Here's some benchmarks! CPUZ Memory Bandwidth Processor Arithmetic SuperPi 1M Not at all bad for what it now a $100 CPU! As soon as I can sort a few things out, it should run even faster. I've got my Hyper Transports to 4500, and I'm shooting for 5000! This is my first overclock of a locked multiplier AMD CPU. I'm still learning! LOL!! Stay Tuned, Russ
Things just keep getting better and better. Here's a few changes for you. I fattened up the memory bandwidth right nice. NB frequency and HT Link frequency set at 2500MHz which means the Hyper Transport speed is 5000MHz New SuperPi now into the 22 second bracket Things keep looking better and better! no real improvement in MIPS, but the speed things happen are unbelievable. It's just click-Bang and things open and close. I'm on the right track though You paying attention Oman7? Class is now in session! ROFLMSOAO!! Stay tuned, Russ
Thanks for the Overclocking link Russ. Very informative I'm sure it'll come in handy, when I start playing again Overclocking Phenom II
Here's a new and interesting chipset from AMD! http://www.pcworld.com/article/190530/amds_890gx_chipset_offers_hd_for_less.html?tk=nl_esx_h_crawl Russ
The 890GX is just another refresh really. Native S-ATA 3 support is good, but the integrated graphics are more powerful, yet still too weak to play any games, so they may as well have stuck with the old version. The only thing the 890GX really adds of significance is upcoming 6-core CPU support. These will have to be competitively priced, however, since unlike with dual core vs quad core, inter-model performance can actually be sufficiently high to negate the extra number of cores.
Here's a hands-on review of the 890GX Gigabyte and Asus motherboards. The GigaByte board is $139.99, about $6 less than the Asus. Impressive for everything it has on board. http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1236/1/ I would think that this would be a pretty good Media Center PC motherboard, although you can install a higher end video card or two. The SB850 southbridge provides SATA 6 Gb/s support, a definite boon for speedy transfer rates of about 500MB/s (I'm assuming SSD). That bandwidth is made possible by AMD's 2 GB/s Alink Express III interface, which alleviates performance bottlenecks between the northbridge and the southbridge. Sounds interesting, and it seems to perform well. Legit Reviews were able to overclock a Phenom IIx4 C3 stepping 965BE to 4.2GHz on it. For a $139.99 motherboard that does all the things this one does, it looks impressive! Russ
Quite a pricey board for a media center really. Very versatile, no doubt, but I imagine something like this would do the job perfectly well: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128432
usb 3 and sata 6 for soo cheap russ! superb board. loving these cheap amd board, deffinately pack a punch
Sam, You are probably right, it is a little high priced for that application. Sure looks like it would be a pretty good gamer though. A couple of fast SSDs, and a good video card or two, it ought to rock! No problems overclocking with the OBG turned off. When you turn it off, it's off! It's no longer part of the system! Looks like a 9 layer MB too! Russ
Shaff, I was impressed with the OC they did with the 965BE. The Bandwidth and data transfer rates are impressive! Russ
Well, the bad news is I had to drop the NB and HT Link frequencies back to 2250MHz. I've been running everything I own and it finally crashed. It ran Orthos for over 8 hours with no problems. Oddly enough it crashed while installing Net Framework 3.5 to install Sandra 2009! LOL!! That's all right though. A 4500MHz Hyper Transport works just fine, and is still faster than 4000MHz. You win some and you lose some. I wasn't willing to up the CPU NB VID Voltage any farther than 1.375v, or the CPU past 1.424v and I didn't want to try and raise the NB voltage past 1.300v. The memory bandwidth is still over 8000MB/s so I'm happy! Heat us not an issue, but it might be if I raised the voltage. Russ
It's funny you should say that, as the only thing that crashes on my overclock is Sandra, SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION I get as soon as I run a test. If it can play games for hours on end without incident I don't really care, and I haven't even touched any voltages yet.
Wow. Impressive! I almost wish I waited on the last Mobo purchase. Though I'm sure a bios upgrade will allow those six core Cpu's later. And if not, not a big deal. I can be happy for at least a year with my current build They must have had that 4.2Ghz OC really cool to run at such a low voltage. But I don't know. I really haven't put much effort into Oc'ing my 965 c3 step. And now that my secondary is running, I'm seeing even more heat.... I can't win... I really need a larger area for myself. THAT'S what I need to focus on. Good luck with that though eh. Finding another job is gonna be highly difficult. People are lucky to have one job right now.
Rick: I run into it a lot, but I'm not the average user. In an HTPC (the environment being mentioned), it's exceptionally rare, as you only really need 16x slots for RAID cards and graphics cards, the rest can go in 1x slots.
Rick, Besides, you personally, would have no use for 2 16x PCI-E slots anyway. You're not a gamer. There's not that many motherboards with 2 16x slots. Usually there's 1 16x and 1 8x, or two where you can use either one at 16x. If you use two slots they both become 8x on some. Others have one full time 16x and 1 8x. It's a question of cost vs practicality. For your needs, with the 890GX motherboard, you wouldn't even need a video card! I mean, who wants to spend in excess of $200 for something they will never use or need? At $139.99, the 890GX GigaByte has all the important goodies most people would ever want or need. Sata 3 6GB, USB 3.0 and the ability to transfer data internally up to 500MB/s Bi-directionally. That bandwidth is made possible by AMD's 2 GB/s Alink Express III interface, which alleviates performance bottlenecks between the northbridge and the southbridge. The combined effective data transfer rate is 1000MB/s Only a very small percentage of people would ever need or want more, and I would question the need for anybody but a serious gamer like Sam and a few others here. I think Sam has 4 high end Video cards in his i5! All the vast majority of people would ever need, is 1 PCI-E x16 slot! Best Regards, Russ
Indeed and to be honest, the Quad crossfire setup doesn't really seem like it's being hampered that much by only 8+8 speed...