Athlon 64 2650e/2850e 15W/22W single-core, low-power $5 AM2 processors...

[cbn]

I like this one, $27.55 shipped with only AM3/AM3+ support (N68-GS4 FX) for refurbished:

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/SKUSearch.asp?scriteria=78796BA&pagetitle=ASROCK N68-GS4 FX Socket AM3+/ NVIDIA GeForce 7025/ DDR#.VZompmfH82w

Add AM2 support jacks up $20 in price for N68C-GS4 FX (no refurb at this moment). Hmmm...

With that low price in mind, I'm curious how would you approach the system build? What other parts would be used in the build-up?

Also how do you feel about refurb DIY boards (like NG-GS4 FX) vs. buying some other type of complete refurb desktop PC?

P.S. I'm tempted to pick one of those boards myself just to check iGPU performance under Linux Mint 17,2.

 

[Shivansps]

AMD 760G has the Radeon 3000, not the HD3000, with just partial H264 support, if you want full video decoding support you gona need a 785G/E chipset.

Yes the 7025 has H264 decoding support, but since its not the PureVideo HD, i think its limited to 720P.

The best one was definately the 8-Series Chipsets, i have a GF8100 mb, and it not only supports H264 in full HD, it supports DivX and xvid as well, something not supported on Intel or AMD.

After having so good chipsets like the 785G and the GF8100, its hard to belive we are back to 7025 and 760G...

Oh wait, actually it's FX-8370E (not FX-8320E) the fastest and max processor you can put in this ASRock. Third post updated.

Maybe we should purchase one of the slooowest 2006 Sempron 2800+ 128KB cache Manila (SDA2800IAA2CN) and see how it stacks up with FX-8370E. What a journey...

The LE-1100 is one of the slower, but not sure if its slower than a 128kb Sempron.

Excluding Athlon 2650e, 2850e, and 3250e that I see here. They run pretty cool and never reach over 45 C even when overclocked at the max.

Yes, remember that im using a fanless LE-1100, but you need to consider the chipset, if you are using Nvidia, and the chipset AND sb if using AMD.

Its just old design.

 

[Sheep221]

Guys skip on these parts, I tried to revive s478 P4 rig in the end of the last year and believe me these things are worthless, I ditched my AM2 build in 2012 along with some Socket As because they just run way too hot and perform slow. Low end APUs are dirt cheap and will do magically better than any of the AM2s. Or celerons for that matter will do even better for the money and power draw.

 

[waltchan]

After having so good chipsets like the 785G and the GF8100, its hard to belive we are back to 7025 and 760G...

So, are you saying the GeForce 7025 has a little advantage on graphics than Radeon 3000? What does H264 decoding support mean?

 

[waltchan]

I ditched my AM2 build in 2012 along with some Socket As because they just run way too hot and perform slow.

Thank you very much for this info. Looks like to me the 22W Athlon 2850e overclocked at 2.33GHz is the maximum and fastest low-heat AM2 processor I can get. Performance quality is very equivalent to Celeron 440 LGA775, I would say.

 

[waltchan]

With that low price in mind, I'm curious how would you approach the system build? What other parts would be used in the build-up?

Also how do you feel about refurb DIY boards (like NG-GS4 FX) vs. buying some other type of complete refurb desktop PC?

P.S. I'm tempted to pick one of those boards myself just to check iGPU performance under Linux Mint 17,2.

This one only has AM3 support, remember, so it has a lower resale value with fewer demand. I use leftover parts I have left in storage that aren't in my priority list.

Refurb boards are okay, except they have a lot of fingerprints all over (messy to clean up), and sometimes they smell weird. I see brand new ones going for $45 shipped, but I think this refurb has more advantage in value due to lack of AM2 support.

 

[Shivansps]

Thank you very much for this info. Looks like to me the 22W Athlon 2850e overclocked at 2.33GHz is the maximum and fastest low-heat AM2 processor I can get. Performance quality is very equivalent to Celeron 440 LGA775, I would say.

no, the Radeon 3000 is better on 3D, the 7025 might be better on videos playback, but thats all, on 3D even the radeon 3000 is worse than BT igp.

 

[SPBHM]

even GMA 4500 is better than the 7025

as far as I know the 7025 is unchanged from the 6100/6150 IGPs, that's basically less than half a geforce 6200 (entry level card from 2004/2005)

 

[nenforcer]

So, are you saying the GeForce 7025 has a little advantage on graphics than Radeon 3000? What does H264 decoding support mean?

Hardware Accelerated BluRay playback. These boards also meet the Windows 10 minimum system requirements and should be around a long time.

 

[waltchan]

Hardware Accelerated BluRay playback. These boards also meet the Windows 10 minimum system requirements and should be around a long time.

Wow, so it has 720p Blu-Ray support. If I'm using Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 with integrated Radeon 3000, can it play Blu-Ray?

But that's totally amazing. From Windows 98 to Windows 10, all fully-supported for 7025, I've never seen something so longest-lasting.

http://nvidia-geforce-7025-nvidia-nforce-630a1.drivers.informer.com/

 

[SPBHM]

Wow, so it has 720p Blu-Ray support. If I'm using Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 with integrated Radeon 3000, can it play Blu-Ray?

But that's totally amazing. From Windows 98 to Windows 10, all fully-supported for 7025, I've never seen something so longest-lasting.

http://nvidia-geforce-7025-nvidia-nforce-630a1.drivers.informer.com/

Geforce 6 had decent 98 support, so it's no surprise, also Vista drivers (WDDM 1.0) work on win 10, I think the problem with 98 would be drivers for the rest of the chipset.

