The New AMD Building Thread

Yep yep. OCZ Platinum. EPP Ready. Board has an EPP option. Really just tell me your exact settings and we'll see if my 780G board is tolerant of it eh?

Aha thank you very much. Big help

I always fully format a drive for its virgin install. After that I do use quick format as it's infinitely faster

I would personally get him a Phenom II X2 550 and a Gigabyte MA-78G-DS3HP or an MA-770-UD3. Those boards seem to be the best as far as price/features and are easy to build with. Plus it should be a fairly cheap build for the relative speed at stock. Though both might need a BIOS update. My MA-78G-DS3HP did for the 7750 BE. Just throw a cheap AM2 CPU into it. I'm not sure if they even work at all with new CPUs without an update or if the board just detects then wrong or what. I never found out as I had my 5000+ laying around

Haha at 17 you should be forcing him to learn computers. I did my first build at 16

I'm gonna wait for Solid State to become mainstream and for the drive sizes to increase before I jump on it. I want it only when they've worked out all the kinks and released a 500GB+ drive

 

So far, my secondary Amd system is running quite well. The WD1001FALS 1Tb drive is loading xp super quick, very streamlined, and its averaging 100Mbs read speed on a bench, and im over half way across the disk (Linear Read) via Everest. I cannot hear the drive running. My fans are not too loud, In fact, the Haf 932 is now slightly noisier. But im not picky when it comes to computer noises, so long as they're normal, and don't keep me awake at night LOL! My secondary system is as follows.

Athlon 5200, WD 1TB Fals drive (OS), MSI - K9N6SGM-V (or)MS-7309 Barebone, Lite-on burners LH-20A1H and iHAP422, Corsair 400W(CMPSU-400CX)PSU, 2 x 2gb Kingston HyperX 6400 Cas5.

 

Sam,
Don't you read? LOL!! For what I use it for, it's very relevant! It's a tool! I use it to show any improvements as I'm adjusting things. It's much easier to see improvements with, than 06 as it's scale is much broader. Even major changes yield almost no change with 06, so it's difficult to tell if you have improved anything testing with it. It's not about the video performance 03 reports. It just shows me if I'm improving things. If the numbers go up, it's something I've improved. If they go down, then I'm going the wrong direction. It better reflects small changes than 03 does. It's not like I'm trying to falsely compete with the high dollar video cards! ROFL!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Of course I read, but it still isn't relevant. 3dmark03 is designed to compare to games even older/simpler than the ones you do. 3dmark05 is a more suitable really. Don't forget, even 3dmark06 is out of date now. The reason the results vary is because 3dmark03 is completely meaningless with modern hardware, the numbers don't add up properly. Minor changes equal massive number increases. Great, but real world performance will be nothing like what 3dmark tells you.

 

i want to make a micro ATX BE 550x2 system to replace my E5200 system. if only i had money

 

Sam,
I use it because of those massive increases. It indicates improvement, no matter how skewed it is. 06's numbers are so tight that it's hard to tell if you improved anything. The numbers themselves are meaningless!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Estuansis,
Neither of those boards have a 750 SouthBridge, so they would be a poorer choice for the Phenom II 550! You need a 790GX chipset to take advantage of all the Bells and Whistles the 550 has!

Russ

 

The only thing they are missing is the SB750 southbridge and, with it, ACC. But I doubt that's a system that will be highly overclocked or pushed to any degree. They will support the Phenom II chips though and will still OC them quite well if one would choose to. And if you truely wanted to go for bells and whistles, get a 790FX ;P

 

I'll be honest, the numbers are tight for a reason, you're not getting a huge improvement, which is right, you won't be for 5% clock speed increases.
Agreed on the chipsets, 770 or 790FX for me.

Shaff: If only you had money? What happened to the £700 you earned selling your other PC and buying the small one?

 

umm rent, and lots of it.

 

LOL, I hear yah buddy.

Heres a little comparison of the 5200, and OC'd PhenomII.

