The New AMD Building Thread

AMD vs Intel. Intel coughs up 1.25 Billion dollars to settle Anti-Trust suit!

http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/13/technology/intel_settlement_emails.fortune/

 

Newegg has dropped the price of the Athlon IIx4 630 to $112! w/free shipping!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103704

I can't say enough good things about mine! I'm so glad I settled on the Quad!

 

That's probably what i'll buy for my mother. Do you think that 200Mhz is worth 13.99 more? From what you posted a little while back, I'm thinking so She's saying she'll have the money soon

 

Oman7,
I honestly think the extra 200MHz is worth it. I know you don't plan on overclocking your Mom's computer, so I think the 630 would be a better choice over the 620! It certainly should perform better! You will be amazed at how well it will cool, although I would have recommended a newer style case. The difference in HDD temps is 13-17C with the sideways mounted HDDs over the conventional mount with mine. You don't need anything fancy for a cooler, either. A freezer 64 works just fine! Easy to install, and much quieter than the older Freezer 64s. You almost never hear it at all!

Russ

 

I just planned on using the stock cooler. My athlon 5200 has done quite well with stock. And since she won't be doing anything real strenuous, I don't see the need in over doing her system. Quads are not even fully used yet. I have very few softwares and games that use all cores...

But at least she'll be set for a while

 

The stock cooler that comes with it looks far worse than it really is. It's much smaller than previous coolers that came with AMDs, but it does work real well. You will need to keep an eye on dust and dirt though, as it looks like a dust magnet. I used it for the 64x2 4800+ that came out of Russell's computer, and it works just fine. Wait until you see it, it's only a 3" square. Like I said, it seems to cool pretty well, just watch the dust accumulation and it should do fine!

Russ

 

I plan on cleaning her tower semi-regularly

 

My Doctor friends decided to build a few Athlon IIx4 630s on different motherboards and then duplicate the tests from Legit Reviews, as they felt it was the more comprehensive of all the reviews they had read. They tell me that the results varried from board to board, but that the Asus and the GigaByte boards clearly performed better. They followed exactly, the tests and benchmarks that Legit Reviews posted. http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1073/4/ And, as far as I'm concerned, the Athlon IIx4 630, and the claims of 95% of a PH II-940 are valid. Clock for clock, it is 95% of the Phenom IIx4 940. The only real big ass-whuppin the 630 gets is in Excel. There the 940 stomps the 630 by a wide margin.

To say that the 630 competes with the Q8200, is a bit off the mark! Maybe from the point of it's the cheapest Intel Quad, it does, but the 630 will romp all over any Q8xxx CPU, at just about anything. It's much closer in actual performance to the Q9300/Q9400 than to a Q8200. In fact in many of the tests the 630 splits the two, and even gets up into Q9450/Q9550 range in a few tests.

Another big plus is in power consumption, a spot that AMD has not done too well, in the past. It's dead even with the Core i5 750. It's too close to call, one way or the other, given the differences in any two samples!

The price at Newegg has gone down to $112 with Free shipping, so even with the Intel price cuts, the 630 is $77 cheaper than a Q9400, and $37 cheaper than a Q8200, that can't match the 930's performance!

Christmas this year, should be very good for AMD. Dell, HP/Compaq, Gateway/eMachines have all announced Quads in the $700 price range, along with a slew of other AMD CPUs. Christmas will tell us a lot about AMD's future, and it certainly looks bright at the moment!

Russ

 

I don't get it, that LegitReviews article is supposed to be about the X4 630, but that CPU isn't even tested in the Cinebench benchmark, it's just a comparison of other CPUs...
and in the games tests, they didn't compare any of the AMDs to any useful CPUs, of course the i5 is faster than the 965, but where are any lower down Intel offerings?
Sorry, but the legitreviews test is crap.


Also, I'm pretty sure we agreed that the X4 630 was around the level of the Q8200, slightly above it for the 630, slightly below for the 620. What made that change?
I still wouldn't call the power consumption of the Athlon II X4s good, since as you say, they compare to the i5 750, a CPU almost twice as fast, but they're still making strides.

