Phenom II X6 is still a powerful cpu. A bit power hungry. Use SSD and it will fly. I have it for 8 years in my main desktop which is rarely used now-a-days.

Phenom II X6 and AMD FX 63xx 83xx are still fairly valid chips for modern computing. I have still not upgraded from an FX8350 and continue to use it with my RX480 due to DDR4 prices.

If you add SSD and enough RAM (>4GB) it will work well enough. The single biggest CPU draw for general computing these days is the idiotic load many modern websites generate. A Phenom II has lousy single-thread performance, so the active page might be a tad slower than on say a modern i7, but with all those cores it should be able to handle multiple open tabs fine.

Case in pont: I downgraded my daughter from an i7-860 to an Athlon64 X2 7750 Black Edition (i.e. basically two of the cores your Phenom has six of) after an unfortunate hardware outage - and she didn't notice. I would, but then again, I'm the kind of person who figured out something serious was going on on 9/11 because of the odd load times of various websites... not exactly representative 😉

AS long as you don't want to play the newest games or encode 4k video, this CPU is perfectly fine for pretty much anything.

Most new games are still at least playable with it, but some are out because of a somewhat outdated instruction set (lack of SSE 4.1/4.2).

I used X3 till 2016 and almost all games was still playable. Some of newest games need some newer instruction, and also you can't finish 3DMark TimeSpy test.

Since then I sold it, and if I would need to build cheap office PC, I would probably go socket 775 route, but AM3 is definitely possible too. Just X6 are for sure more expensive then some equivalent 775 CPUs.

My daughter's PC (and actualy the most modern one at home) is a Phenom II X6 1090T. With SSD, 8GB RAM, GTX750 and Windows 10 it is very responsive and even with modernish games, it runs well. For Office/web/multimedia use, it will probably be overkill, even 🤣

Here is a test that I performed for another discussion here in vogons:

@tayyare
5113 FPS 😕

Thank you, only problem is the prices of the cpu, i already have the mobo anyway. I wanted to go for a775 solution having the q6600 but i imagine it would be slower.

I have a Phenom x6 1100t and they are defiantly capable of basic office work. But if I put my practical head on they are dated with below modern mid range performance, lack modern extensions, are power hungry, require a lot of cooling and are more expensive than they really should be.

Only just about to retire my X4 from being my mainstay, going to a LGA1155 build (mainly because I just happened to turn up a usable board in a bundle, ran the CPUBOSS numbers on the medium/higher CPUs and ended up getting an ok deal on an i7-3770

The X6, as the top of the pre-FX range, tends to be rather overpriced - the peak models of particular ranges usually are

I picked up a 95watt 1055t for $30 awhile back. It's clocked at 3.4ghz after a bit of overclocking on stocm voltages and handles everything that's been thrown at it no problem. A Hyper 212 or cheap 120mm tower cooler equivalent is more than suitable for icy cool temps.

Iv never understood why everyone claims FX and Phenom chips are power hungry, they have about the same power ratings of a 3.4ghz P4 but have the modern day power saving features needed to keep them chilly in 90% of tasks. Stock sub-par cooling is adequate for 100% load gaming for hours if a bit loud.

Sorry for long post, TL;DR use a good cheap cooler and have at least a single 120mm intake and 120mm exhaust fan for Am3/+ 95watt+ chips 😀

ODwilly wrote:

[...]

Iv never understood why everyone claims FX and Phenom chips are power hungry, they have about the same power ratings of a 3.4ghz P4 but have the modern day power saving features needed to keep them chilly in 90% of tasks.

Because people don't compare them to the absolute worst-case Netburst CPUs but to contemporary Intel Core2 and Core i-series designs, which both have better performance per Watt under load and much lower idle power scaling.

AMD's designs gave by far the best performance per Watt compared to the P4, but once Intel got their act together with the Pentium M-based Core designs, AMD's been playing catch-up on that front. That said, the differences aren't as huge as some people make them out to be. It matters if your PC is going to be on 24/7 (where idle power draw dominates) or if you are doing tasks that max out the whole CPU for long periods (compiling/rendering). For normal desktop work with incidental gaming, you won't notice anything significant in terms of power usage.

Good points. Also made me think of the relative performance per watt ratio of FX or Phenom to Nehalem or Sandy Bridge. The top end Nehalem I7's blew the doors of anything AMD put out with about the same power draw.

Then you have the fact that they competed with the i5's which were just soooo thermally well behaved.

Core2 and Core i-series designs, which both have better performance per Watt under load and much lower idle power scaling.

I don't know about Core i, but I would somewhat disagree on Core 2. Core 2 has the lower speeds and voltages locked out, unlike Pentium Ms or AMD chips where you can underclock to your heart's content. If your focus is on low power usage at idle or light loads then that could be a deciding factor. Although it's true that AMD's stock settings for power saving aren't very aggressive.

Otherwise the situation becomes more complicated. For a single-threaded program a Core 2 will almost always beat a Phenom II X4 or X6 because the extra cores are nothing but a waste. For a multi-threaded program the tables are turned. If you only look at the CPU power consumption you are also missing out on what the chipset is using, and part of the chipset functionality was moved to the CPU itself by AMD (ie. memory controller). Beyond that you have to look at the particular chip variants. Higher wattage CPUs are usually less efficient despite their marginally higher performance. 65W Core 2 looks OK compared to a 65W Athlon X2 but what about a 45W Athlon X2 or 65W X4?

Right now I'm on a 10W (ULV) Core 2 which probably beats any desktop chip or any 45nm chip in terms of idle power or performance/watt (but it can't match the .9W idle power of the original 130nm Pentium M!)

Core 2 has the lower speeds and voltages locked out

Wrong. Also on some boards FSB is adjustable down to the original 400mhz.

Core 2 has the lower speeds and voltages locked out

Also you can do VID mod: Asrock 775Dual VSTA & Core4Dual thread

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Core 2 has the lower speeds and voltages locked out

Wrong. Also on some boards FSB is adjustable down to the original 400mhz.

Proof for this : https://valid.x86.fr/6a4a9i

i still use a A10-5800k and it does well in daily usage.

Even a C2Q is still sufficient for this.
Except for some stupid javascript loads..

kixs wrote:

Phenom II X6 is still a powerful cpu. A bit power hungry. Use SSD and it will fly. I have it for 8 years in my main desktop which is rarely used now-a-days.

Rarely used main desktop, what do you use in lieu of it, phone? tablet? spend most your time off the computer?