The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

im saying, if one has £700 or £1000 im sure if you go for a 920 and cheapest x58 itll still cost more than a top amd setup, in which im sure the amd's setup would have a more powerfull gpu, which is more effective at games.

 

I would go for the i7 920 of that system because I'd overclock it and it would be awesome. To the casual builder, I would advocate neither, I'd advise a Q9550 and P43 board.

 

well same i prefer overclocking, but for games, the amd would be better, no?

 

not by much, about the only game there's a difference in is Far Cry 2, and even then it's not by much.
i5 750 looks quite attractive, but IIRC, that's the entry level model.

 

why wouldnt the amd setup for the same price be better for games? it will have amuch better GPU.

 

Well, that depends whether the card you had with the i7 was sufficient or not. if you don't need the extra GPU power, you may as well save the money.

 

liek u have a budget and to fit in an i7 u have to get a 4890 but with the AMD you can get a 4870x2, IMO id take the AMD and x2 over an i7 if theyr both come to the same buget

 

As I said before, for that money I'd build a q9550 and a 4870x2 over an i7 920 and a 4890. I only generally spec i7s for systems that a 4870x2 would already fit with in budget.
Problem is, the 4870X2 is discontinued and has no replacement. Not sure if this is to promote the sale of 4890s instead, but it's not very welcome, people will be forced into spending an extra £100 to buy GTX295s. The rarity of 4870X2s now is causing some prices on ebay to be over £400. They're becoming collectors' items.

 

Shaff,
But the article wasn't about the i7s, it was about the x3 720BE and x4 810 and their comparisons to other AMD's as well as the Intels it would compete against. Flawed would have been if they had unlocked the 4th core of the 720BE and then compared it the same way, like it was still a triple. A number of reviews I read, did just that. It's an unfair comparison because about 20% or so, won't be able the activate the 4th core of the 720.

BTW, I was able to unlock the other two cores on my 7750BE with the 790X-UD4P, and it will boot into windows. After about 2 or 3 minutes you can't open or close any windows. The mouse will move for about 20-30 seconds and then it all freezes! About 20 seconds later the computer makes a loud solid beep and you have to reboot! It's not the warning beeps from the temperature monitors either, because mine are shut off! Just a single continuous loud beep! Heat isn't the issue at all, it's something in the electronics of the chip. Quite fast while it runs though! Oh! Before I forget!
sam,
The reason you were wondering about with Intel not having any triples? The Core 2 Duos are two dual cores on one chip, while the triples were native quad cores from the start. The C2Ds cache memory management would have to be changed in order for Intel,s quads to work effectively as triple or duals, while the AMD's triple's and dual's cache management works the same whether it's a Quad, Triple or a Dual! It automatically delegates all the available on chip cache to the working cores. Since no calls for cache memory come from the disabled cores, all the cache memory belongs to the remaining working cores, and is managed accordingly. Judging by what I know about the now almost 4 year old plans for a triple, AMD may have planned it as a cost saving thing right from the start. Perhaps I heard wrong back when I first posted about a coming triple. Perhaps what they were discussing was the Cache Managment, rather than managing two cores with a third. Looking back, it looks an awful lot like that's what they were discussing! Hey, it's not easy to hear on a moving train full of people! LOL!! Especially when you are pretending to be asleep! ROFL! Still, I gave AD a present of a World Exclusive by a good 4-5 months that's turned out to be far more meaningful today than it was almost 4 years ago!

I don't know if you can individually tune or even shut off any of the cores on an Intel, but you can on the AMD Quads. I have to admit I wondered why you would ever turn off one or two perfectly good cores? Then I remembered something someone here said about some games and other applications favoring Dual Cores, and now it starts to make sense to me. Make a two core Profile and save it for games and apps that favor dual cores. I would imagine it would work quite well that way with a Phenom II 955BE or a 940BE. Tailoring various profiles and being able to call them up at random, to suit the needs seems pretty cool to me!

