TR Forums

Posted: **Sun Sep 15, 2013 3:28 am**

madmanmarz wrote:
Alright guys best I could do was 4.4 Ghz @ 1.45v 2475 NB/HT, 1500 DDR3 7-8-7-1T. This thing puts out a TON of heat. Gonna have to do some little upgrades if I want moar gigaz. Sellin the 1090 but I guess if I had to do it all over again I wouldn't have upgraded without better cooling (Unless I DO get $150 for it).

You can splurge on a Corsair H100 for $59 (if you dont mind the 10$ rebate) at tigerdirect,and if your case got the space to mount it.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... &CatId=499

Right now I run at 4ghz 1.248v (according to cpuz) on the stock cooler. Fine under regular workload (1300rpm mostly, jump to 2100rpm occasionally), but get to 4000 rpm running cinebench benchmark in a loop.

I measured 95w at the wall during idle (about 20w of that is the GPU + 16GB of ram), 226-258w(peak) under cinebench. (I have a feeling the motherboard VRM are not efficient at all)

Because of the high RPM, under full load of all cores, I'm actually getting that H100, and will run it on quiet profile to hopefully stay <65c under max load @ 4ghz.
http://www.corsair.com/blog/understandi ... -profiles/

And since I'm going to use this system full time, the u4 rack case is out, and this will be the new case
http://www.corsair.com/us/carbide-serie ... -case.html

Posted: **Sun Sep 15, 2013 8:55 am**

sschaem wrote:
Right now I run at 4ghz 1.248v (according to cpuz) on the stock cooler.
...
I measured 95w at the wall during idle (about 20w of that is the GPU + 16GB of ram), 226-258w(peak) under cinebench. (I have a feeling the motherboard VRM are not efficient at all)

My FX-8320 running stock draws 50W at idle, and 125W at full load. This is the CPU only (measured by the CPU's on-die power monitor), not at the wall. So with your bump in core speed and expected losses in the PSU and VRMs, mid-200s for system power usage under load sounds about right.

I do find it interesting that my full-load CPU power usage is exactly equal to the TDP. Coincidence? A sign that AMD is having binning issues and pushing things right to the edge? Or maybe it throttles when it hits the TDP spec if all settings are at stock?

Posted: **Sun Sep 15, 2013 9:30 am**

FWIW TigerDirect has a deal going right now on the FX-8350, $169 with coupon code TDU100708.

Posted: **Sun Sep 15, 2013 10:38 am**

Posted: **Sun Sep 15, 2013 11:07 am**

Since you still have both chips, how about doing some 1090T @ 4.1 vs FX8320 @ 4.4 benchmarks?

Treat it as sort of a gauntlet, loser gets sold!

Posted: **Sun Sep 15, 2013 11:52 am**

clone wrote:
You can splurge on a Corsair H100 for $59 (if you dont mind the 10$ rebate) at tigerdirect,and if your case got the space to mount it.
I thought he would have used the water cooling unit that enabled the 1090t's overclock.

I think If I really want to overclock this thing I'm going to have to upgrade my water setup completely, but money is tight right now, so I might do some little things that will carry over, like better fans and reservoir. Setup is basically a CPU & GPU block cooled by one 120mm radiator, stacked on a double wide 120mm radiator and an aquarium pump (rad|fan|rad|fan) (all outside the case).

Dang if I had seen that deal on the 8350 I might have jumped on it.

jihadjoe wrote:
Since you still have both chips, how about doing some 1090T @ 4.1 vs FX8320 @ 4.4 benchmarks?
Treat it as sort of a gauntlet, loser gets sold!

Haha I should have done some benches before and after but ain't nobody got time for dat. I had a real nice ht/nb overclock on that Thuban as well. So far BF3 seems to play at about the same framerate.

Posted: **Sun Sep 15, 2013 12:15 pm**

Sometimes you have to try before you can know that you shouldn not buy.

just brew it! wrote:
FWIW TigerDirect has a deal going right now on the FX-8350, $169 with coupon code TDU100708.

It's a trap. He will still need excellent cooling, favorable ambient air temperatures, and even a little bit of luck to get an overclock that will provide a meaningful performance increase over a 6-core Thuban clocked at 4.1.

