Quick question: Is an AM3 processor compatible with an AM2 board?

Generally yes but it's always best to check supported cpus on the manufacturers site.Which cpu and which board?Just not the other way around because of pin differences.

Thanks John,

The main board is a Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. GA-MA790X-UD4P
Currently hosting a 3.00 gigahertz AMD Phenom II X4 940
I'm hoping to replace the Phenom II with an AMD FX 6300.
I had been planning to build a second desktop, but I'm getting a little long in the tooth and may never finish the 2nd desktop.

Edit: I may have found the answer, i.e. There was a listing for my main board GA-MA790X-UD4P showing AM2+/AM3+. so it just may work.

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Thanks John,

The main board is a Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. GA-MA790X-UD4P
Currently hosting a 3.00 gigahertz AMD Phenom II X4 940
I'm hoping to replace the Phenom II with an AMD FX 6300.
I had been planning to build a second desktop, but I'm getting a little long in the tooth and may never finish the 2nd desktop.

Edit: I may have found the answer, i.e. There was a listing for my main board GA-MA790X-UD4P showing AM2+/AM3+. so it just may work.

You know, you may not see much of an improvement between the 2 CPU's. Unless you are a gamer the Phenom II x 4 940 is a very capable CPU. Your Mb will also limit the speed of the FX 6300 as the MB uses DDR2 memory instead of DDR3.

How much memory do you have? What type of HD do you have? You may get more bang for your buck by upgrading to an SSD if you still have a standard Hard Drive.

MB will bottle neck everything though. Only Sata-2 ( 3 Gbps ) and DDR2 memory. Not really worth upgrading the CPU unless you upgrade the MB to Sata 3 with DDR3 memory.

I had a Phenom II X 4 965BE with a Gigabyte Ga-MA785-UD3P, 8GB DDR2 800 Corsair Ram, WD 650GB Black Sata 2 HD and a Radeon HD4860. Really, the thing was fast enough for anything I needed.

I upgraded to an FX6300, Gigabyte 970A-UD3P, with Sata-3 ( 6 Gbps ), 8GB DDR3 1866 Corsair Ram and a Corsair 240GB LE SSD. Really, the biggest difference was putting the OS on the SSD drive. I kept the WD 640GB Black Sata2 HD for storage.

My Previous system had a Windows 7 Experience score of 7.3. This system has 7.4. FX6300 CPU is the lowest score. Everything else is a 7.8 or 7.9. In day to day operation I really can't tell any difference, with the exception of Boot speed.

Oh, and I recently upgraded my Video card to a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 TI. That did make some difference to gaming benchmarks... but I never hardly ever play any games.. other than Freecell. Doh!!

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Thanks, that's all good information. My hard drive(s) are all SATA, but I have an SSD in reserve.