 

[Shivansps]

Im not so sure...

There are Geforce 6 Drivers for Win9x, but i dont see any for Geforce 7.

The last chipset to have drivers for Win9X was the nForce 3....

I know this very well because i was planing to use a Biostar NF61S Micro 754/Athlon 3200+ as a legacy pc running old games on Win9X, and i had that problem of the lack of Win9X chipset drivers for nForce 405, the IGP has drivers, the rest do not.

I ended up using a K8M800 Micro AM2 and a GF6200LE because of that.

 

[SPBHM]

Im not so sure...

There are Geforce 6 Drivers for Win9x, but i dont see any for Geforce 7.

The last chipset to have drivers for Win9X was the nForce 3....

I know this very well because i was planing to use a Biostar NF61S Micro 754/Athlon 3200+ as a legacy pc running old games on Win9X, and i had that problem of the lack of Win9X chipset drivers for nForce 405, the IGP has drivers, the rest do not.

AFAIK anything under 7300 is a geforce 6 chip rebranded, and the 7025-630 was a refresh from 6100-430 and the IGP part was unchanged

but yes, drivers for the rest will be difficult


asrock made am2 (am2+ compatible) boards with nforce 3 :biggrin:

 

[cbn]

For Nvidia drivers, GeForce 7 has Windows 8.1 support,....but GeForce 6 stops at Windows 8.

I wonder if GeForce 6 will get updated to Windows 10? (considering we don't have the Windows 8.1 driver yet)

 

[SPBHM]

For Nvidia drivers, GeForce 7 has Windows 8.1 support,....but GeForce 6 stops at Windows 8.

I wonder if GeForce 6 will get updated to Windows 10? (considering we don't have the Windows 8.1 driver yet)

windows 8.1 installs automatically the driver for my 6100 (it's forceware 307, the 309 for win8 should also work)

my G31 IGP installs automatically WDDM 1.0 drivers on win10

if you have a vista driver that should be enough, I can see plenty of 2006 drivers for my G31 board on win 10 for things like the sata controller.

on the nvidia site geforce 7 + 8.1 gives "no results found"

I think the support level is exactly the same as 6 series, and that should be good enough for win 10.

 

[cbn]

on the nvidia site geforce 7 + 8.1 gives "no results found"

They exist, but you have to manually plug in the values:

http://www.geforce.com/drivers

I think the support level is exactly the same as 6 series, and that should be good enough for win 10.

Before my GT 630 was supported in Windows 10, I used the Windows 8.1 driver. It worked, although I wonder if there is a performance hit when doing this? (My understanding does not extend to the software level and I didn't do any performance testing)

 

[SPBHM]

They exist, but you have to manually plug in the values:

http://www.geforce.com/drivers




Before my GT 630 was supported in Windows 10, I used the Windows 8.1 driver. It worked, although I wonder if there is a performance hit when doing this? (My understanding does not extend to the software level and I didn't do any performance testing)

it have the option but no drivers found for 8.1, and for 8 both 7 and 6 get the same result

630 is Fermi, so it's going to make a big difference, but for older stuff? not really I think.

 

[Sheep221]

Thank you very much for this info. Looks like to me the 22W Athlon 2850e overclocked at 2.33GHz is the maximum and fastest low-heat AM2 processor I can get. Performance quality is very equivalent to Celeron 440 LGA775, I would say.

Yes, that's correct but as I said, by today's standards, investing in AM2 - 775 system is waste of money really.

 

[escrow4]

No point in buying them. Unless you live in Somalia buy a Haswell celeron and H81 or a refurb Core 2 complete box minus monitor. Or the next equivalent celeron equivalent. Intel will always have cheap CPUs those are the ones that sell and they will do the job. Not just i3s either, bottom barrel Celeron's are now fine. AM2 and AM3 are obsolete so are all the low end chips you can run on them. My G1850 can decode 4K and H.265 with barely any power usage on a modern platform, cheapness only goes so far before you end up going primitive.

 

[SPBHM]

one nice thing about AM2 compared to 775 is that AM2 can run those ultra cheap high density DDR2

 

[VirtualLarry]

one nice thing about AM2 compared to 775 is that AM2 can run those ultra cheap high density DDR2

I had nothing but issues with those cheap Chinese 4GB DDR2 DIMMs.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Performance quality is very equivalent to Celeron 440 LGA775, I would say.

That's not much to brag about, really. I built someone a free rig using one of those CPUs in an ITX rig. It was painfully slow, being only a 2.0Ghz single-core. I guess, in theory, it would be equivalent to a 4Ghz P4, but that's not saying much either.

I would much rather have my current Sempron 3850.

 

[SPBHM]

I had nothing but issues with those cheap Chinese 4GB DDR2 DIMMs.

that's a shame, have you tried the 2GB ones? also pretty cheap and I was thinking about getting more memory for my old asrock alivenf6g (with 4 slots, no need for 4GB sticks)

 

[cbn]

that's a shame, have you tried the 2GB ones? also pretty cheap and I was thinking about getting more memory for my old asrock alivenf6g (with 4 slots, no need for 4GB sticks)

Which DIMMs are you using? And how much do they cost?

 

[cbn]

I had nothing but issues with those cheap Chinese 4GB DDR2 DIMMs.

I see some new Samsung 2 x 4GB DDR2 6400 800 kits for $19.85 free shipping on ebay.

That seems like a good price to me and the brand, of course, is legit.