a couple of broken pins. Fixing that would be fun...

Does anyone have an idea of an interesting use case for a system like AN52S/6400+/GTX660 or x1950pro/4 or 8 GB of RAM? The stuff is interesting by itself, but i most definitely do not need or want another XP system - have 3 of those already. And this hardware does not seem to be well suited for anything else... or am i missing something?

Sounds like a waste of time in your case. In my case it fills space after Athlon 64 3400+.

Interesting that MSI 790XT G45 survived Phenom II X4 3.2Ghz with just 4 pin power connector and no VRM cooling. It cannot even be attached to that board as it has no holes in PCB and VRM is L shaped.

Phenom II X6 1100 is likely to get replaced by a fast clocked Vishera FX-8370 (has modern instruction set) once I find a cheap one. 200W+ CPUs are motherboard killers. So that system is basically modern and will have Windows 10 instead of current Windows 7. It will use GeForce 2080/3080 once they get cheaper. Phenom II X6 1100 offers too little benefit over AM2+.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-06-24, 07:16:

Sounds like a waste of time in your case. In my case it fills space after Athlon 64 3400+.

Yep, that is how it feels to me. I have AthlonXP 2200+ for 98/XP, AthlonXP 3200+ for XP and C2D E8600 for XP. In addition to win7 system from screenshot above, which is vista/7 dual boot but if i wanted to - it definitely can run XP too.

Oh, and those dell workstation with P4 is technically only useful for XP too... i have too many old computers 😁

I'll probably play around with this hardware, test it and stash it for now. May be i'll found some use for it later.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-06-24, 07:16:

Interesting that MSI 790XT G45 survived Phenom II X4 3.2Ghz with just 4 pin power connector and no VRM cooling. It cannot even be attached to that board as it has no holes in PCB and VRM is L shaped.

It does not even get hot. I mean i can hold a finger on that VRM while running CPU benchmark. It gets toasty, but not to a point of being too hot to hold. Which is absolutely nothing for VRM - most components are rated for 150-175C. VRM design matters too, not just cooling...

It also was overclocked more, at least 3.4 and IIRC 3.6. But that required higher voltage and a beefy cooler, which i stole when it stopped being the main PC. With downgraded (still modern tower) cooler i dropped it down to nominal voltage and whatever OC it could handle. It is Phenom2 X3 720 BE by the way 😀

The beauty of this CPUs back in the day was that i got it cheaper than high end C2D would cost and got full quad core which was kind of competitive with C2Q.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-06-24, 07:16:

Phenom II X6 1100 is likely to get replaced by a fast clocked Vishera FX-8370 (has modern instruction set) once I find a cheap one. 200W+ CPUs are motherboard killers. So that system is basically modern and will have Windows 10 instead of current Windows 7. It will use GeForce 2080/3080 once they get cheaper. Phenom II X6 1100 offers too little benefit over AM2+.

Yeah, lack of some instruction sets, like full SSE4.x, is quite annoying on phenom2. And limiting for modern use.

Not sure i'd get FX though. Those CPUs and how completely and utterly useless they were compared to competition were what made me switch to intel after using AMD since K6. And i am still there. Yeah, AMD did some great stuff lately and i probably should try it, but intel did not screw something up to the same degree AMD did with FX yet. So i absolutely hate FX 😁

As long as you don't overclock it, it should be fine. The main concern IMO is slagging the 4 pin CPU power connector. If the electrical connection isn't tight and there is excessive resistance it might overheat and melt. I had this happen with a Q6600 on a P35 board way back, but I was also overclocking and I was running all night processing loads.

I only have a couple of odd-ball AM2 builds, none of witch see major use, but are fun to play around with from time to time.

One is an AGP build, based on the Gigabyte GA-MF3. Wierd motherboard - nforce 3 250 chipset, AM2 socket, full-fat AGP slot. It runs an Athlon 64 X2 5200+ and a Geforce 6800GT AGP and dual boots windows XP and 98.

The other is an early AMD quad core AM2+ build, based on a Asus M3N-HT Deluxe - a 2008 AM2 board that sports the nforce 780a chipset. It runs a Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition 125w CPU and a placeholder GTX460 video card. It dual boots XP and windows 7. The GTX460 is a bit new for the build, but I'm not sure what to replace it with. I have a GTX 260 witch is period correct - as well as a radeon 4890 (sapphire toxic vapor-x, runs at 960MHZ!). The 260 I find to be on the slow side for a versatile XP/7 build - the 4890 on the other hand is a rocket ship, edging out a GTX285 in most of my tests - but it is a fairly rare card, factory overclocked, and in my experience, this type of card tends to go bad when in frequent use...

But anyway, those are my two AM2 builds.

swaaye wrote on 2025-06-24, 15:13:

The main concern IMO is slagging the 4 pin CPU power connector. If the electrical connection isn't tight and there is excessive resistance it might overheat and melt. I had this happen with a Q6600 on a P35 board way back, but I was also overclocking and I was running all night processing loads.