The only thing I can't seem to understand is why only the 940BE and the 720BE have better memory performance than all the other Phenom IIs? The 720 is just over 1000MB/s at reads compared to the 920, and almost 3000MB/s better at writes! Here's the whole article!
http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-phenom-ii-x4-810-and-x3-720be-review-am3/1

Best Regards,
Russ

 

No russ, once again you've misunderstood me. I know the core 2s is a double-up, I was asking why Intel didn't produce an i7 tri-core, because that is a native quad environment.
Interesting about the unlock not working for you, was this still overclocked? Remember with two cores overclocked, your basically trying to use an original Phenom at 3.2Ghz, which is never going to work.

 

Sam,
Sorry, I quite forgot that the i7 was a native quad! The unlock worked, and it would boot into xp at 2.7GHz. Just the load of a benchmark was enough to crash it! Regardless of speed, even underclocked to 2.5GHz, it would still go through the same routine as before finally ending with a locked computer and a continuous beep until you shut it down! It just wouldn't tolerate any load at all! At the moment, it's running at 3.0GHz at 1.39v. Below that I left the voltage on auto and let the EPP manage the memory! I may play with the HT frequency and see if I can run it at 10x, and see if that does anything!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

3.0Ghz on two cores I'm assuming. This is the example of why I don't tell people to buy AMD CPUs an expect to get more cores, it isn't always going to work.

 

Rumoured i7/i5/i3 prices:

LGA1366
i7 975: 3.33Ghz Quad, £591
i7 960: 3.20Ghz Quad, £332
i7 950: 3.06Ghz Quad, £332 (can't see this being the case for too long)
i7 920: 2.66Ghz Quad, £168 AMD rival: 965 Black edition (certain apps)

LGA1156
i7 870: 2.93Ghz Quad, £332
i7 860: 2.80Ghz Quad, £168 (not sure why the huge price gap)
i5 750: 2.66Ghz Quad (No HT), £117 AMD rival: 965 Black edition (possibly 955 as well)
i5 670: 3.46Ghz Dual, £168
i5 660: 3.33Ghz Dual, £117
i5 650: 3.20Ghz Dual, £105
i3 540: 3.06Ghz Dual, £85
i3 530: 2.93Ghz Dual, £73 AMD rival: X2 550?
I know high speed dual cores is a very niche market, but in appropriate apps, the i5 670 looks rapid. It's also £32 less than the E8600 it will undoubtedly flatten.
TDPs allegedly 125W for i7, 95W for i5 and 65W for i3. Not sure about i5 750 versus 650, or the actual power consumption (considering that Q6600s and E6750s met their 95W and 65W TDP figures almost exactly whereas the E5200s and Q8400s ended up at 50W and 80W)

Red CPUs due for release early 2010, rather than next month for the rest.

 

Very true! But the 7750 being half a quad makes the failure rate higher than looking to get a single additional core working on the triple. The odds are much better then! At least this motherboard allowed it to post and boot up with all 4 cores working and load windows. The UD4H showed the cores with the ACC enabled, but it wouldn't even post!

I went ahead and raised the HT to 10x. Between it and leaving the memory and voltages up to EPP, has fattened my memory bandwidth from 5743MB/s to 6261MB/s. I have to install the new Sandra and then try again!

I also did another experiment with "Sweet Alice"! I ripped it again using AnyDVD 6.4.9.1. I could make a DVD from it, using DVD Shrink, but it wouldn't work at all with DVDRB/CCE! You can play it right from the HDD, but DVDRB is out! Strange!

Russ

 

Do you mean DS4H? You claim the board you have doesn't POST with the CPU, and also that the same board booted into windows... I'm confused.

 

This is what I just copied from my post! "The UD4H showed the cores with the ACC enabled, but it wouldn't even post"! With the UD4P, it will unlock the cores, post and boot into windows, but it's like starting an egg timer. Even if left completely alone, you eventually here the wail of a single long beep!

I'm pretty pleased with the way it's running right now. I OC'd the video card the same as before and it just runs real nice. I may leave it this way for Russell!

Russ

 

Sorry I forgot there was a UD4P and UD4H, I'm still not used to the H tag.

 

To unlock mine I can give you the steps I took . The most important to make it hold was to drop the HT to 1600. Chris

 

Who can name this case?

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/3068/img08341131x848.jpg

http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/8349/img08431131x848.jpg

http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/3474/img08451131x848.jpg

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/6288/img08441131x848.jpg


this other case here is giving me ideals on how to Modify my old
clear case later down the line for ventilation issue that the case
has for Ocing