The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Yep It's a whole new design from the ground up. We just got done watching AMD release a very successful one so I'm not worried yet. Let's see some benchmarks before we all get excited.

On another note I hurt my back pretty bad a few days ago. Strained lumbar, not fun. But it did prompt me to finally repair my cushy office chair and dump this "office stool". Just couldn't stand it any longer

 

Ouch. I've had a bad back a few times. Occupational hazard :S My chair is wonderful. I pass out in it often LOL!

I hear that Asus, and MSI will probably update AM3 boards bios's to allow AM3+ processors. We'll see I guess. Apparently Gigabyte may not be onboard with that It's just as well though. I'd rather have the proper socket, and full support myself

 

Oman7,

Gigabyte is definitely on board with that. At the moment they have 10 models to chose from!

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/list.aspx?s=42&jid=10&p=2&v=26

All are AM3, AM3+! I was considering a socket AM3 motherboard to give me all the bells and whistles for the Phenom IIx6 1090T BE on socket AM3, but I might as well consider the socket AM3+ GA-890FXA-UD5 to replace my 790X-UD4P. That way it can be upgraded to Bulldozer!

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3781#ov

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Alas, Mine is not AM3+ ready

What I meant was, there is AM3, and there is AM3+. My board is AM3. If it were MSI or Asus, possibly a Bios upgrade would allow Bulldozer upgrade. What I read, was that Gigabyte would not be supporting bios updates for AM3 boards. Perhaps they were misinformed. Unfortunately, I cannot find where I read that :S

 

Oman7,

It will take more than a bios update for AM3, because the socket is different! In fact, the Asrock (Asus) AM3+ board doesn't have the black AM3+ socket in it's picture! Here's what AMD had to say about why!

For someone like me, going to a Socket AM3+ with my Phenom IIx6 1090T BE, it would be the perfect move, while still looking to the next generation of AMD CPUs!

Russ

 

AM3+ it is Not sure when I can afford it though. I just dumped money into a Wii setup. And one of the components is fowling up. Not sure which yet. Very unhappy camper

 

Oman7,

Look at it this way. Right now Newegg only has two socket AM3+ motherboards for sale. It won't be until more and better boards are available for purchase that bulldozer will be introduced. I personally think that Asrock was stupid bringing out a $180 board for socket AM3+ at this time, since you gain nothing over an AM3 motherboard, but future compatibility for Bulldozer, and no one knows how long the wait will be for it! People are not going to spend that kind of money for a benefit that may well be 6 months or more away! In fact, it sounds a lot like Intel with the first Pentiums, and their one upgrade to the Pentium 75MHz CPU, and then the Pentium 90 came out with a completely different socket! After mulling that one over, I'll probably wait to do anything until it's all sorted out! I'm more than happy with what I have now!

Russ

 

It doesn't matter that they are significantly better or a different design, that is often true. What matters is how they are manufactured and as far as I know these will be produced with a dual 4-core mask. If that is true and they drop the AM3 line to go with the AM3+ only, which makes sense, they will most likely offer 4/6/8 core versions of Bulldozer much like they did with 2/3/4 core chips. Then the question would be will they allow a BE that can be unlocked?

 

Steve,

That's the very reason I suggested that anyone looking for a cheap, fast Quad core buy the Phenom IIx2 CPUs. The wafer yields have gotten so good that it's almost a certainty that you will get one that will unlock both locked cores. The Phenom IIx2 555 BE I just built became essentially the same thing as a Phenom IIx4 3.2GHz C3/955 BE for $50 less than the 955 BE. Fast little sucker at 3.2GHz too! Since they have discontinued them because they are no longer profitable, the 555 BE is a steal at $89 and free shipping! It would be a good upgrade for any AM2+ motherboard, running a Dual Core Athlon or Athlon II, and even if it didn't unlock any cores, it's still much faster than an Athlon IIx2 because of the 2MB of L2 cache and 6MB L3 cache vs the 2MB of L2 cache in the Athlon IIx2!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103846

Best Regards,
Russ

 

That is a dam# good deal good deal I think I'm going to grab a 565BE, or two, though before they go away. I prefer the higher stock clock over the 555, mentioning that makes me think of the old 555 timers which I still have a few laying around. funny...

 

Steve,

There's probably only two old timers that even know what a 555 timer chip is anymore, You and Me! LOL!! The first one I ever fooled around with was a metal can with leads that was soon replaced with a socket-able DIP-8 configuration. I mostly used the 556, for xray timers with a digital LED display around the mid 70s. I wound up having to design and build about 400 (373 + spares) of them to replace poorly designed timers on an Italian Dental X-Ray that couldn't pass the Federal x-ray regulation of + or - 1 pulse, at anything under 1 second! We either had to fix them, or give back the money and remove them. I ultimately wound up building another 250 of them which we sold for $150 (Cost $75) to independent dealers and other Dental supply houses, to cut our losses. They ultimately about broke even, and landed me my first $100,000 a year job as National Service Manager for the company! Pretty good money for the mid to late 70s, and it came with a three bedroom Condo on lake Michigan and a new car every year!

After about 40 years, the 555 is still a very commonly used chip, at least the ultra low power TLC555 still is. I know they have made billions of them!

