Athlon XP 2500+ to Phenom II X3 2.8ghz ... @ 3.5ghz

[Yukmouth]

Update3:

Originally posted by: richierich1212
So your highest stable OC is 3.1GHz w/ stock voltage?

Didn't quite have the webbo's to add the extra voltage for max oc test ... but I got over my fear after some reading and started screwin around when I was sure cool n quiet would still work.

http://i360.photobucket.com/al...et_Worth/OCResults.jpg
http://i360.photobucket.com/al...Worth/Memoverclock.jpg


3.5ghz @ 3.60v (in the bios, 3.52v in CPU-Z)
250mhz CPU Northbridge @ 1.310v ~> 1.245v is default, kinna worried on this one but it's a must for stability. It seems like most people are pushing it even higher.
835mhz DDR333 9-9-9-24-1T. I'd tighten the timing's but I've not made it there yet.


Pretty simple OC overall, certainly not the 300mhz NB frequency they reached on anandtech. I don't like the voltage's people are using to get to 3.7ghz and above so I'm iffy on going any further with this thing. I'm pretty positive the DDR3 can get me more out of the NorthBridge, but being that the northbridge took the highest percentage increase in voltage, I'd rather not risk the god like temps I'm getting right now ...

... which leads me to my biggest question at the moment ... How am I getting 18c idle temps and 23 to 24c full load temps?

Every program I've used is reporting these temps and I'm starting to think the temps are not accurate. That is, compared to the temps I've read from other's with these or similar chips.

I'm using a thermal take V1

Update2:

All is well, BSOD was due to the SCSI drives.

3.1ghz @ default voltage, 222mhzfsb with no issue's at the moment.

Update:

Before I start sending stuff back I thought I'd check to see if you guys had any idea's, as I've run out of option's trying to get this new setup to work. I went with a cheaper PSU to start, then went to an Antec 550 Basiq to see if that might be the issue.

http://i360.photobucket.com/al...Worth/MotoFatelSys.jpg

BSOD's o'plenty, though it's odd, the BSOD is always identical. Formatting my drives was a PITA, the system would hang a lot more than usual making it to the next installation steps of Win XP pro. Then after the first batch of XP files were installed and the OS boots from the HD for the first time, the blue screen comes up.

Here's a link to the cooler I'm using, temps are at 26c to 27c when running @ 2.8ghz, I've even downclocked to a multi of 4x and found no resolve. Mem was running at 1333.

http://zedomax.com/blog/wp-con...take-v1-cpu-cooler.jpg

At a loss here as I don't have an HD that's SATA, I only have one IDE slot with no way to hook an IDE hd and IDE CDRom up at the same time ...

... AMD chipset is NOT being cool on the compatibility front for me thus far, but perhaps I have a dud of an item I can't sniff out. I have no other video cards or HD's compatible with this setup at the moment.


Final Specs:
- Antec Basiq Plus 550watt
- AMD Phenom II X3 720
- LSI 68pin PCI SCSI card
- 2 10krpm SCSI *Cheetah's*
- G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
- Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 Dual DVI (Refurbished)
- Windows XP Pro



Initial post
____________________________________________________________________
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton core oc'd to 2ghz (133mhz fsb) (Won this at an AMD giveaway event in San Francisco, back when .13 micron was the sh*t!)
x2 512mb Dual Channel DDR
MSI NF7s N-Force2 Motherboard
Radeon 9700Pro (AGP)
x2 10,000 rpm 80gig 68-Pin scsi drives (can't recall brand)
Antec 500+watt dual fan PSU
Random IDE drives for storage

I'm thinking I put this thing together 2002 or 2003? Can't quite recall, but it's still pretty fast after six years, I think .... This computer is going to mom who says her celeron 466 will no longer do the trick . The SCSI drives and PSU are moving to the new computer though.

I've not seen a need to rebuild due to the fact that I use a computer for music production, internet and other music related tasks that don't need to much horsepower. If I want to game I'm generally on the XBox 360, but I do enjoy computer gaming once in a blue so I'd like to keep that option available with this next build.