PhenomII

Athlon 5200

 

Hmm, 32.38% faster. I was expecting a bit more than that really... :S

 

Ehhh...these numbers dont mean much to me. Just for curiosity sakes. The PhenomII is wicked fast, with Dvd Rebuilder. Thats why I bought it. Its around 250% quicker encoding. THAT is impressive

 

I like that board, its in my shopping cart, but is this one of the AM2/AM2+ boards that will run an AM3 CPU? Asking because of the Phenom II 550 CPU thats been advised. I was thinking more along the lines of this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103678
Its less expensive and this machine wont be hugely taxed or OC'd. Converting DVD files to PSP format will be the most strenuous task asked of this machine.

He will be helping, be sure of that! I got his older brother into it enough that he recently graduated the Army National Guard choosing the path of advanced IT training.

 

What are you? Mr Gloom and Doom? ROFLMSOAO!!

Just funnin with you!

Russ

 

You don't need anything but an AM2+ board. The CPU has both DDR2 and DDR3 memory controllers built in!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Russ is right. Either board I mentioned will work just fine with a Phenom II CPU. I recommend the Phenom II especially if you don't plan to OC as it will be WAY faster at stock than the 7850. Not to mention the Phenom II X2 550 has lower power consumption than the 7850 and will save you money in the long run.

I'm more of a fan of the newer and better 780 chipsets but I have recommended that exact 770 board to a friend for his first build and he is extremely happy with it. There's nothing wrong in particular with a 790GX chipset either but the 790FX will OC better, has better power management, and is much more reliable with the higher wattage Phenom IIs. Some 790GX boards and most 780/770 boards will burn up with a 125W CPU. Only the 790FX is actually DESIGNED to work with 125W CPU. The others only SUPPORT them.

Aha very nice. I very nearly went into "The Guard" myself. In fact, I'm pretty sure my sister is going to. We have a long family history of military service. 2 WWII vets, 1 Korea vet, 3 Vietnam vets, 2 Desert Storm vets, and 1 currently serving in Iraq.

EDIT:

I might add that Russ' recommended settings for the 7750BE are magical. It just went from fast to blistering for being a Phenom I dualie. Note to self: EPP is your friend.

The NB and HT Link frequency/memory bandwidth boosts are way faster in practice than on paper. Everything went from taking a second or two to load to instant response. I've never seen such a stark difference while staying at the same clock speed.

From Russ:

Going down the settings from the top. Slightly modified by myself(Estuansis) with some stuff that that was important to me as I went through.

HT Link frequency to 2200MHz(up from stock 1800)
HT link multiplier on Auto
CPU Clock ratio to 16x for 3.2GHz
CPU Northbridge frequency to 2200MHz(11x multi for me, up from stock 1800)
CPU host control clock on Auto.
Important: Memory Clock must be set to Auto for EPP control
EPP Mode to Auto.
EPP Voltage Control to EPP Control
CPU Host clock Control to Auto
PCIE Clock to Auto
DCTs MODE to Unganged
System Voltage Control to Manual
NB volt control to +0.075.
CPU voltage Control to +0.075(may vary depending on your individual chip. ideally looking at around 1.4v)

Again, do not set the memory voltage if you use EPP! Leave it at Normal.

In the Advanced bios features.

disable Virtualization and Cool and Quiet.

In the Advanced Chipset Features(only applies to 750 SB)

NB Power management to Enabled.
SB 750 Spread Spectrum to Disabled.

In the Power Management

HPET Support to Disabled.


------------------------------------

I followed these settings exactly and my memory bandwidth has skyrocketed. Anyone with a 7750 BE or similar is advised to check this out. This was a completely different approach to OCing this chip than I had originally used.

 

Estuansis,
Glad it all worked out for you like it did me! You don't have to look for the improvement, it bowls you over! LOL!!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I was pretty surprised it made such a big difference. It's not huge like night and day. But when your system suddenly boots and loads faster at the same cpu speed with no software changes, you know you're onto something good

Definitely in the true spirit of overclocking. Taking dirt-cheap hardware and making it perform way out of spec

 

I'd never agree to overclock a 125W chip in those boards, but the original phenoms are the board melters, despite sharing the same TDP, the Phenom IIs aren't as bad for power usage. Still dreadful compared to their Intel counterparts but they're also dirt cheap... It's up-front cost vs. long-term cost really.