True, the 565BE is 200 MHz faster, but it's only $30 less than a real 965BE. For me it might be OK for a customer build, but I would spend the extra $30 for the 965BE if I was planning to overclock it. The 555BE I had overclocked easily to 3.7GHz, but the minute I raised it to 3.8 it started giving me video problems when playing a DVD. The contrast would pop in and out. While I'm pretty sure that I could have isolated the problem core and adjusted it out using the ACC set to individual cores, I quit playing around with it because I didn't want to risk any harm to the CPU, as it was only going to run at stock 3.2gHz anyway. Even an Athlon II x4 645 3.1GHz Quad, that costs $20 more than the x2 555BE is a great deal slower than the 555BE with the two cores enabled, and the 645 Quad is not that much faster (about 5000 MIPS) than the 555BE as a dual core.

Russ

 

That is a good point Russ that the 965BE would be better for the money, I didn't look at that but is a better path.

I do have a stick of the low power smt 555's their purpose is for a LED Department 56 house light that I designed about ten years ago, or better, and never built. Very dumb because now people are doing just that I would have been way ahead of everyone else. I could have made good money if I would have just finished what I started and still should.

One thing we used the 555's many years ago was to get HBO for free, that is when they inverted the porch of the video signal on TV's. We would overlay the sync to bring up the trigger which was crude but it worked very well.

It looks like Creaky is cranky today, I know the feeling!

Stevo

 

What's funny russ, is there are those who will see the newest best thing, and jump right on it. Asrock knows there are people out there, that jump into deals, without thinking it through. People with lots of money LOL! Once upon a time, I may have jumped on such a deal. But you're right. It's pointless to buy an AM3+ board at present, when Bulldozer hasn't even graced the shelves yet xD

 

I don't understand that Oman7. It is smart to buy a forward capable board even if you are putting a current cpu on it. This way you can upgrade it down the road so people are not stupid for doing this and in fact are much smarter for it. Short sightedness is not a plus it is a minus!

My new board has USB3 but I have NO 3rd standard devices so is it bad to buy a USB3 board? I think not!

 

LOL! I should have explained better. I'm not buying an AM3+ board, until I'm ready to put bulldozer in. Not everybody fall into this category. I think it's better to wait, because the price will probably come down at least a little, eh? The only benefit I see for AM3+ is bulldozer. I'm not buying it til I have bulldozer. It'd sure suck, if I bought the board now, so I'm nearly ready for it down the road, only to have the same board drop in price 30 - 50$ when bulldozer releases thereabouts.

Now if I were building a system now, and had to do it, that's a different story. If I were building a system for somebody, I'd stronly recommend AM3+. Since there are very few boards available, I'd urge them to wait a few weeks...

 

Now that does make sense and you are absolutely right it is much better to wait for the prices to come down, which is what I do too unless of course I have to make a move for whatever reason.

I'm definitely frugal, not cheap!, so I watch price breaks and jump on them over shooting for bragging rights, typically...

 

Steve,

I think I understand where Oman7 is coming from there! He already has an AM3 motherboard, with Sata3 and USB3, so he gains nothing by buying the $180 Asrock motherboard except future compatibility with the "Zambeni" CPUs, and it may well be the end of the year before they come out. With my AM2+ motherboard, upgrading to an AM3+, I would at least gain full compatibility for my AM3 BE CPU, with all of the extras that go with it. For instance, I can't use Turbo Boost with my AM2+ board, even though it's there in my bios setup because the voltages go all over the place when I do. It's not at all comforting to look down and see the CPU running at 1.58v when I know 1.40v is supposed to be the maximum for the 1090T BE. AMD does caution you about this though!

The biggest reason I decided to hold off on buying one is it's only going to work with the Bulldozer "Zambeni" chips, and right now no one has any idea of whether there will be very many models of those. It appears that Socket AM3+ will be limited to 4-8 cores, just like the socket G32 Valencia CPUs for the Opteron. Anything based on the 16 core Interlagos, is going to take a new socket like the socket G34 for the Opteron, and that's bothersome to me because the faster they can get higher yields from the wafers, the sooner they can switch to a different socket for the 16 core, which means it will be Intel all over again with their 3 different sockets to cover i3, i5, and i7 (will the real Core i7 please stand up)! The X58 motherboards are still expensive, with the Cheapie Asrocks selling for $155 and $170 respectively on Newegg and the average decent X58 board costing $200+! Forget about the high end, as it approaches $600! That's while I'll wait and see how it all shakes out!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

That is true that the Bulldozer will be 4 to 8 cores, built on a dual 4-core mask, if you want to go 16 cores it will be with server boards at least at first of course as the 8 core cpu is/was. You are right Intel is horrible with their different socket configurations, but at least they aren't doing the old Rambus garbage with RAM, at least for now.

Stevo

 

Bad news on the 790X failure Jeff. The 'reprint with a new chipset' is quite common though. Gigabyte's P31 and P35 boards shared a lot with their i965 predecessors, and the X38-DS4 and X48-DS4 boards are identical, even the chipsets inside are almost the same!
My X38-DS4 turned 3 last month, and is still running the system that, of all of them, has the most I/O activity and the longest uptime by far. It's showing its age, with a faulty rear audio connector (black I think), and quite noisy Vregs, but still soldiers on.
For now, it's one of those days where I'm quite content with everything I have, and will be for some time to come. The only thing I need to do is grab one or two more 2TB disks and the plastic carry boxes for the backups.