Yup. 8 pin CPU power connector on Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 rev2.0 should help mittigate this risk. Great majority of AM2 boards had 4 pin connector only. High-end AM2+ boards often had SLI pcie slots which are useless nowadays. Having multiple x1 slots is better.

Socket3 wrote on 2025-06-24, 16:37:

The GTX460 is a bit new for the build, but I'm not sure what to replace it with.

My testing with Athlon 64 3400+ revealed that old systems do benefit from a much stronger GPU. The benefits are mostly higher possible resolution in games that already worked before and more smooth complex scenes like stadium view in Fifa games. The GPU will be mostly idle and much quieter than an older one running at 100%.

I'm testing a GeForce 780 on my Phenom II X6 and the difference in Heaven benchmark is quite noticeable compared to GeForce 980. On GeForce 770 it runs really sluggish.

Socket3 wrote on 2025-06-24, 16:37:

One is an AGP build, based on the Gigabyte GA-MF3. Wierd motherboard - nforce 3 250 chipset, AM2 socket, full-fat AGP slot. It runs an Athlon 64 X2 5200+ and a Geforce 6800GT AGP and dual boots windows XP and 98.

That sounds fun, i may need to try finding a board like this.

Socket3 wrote on 2025-06-24, 16:37:

The other is an early AMD quad core AM2+ build, based on a Asus M3N-HT Deluxe - a 2008 AM2 board that sports the nforce 780a chipset. It runs a Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition 125w CPU and a placeholder GTX460 video card. It dual boots XP and windows 7. The GTX460 is a bit new for the build, but I'm not sure what to replace it with. I have a GTX 260 witch is period correct - as well as a radeon 4890 (sapphire toxic vapor-x, runs at 960MHZ!). The 260 I find to be on the slow side for a versatile XP/7 build - the 4890 on the other hand is a rocket ship, edging out a GTX285 in most of my tests - but it is a fairly rare card, factory overclocked, and in my experience, this type of card tends to go bad when in frequent use...

From practical point of view something like GTX460 is great. Reliable, quiet, cheap.

As for 4890/4870... yeah, i had 4870 back in the day, it died within warranty. Replaced with 4890 and it died too. A friend had 4890, which died. Much simpler versions then yours, but still. Subjectively this are worse than well known geforce 8 stuff like 8800. So yeah, a shelf queen...

swaaye wrote on 2025-06-24, 15:13:

As long as you don't overclock it, it should be fine. The main concern IMO is slagging the 4 pin CPU power connector. If the electrical connection isn't tight and there is excessive resistance it might overheat and melt. I had this happen with a Q6600 on a P35 board way back, but I was also overclocking and I was running all night processing loads.

Curious. I have not seen this happen, must have been lucky. There must be really bad connection for just ~10A through a couple of pins to cause things to melt.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-06-24, 19:46:

High-end AM2+ boards often had SLI pcie slots which are useless nowadays. Having multiple x1 slots is better.

As long as the slot does not refuse to work with devices other than videocards it can actually be quite useful. Mostly for storage, but there are some fun other devices too, like FC cards etc.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-06-25, 03:28:

As long as the slot does not refuse to work with devices other than videocards it can actually be quite useful. Mostly for storage, but there are some fun other devices too, like FC cards etc.

The problem is usage of 2nd SLI pcie slot causes pcie lanes to be split in half so GPU will get x8 only. I do not want that to happen so the 2nd SLI slot is unusable for me.

pcie 2.0 x1 has speed 500 MB/s which is ok

AlexZ wrote on 2025-06-25, 07:53:

Archer57 wrote on 2025-06-25, 03:28:

As long as the slot does not refuse to work with devices other than videocards it can actually be quite useful. Mostly for storage, but there are some fun other devices too, like FC cards etc.

The problem is usage of 2nd SLI pcie slot causes pcie lanes to be split in half so GPU will get x8 only. I do not want that to happen so the 2nd SLI slot is unusable for me.

pcie 2.0 x1 has speed 500 MB/s which is ok

AFAIK all PCIe 16x slots are fully backwards compatible with 8x, 4x and 1x cards, I would imagine that if it can run a GPU then it'll be able to run everything else. Only time compatibility was ever an issue with PCIe was between PCIe 1.0 and 2.0/3.0 where the newer 2.0 cards would have issues with PCIe 1.0 slots.

Even the funky boards with that little SLI/Xfire card should be compatible also, that card simply splits the 16x lanes of the primary slot into two 8x slots to allow dual cards, but itll still be electrically compatible with all PCIe cards but will just share bandwidth with the GPU.

I personally have never heard of a PCIe 16x slot being only compatible with GPUs and I'm not even sure how they would go about doing that without causing issues, even a PCIe 1x slot can in theory run a 16x GPU due to how PCIe works.