The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

I'm not excited about it LOL! I'd rather they produced a CPU true to the times I still find it interesting though
If overclocked, it could break the 1TFLOP barrier(APU/CPU combined, Theoretical).

 

I would rather AMD drop their current architecture entirely and go back to what worked. Much like Intel had to re-visit the Pentium III to come up with Core 2 and i7. AMD should go right back to Clawhammer and re-engineer it from the ground up using all the latest technologies.

Piledriver in itself is day and night from Bulldozer. If we had Piledriver from the beginning, I can guarantee you I'd already be using one. The fact remains that they released Bulldozer though and I went with my Thuban. Can't say I'm disappointed as it performs quite well. Just wish I had a more up-to-date option. In a best case scenario, Piledriver is a sidegrade for me. It has tons of grunt in benchmarking on par with some i7s. Piledriver stomps my Thuban badly in synthetic benchmarks. In real-world applications though, the Thuban at 4GHz is faster than the majority of even OC'd Piledrivers. My real world tests show the rough PD equivalent of my CPU at 4GHz is a 4.6GHz 8 core. The hex cores don't even compare. 4.6GHz seems to be about the average OC with an FX8350... hmm... A better cooler, which is mailed and on the way, along with the 1100T should see me in the 4.2-4.4 range. At which point it takes a 4.8-5.0GHz Piledriver to make the same real world grunt. It takes a 5.0-5.2 Bulldozer to do the same, and we all know that just isn't realistic with BD's huge power requirements.

I am willing to stay with AMD as long as their hardware is capable of meeting my needs. I am much more accustomed to their architecture and OCing, and all of my friends use AMD as well, so it makes hardware swapping extremely simple. A great way to keep some of my less financially able buddies up and cruising, as well as allowing me to get the system I am running today piecemeal. Single parts are much more sustainable on a limited income than large purchases. Intel have switched sockets with nearly every generation now since 775 fell out of favor. Even though I have switched boards several times, I was always able to keep every bit of the surrounding hardware. On Intel that means getting a new CPU and motherboard every single time you want to get ready for a large upgrade(with a few exceptions, but not many). On AMD it means you can get the new board, but keep your old CPU until you're ready to buy the new one. In this particular case, I was able to jump from AM2 to AM2+ with my 940, AM2+ to AM3 with my 955, and now AM3 to AM3+ with my 1090T. The only really large platform change I've had to do was switching from 939 to AM2 to Intel, then dusting off the AMD hardware when switching back to AM2.

For value, AMD have it licked. Pay attention to the newest Mobile APUs coming out. I have spent quite some time on a 7640G equipped A8 laptop. It is capable of some power. Able to play the majority of my games, including some brand new ones, with decent settings at 1366 x 768. That isn't even the 7660G in the higher-end A10. At nearly twice the processing power in the new R7 equipped chips, you're actually talking full dedicated video performance. Now THAT'S impressive considering how cheap AMD laptops are. I still think proper 1080p gaming is a stretch, but 1280 x 720, 1366 x 768, and 1600 x 900 would be very nice.

 

Just a quick update: 1100T sitting here and waiting on the Silver Arrow SB-E Extreme to arrive next week! Wish me luck

Didn't get to play with the Haswell build much but it seemed just as snappy as any of my own stuff at stock speeds.

4770K at stock 3.5GHz w/ CM Hyper 212 Evo
Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD4H
8GB(2x4GB) DDR3 1866 CL9-10-9-28
Sapphire HD7970 non-GHz
Zalman ZM-850HP Rev 2. 850W

Very nice setup. Jealous of my friend

EDIT: 1100T installed and running just fine. Ordering the new cooler Monday as my payment for rebuilding the above PC. Current cooling sees it reaching a similar OC to the 1090T, though maybe a hair cooler running, and seeming to hit 4GHz with a little less stubbornness. Pushing any higher is still not a matter of capability, but of cooling. I will be sure to swap both CPUs back and forth to find the best clocker, but that will have to wait until I have the Silver Arrow Extreme or Corsair H110(basically in consideration and depending on final discussion). Right now the 1100T is the better running chip by a small margin.

 

Saw this on reddit earlier



http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1vogje/my_workmate_just_finished_his_pc_build/

$400 case, why not!

Edit: (nb: I dislike this greatly)

 

Nothing short of incredible! But, I prefer the more standard look myself Perhaps one day, I'll have an experimental rig like that one

 

I have a new toy



New toy on the left, WD1001FALS on the right.

It's a Toshiba THNS064GG2BBAA 64GB SSD used as an OEM drive for Qosimo desktop replacement laptops. I don't know, and can't find, much about it. It seems to perform properly according to the few benches of it I could find. About 9000 hours of usage on it, probably poorly cared for, but doesn't seem to affect its performance.