 

I wouldn't go so far as to call the review crap, but they did insert a lot, and some of the tests didn't have the right CPUs to compare to. I think they rushed and fudged on a few things to get a quick review out. I don't know why they even included the I7 at all, but the places where you could see the difference, the 630 was all over the Q8xxx CPUs, and mostly split the difference between the Q9300 and the Q9400. I don't think anyone would buy a Q8200 over the 630, because it does so poorly against the 630, and I don't think it's worth paying $37 more than the 630 for it. To my eyes, it's much closer to the Q9300/Q9400 in performance. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, but overall the 630 is right there with them, and a good bit ahead of the Q8200/Q8300/Q8400. Even looking at reviews that did a more through job, the 620/630 pretty much stays with the Q9300/Q9400, and drubs the Q8xxx series for the most part.

My Doctor friends built 4 630s just to test them (must be nice), a GigaByte like mine, an Asus M4A78-E, the same MSI that Legit used and a Biostar TA790GX XE. The Asus and the GigaByte were evenly matched and the best of the lot. The MSI came next followed by the Biostar, which doesn't seem to have everything quite worked out yet with the new CPUs. They also felt that the 630 was better judged against the Q9300/Q9400, than the Q8xxx CPUs. All were impressed with it's performance for the $!

Intel recently lowered the prices on some of their lesser quads, and AMD followed by lowering the 630 to $112. The Q8200 is going for $149, and the Black Friday price from Newegg for the Q8300 is $139, which is still $27 more than the 630. While you could get a Q9400 for $77 more, I don't think it's worth the performance difference for the price! If you already have a good AMD AM2+/AM3 motherboard like mine, it's not even a question as to what to buy. I'm happy!

Russ

 

Well that's it, there were so few real world tests that included the Q8s and the X4 600 series together, I wouldn't draw anything about that comparison (and let's face it, that's the only valid comparison the article offers) from the article. As far as I'm concerned, I still place the Q8200 squarely between the 620 and 630.
The X4 630 is nowhere near the Q9400, since the 9400 is a direct rival to the X4 940.

 

Hmm! Interesting, I know a lot of times those surveys you can take with a grain of salt by the so called testers, but actual users I would not take lightly, I don't know Jack compared to you guys, but Russ's Doc friends have a point to be reckoned with.

 

People like those love cheap, overclockable CPUs, and that's exactly what the X4 600s are. Like the E2100/4000 series and Pentium D805 before them, they offer low-budget enthusiast attraction so you can play around with loads of systems for fun. What they aren't, however, are rivals to CPUs twice the price.

 

Sam,
I never said or implied that they were! I believe the largest price difference was the $77 more expensive, Q9400. I just don't happen to think that the Q9400 is worth $77 more, by virtue of the small difference between them in performance. They sneak up on the Q9450/Q9550 in some things, but the Q9450/Q9550, are the better chip, by far! I wouldn't turn one down! LOL!!

Russ

 

An interesting bit of surprising and welcome news for AMD fans - the Q8200 has been discontinued. Intel's Quad core lineup now starts at the Q8300 for £100-£105, versus the £90 of the X4 630 and £75 X4 620. This leaves the X4 600 series basically without competition. It also highlights intel are starting to wean off the Core 2 architecture in favour of the i5 and upcoming i3. Interestingly, this also includes refreshes of the current LGA1156 crop to an 82W TDP.

 

The 620 is in fact cheaper then any Core 2 Duo at the moment obviously Pentium dual cores are the same thing but it still seems quite quite silly.

 

Sam,
The thing I don't understand is why! Intel surely must know by now that their CPU sales are not very good at the moment, and that recovery isn't just around the corner. The thing I don't understand is why bring out 2 entirely new platforms requiring new motherboards and memory with the economy the way it is? Especially considering the luke warm reception to Core i7, in spite of it clearly being a superior platform! Understand too, that it was the cost that doomed it! Lot's of people wanted one, but few could afford the cost!

If you could buy the motherboard this year, use it with what you have now and then upgrade the CPU when you can afford it, it wouldn't be so dumb, but to force it to be "all or nothing", was a foolish mistake on Intel's part, IMO!

This was my first upgrade to my computer from the 7750x2 to the 630 Quad. I still have at least two upgrade options left! I can again upgrade the CPU about 10 different ways, or I can choose the more expensive route, and go with the DDR3 platform and the 630, which still leaves most of the CPUs (and all AM3s) available as another upgrade in the future!