Do the smart thing: return the chip and put the $150 in a piggy bank. Add some money to the piggy bank on a regular schedule until you have $350. Then pick out a socket 1150 motherboard and a Core i5 4670k. If you legitimately need more than 4 threads, continue to save until you have enough for a Core i5 4770k.

Well, I guess the first thing you can do is see how much you can sell your 1090T for. If you can come close to breaking even then you may as well keep the FX 8320 and use the money from the 1090T sale to start saving for mobo and CPU.

Everyone's got to see that spending approx. $150 for negligible gain is a bad expenditure. $350 for real gain is much better than $150 for negligible gain.

Posted: **Sun Sep 15, 2013 3:35 pm**

flip-mode wrote:
Sometimes you have to try before you can know that you shouldn not buy.

just brew it! wrote:
FWIW TigerDirect has a deal going right now on the FX-8350, $169 with coupon code TDU100708.

It's a trap. He will still need excellent cooling, favorable ambient air temperatures, and even a little bit of luck to get an overclock that will provide a meaningful performance increase over a 6-core Thuban clocked at 4.1.

Do the smart thing: return the chip and put the $150 in a piggy bank. Add some money to the piggy bank on a regular schedule until you have $350. Then pick out a socket 1150 motherboard and a Core i5 4670k. If you legitimately need more than 4 threads, continue to save until you have enough for a Core i5 4770k.

Well, I guess the first thing you can do is see how much you can sell your 1090T for. If you can come close to breaking even then you may as well keep the FX 8320 and use the money from the 1090T sale to start saving for mobo and CPU.

Everyone's got to see that spending approx. $150 for negligible gain is a bad expenditure. $350 for real gain is much better than $150 for negligible gain.

For gaming, unless the system already got a GTX780 I would upgrade the GPU VS spending $350 going from a 4.1ghz X6 to an intel i5

Posted: **Sun Sep 15, 2013 3:46 pm**

flip-mode wrote:
It's a trap. He will still need excellent cooling, favorable ambient air temperatures, and even a little bit of luck to get an overclock that will provide a meaningful performance increase over a 6-core Thuban clocked at 4.1.

Not to burst your pessimistic balloon, but I'm willing to bet the FX-8350 will perform exactly on par in games -- at stock -- and actually generate less heat than that Phenom X6 overclocked by 28%. Probably better multithreaded performance, better single-threaded performance due to that turbo-thingamajig, and you can still overclock it from here, which makes it a slim net win, but a win nonetheless.

Posted: **Sun Sep 15, 2013 4:03 pm**

just brew it! wrote:
Umm... Socket AM3+ is also limited to dual-channel DDR3. The main thing it has going for it compared to FM2 is support for ECC DIMMs, which makes it suitable for workstation-class machines but doesn't matter one damn bit to 99% of gamers.

That's fine for a CPU, but scarcely sufficient once you start tossing graphics textures over the bus as well.
At teh moment, ~$50, 128bit DDR3 graphics cards inhabit the very lowest levels of the performance ecosystem. Even with a few meg of cache on-chip, I don't see how ANY APU can compete with a typical ~$100 graphics card. And once you add a discrete GPU to your FM2+ system, all the APU graphics transistors become dead weight, robbing space that could have been used for more cache and/or cores. If they kill AM3, I can only hope that AMD will offer a 6/8+ core FM2+ CPU/APU with zero, or only a few, shaders and other GPU resources.

Posted: **Sun Sep 15, 2013 4:22 pm**

Geonerd wrote:
If they kill AM3, I can only hope that AMD will offer a 6/8+ core FM2+ CPU/APU with zero, or only a few, shaders and other GPU resources.

Why would they bother? The thing that sets FM2 apart is that you've got "good enough for most purposes" CPU and GPU together in a single low-cost package. AM3+, as their "performance" desktop platform, has lost the battle with Intel. Why would they want to turn FM2 into another AM3+?

Yes, I will be sorry to see AM3+ go; but at this point it probably makes business sense for AMD to kill it. (And aside from stunt products like the FX-9590, it would appear that they are doing exactly that, i.e. killing it by way of neglect.)

Posted: **Sun Sep 15, 2013 4:48 pm**

just brew it! wrote:
sschaem wrote:
Right now I run at 4ghz 1.248v (according to cpuz) on the stock cooler.
...
I measured 95w at the wall during idle (about 20w of that is the GPU + 16GB of ram), 226-258w(peak) under cinebench. (I have a feeling the motherboard VRM are not efficient at all)

My FX-8320 running stock draws 50W at idle, and 125W at full load. This is the CPU only (measured by the CPU's on-die power monitor), not at the wall. So with your bump in core speed and expected losses in the PSU and VRMs, mid-200s for system power usage under load sounds about right.