Ordered:

AMD Phenom II X3 720 2.8GHz Socket AM3 95W Triple-Core Black Processor
MSI 770-C45 AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard (MSI treats me well .. edit .. not any more)
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Dual Channel Kit
Titan TTC-NK35TZ/RPW/V2 95mm Z-AXIS BEARING CPU Cooler - Retail
Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16
SCSI Config above

DDR3 seems to have more Cas settings .... What should I aim for with this G.Skill memory??

Is this Radeon 4850 comparable to my old 9700 pro? Way more memory (128 vs 512), but I'm wondering if this current " value " GPU is actually faster than my 9700 pro, which I'm pretty sure was high end when I bought it.

 

[richierich1212]

Not a decent upgrade.....but one heluva upgrade! And the 4850 surely smokes that 9700pro.

 

[brblx]

hell, i saw large gains going from a 2ghz athlon XP to a 2ghz athlon 64. the phenom II will be hugely faster.

same with the video card. it's exponentially faster.

http://www.techpowerup.com/rev...hire/HD_4650_OC/6.html

look through the position of the 4850 on those benchmarks and then realize that the lowest card on that list at least as fast as a 9700pro.

 

[Sylvanas]

Lol is the 4850 faster than a 9700pro? Are you serious? Yeah it's faster...about 10times faster. Nice choice on the rest of the components, enjoy .

 

[BolleY2K]

I upgrade from a pretty similar system 2 years ago. Had an Athlon XP 2500+ @ 2800+, 1 GB RAM DualChannel, NForce 2 Mobo (Asus), Radeon 9500 Pro flashed to 9700.

I upgrade to C2D E4300@3,1GHz, 2 GB DDR2-800, Geforce 8800 GTS 640, Nforce 650i SLI Mobo.

It was a really great difference, so your upgrade should be even more significant. Don´t fear - it will be like day and night...

 

[Gikaseixas]

decent????? here's what you missed along the years

A64 3000/4000+, X2 3600/6400+

so yeah since Barton we've had considerable upgrades, go for it man

 

[Yukmouth]

NICE.

So it's official, six years removed will produce substantial gain's .

Big thanks guys! I'll post OC results, core type, ect.

 

[Arkaign]

Good list! Hey btw, time to retire those trusty SCSI drives.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822136283

^^ That will be faster, no doubt about it.

 

[magreen]

LOL. Entertaining thread, OP. Is a 4850 faster than a 9700 pro. Your new rig is gonna put your old rig in a double-reverse suplex and pile drive it.

OOH YEAAAH, SLAP IT TO A SLIM JIM!!!!

 

[BolleY2K]

I upgraded at least every 3 years since I was ten years old, and it was always a substantial gain... ;-)

 

[Motavian]

I'm actually about to do almost the same exact upgrade

My current system has an Athlon 2400+ and a fanless 7600GS, and I'm probably getting the Phenom II X3 720 just like the OP. I was looking at the 4850 but might get something a little cheaper since the newest game I play is Oblivion.

I wonder if the jump will be as big as my previous upgrade... from a 200 MHz Pentium w/ 64MB ram up to my current 2400+

 

[Yukmouth]

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Good list! Hey btw, time to retire those trusty SCSI drives.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822136283

^^ That will be faster, no doubt about it.

Soooooooo ......, Western Digital Caviar's @ 7,200rpm and 32mb's of cache are faster than my Seagate Barracuda's @ 10,000rpm with 8mb's of cache?????

I don't get it .

Can ATA compete with SCSI now?

I wouldn't call these SCSI drives trusty, they're Seagate Barracuda's of which I had four. Two of them died about a year ago with stuff I didn't back up and I never bothered replacing them. I'm not a fan of replacing item's that die within the same year the warranty expires and I was pretty annoyed about the information loss also, though I blame myself entirely.