I know you complained, and rightfully so, that figuring out which CPU works in what motherboard was a pain, but that has gotten much easier now that most of the good MB manufacturers post CPU and bios compatibility on their websites. Just flash the required bios for your CPU upgrade, and you're done. It couldn't be simpler!

I just don't know what Intel is thinking. The Patent books are full of "Better Moustraps" that failed because they cost too much for the times! Discontinuing the Q8200 was a mistake, even with the price cuts to the lesser quads. The only "Black Friday Special" CPU on sale at newegg, was the $139 Q8300. Good for an upgrade if you have the motherboard to begin with, but no one is going to buy a new socket 775 motherboard just to get one! I simply can't understand why Intel would abandon the market where better than 80% of the total sales are going to be, for at least the next year!

Here's a very simple explanation for what's going on and why!
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2009/06/intel-rebrands-again-meet-core-i3-and-core-i7.ars
The last line say's it all, and I couldn't agree more! It all reminds me of Charlie Brown, and a Snoopy Poster I have. It says, "If you can't dazzle them with Brilliance, then Baffle them with BS"!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Still hear a lot of abuse for the i7, even though Intel are primarily targeting the i5, which is perfectly fair, since it costs no more than a high-end AM3 system. It's still a high-end platform ultimately, just one in the reach of normal consumers, unlike the i7.
To say Intel's sales are 'not very good' across the board is very misleading, as it's not exactly any better AMD side. CPU sales in general have been mediocre lately since it's no longer such a requirement to continuously upgrade your CPU just to get a PC that runs properly, only to keep up with the latest PC games, or quicken those encode/compress times.
Given the potential to wreck your board with a BIOS update still, I'm still not happy about the fact that you need to update your BIOS to run AMD CPUs.

 

but AMDs also reqire a new mobo/memory, with the AM3 stuff.

i5/i3 are not targetting upgrades, but rather new systems.

 

Sam,
I think you are being a little unfair here! I didn't have to upgrade anything as My motherboard came with the F7 bios. I only upgraded it after the fact to F8, so I could compare results. I've stuck with the F8 because it performs better!

While the potential is always there to wreck your board, the likelihood of it happening is very remote. You almost have to be Dumb or Unlucky for one to fail and trash the board, with unlucky being a power failure in the middle of the flash! I can tell you from Flashing several GigaByte boards, that there's no way to make a mistake without it telling you, you are doing something wrong. It won't flash the bios otherwise. I've flashed so many bios over the last 20 years without ever losing a single motherboard, I've lost count. The one I did lose was a BioStar, and it was entirely their fault. They had the wrong bios for the motherboard I had, and I downloaded it from their website. In fact they switched the T-Force with the G-Force and vice versa. Biostar took care of everything and I had a new board the next day, and 30 days to send the old one back, before they charged me for it! That's one, out of the hundreds of bios flashes I've done over the last 20 years. I've also never tried to flash the bios through windows, and I doubt very much if I ever will!

I'm totally puzzled how you can think that Intel is any different. If you recall, I had a whole pile of problems with getting the right bios for my 965P and the P35 with the E6750. Going back from the F11 bios to the F10, cured all the problems! Same type of problem with the Pentium D and the E4300. Just the problems that the E4300 created with the P5N-E SLI and all the bios revisions that followed, tells me there was quite a problem there.

There will always be bugs and glitches with any bios. I see absolutely no difference between AMD and Intel at all, so it's pretty meaningless, as far as I'm concerned!

As far as the price of i5 being in the reach of normal consumers, for the most part, it isn't in America. It's gotten to the point where it's affecting middle class Management level workers, and the higher end of middle class! There was not a single Intel motherboard as part of the Black Friday Sale at Newegg on the US website! There were two from AMD plus a PhII 965/Asus M4A79XTD EVO combo. Perhaps in Europe things are different, and that would be a good thing, but here in the US, precious few have the money, and it continues to get tighter! Here, AMD is the only thing selling at the moment in any kind of numbers, and they're not overwhelming. Black Friday will tell us something, but Christmas will tell it all! I think that AMD is in a terrific position to do very well, while Intel seems to have painted itself in a corner My Money is on AMD!

Russ