The New AMD Building Thread

PC World magazine started it all about 15 years ago by taking several computers that had been deliberately knackered to several different shops, and then reporting on the results. About 80% cheated the people with outrageous bills! The remaining 20% either just fixed the obvious problem and charged a minimal fee. A couple of them fixed it on the spot and charged nothing! Caused a bit of a fuss when they named names, and listed the shops to avoid! A couple of them sued, but they secretly videotaped the things, as they were being deliberately messed up and the transactions that went on at each shop, so they lost! 60 Minutes did a piece on the same thing about 10-12 years ago, with about the same results, but offered the offending shops air time to defend themselves for their actions. There were no takers! All declined to be interviewed!

There are crooks everywhere today who use the present bad economy to their own advantage, and cheat people left and right. That's what happens when people depend on computers so much that they don't take care of important things, like car payments or mortgage payments, just to get a computer fixed because they just can't live without one. It makes me wonder if there ever is a global war, what people would do if the lights went out for good! Without the internet, people would be totally lost, and wouldn't have a clue how to live without it! Would you?

Sam,
ECS used to make some real garbage. I bought one about 6 years ago, and it took me 6 months to get my money back from Frys! It was total junk! Today's ECS boards use better components and better designs. Still no where near the quality we here at AD demand, but far better than what they offered 4-6 years ago. I still wouldn't buy one, but at least the quality is better than it used to be.

This particular board belongs to the guy that bought my Pentium D-940. I warned him that he needed to check with the MB manufacturer to be sure that his MB could handle 130w, and he didn't. It's a 65 watt MB, and the load wiped out 5 of the 6 caps in the 3 phase power circuits. To ECS Credit, nothing smoked and the VRMs are all working properly, and it did shut down without any real damage. Now, it can't handle any load, let alone 130w. The initial load of windows starting up is enough to reset the computer. It will run with an Athlon 3800+ single core in it, but the caps still need to be replaced!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Thus why I want to open a PC repair shop. I want to offer quality service with reasonable prices. So what if I don't make a killing off every patsy that walks in? I know better, and I want to use that to benefit other people. That is my main draw to PCs. I love seeing the look on peoples faces when their bogged down machine instantly doubles in speed or when something they thought was fatal could easily be fixed with a single new part. I pity the uninformed and I like to steer them down the right path. Even if they don't heed my advice or appreciate the service at least I tried eh?

 

For all the ballyhoo over the i5, I decided to look into real costs, using components comparable to what I have now!

This would be the components and my cost to switch over to an i5!
http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/8679/i5musts.jpg

This is using a Comparable motherboard to what I have now, an 15 750 and DDR3 memory comparable to what I have now.
Total cost is $541.22

This is what the same upgrade would be to do the same thing with an AMD Phenom II 940 and the same caliber motherboard.
http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/9836/phenomiimusts.jpg
Total Cost is $310.50

I don't have to buy the memory as most of us have 4GB of DDR2 memory on hand.

Is the $230.72 difference worth the investment? Not to me it isn't! Since I already have the motherboard it would only cost me a total of $182.93 to do the job! For me, the difference in cost would be a whopping $358.29

Just to put all the hoopla in it's proper perspective! I'm getting the Athlon IIx4 630, which will give me about 95% of the performance of the Phenom II 940 for only $133.14!

You do the math!

Russ

 

The X4 630, which offers around 85% (not 95) of the 940's performance, is good value compared to the 940 at 73% of the price.
The X4 940 is roughly speaking, 75-80% of the i5 750 at best, and is 85% of the price. It's just the architecture change which is the limiting factor for your build, and I agree, an i5 build makes little sense to you as you already have a good backbone for an AMD system. For those who have older chipsets though, the i5 is the better option. You have not picked a board comparable to your 790X board for the i5, you've chosen one way more featured, which will of course cost substantially more. Overall, platform for platform the cost of AM3 vs. i5 is almost identical, and performance per dollar it's about the same for the CPUs as well, excluding the 'not so good' i.e. 955 and 965.
For your situation, I would always recommend the 630 or 940. For anyone starting from scratch I'm afraid I would always recommend the i5 750 where possible (and relatively few budgets don't allow one these days)

 

Sam,
Well, we are both wrong! It's 90%, not 85 or 95. Typo on my part. It's funny you should say that about the motherboard though. Most of the difference is because of the platform itself. It has features that only work on select CPUs. It has both SLI and Crossfire, while I only have CrossFire. I could buy a motherboard costing the same as the Intel, and still wouldn't have those features. I spoke to Gigabyte on Friday and asked which i5 platform motherboard comes closest to what I have now, and the one I listed comes the closest for those reasons, according to them. Things like the XMP Memory Profile are questionable. EPP does the very same thing, by adjusting the memory settings on the fly to meet the demand. I've repeatedly said that I can't get the same performance adjusting the memory manually. It's worth a couple of thousand MIPS! While it might make more sense to someone if this was a new build, it wouldn't for me. Most of us have 4GB of DDR2 hanging around, so why not use it. That means someone can do a Phenom II 940 build on a very good motherboard for $230 less. If someone needed to buy the memory, it would still be a $100+ price difference. I think you are selling the Phenom II 940 just a little bit short, at least judging by the ones on the forum. The P55 platform is just more money than I want to pay. I can't justify the cost, by the performance difference.

I fully realize that there is no real way to compare both platforms because of the differences in the architecture, but I'm not alone in my thinking either when I say that the AMDs are a better buy for the dollar unless High end gaming performance is your main thing. Even then, it's not 75-80% but more like 85%. I just can't justify the extra expense, especially since I already have 4GB of DDR2 memory on hand!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

You do realise every motherboard that has SLI support has to pay a license to nvidia for it?
As for the boards, the P55-UD3R at $140 looks the closest match to what you have now, the only difference I can see is that the second PCIe slot runs at 4x instead of 8x.