I've made sure TRIM was enabled, reduced my paging file from 8GB to 4GB, disabled hibernation and system restore(neither of which I have ever used), and disabled indexing on the drive. Anything else I should be doing for it?

Otherwise it performs well and boots are lightning quick.

 

I eliminated my pageing file, however, I have 32GB of memory. Makes a huge difference.

 

Might be a driving factor in my 16GB upgrade if I decide to go in that direction... It's not a particularly good SSD, but it's not one of the piss poor ones and seems to run without a hitch. It did last just fine so far. I'm giving it a go as my main OS drive. Having a 60GB OS partition to begin with didn't hurt...

Never seen Windows touch my RAM limit so I might give disabling the page file a go.

Rather good set of upgrades for me recently. Kind of a shame I'm still using Phenom II but continually finding myself impressed with the X6. The cost of a proper Intel CPU has been my biggest holdback. Further research shows that I might want to experiment personally with a Vishera and explore its capabilities. I hold them in nowhere near the same light as Bulldozer.

 

Hypothetical situation. You're working on a computer for someone, you don't wanna tell them that they need a new computer. But the Mobo is 8yrs old. It supports a maximum of 2Gb Ram, Dual thread 3.0Ghz Pentium D, and the Sata ports are likely Sata 1.5Gb/s. It's running windows Vista, and currently has a mere 1Gb of Ram :/

Would an SSD , and another 1Gb of Ram, boost performance enough, to last them another year or two?

I'm really leaning toward telling him to go new. He told me yesterday, that faceboook always freezes his computer. I don't doubt it!!! Vista is using 90% of the Ram alone! And Facebook is a Flash nightmare (for slow computers)!

What would you do???

By the way, the CPU fan may be about to fail. He gets a warning message every now and again. And I hear a curious sound, when I cold start it. Probably a bearing. (yet another sign of age)

 

It supports a maximum of 2Gb apparently. We are in agreement on windows 7, but I've seen systems run 7 and 2Gb. Firefox did not run very well. Chrome was noticeably better, but I'm still not sure that 2Gb is enough. He runs Norton as well.

Yeah, he's pretty much just a surfer LOL. The CPU fan is a CM. I haven't seen the message myself yet, but given the noise I heard (Up close), It may indeed be failing. He says he blows out the computer, though I see a fair amount of dust on the heat sink. It's possible he didn't stabilize the fan, when blowing on it. I'll talk to him about that

 

Seems pretty simple. Format it to clean it up, replace the fan, and give it another gig of RAM. Leave out the SSD as that's an exorbitant price to pay when the rest of the system costs as much as a snack. The Pentium D isn't too bad. The biggest issue there would be the lack of RAM. Likely the root of many issues, especially using Vista. I'd say putting Windows 7 on it plus doubling the RAM would give a massive speed boost for relatively little cost.

Also, ddp has a point. Re-TIM the cooler and see if that helps. Maybe throttling due to heat.

 

It's a 2006, HP Pavilion a6100y(ipilp-LC lancaster MOBO). Oddly, the front has an AMD Sempron sticker, but it's clearly an intel board/cpu. Epic fail... LOL! It's a 2.4Ghz Pentium D. Or at least that's what CPU-Z was reporting. And I don't think it's running hot. Not here anyhow. The CPU fan is pretty quiet, once up and running. I have it fully open, to monitor the fans at the moment. Generally clean, other than some dust on the CPU heatsink.

He seems to think the Norton is updated. He says he updates it. And given we were talking about it in this thread recently, and how they're better than they used to be, I suppose it's not a concern. But I'm still not convinced. I prefer to live dangerously, what can I say

 

Norton on Vista with a gig of RAM? There's your culprit...

 

My thoughts exactly. But this guy is very NOT tech savvy. If it makes him feel safe, well... aw well. He seems attracted to the real time file scanner.

I'm thinking I'll relay all thoughts here, but still recommend a new machine. Tax time is upon us, and they were already considering it anyway. I wonder what they'll do with the spoils?

 

Maybe move them into Windows 7 as it runs much better on a slow PC then Vista and upgrade the RAM to 4GB but really the writing is on the wall, it is new PC time as everything will start failing soon and you'll run sluggish at best.

You could get them into a decent APU system that has a small foot print and does whatever they want it to for a little more then what you'll spend is bandaging what they have now.

If you approach them correctly and explain it nicely they will probably get it and go forward, let's at least hope so....

I've been in this spot more times then I want so I know what you'll be going through to coach them into a better, new, warranted system.

Steve

 

2GB is far less appalling than 1GB, but it's still pretty limiting, If 2GB is the maximum supported, I'm not sure it's justified. Unless you have these parts lying around for nothing, I think it's a foolish investment. Before you know it you could end up with a hardware failure elsewhere in the system given its age and it will nullify the work you have done. Sometimes upgrading isn't really the best option.