I do find it interesting that my full-load CPU power usage is exactly equal to the TDP. Coincidence? A sign that AMD is having binning issues and pushing things right to the edge? Or maybe it throttles when it hits the TDP spec if all settings are at stock?

You measure full load using Prime95 Blend torture test ?

Also what tool do you use to read that on-die power monitor ?

Posted: **Sun Sep 15, 2013 5:17 pm**

sschaem wrote:
You measure full load using Prime95 Blend torture test ?

Sadly, no... so it is admittedly a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison. I've tested using the Folding@home SMP client, and also a fractal rendering program I wrote myself. Both peg all available cores at 100%, and give the FPUs a workout.

sschaem wrote:
Also what tool do you use to read that on-die power monitor ?

Linux "lm-sensors" package. Seems to me that someone's gotta have something that'll do the same thing for Windows...

Posted: **Sun Sep 15, 2013 6:28 pm**

Sorry guys no Intel 4 me. AMD fan at heart and $350 is $350. Looks like a 1090T sold for $120 yesterday on the bay. We'll see what mine fetches (already at $100 with 5 watchers on day 1).

I think my next upgrade will be those little cooling upgrades and then graphics. I'm actually considering picking up a used 6950 for about $120 that will unlock to 6970 and then overclock that thang. Should be considerably faster than a 7850; my only reservation is that it will put out more heat than a 7850 (although be much faster).

And I did manage to get one bench if it matters. Old Windows experience score was 7.9, 7.9, 7.8, 7.8, 5.9 , new score is 8.1, 8.1, 7.8, 7.8, 5.9. =)

Posted: **Sun Sep 15, 2013 8:41 pm**

This is going to sound like a familiar argument:

Instead of sinking $120 into an obsolete power-guzzling Radeon HD6950 that's only slightly faster than what you have, save up to spend $200AR on a Radeon HD7950 that is much faster and more efficient. Otherwise, wait until Hawaii appears next month.

Posted: **Sun Sep 15, 2013 9:02 pm**

Bensam123 wrote:
My dad can beat up your dad.

Not even Damage is happy with those results:

Damage wrote:
Yeah, not my favorite set of results, given how not-really-CPU-limited that test scenario turned out to be.

Damage wrote:
But yeah, I wish I had the time and resources to do proper mega-multiplayer testing in properly in something like BF3. Maybe I can take a crack at it at some point soon. Maybe with BF4..?

Posted: **Sun Sep 15, 2013 9:04 pm**

JustAnEngineer wrote:
This is going to sound like a familiar argument:

Instead of sinking $120 into an obsolete power-guzzling Radeon HD6950 that's only slightly faster than what you have, save up to spend $200AR on a Radeon HD7950 that is much faster and more efficient. Otherwise, wait until Hawaii appears next month.

We are on the verge of a next gen update. Price will shift, and ebay will fill with great deals

7970 new are now $279 AR, in a few month those will on ebay for <$200

Posted: **Sun Sep 15, 2013 9:05 pm**

I would expect a 7850 to be faster than a 6950 at all times. It might even be faster than a 6970 in modern games;

GCN is just better than the old VLIW, A 7950 is just $200 new, It'll likely be 50-100% faster than a 6950 and you can probably pick up a used or refurbed one for not much more than the $120 you were planning on a used 6950.

Posted: **Sun Sep 15, 2013 10:52 pm**

Meadows wrote:
better single-threaded performance due to that turbo-thingamajig

Thuban has turbo too!

Chrispy_ wrote:
I would expect a 7850 to be faster than a 6950 at all times. It might even be faster than a 6970 in modern games;

GCN is just better than the old VLIW, A 7950 is just $200 new, It'll likely be 50-100% faster than a 6950 and you can probably pick up a used or refurbed one for not much more than the $120 you were planning on a used 6950.

I agree, and all the data out there supports this, but I can sympathize with OP on his thoughts.
There's just something about unlocking hardware that makes you feel like you're sticking it to the man.

