The New AMD Building Thread

all those external drives and no 2560x1600, not even 1920x1080? shame

 

Time to revive this thread LOL!

TomsHardware - PhenomII overview

Not sure if this is no longer relevant(1/12/09). I found it an interesting read. Especially when the guy said:

I was dismayed to discover however, that they used a board with onboard graphics! And they're using 1066 ram, which is arguably less stable than 800. Also notice that they're using only an AIR solution.

I apologize if i've overlooked something, and have revealed my ignorance LOL! It still looks fascinating to me

 

It's Tom's Hardware, I wouldn't give it much credence.

 

lol why not?

 

Yes, please do explain sam. Toms hardware has been an asset for me for countless months...

 

LOL Tomshardware is very heavily biased. They've already gotten in trouble for fake benchmarks. Not to mention their GPU charts which are 90% lies...

 

They are indeed complete lies - all you need to do is compare their results to other websites to work that out - they've been doing it at least since as far back as when the HD2900XT first came out, if not longer. They've removed 2560x1600 from their tests to hide the low performance of the GTX200 series at that resolution, they post completely false figures for at least two games, and skew the tests in various other ways as well. Would you trust a site like that?

 

Thats unfortunate.

The Gtx200 series have trouble at max resolution eh. Is that due to poor memory management you've mentioned before?

 

On another note, can't wait to get my paws on THIS freak LOL! Although I see its currently a server grade chip. No doubt VERY expensive!

Amd - Magny-Cours

 

Estuansis,
That was a long time ago. Tom's is much better today than it was just a few years ago. Same thing for Anandtech! BTW, I can't help but notice all the negative reviews for Gigabyte motherboards. The funny thing is that they all come from sites that nobody ever heard of before, and all have popped up recently. All the reliable places seem to like the majority of GB Boards! These sites do nothing but bash Gigabyte, which makes me wonder if this is Asus way of getting even for the EPU fiasco! It just seems very strange when you see 6 or 7 sites that are claiming to be legit, differing greatly in their test scores and opinions compared to all the other reputable reviewers and testers! Very odd!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Sam,
You used to trust the SPCR and their fan specs, and we both know that their testing methods were crude and obsolete at best! They used to bomb Silverstone, but they weren't even close to as loud as they claimed them to be. How honest is that, yet you trust them!

If I wanted to play games, I would do my looking in gaming forums for that information. Look some place where you're most likely to get good information, not general reviewers like Tom's or Anandtech! You will get a lot more useful information that way!

Russ

 

IMO nothign wrong with anandtech

 

Shaff,
It's not that there's anything wrong with looking there, I just think it's better to look some where that's more tuned to the needs of gamers. It just seems to me that you get more useful information that way, from other gaming enthusiasts.

Russ

 

tbh i dont game too much, well ok i lie. i play COD4. in the 2 years its been out i have played over 1.5k hours off it lol.

 

No Russ, Tom's is worse now than it was a few years back. Their current GPU charts are about as biased as it gets. I still do trust SPCR and their fan reviews, I don't know where you get that from - no other site even goes into the detail the old site used to use, let alone their new methods. They bomb silverstone rightly, their fans are absurdly loud, all of them.

 

Sam,
Funny about that as I didn't get to within 10dBa of the noise they claimed the silverstone made, with my sound chamber testing! They never even gave a test figure, just that it was unacceptably loud. Hopefully they will give the test figures for everything in their future tests, rather than making guesstimates of the fans they obviously don't like. I'm always suspicious whenever all the test scores aren't included in any comparative test! I know that they were going to improve on their testing methods, and I'm sure they have by now. With my testing methods, I make things even harder by mounting the fans I test on a side cover I modified to mount both 80 and 120mm fans. It acts just like a sounding board, so my figures were actually higher than if I just tested the fans stand alone. In all cases, they were quieter than the specs, including the top speed noise levels!

I've wised up too! Nothing but 1200 RPM or lower speed fans for me anymore! My AMD is much quieter than the E6750 was in spite of having 2 more fans. Granted, the Freezer 64 with it's redesigned fan blade doesn't begin to make noise unless it's spinning above 1600 RPM, which is over 400 RPM higher than where the noise became apparent with the older Freezer 64s! I have a very quiet PC. Not dead silent, but still very very quiet!

Russ

 

I have never seen them make a purely objective comparison - they give the scores of products tested with their old equipment even though they aren't comparable, just for information's sake. What decibel count did you end up with for that thermaltake? I always thought the results you were getting were suspiciously low.
Have you even been to SPCR since they moved from a test room to an anechoic chamber?