I do remember being stoked about upgrading to SCSI over my old 7,200rpm Caviar's way back when for the multitasking ability alone. I never looked back when I made the switch. IDE/ATA drives were relegated to mere storage apparatus in my mind and I'm still stuck on thinking SCSI is the supreme being ...

I was thinking about two of these bad boyz:

x2 Fujitsu 73.5GB 15000 RPM SCSI Ultra320/68pin

I might go for a larger capacity of course, though SCSI is still expensive for the amount of storage space you get.

Is SCSI a waste of my time now?

LOL. Entertaining thread, OP. Is a 4850 faster than a 9700 pro. Your new rig is gonna put your old rig in a double-reverse suplex and pile drive it.

Excellent, I was hoping for SOME sort of suplex result, though I certainly didn't expect a double-reverse. Honestly, I got tired of upgrading every time a new chip came around. I said screw it when I got the XP2500+, I'll let this build be my last for a while, I've got better stuff to do!

However, I just kinna forgot about the hobby entirely up until I got a call from mom this weekend. Lets just say I was nineteen when I built the 2500+ ... computer's got replaced with female's.

Now I'm back, with no female's and a grossly out dated rig, I am ashamed .

 

[magreen]

Originally posted by: Yukmouth

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Good list! Hey btw, time to retire those trusty SCSI drives.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822136283

^^ That will be faster, no doubt about it.

Soooooooo ......, Western Digital Caviar's @ 7,200rpm and 32mb's of cache are faster than my Seagate Barracuda's @ 10,000rpm with 8mb's of cache?????

I don't get it .

Can ATA compete with SCSI now?

I wouldn't call these SCSI drives trusty, they're Seagate Barracuda's of which I had four. Two of them died about a year ago with stuff I didn't back up and I never bothered replacing them. I'm not a fan of replacing item's that die within the same year the warranty expires and I was pretty annoyed about the information loss also, though I blame myself entirely.

I do remember being stoked about upgrading to SCSI over my old 7,200rpm Caviar's way back when for the multitasking ability alone. I never looked back when I made the switch. IDE/ATA drives were relegated to mere storage apparatus in my mind and I'm still stuck on thinking SCSI is the supreme being ...

I was thinking about two of these bad boyz:

x2 Fujitsu 73.5GB 15000 RPM SCSI Ultra320/68pin

I might go for a larger capacity of course, though SCSI is still expensive for the amount of storage space you get.

Is SCSI a waste of my time now?

LOL. Entertaining thread, OP. Is a 4850 faster than a 9700 pro. Your new rig is gonna put your old rig in a double-reverse suplex and pile drive it.

Excellent, I was hoping for SOME sort of suplex result, though I certainly didn't expect a double-reverse. Honestly, I got tired of upgrading every time a new chip came around. I said screw it when I got the XP2500+, I'll let this build be my last for a while, I've got better stuff to do!

However, I just kinna forgot about the hobby entirely up until I got a call from mom this weekend. Lets just say I was nineteen when I built the 2500+ ... computer's got replaced with female's.

Now I'm back, with no female's and a grossly out dated rig, I am ashamed .

You definitely want to stop dropping money on small fast hard drives and buy a small fast SSD (solid state drive). The drive to buy right now is the newest intel x25-m, either 80gb or 160gb. It will put any spindle drive to shame, period. Spinning drives are going the way of the dodo, my friend. The only advantage they have over SSDs right now is $/GB. But if you're talking about buying expensive scsi drives... well, then, there's zero reason to do that instead of an SSD.

Also... when the girls see this new rig, they'll be back in a hurry. :laugh:

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Yukmouth

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Good list! Hey btw, time to retire those trusty SCSI drives.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822136283

^^ That will be faster, no doubt about it.

Soooooooo ......, Western Digital Caviar's @ 7,200rpm and 32mb's of cache are faster than my Seagate Barracuda's @ 10,000rpm with 8mb's of cache?????

I don't get it .

Can ATA compete with SCSI now?

