AMD 5000+, HD3850 build complete

[chinaman1472]

@TheWrongTree

Except a motherboard that is cheaper right now STILL provides the same upgrade paths as that one you picked out. It's not like AMD's new socket was JUST released and you picked the old socket. I haven't run 3DMark06, but I'll go ahead and do a few tests. I'm actually upgrading to a E2160 with 2GB memory later this weekend, so I'll go ahead and see my jump in performance ^^;.

EDIT: Here's my 3DMark06 scores
Resolution - 1360x768, No AA, Optimal Filtering
3DMark06 Score: 5971
SM2.0 Score: 2905
HDR/SM3.0 Score: 4025
CPU Score: 865

 

[TheWrongTree]

Originally posted by: chinaman1472
@TheWrongTree

Except a motherboard that is cheaper right now STILL provides the same upgrade paths as that one you picked out. It's not like AMD's new socket was JUST released and you picked the old socket. I haven't run 3DMark06, but I'll go ahead and do a few tests. I'm actually upgrading to a E2160 with 2GB memory later this weekend, so I'll go ahead and see my jump in performance ^^;.

EDIT: Here's my 3DMark06 scores
Resolution - 1360x768, No AA, Optimal Filtering
3DMark06 Score: 5971
SM2.0 Score: 2905
HDR/SM3.0 Score: 4025
CPU Score: 865

Damn, I was hoping that you'd have like a 10,000! Are you going to carry that video card over to the new system?

You're right, I probably could have gotten a cheaper motherboard, but I liked this one for varioius reasons. The biggest being that Falcon Northwest uses these in all their AMD builds and they have a great reputation so I figured if it was good for them, it'd be good for me too. 🙂 Apart from that, I didn't see too many other boards that had 4 PCI-express slots. Dunno if it will be necessary, but I'd rather have and not need than need and not have. It's not like I was on all that strict a budget. I could have spent more than I did, but I didn't want to. I felt like I had a build that would meet my current needs and give me the opportunity to play with it later.

 

[chinaman1472]

Yea, just doing a cheap upgrade on the mobo, CPU, and RAM. Snagged the DS3L, E2160, and Super Talent 2GB stick of RAM for about $210 after tax and shipping and no rebate hassles.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Originally posted by: TheWrongTree

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo
Yah done great, WrongTree 🙂

I've got an MSI 790fx with a pair of OC'ed 2900pros ($145/each). Combined with an X2 5400+ @ 3.2GHz (stock volts and a really 'cool' Opty copper heat pipe cooler) that cost me $95.


Edit: I didn't want to 'smack' you but I got a 9152 on a single 2900pro 🙂

I found something else interesting when I went to go make that change, heyey...

PCIe 2.0 is not activated by default. I turned that on (and increased the multiplier on my CPU so that it is at 2800 (not much of an OC, I know 🙂 ) The memory seemed to already be running at 800. It didn't have an option to go to an x14 multiplier. Maybe because of the black edition CPU, which unlocks the CPU multiplier from the RAM? Never been an overclocking sort of person, so I don't know anything other than the snippets of what I've read here and there about it. Anyway, I got a 9116 now. Thanks again for the tip.

Nice bump on your 3dmarks (and good find on the PCIe2) - hopefully will make a difference in your game play.

If we wanted to be 'official' about the ram before we started you could have used something like CPUz from within Windows to check your ram speed. Here's the deal ...

AMD uses a divisor of the cpu speed to determine the speed of the ram. In the case of the X2 5000+ the memory divisor is 7. The cpu speed is 2600MHz (13x200MHz.)

2600 divided by 7 equals 371.xxx. AMD ram is 'double-pumped' meaning the ram speed would be 371.xxxMHz x 2 equals 743MHz.

When you changed the cpu multiplier to 14 the cpu speed increased to 2800MHz. The memory divisor is still 7. So if you do the math ... 🙂

So you get a little bump in cpu speed and bring your ram to spec without an overclock.


Edit: btw - the 790fx mobo was an excellent choice. You have eSATA and an 'upgrade path' to K10 and CrossFireX. There are no other chipsets/vendors that offer the 790fx for a cheaper price (even though I got mine for $155 - lol)

 

[TheWrongTree]

Nice bump on your 3dmarks (and good find on the PCIe2) - hopefully will make a difference in your game play.

If we wanted to be 'official' about the ram before we started you could have used something like CPUz from within Windows to check your ram speed. Here's the deal ...

AMD uses a divisor of the cpu speed to determine the speed of the ram. In the case of the X2 5000+ the memory divisor is 7. The cpu speed is 2600MHz (13x200MHz.)

2600 divided by 7 equals 371.xxx. AMD ram is 'double-pumped' meaning the ram speed would be 371.xxxMHz x 2 equals 743MHz.

When you changed the cpu multiplier to 14 the cpu speed increased to 2800MHz. The memory divisor is still 7. So if you do the math ... 🙂

So you get a little bump in cpu speed and bring your ram to spec without an overclock.


Edit: btw - the 790fx mobo was an excellent choice. You have eSATA and an 'upgrade path' to K10 and CrossFireX. There are no other chipsets/vendors that offer the 790fx for a cheaper price (even though I got mine for $155 - lol)

Ahhhh... that makes sense. Interesting. So now that I've bumped up to 3000MHz, I'm actually running at 857. Excellent. I wonder when something will catch fire? lol I always thought this overclocking thing was a bunch of voodoo stuff. But it seems simple enough. I guess the major thing is to get something to monitor temps and check for hidden instabilities to ensure that the overclock isn't going to cause unexpected problems?