 

Maybe they don't know how to calibrate the Anechoic chamber properly. Ours are calibrated every weekend when things are at their quietest. You can't get absolute 0dBa, but we can get it down to 10-11dBa as long as no big trucks rumble through. Sometimes if it's a busy weekend, you can only get it down to 16-17dBa, which is still well below ambient, which is all you really need. It has 4 computer controlled scopes with digital read outs that record the measurements, and the base sound level is factored by the computer in order to give accurate results. I have no doubt about the results I've gotten as we're talking $147,000 worth of equipment (less Computer) that's calibrated weekly, by the book!

The Company employs a full time Audio Engineer who checks every single part they make that requires Audio testing and Federal certification. He's the one that does all the testing, not me. I don't have enough experience at it yet, while he's made over a million tests since the equipment was installed. I used to have to re-work any turbines that don't pass, and he could tell me just by looking at the scopes and readouts which bearing was the problem! Saved me lot's of time making it right! LOL!! If he says something is 20dBa, I know it's right!

As far as the Thunderblade noise, I don't remember the specifics, and I'm not going to hunt for them. I seem to remember that it was almost twice the dBa as the specs. It was almost as loud at 2000 RPM as the 120mm Silverstone FM-121 was at 2400! Even up at 2000 RPM, the FM-121 was quieter! I couldn't stand to be in the same room with either of them at full chat, as the sound is far more than annoying! The Thunderblade's fan blade balance was poor too, causing lots of vibration! You couldn't sit it on edge on the desk as it would dance/vibrate itself right off the desktop!

My 120mm fan of choice is the Silverstone FN-121. 53.24 CFM at an advertised 26.6dBa. One of these days I'll drag one down to Orange and do some testing. All I can tell you about it is it's extremely quiet! So far no problems with fan noises either! The Kama Bay fan is specked at 12.8dBa, and it's the quietest fan in the computer followed by the FN-121. I plan to replace the side 80mm silverstone with an FN83, which is a 92mm blade on an 80mm frame. 31.52 CFM at 1600 RPM, 19.8dBa. It's certainly not a ball bearing fan, that's for sure!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835220024

That's another thing I've noticed, is that there's very little dust inside the case. I would hazard a guess that because I have about 60 CFM with the 2 side cover fans, which is stronger than the 53 CFM at the rear, that the dust particles get pulled to that side, and zip mostly out the back of the computer because it's vacuum pull is stronger than either of the two side cover fans by themselves. I know I have to vacuum the drapes behind the computer about once a month, because that's where most of the dust winds up. I've yet to touch the CPU cooler, and it's still clean after 4 months or so! No dust in it at all! Compared to before where I had to clean the case, fans, memory and CPU cooler about once a month! I'll take it! It all works just as I planned it to, and the bonus part is the quiet!

Russ

 

SPCR's anechoic chamber is calibrated down to about 11dB for good accuracy. I think they can sometimes get readings as low as 9-10dB.
As noisy as the Thermaltake Thunderblade was, it was nowhere near as bad as the FM121, which makes sense, a 9-blade 2400rpm fan versus a 7-blade 2000rpm is substantially more CFM, and more noise. I thought I remembered you giving the thunderblade a reading of like 25dB, but obviously I'm wrong (I think it's real dB figure is around 36-38, the silverstone is around 45). Agreed on the full speed, it's mainly the comparative tone sound - the fans i tend to use are mainly masked by the airflow, not of the fan itself, but where it is mounted.
The FN121 being a 1200rpm fan by design should make it a little quieter at the same speed than FM121 (I would hope). The noise rating of 26.6dB is a little on the conservative side, but nowhere near as bad as most manufacturers. I would place it as being a little quieter than an SFF21F, but noisier than the SFF21E due to the higher blade count and rifle bearings.
It's worth mentioning that higher blade count makes the fan specified for case fan use. The higher the blade count the lower the pressure, making the fan less suitable for use on heatsinks. 7-blade fans are pretty ubiquitous.
The FN83 should certainly be quiet as a 1600rpm 80mm 7-blade, the Nexus examples I have are pretty good, but suffer the usual 80mm ills of higher vibration. 20dB seems about right from silverstone for this example. I have no doubt the Kama bay fan is the quietest in the PC if it's the 1000 or 800rpm version (I think it usually is). Scythe's fans are exceptionally quiet at this speed, which is why I use them.

As an idea, I use an SFF21F at 600rpm in my work PC, it's still audible over the rest of the components, just. That's the level of tolerance I'm working with.