I wouldn't call these SCSI drives trusty, they're Seagate Barracuda's of which I had four. Two of them died about a year ago with stuff I didn't back up and I never bothered replacing them. I'm not a fan of replacing item's that die within the same year the warranty expires and I was pretty annoyed about the information loss also, though I blame myself entirely.

I do remember being stoked about upgrading to SCSI over my old 7,200rpm Caviar's way back when for the multitasking ability alone. I never looked back when I made the switch. IDE/ATA drives were relegated to mere storage apparatus in my mind and I'm still stuck on thinking SCSI is the supreme being ...

I was thinking about two of these bad boyz:

x2 Fujitsu 73.5GB 15000 RPM SCSI Ultra320/68pin

I might go for a larger capacity of course, though SCSI is still expensive for the amount of storage space you get.

Is SCSI a waste of my time now?

LOL. Entertaining thread, OP. Is a 4850 faster than a 9700 pro. Your new rig is gonna put your old rig in a double-reverse suplex and pile drive it.

Excellent, I was hoping for SOME sort of suplex result, though I certainly didn't expect a double-reverse. Honestly, I got tired of upgrading every time a new chip came around. I said screw it when I got the XP2500+, I'll let this build be my last for a while, I've got better stuff to do!

However, I just kinna forgot about the hobby entirely up until I got a call from mom this weekend. Lets just say I was nineteen when I built the 2500+ ... computer's got replaced with female's.

Now I'm back, with no female's and a grossly out dated rig, I am ashamed .

Yes, as a matter of fact you should see a noticeable boost going from the 73.5G 10k RPM U320/LVD SCSI to the 7200RPM WD Black Sata.

The reason is one that people frequently overlook : areal density. The SCSI drive may be spinning those platters at 10k rpm, but they have relatively low areal density, which means the heads can only read so much data as they pass over the spinning platters. With a hugely increased areal density, so long as the heads are up to the challenge, the data transfer rates on the 750GB drive should be almost through the roof in comparison. Seek times should, all things being equal (they aren't in this case, comparing a 2009 drive to circa 2003-2004 drives), favor the 10k RPM drive.

Read in detail here :

http://www.storagereview.com/g...d/op/mediaDensity.html

It's shocking how this escapes so many people.

 

[alkemyst]

I went from a 3200+ Winchester to 4000+ San Diego and thought that was good...then the Opteron 165 really opened my eyes. I could run A/V scans and game...

I just went to a x3 myself...trying to get to a final clock. My LS120 drive was dying and causing all sorts of random instability

I have been at 3600 for 6 hours now. I will be happy with that, but I want to try 3700-3800 as well, then try and tweak the NB and HT settings. I hear at 3400-3600 on the CPU a NB of 2200-2400 is ideal...then scale up with CPU speed. For HT I hear 2100 is about the limit you want to go, after that return on investment is much lower and risk for HW damage increases.

 

[Arkaign]

A thread with benchmarks of Raptor 74GB 10k rpm vs. 750GB 7200RPM drive : http://www.techpowerup.com/for...showthread.php?t=55760

Heh, it's funny, the people in that thread are also mystified, as they apparently have no clue about the crucial impact that areal density plays in HDD performance.

 

[Bruizer]

I actually went from an AMD 3000+ Venice to a San Diego 4000+ about three/four years ago. I must say I was quite pleased with those results. And today I decided to upgrade from my 939 San Diego to a Phenom X3 720. Must say I'm a little bit excited, even though the only game I play is BF2, but with BF:BC2 coming out and BF3 in a year or so, figured it was about time to upgrade.

 

[Yukmouth]

Originally posted by: Arkaign
A thread with benchmarks of Raptor 74GB 10k rpm vs. 750GB 7200RPM drive : http://www.techpowerup.com/for...showthread.php?t=55760

Heh, it's funny, the people in that thread are also mystified, as they apparently have no clue about the crucial impact that areal density plays in HDD performance.

Great lesson Ark much appriciated.

All things considered, eighty bucks for a 700+ gig drive that's faster than my 2003/2004 drives is an awesome deal!