And up to 9282 now. Apparently 200Mhz is worth approximately 170 3DMarks . I get almost exactly the same fps on all tests so I don't think I'm actually improving my gaming capabilities at all, though I might be improving my ability to do other things (zipping along in Vista, burning CD's, ripping CD's, etc.). Perhaps some other benchmark would be more appropriate to measure that.

This speaks well to my feeling that the differences in anyone's processors are not all that important for gaming as long as they are beefy enough to allow the GPU to do its job. I don't think there are many games out now that are CPU bound, though I may be mistaken.

At any rate, I think something is wrong with my video card. It has started doing funky things now that I've started to actually do some gaming with it. Some games cause it to freeze up and I noticed in Portal (one of the HL2 based games) a significant amount of screen tearing. That seems rather unusual since my old 6800GS didn't have any problems with any of the games I am running now (just had to run them at lower quality settings). I am going to work the angle that perhaps these are driver related first to make sure it's not something like that, but.... I don't think so. A friend has an older PCI-e video card I'm going to test out in my system to see if I have the same problems.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Originally posted by: TheWrongTree

Nice bump on your 3dmarks (and good find on the PCIe2) - hopefully will make a difference in your game play.

If we wanted to be 'official' about the ram before we started you could have used something like CPUz from within Windows to check your ram speed. Here's the deal ...

AMD uses a divisor of the cpu speed to determine the speed of the ram. In the case of the X2 5000+ the memory divisor is 7. The cpu speed is 2600MHz (13x200MHz.)

2600 divided by 7 equals 371.xxx. AMD ram is 'double-pumped' meaning the ram speed would be 371.xxxMHz x 2 equals 743MHz.

When you changed the cpu multiplier to 14 the cpu speed increased to 2800MHz. The memory divisor is still 7. So if you do the math ... 🙂

So you get a little bump in cpu speed and bring your ram to spec without an overclock.


Edit: btw - the 790fx mobo was an excellent choice. You have eSATA and an 'upgrade path' to K10 and CrossFireX. There are no other chipsets/vendors that offer the 790fx for a cheaper price (even though I got mine for $155 - lol)

Ahhhh... that makes sense. Interesting. So now that I've bumped up to 3000MHz, I'm actually running at 857. Excellent. I wonder when something will catch fire? lol I always thought this overclocking thing was a bunch of voodoo stuff. But it seems simple enough. I guess the major thing is to get something to monitor temps and check for hidden instabilities to ensure that the overclock isn't going to cause unexpected problems?

And up to 9282 now. Apparently 200Mhz is worth approximately 170 3DMarks . I get almost exactly the same fps on all tests so I don't think I'm actually improving my gaming capabilities at all, though I might be improving my ability to do other things (zipping along in Vista, burning CD's, ripping CD's, etc.). Perhaps some other benchmark would be more appropriate to measure that.

This speaks well to my feeling that the differences in anyone's processors are not all that important for gaming as long as they are beefy enough to allow the GPU to do its job. I don't think there are many games out now that are CPU bound, though I may be mistaken.

At any rate, I think something is wrong with my video card. It has started doing funky things now that I've started to actually do some gaming with it. Some games cause it to freeze up and I noticed in Portal (one of the HL2 based games) a significant amount of screen tearing. That seems rather unusual since my old 6800GS didn't have any problems with any of the games I am running now (just had to run them at lower quality settings). I am going to work the angle that perhaps these are driver related first to make sure it's not something like that, but.... I don't think so. A friend has an older PCI-e video card I'm going to test out in my system to see if I have the same problems.

I don't know if your ram can run at 857MHz without creating system instabilty. Running the ram that far out of spec (if it is DDR2 800) may be creating your system 'freeze-ips'.

Dropping the cpu multi back to 14x and bringing the ram back to DDR2 800 spec may solve your problems. If you want to run at 3GHz with DDR2 800 you must return to the Cell Menu and adjust the FSB/Memory Ratio ---> divider 1:1.66 (I'm not at my 790fx right now but I believe that is the setting 🙂 )

Your x2 5000BE may well reach 3.2GHz+ at stock cpu volts simply by adjusting the cpu multi to 16x. You still have yet to 'technically' overclcok because the FSB remains at 200MHz (16 x 200MHz = 3.2GHz) BUT you do have to account for (adjust) the increase in memory speed for system stability.

3.2GHz with the 166 divisor will run your DDR2 800 at 759MHz. You system will officially be ""smokin' "" but not in a bad way

Please download CPUz to view system settings and clocks. You also need a program to monitor system temps.

You also need to run a system stress test like Orthos/Prime to test system stability

 

[TheWrongTree]

Nah, the freeze ups started before I bumped it up further. I'm fairly certain it's the video card and not the system. but I'll take a look at that stuff and see if I can find some answers. Is there a test to see if your video card is losing its mind?

 

[TheWrongTree]

Turned out to be a bad RAM stick, it looks like. Failed memtest like crazy. Testing now with the one good stick to make sure something else isn't the culprit, just to be sure. Hopefully, all will be well in the near future.

I think I'll just go nuts and order a new set of 2GB sticks and then RMA these and get the two more.... then I'll have 4GB. Unless... I can find a good deal on 4GB (2GB x2).... in which case, I'll run 6GB. Just because I can. lol

Thanks again everyone for your interest and comments. I think I may take another shot at some mild OCing once I get fully stabilized. Look for me in the OC section in the near future! hehe

 

[TheWrongTree]

Quick update...

Made sure all BIOS settings were back to stock, abused it with memtest first, then Orthos. No errors or issues. Ran a 3DMark06 with just the 1GB of RAM at stock and it was 8810, which is 100 points higher than it was at stock with the 2GB when I had the bad RAM stick in.

I think I am going to order a set of this to replace the bad RAM:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820227169

Anyone have any thoughts on that? The price seems good, and until this time, I've always had good luck with OCZ.