The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

I decided to up my six core to 3.7GHz. I just changed the Multiplier, without increasing the voltage. I ran IBT on it, 10 pass and it ran solid. It turned out balking, running DVDRB/CCE, and BSOD'd at about 82% done, so I upped the voltage to 1.34v, and now it's stable, even running DVDRB/CCE.



The memory is a hair over stock settings at 1342MHz, with the HT Link set to 2600 and the Northbridge frequency set to 2600 for an HT of 5200MHz.



Temps look real good, and hits a max of 52.5C fully stressed with IBT, and stays under 40C encoding. I'm happy with it!



Russ

 

I swear, this thread makes me itch. I'm itching to build a new system LOL! And the 1090t/1100t is the most tempting upgrade path. I don't dare sell my 965 though. It's an excellent secondary processor

 

It just proves and shows you that Prime and other testing software just doesn't do the job as a good old intensive app. Way to go Russ nice job!

 

It was probably memory related errors. I had a similar problem with my ram, when trying to run XMP. I still haven't moved to slots 3 & 4 :S Rebuilder crashed, and another application that will remain nameless

 

Steve,

It sure runs sweet!

Russ

Oman7,

If you already have some DDR3, get a GigaByte 990XA-UD3 or better. With your Phenom II 965BE, it will be like a new build to you. You can also get Cas 7 DDR3 1600 memory with timings of 7-8-8-24 that's supported natively by the 990X motherboards, so no having to play with the buss speed. I would have gone that root myself, but the 1333MHz DDR3 Cas 7 7-7-7-21 was half the price. I don't think it was the ram, because bumping the CPU voltage to the next setting up cured the problem.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128510

I can't find any programs like Sandra that want to work with Win7 64 bit, since my old Sandra no longer works on my machine. I downloaded the latest Sisoft Sandra Trial, and it crashes during the CPU arithmetic test. It just freezes the computer, even at stock speed. My old Business Sandra worked fine when I first installed it, but not anymore. I like IBT for stress testing because it moves the CPU load up and down slowly. It takes all six cores up to over 40C, with the CPU temp at 52.5C. If it completes 3DMark testing, I'll leave it alone!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Yah, I would like an AM3+ board. If only for the new revision, and better support of AM3. I'm fairly certain that I'll want piledriver when it releases.

 

If AMD can make a Phenom II-esque comeback for Bulldozer I'll be all over it. Bulldozer showed a LOT of potential but they need to go back to basics, ie heat and power. When it doesn't double my PC's energy consumption and is actually practical to cool, I'll be very interested. If they hadn't been such hogs, I would probably already have one...

BTW guys I find IBT at the highest setting possible is great for CPU testing. Variable levels of load would seem essential to find instabilities.

Likewise Unigine Heaven 3.0 is an amazing video stress test. Pushes much higher video card temps than any game I currently play, for some reason or another. Will easily crash a video overclock that played games fine for hours. Also has the built-in failsafe of doing a CTD instead of a bluescreen when video instability occurs(none of my other benchmarks or apps do this). Of course this isn't infallible, crashes do occur, but is very convenient for fine-tuning my clocks without a reboot every 5 minutes.

 

I would have found a way to purchase AM3+ and Bulldozer around tax time, if it weren't for the power consumption reports I was seeing. Very disappointing. The power demand would make me nervous for the mainboard when overclocking. Heck, I probably won't even push the 1090t too hard. I just want more cores LOL! I think 3.8 - 4.0 will be a good sweet spot.

 

I think you'd be fine but definitely more consumption means more heat and if you push it you would have to deal with the extra heat somehow. I have Russ's board so I should up the CPU on it and play like he did. I have high end RAM so I would only need to up the CPU plus I have a good heat sink too.

My next purchase though will be a Garmin G6 or the SkyCaddy SGX GPS for golfing but after that I may have to pull the trigger on a new CPU thanks to Russ.

 

A Bulldozer might be more heat than you think. The wattage increase when overclocking is enormous. If you plan to stay stock it's actually quite the opposite, they're not much worse than an Intel. But they do get very hot when OCing.

Again, give me a Phenom II-ish remake and I'll be a happy camper. Phenom I was easily as bad as this. If they can put it squarely in i5/i7 territory per-core(heck, even close to a 45nm Core 2 Quad would be nice), then it should be a fantastic product. Again, the potential is there.

 

I suspect Piledriver will more than please people. A 5% increase would be a joke. Surely it will be closer to the 20 - 30% mark that Wiki is projecting. Taming the power requirement will hopefully be a similar improvement

 

That's usually what it roughly works out to. About equal power consumption and speed improvements. IvyBridge should also be about 30% faster and less power hungry so AMD will have their work cut out for them. If they can at least produce something that is a respectable improvement over Phenom II, reasonable wattage and resonable price, I will be buying one. I understand that SandyBridge is currently hand over fist above Bulldozer right now, but the two companies have been back and forth several times. AMD held the lead for a very long time. They need every bit of support they can get if they want that lead back.