For a little extra I can get a solid state drive, which I didn't even know was out by the way!

Can I trust a Solid State Drive to run my OS though?

Guys I've got a problem!!!

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Dual Channel Kit
^^^^^^

After doing some reading I'm pretty sure this memory is crap and not fast enough, but I didn't know it at the time of purchase. If I drop down to 2gb's of ram and go for say, DDR 3 2000, the price range is about identical.

Can someone point me in the right direction on the ram? I'd rather have the speed than the extra 2gb's.

 

[BolleY2K]

There is a nice test right here on anandtech about DDR3 speeds... Read first, ask later. ;-)

 

[alkemyst]

while clock for clock DDR3 is slower....at 1333 and beyond it moves ahead.

Since you have 1600/12800 ram you should be able to run at higher speeds.

What is it that you are trying to do that you don't have the memory speed for?

 

[Fox5]

The extra speed of DDR3 isn't worth much. I'd rather go for a cheaper ddr2 motherboard + ram.
A Phenom II won't really see much difference from going faster than 800mhz ram anyway. 1600Mhz ram is about 10% faster at best. I'd rather go for more ram over ram speed, 8GB of DDR2 is pretty cheap.

Oh, and a SSD would be a wicked fast improvement, but only the Intel drives and I think the OCZ Vertex drives are worth it. (probably a few more now) But they're small and you pay a ton per GB, but a primary OS drive/app drive as a SSD and a terabyte hard disk for data storage would be good.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Fox5
The extra speed of DDR3 isn't worth much. I'd rather go for a cheaper ddr2 motherboard + ram.
A Phenom II won't really see much difference from going faster than 800mhz ram anyway. 1600Mhz ram is about 10% faster at best. I'd rather go for more ram over ram speed, 8GB of DDR2 is pretty cheap.

Oh, and a SSD would be a wicked fast improvement, but only the Intel drives and I think the OCZ Vertex drives are worth it. (probably a few more now) But they're small and you pay a ton per GB, but a primary OS drive/app drive as a SSD and a terabyte hard disk for data storage would be good.

^^ This guy is right on the $, that's a good combo if you can afford it.

As for Ram, it's not going to be holding you back by getting slightly lower-spec ram. A system with 4GB of DDR2-800 will blow the doors off a system with 2GB of DDR3-2000 in any situation where more than 2GB is usable (with a modern OS and a new game, that is almost inevitable). Phenom II isn't overly sensitive to ram speed either.

Good advice would be to get the 4GB now, you'll be on DDR3 so pretty set for the coming 2-3 year period, and when prices hit a sweet spot maybe you can jump to 8GB of DDR2-2000 (or better).

 

[Yukmouth]

Guess I'll make due with the DDR3, I'd of figured DDR3 was way faster by default than ddr 2.

I'll do some research, thanks guys!

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Arkaign
As for Ram, it's not going to be holding you back by getting slightly lower-spec ram. A system with 4GB of DDR2-800 will blow the doors off a system with 2GB of DDR3-2000 in any situation where more than 2GB is usable (with a modern OS and a new game, that is almost inevitable). Phenom II isn't overly sensitive to ram speed either.

Good advice would be to get the 4GB now, you'll be on DDR3 so pretty set for the coming 2-3 year period, and when prices hit a sweet spot maybe you can jump to 8GB of DDR2-2000 (or better).

I agree with this. Of course faster memory is better, but it's one of those non-issues where diminishing returns hit hard near the bottom of the performance spectrum.

Try not to think of memory speed as being similar to CPU speed or GPU speed. Performance and CPU cost scale in a fairly linear way, performance and video card cost scale in a linear way, but memory is not linear. When running high end stuff like Far Cry 2, the performance goes up by less than 10% even though the memory speed goes up by 100%. As I write this, 4gb of DDR3 1333 on newegg is $58 while the cheapest DDR3 1600 is $74. No reasonable person is going to say that the expensive memory is worth the added cost. Get as much memory as possible then maybe consider the speed of it.

 

[Yukmouth]

up for the update