CPU upgrade to retail Acer system...?

[BadBrent]

I'm considering upgrading the CPU in my desktop Acer system and am in need of a little advice. My current desktop is an Acer Aspire AX3200-EF9100A with these specs:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16883103168

Brand Acer

Series Aspire

Model AX3200-EF9100A

Recommended Usage Home / Home Office

Colors Charcoal-black

Processor AMD Phenom X4 9100e(1.8GHz)

Processor Main Features 64 bit Quad-Core Processor

Cache Per Processor 4 x 512KB L2 Cache

Memory 4GB DDR2

Hard Drive 640GB SATA

Optical Drive 1 BD DVD Reader & SuperMulti DVD burner (DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD-RAM)

Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 9300GE 256MB VRAM with Hybrid SLI Technology

Audio Sound card - Integrated

Ethernet Gigabit LAN

Wireless Card 802.11b/g/n

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_P...microprocessors

Anywho, I'm wanting to upgrade the CPU from the Phenom X4 9100e to a 9500 or a 9600, maybe higher depending on the cost. The 9100e CPU has a TDP of 65W, and the processor I'll end up getting will most likely have a TDP of 95W. Given that the power supply in this little joker is only 220W, would those extra 30W make that much of a difference? Obviously I don't want to hang my power supply (or mobo for that matter) out to dry, so I was just curious what you guys think. Any opinions (or facts for that matter) will be greatly appreciated.

BTW, the motherboard is an evil spawn of the ECS MCP78M-A that Acer dubs as their own WMCP78M. Thanks again.

-BB

Edited January 8, 2009 by BadBrent

[CoffeeFiend]

Even going to the 9600 is only a 25% clock increase, on a processor with very poor single core performance. Assuming your motherboard and PSU can handle it, I still doubt it will be very fast...

In fact, even the most expensive & brand new Phenom (X4 9950 BE) barely competes with the two year old Intel Q6600 in terms of performance, and the few bucks one saves buying one of those he pays back several times in power...

I'd wait for the Phenom II. At least they might have good performance (but it won't be cheap: $275 for the X4 940, and the X4 920 is not much faster than the old Q6600), and lower power too.

[BadBrent]

Well, I am aware a 25% clock increase isn't that big of a deal, but my reasoning behind upgrading is the fact that I'm also building an HTPC based on another GF8200 chipset motherboard and wanted to put this current CPU in the HTPC and overclock the mess out of it. I'm still going to have to buy a new CPU as it is, I just was hoping to do a little CPU swapping so my desktop may have the quicker CPU. Those new Phenom IIs run at 125W TDP right? That means I'd be pulling 60W more juice out of the PS.

Something tells me I should just tough it out with the processor in this machine right now.

Thx crahak

Edited January 8, 2009 by BadBrent