x2 4200 vs. x2 5200 BE

I checked the specs on your motherboard and the manufacturer says it will support the 5200 with the proper BIOS. According to AMD, it isn't available in a Black Edition.

Here's the thing. You aren't going to get much of an improvement in going with the 5200 over the 4200. It's only really a jump of about 500 MHz, and in most cases, you won't see a big huge difference. You will see some, and if the 5200 is really cheap, then it might be a good buy. But if the CPU is expensive, it might be a better idea to save up and upgrade the motherboard to something a bit newer and get a better CPU at that time.

There are some 5000 series Athlons available in Black Editions, and IIRC, they are the 65W Brisbane cores which overclock fairly well. But if you buy the BE with the intent of overclocking, make sure you have good cooling and airflow in your case. An o/c'ed CPU puts out much more heat than stock, and you'll kill it fast without proper cooling.

dorian hawkmoon said:

I want to upgrade from 4200 X2 to 5200 X2 Black editions, what are the pros and cons of gaming, encoding and heat? It would be a lot of help to know guys...thanx!

PS. Is there such a thing as 5200+ black edition at all? My friend suggested it. Will 5200 fit my mobo? Please answer guys

Ok, we have the same motherboard... and I would suggest caution about simply looking for the fastest chip... ASUS is famous for supporting boards up to only a certain level of chip... and often that is based on BIOS revisions...

Here's the CPU page for that (our) board...

ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Support-

Select the motherboard with the pulldowns...
Just be sure your chip is on this list before ou purchase.

Also note the bios revision levels... You may have to flash the bios to get the CPU support you need... But frankly, I'd choose a different chip before I went off willy nilly flashing the bios... A bad flash can trash the motherboard and I'm betting that's not what you want...

Cooling wise, unless you are overclocking, the AMD supplied heat sink should be just fine. But do keep in mind you may have to increase air circulation in your case to eliminate the added heat from a faster CPU... This is usually no problem, add a fan, clean things up, etc.

Hope this helps....

Hey, if it's really cheap...

It looks like the board will support it, but as mentioned above, make sure the BIOS is up to the task. If you need to reflash, you'll need to do it BEFORE putting in the 5200, or it most likely won't boot, or run properly if it does. Reflashing is best avoided if you can, as it's not something you want to mess up.

Ok here's a snip from the ASUS CPU page for the M2N-MX SE Plus...



It looks like the 52OO+ chip will be ok without flashing your bios.

However the actual speed difference isn't that great... As in you might need benchmarking programs to see it...

Still, having a spare CPU chip (the old one) isn't such a bad idea...