As for the performance gaps, I'm working on a nice little performance chart that compares the i5, i7, Core 2 Quad (Yorkfield) and the Phenom IIs. The X4 940 isn't in the benchmark I'm using, so it's going to be roughly extrapolated from the differences between the 955 and 965.

As for having 4GB of RAM lying around, I'm not so sure, I actually know quite a lot of people that still have 2GB and intend to up it to 4 when they upgrade to i5 rigs later on. Most of these people are using 65nm Core 2 Duos and early chipsets like 965/P35 and nF650/680i (and yes, before anyone asks, these particular upgrades are being forced due to the gradual failure of their motherboards), so an i5 is a substantial upgrade for them.

 

Performance mini-chart is up in the PC building thread.
I'm not entirely convinced the X4 630 can be 90% of what the 940 is, as it's pitched against the Q8200, where the X4 940 is pitched against the Q9400, and the Q8200 is more like 83-85% of the Q9400.
On top of that, the clock speed of the X4 630 is only 93% that of the X4 940, and there's a lot less of the 630. 85-87 sounds about right to me.
As it turns out however, the X4 940 comes in at 86% of the i5 for software, and 81% for games. So much for the myth people keep posting that AMD CPUs are best at games. The areas where the AMD CPUs do best is actually Folding at Home.

 

Here you go folks. The first look at what the new $122 Athlon IIx4 630 can do!

Here's some benches. Fast little mother! LOL!!





Here's DVDRB/CCE of The Chronicles of Narnia, Prince Caspian. Encodes like I expected it would! note the speed! I runs in the high 12s to the mid 13s!



For $122, it is fast! An outstanding buy for the money! I am one happy camper!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Which version of Sandra is that? I've sort of lost my way with what the numbers mean with all the different versions... :S

 

Sam,
Sandra Pro Business XLB v2007.2.11.17. I tried the 2009, and I just don't like it. It's completely meaningless unless someone else has it to compare with, and the blasted screens constantly changing drove me nuts. The should have a manual setting so you don't have to wait for it to cycle through 4 screens.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I'm guessing SiSoft won't offer it on their website - any ideas where I might be able to get hold of it?

 

Sam,
It will be on the way shortly, via sendthisfile! Look for it!

Russ

 

I've been living with and playing with my Athlon IIx4 630 for more than a week now, and I have to say I am happy and surprised at it's performance. I have it OC'd to 5.512GHz and it's run solid ever since. I set the CPU multiplier to 13.5x and the base processor speed to 260. Works like a champ! Here's the latest Sandra Processor Arithmetic!



It put the hurt on a couple of Q9550s until Rob came along and showed right at 69000 MIPS @3.8GHz with his. The thing that was so surprising was the Q9550s were all clocked higher. Bigwill is sending his BioStar MB back because even at 3.93GHz, his Q9550 couldn't match the 630s performance at a much lower clock speed, Still 16000 less MIPS than Robs, is not a lot of difference when you consider that the 630 costs less than half of what the Q9550 costs.

Encoding is a dream come true for me, with most titles done with DVDRB/CCE 2 pass, finished in 30 minutes or less! The bottom line is, it was well worth the $122 price!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Let's not get too hasty, mine's at 63469, and only 3.4Ghz, a 20% overclock. That therefore places a stock Q9550 at 52700, which is quite close to your result. I'm not entirely sure what happened to bigwill, but sending a board back over Sandra alone seems rather bizarre, I assume he has more evidence...

Running the maths puts an i5 750 @ 4Ghz at roughly 85,000 MIPS.

 

Yah, I was thinking the same thing. I wouldn't base it on a Sandra result. Although I must admit, his score WAS eye opening...

 

Sam,
The i5 750 is $77 more than the 630 and you have to buy a new motherboard and DDR3 memory to run it. Even if I had needed a new MB and Memory, it would still be a better value for the buck than the I5, for about $180 less. You can run the maths all you want, but I would prefer to see results in the form of Sandra benchmarks!

I'm delighted with what I have now and the way it performs. I feel it's a very good CPU for the price. AMD is going to sell tons of them! Hp/Compaq, eMachines/Gateway and Dell have all signed agreements with AMD for Athlon IIx2, x3, x4 along with a good mix of Phenoms and phenom IIx2, x3 and x4s so profitability for AMD should be assured and that's good thing for all of us! AMD turned it's first profit in a couple of years last quarter. They made 2 million in third quarter of 09, and I don't see them being in red ink again for a good while to come!

Go AMD!
Russ

 

AMD is also doing pretty well on the graphics side of things from what I hear. Could be some interesting times approaching

 

Don't get me wrong, your CPU is still impressive for what it costs architecturally, there is no cheaper way to get the performance you're getting. I'm hoping to pick up an i5 before March, but it all comes down to the Lucid chipset. If it's going to come out, but hasn't by then, I'll wait. I don't want to be buying a board without that functionality, else I would be going i7 instead.
AMD have been massively helped out by finally settling the antitrust lawsuits with Intel for $1.25 billion and a 'no more shernanigans' from Intel. Couple this with the extra delay of nvidia's rival graphics architecture and the now very imminent release of the HD5900 series graphics cards, AMD are living it up this quarter.

 

Haha and my 5 shares of AMD stock went up XD

 

Stock market eh. I've been itching to fool around for quite some time. I won't do it though til I have at least a basic understanding, and at least SOME money to play with...