First sorry for my english.It isn't my mother language. I have a phenom 955be, may I put a 6950 2gb and have a great perfomance?If no, so the video card won't be running 100%,correct?What can I do? Should I do an overclock in my processor?OR Should I buy a x6 1100t? Thank you!
Hi and welcome to the forums! I have the same processor as you, the 955 BE. I installed an aftermarket fan on it and overclocked the processor from 3.2GHz to 3.7GHz without touching the voltage. But beware: you have to buy a new fan for your processor like the Cooler Master Hyper 212+ or a Corsair A50 before attempting an overclock. I also recently bought a HD 6950 2gb. It's a great card that run every games I have (Crysis 2, The Witcher 2, Age of Conan, Rage, Starcraft 2, Deus Ex, Civilization V, etc.). I recommend getting the Sapphire HD 6950 2gb Dirt 3 edition or the MSI HD 6950 2gb Twin Frozr III. Both are great cards with excellent cooling and nice overclockers if you're into it. You could simply overclock you 955BE to 3.6GHz and enjoy your HD 6950!
I have the C3 stepping but your C2 will mostly be able to run at 3.6GHz easily! Get a new cpu heatsink fan and enjoy the free speed!
Corsair A50 or A70 (A for air cooled and H for water cooled, dunno if you want to go the water way but if you do I won't be able to help you there ) So Corsaqir A50/A70 or Cooler Master Hyper 212+ would be great choices and they go for low prices often too.
I'm pretty sure the 955 BE won't bottleneck a 6950 2gb even at stock clocks, but it certainly isn't a bad idea to grab a 212+ and get a few hundred extra MHz out of that chip
We have a 965BE and fitted the coolermaster hyper 212+, it's wonderfull. Temps never go very high and idle is low, around 30°C. plus it's very silent!!! Clocked it to 3.8Ghz since anymore required much vcore and just doesn't seems worth it. We run a 6870 card in it and it's fine. So I would say the 6950 will do ok. I say go for it. And may I offer you a little bit of advice? f you have the money ofcourse, try getting the sapphire 6950 toxic 2GB. It has the bios switch with the one from 6970 included. I flicked the switch on mine and have all shaders unlocked, clocks very good also. It scores very good in benches, better than the 570GTX and on par with the 580GTX, although those can be overclocked also ofcourse. Still, my gpu score in vantage is 24230, and 3dmark11 default test scores p6118. This is also due to my cpu ofcourse, but it's a fast card for sure. And certainly alot cheaper than the GTX cards. ps. you can always upgrade your cpu at a later stadium.