Posted: **Mon Sep 16, 2013 12:21 am**

Posted: **Mon Sep 16, 2013 6:55 am**

jihadjoe wrote:
There's just something about unlocking hardware that makes you feel like you're sticking it to the man.

Yeah, indeed.
Unfortunately for me, the 6950 wasn't fast enough and unlocking it to a 6970 made practically no real difference. I needed new architecture and dramatically more throughput to handle 1440p

Posted: **Mon Sep 16, 2013 8:13 am**

Yeah I'll probably wait a month then and see the difference between the new stuff and the 7000 series. I'll still probably end up with a 7850 at most due to cost unless the 7900s come down a lot.

From most reviews tho, the 6970 was faster than the 7850 by a tad. I guess it would be a risky move to go 6950 since it is unlikely to clock as well as a 6970, plus the heat.

Posted: **Tue Sep 17, 2013 1:19 am**

Posted: **Wed Sep 18, 2013 1:41 am**

I done went and got me one one of them there 7850's (2GB, refurb) off the egg for $115. GPU block works on it and everythang.

Posted: **Wed Sep 18, 2013 11:24 pm**

Just replaced the stock fan for the H100.
Now the CPU cores seem to max out at 46c (in quiet mode where the fan spin at 1300 rpm max) running Prime95 torture test: 4.2ghz / 1.280v (as reported by CPUz)
Idle temp match the SSD sensor now: 29c. Fan spin at 900 rpm under normal load.

Power at the wall max at 272w with prime95, desktop iddle 84w. Peak system usage in cinebench, 226w . (Scores 7.25pt)

So far I'm happy with the end result.

Posted: **Wed Sep 18, 2013 11:46 pm**

Really wish OEM AMD desktop CPUs were more readily available. We could probably buy these for ~$10 less with no HSF. I have not been satisfied with any of the retail HSFs AMD has shipped in the past ~4 years; they all end up in the "spares" pile for servers that will be put somewhere that noise isn't an issue, or as something to bundle with older CPUs I give away.

Posted: **Thu Sep 19, 2013 2:00 am**

and the funny thing... at 7000 RPM it didn't feel like it was moving that much air at all. It was just loud.
Also it look massive compare to my stock Q6600 heatsink and this thing is just a small copper pad (rated for 95w) vs AMD big copper block + copper heat pipes for 125w.(and does a poor job at it)

Anyways... I found something troubling.

So I was happy, ready to do a clean install when I performed another Cinebench test coming out of sleep mode.. and the score was 6.74 .. I expected 7.25

I graphed the clock during the test, and it bounced as low as 2.9ghz. I never see this before.

So I loaded AMD overdrive, and the turbo was enabled. Even so I disabled it in the bios.

So I disabled turbo in AMD Overdrive.. and poof, back to the steady 4.2ghz clock under load and 7.25 Pt score.
turn turbo on.. back to bouncing between 4.2 and 2.9 ghz

note: turbo lv1 is 4.3 and lv0 4.4

Posted: **Thu Sep 19, 2013 5:45 am**

That must be frustrating. Have you tried setting overdrive to run with those settings at startup?

Posted: **Thu Sep 19, 2013 2:31 pm**

Any settings governing power usage in the BIOS? When I had my 8120 I had to disable the power limiting circuits to get it to hold an OC.

Posted: **Fri Sep 20, 2013 2:43 am**

Well, no solution so far. I'm guessing its a BIOS problem and I'm out of luck.

Enter sleep with turbo disabled and a 21 multiplier
Come out of sleep with turbo enabled and a 18.5 multiplier

Not being able to put the system to sleep is extremely lame.
My main PC (Q6600) is in sleep mode 10-14 hours a day on average, 365 days a year.

This bug would cost me about $280 over the lifetime of the system If I decide to replace my Q6600 with this AMD system... just unacceptable.

Oh, and getting S3 sleep to work was a PAIN on this AMd motherboard. MSI seem to want some peripheral enabled for S3 to work.
Example, if RAID IDE is not enabled in the bios, the machine will lockup during the wake up procedure.
Took me ages to figure that out. lame, lame, lame...

This is turning out to be a failed experiment, but a learning experience. I really cant blame people now from staying clear away from AMD after an experience like this.
GPU because of their drivers, and CPU because of the flaky platform.

So close, yet so far...

TR Forums

Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)

Re: Should I upgrade to an FX-8320? (1090T)