Also, they tend to stretch the use of platforms better lately. Intel have released i7 on how many different sockets? AMD has proven easier for me to upgrade and play around with. The basic structure hasn't changed. Maybe that's an issue for AMD to consider. Keeping platform commonality and value while improving architecture. Remember Phenom II is still distantly based on Clawhammer/Athlon 64 architecture. Bulldozer is an entirely new approach and it's going to take them time to get it on its feet.

BTW Intel has 14nm transistors in testing.

We haven't hit the limit yet. There are so many ways to tweak everything. I suspect AMD has similar improvements in the works.

 

Same here, at first I thought it indicative of an unstable overclock, until it did it at stock. I ran sandra on windows 7 x64 before, so it presumably must be a version change that did it.

 

Hey guys I'm not up to date on burners but I figured it's high time for an upgrade so I can enjoy my small collection of Blu-Rays without the PS3(amazing machine for some stuff) and also for the inevitable occurrence of PC games on Blu Ray.

Is this any good? Newegg sent me a promo code for it for $10 off and it's currently the cheapest one available. Anything on an optical drive I should be wary of or are they pretty much black and white as far as quality? I'm not looking for thousands of flawless burns, in fact my current DVD-RW has seen zero use this year so far.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106369

Also in the process of attempting to sell my 6850s. It's about time I got a 2GB+ video card. Maybe one now and one later, possibly one very expensive one. Am looking at a few different models, but am sort of split on what presents best bang for buck. Everything seems relatively expensive this generation vs my 6850s for $200 each on release and my 4870s for $300 each on release(bought both sets literally less than a month after release). A 7970 is about $550. Damn that is a lot.

Also, if I don't get something higher performance than a single 6970, I might as well stay with these cards.

 

I'm sure you'll probably see the same with other drives, but there are a lot of people complaining about failed tray mechanisms with that drive. Coasters you can't often judge whether it's the drive at fault, but hanging POST and tray not ejecting, you can. Just a brief heads up.

 

Any recommendations on video cards or am I better off to sit tight and watch prices? BF3 really calls for more video power than I can supply, but it's not by much. I am content to sit on these cards for another year if that's what it takes but I've been at relatively the same video power for a few years now...

 

That's a great deal I thought about buying one but LiteOn doesn't support their drives well these days and I wouldn't want to get stuck with a crap drive again as I did recently with them. However that is cheap so it might be worth the gamble. The better Blu-ray drives tend to be LG and Pioneer, both can burn media at two to three or even four times the media manufactures rated speeds reliably. I have had both drives but have had better luck with the LG's than the Pioneer BD-206 I have now, I still like my 206 but there was some crappy media it didn't do a good job on that the LG did.

Burners can be tricky to rate like Sam said as the firmware and timings are so key to the media you are using, so some might have better luck than others based on their media of choice.

I use to buy LiteOn mostly but since dealing with their customer service or lack there of it on a drive that should have performed well with the media I was using I have given up with LiteOn for future drives.

 

I bought one of those about 3 months ago, I should have returned it but other things got the best of me, it came with cyberlink software, if I'm not mistaken you need these kind of softwares to be able to view or use your blurays, and don't forget I am not up to speed as most of you guys on this subject, I wanted to jump on the bandwagon with this bluray stuff since the price was cheap on this model and give it a go, even ordered a couple of bluray movies.

Well whatever reason before I could even get into burning anything, bluray anyway, I could not even view it, neither bluray movie I tried to watch would not play using that cyberlink software, it drove me crazy for days trying to figure it out, even e-mailed cyberlinks support, what a joke that was, it plays regular dvd's great, it burns regular dvd great, but when it comes to do anything with bluray movies forget it, and yes I have tried about 5 brand new bluray movies niether worked, by the time I had time to mess with a return it was to late, and don't forget, it could also be I was doing something wrong, either way still can'r figure it out.

 

You need third party software to play blurays. Cyberlink PowerDVD is only included for use with DVDs, as far as I know. Lots of complaints about such software not being included with the drive, but that's why you should do the research before you buy one! Plenty of free software will play blurays.

 

Lite-on used to be really good. Now I'm not so sure. Their quality control seems to be slipping. At least my BD-Rom seems to be O-K. I don't rip with it much, but I do scan burned media. Seems to do ok at that.

Like steve, I would recommend LG. I however would not recommend LTH media. They seem to be hit or miss. Well, perhaps not that bad, but they're not great either. I would worry about longevity with LTH media.