The New AMD Building Thread

Gigabyte boards had a severe problem with overloading Intel PCIe controllers that no other brand seemed to be affected by, but arguably no brand is perfect, they're certainly the least of many evils to me. In my opinion the only reason Asus still survive is off reviews when the products are new, not considering long-term reliability. Asus are far from alone in this regard, there are several companies I've used in the past which manufacture stuff that can barely reach the 1 year warranty mark (and often doesn't) - my do-not-buy list is quite lengthy
That said, there are products which, although unreliable, due to their performance and only minor inconvenience in failure, I'm happy to just replace. Scythe slipstreams are an example of that, they're panned all over for poor reliability, but the combination of high airflow and reasonable noise in a compact size and reasonable price means I'm happy to just keep buying new ones when they fail.
Likewise, although they don't exactly 'break', I'm happy to use coolermaster and NZXT for cases because although generally of quite poor build quality, their designs are usually pretty good. The majority of NZXT Whispers (mine included) come with faulty HDD LEDs, and my front illumination is now so dim it's invisible unless in a pitch black room (if i shake the cable around it brightens up a bit, so I assume it's a dry joint or something), but there is no case that comes close to what it does for my purposes, and it still looks reasonably tasteful imo.
Same goes for the HAF, although almost every time i take the side off I have to bend it back into shape with pliers so it will fit back on the case, and none of the front ports work, and the LEDs are uninsulated, so just the HDD LED flashing lights up the power LED (I disconnected it, too bright) too, otherwise the design is still nice and very pleasant to use.
It's just a shame that almost everything is built to such an appalling standard in the PC area these days.

 

Estuansis,

I have to agree with you about the old 790X-UD4P. I had a few teething problems with a couple of the early ones, but hey, that's how you learn. I'm thinking about eventually replacing my 790X with this MB and memory

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128510
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231430

Should work pretty well together.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

never had a problem with my lian li, but then again, I did spend 140 quid on it without mods. And to be honest, didnt use my silverstones for to long to let any problems occur. The lianli has been in use for nearly 3 years now aswell.

 

Likewise never had the same problems as Sam with my HAF. Might make a difference that my side panel is the AMD Dragon one but all my lights, usb ports, etc work fine. I'll note that the USBs don't seem to be properly grounded as sometimes plugging into them will result in a reboot. Properly grounding myself before plugging in by touching my finger on one of the tool-less screws holding the side panel eliminates the problem. Otherwise really don't really have any valid complaints about the HAF. For what it's made to do, it works well.

 

My Haf932 used to reboot when connecting USB's. For some reason, it just quit a while back(worth noting, it's seen a few different motherboards). It's been normal for quite some time. Now the only problem I have is the front eSATA port. Best case I've ever bought hands down Excellent cooling, and of course it's spacious
Can't wait to upgrade my tower. I drool at the thought.

 

N_3_Days,

3D gaming is where it's at! AMD looks at it as the future, and absolutely drubs the competition at 3D graphics, by about 10 to 1 or more! The i3 2105 with it's HD3000 graphics running 3D games, is bog slow!

My thoughts are this is all going to benefit entry level buyers. I expect to see a lot of Pre-Builts with the Llano chip, from all the computer manufacturers. I can totally envision an under $250 Quad core Computer Console from eMachines, with the 2.1GHz A series chip. I don't know if anyone else noticed but eMachines and others have started selling just the console, as well as full systems. Laptops will benefit as well because none of the other Laptops on-board HD graphics can compete with Llano in terms of laptop graphics performance, especially in 3D gaming fps, where the Intel HD3000 graphics are a distant third behind nVidia and AMD/Ati!

All of this is because of the choices both Intel and AMD made at design time, and what priorities they considered in the design. AMD put their emphasis on 3D gaming and DX-11 (even for laptops), even though that choice makes other more mundane programs run a little slower. I do expect to see a lot of Llano chips in Laptops, in the near future.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Sorry, I have to disagree. 3D gaming with various non-standard formats isn't going to become the norm any time soon. A lot of people are put off by the limitation of glasses, you need entirely new displays to run it, and the hardware demand increase is more than double. It's going to be a long time before I'll treat 3D games as anything more than a fad. AMD put less emphasis on DX11 than nvidia.

 

AMD has launched the first two Dual Core Llano CPUs. $70 for the A4-3400 and $65 for the A4-3300.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4742/amds-first-dualcore-llano-apus-a43400-a43300-launched

For under $200 you can have a decent motherboard, memory and the CPU/APU w/HD-6410 graphics. Not bad at all!

Russ

 

Impressive! I can see those going into a good deal of builds(or laptops). My brothers HTPC has an Athlon 5200(quite outdated). With something like the A4-3400, it'd probably be better than the current onboard graphics offering. No doubt a performance boost anyway. But he's content for the time being. Until software advances beyond his hardware

Now if they could just unleash Bulldozer. I'd sell my right arm for that badboy! LOL!

 

Here's some benchmarks for the new GigaByte 990XA-UD3 motherboard.

CPU math



Memory Bandwidth



I'm pleased as it seems that the computer, now running at 3.6GHz, 100MHz slower than with the 790X, is about 10% faster. I was able to turn the North Bridge frequency from 2000MHz to 2600MHz. I also raised the HT Link frequency to 2400MHz. This effectively gives me 5000MT/s performance on a 4000MT/s CPU.

Be back later if I turn up anything new.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Not bad russ. I am however disappointed. When I saw that a new post was made to the AMD thread, I got my hopes up. For some reason, I thought somebody was announcing Bulldozer LOL! I'm really getting impatient on this one!

 

Thought this article belongs here.

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/thi...s-an-overclocked-beast-video/8475?tag=nl.e550

Whats funny is this is from Smart Planet (environmental) website and the techniques used for massive OC's and the power drawn does not align with the idea of conserving resources.

 

EDIT---stupid double post

 

Thanks deadrum!

The company also pointed out that implementing more modest and realistic cooling methods like fans and inexpensive water systems would still enable the Bulldozer chip to reach clock frequencies “well above” 5 GHz
Oh man... I can't friggin wait!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKN4VMOenNM

 

Is this for real?

 

No, IIRC recently (<1 week, that article is 3 weeks old) the launch date was pushed back to October-December.

 

Bastards! They need to stop doing that. They're driving me crazy

 

It's here, NOW! Here's the Anandtech review.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested

Russ

 

This doesn't sound very promising for Bulldozer. Hope the 2nd revision has more promise.