CPU upgrade Athlon II X3 435 --> Phenom II X6 1055T - Any issues I should be aware of?

[Eug]

Typing this on the X6 rig (Microcenter combo deal from 2011).

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Jan-2-2012 AMD Phenom II X6 1055T installed. MSI 880G-E45
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Jan-5-2012 PhenomMSR again, 1.2750 VCore. CnQ on. Using Turbo 16.5x 1.4375 VCore, P1 P2 P3 1.2750V, P4 1.0000V.
FSB 250 14x 3510.3 MHz OS loads. 4125 MHz Turbo. HT & NB 8x, Dram 1:3.33. CPUz under load 1.344 1.336.

*North Bridge Overclocking. VCore 1.2750, 1.4375 Turbo 4125 MHz. CnQ on. CPUz load 1.336 1.328 1.344.
*250 14x 3510.3 OS loads. HT & NB 10x, NB volts up 1 step at 1.1625, HT 2505.0, Dram 1:3.33 835 MHz. SuperPi 1M best yet.
Prime ok 1hr+. 50c fan target: fan at 100% at 55c 44c-die. Peak temps 59c 48c, VRM 59c large FFT & 64 small FFT.
*** Using these settings, and loading PhenomMSR at Boot ***

Nice 25% overclock: 3.510 GHz normal speed, and 4.125 GHz Turbo. On air?

I'm happy with my stock 2.8 GHz / 3.3 GHz though.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

Kick butt!! I would have loved to get me one of these cpu's back in the day. Its fun to see people still upgrading and running the older tech like these. I cant wait for face book to upgrade there servers again and dump there old CPU's for people like us. I have upgraded twice from there offerings. L5639's and E5-2670's!!

 

[DrMrLordX]

I would be wary of buying anything from Facebook or Google (or Amazon). They often get custom or semi-custom (or just early) releases with all kinds of funky features in there that you might not find in a standard Xeon.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

Pretty sure they are just standard retired Xeons... Besides, a bunch of us here on A/T bought them and they run great. well as far as the X5650's and the E5-2670's goes that is. Point being if they would have retired the AMD x6 class I would have loved to have snagged one of them. I heard they were overclocking beasts for there time.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

Nice 25% overclock: 3.510 GHz normal speed, and 4.125 GHz Turbo. On air?

I'm happy with my stock 2.8 GHz / 3.3 GHz though.

As well you should be. I remember OC'ing these 6 core amd chips. They were notorious for killing cheap motherboard VRM's. Keep yours stock and even consider undervolting (if possible).

 

[DrMrLordX]

Pretty sure they are just standard retired Xeons...

Well, for example, Google (and some others) had a 6-12 month lead time on server Skylake. Not sure if the chips they had were buggy or what, but they had them before anyone else. Presumably on custom boards. It would be interesting from a historical pov to have one of those, but I'm not sure how much I would trust it.

Point being if they would have retired the AMD x6 class I would have loved to have snagged one of them. I heard they were overclocking beasts for there time.

Depends, if you had one of the second spins (95W 1055T, 1090T) then you could get a beast. On 970 and 990FX boards you could get them to run over 4 GHz sometimes. They got a bit warm at those speeds though.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

Oh i know all about heat out put, used to have a i7 920 at release day and that sucker used to get up to 75-80c while gaming.I would have killed for todays cooling solutions back then!!

 

[Eug]

As well you should be. I remember OC'ing these 6 core amd chips. They were notorious for killing cheap motherboard VRM's. Keep yours stock and even consider undervolting (if possible).

FWIW, the voltages are running lower than my previous 95 W Athlon X3.

The Athlon X3 (with BIOS-based Cool'n'Quiet turned off) would run at 1.44 Volts all the time IIRC.

In contrast, this Phenom X6 runs at 1.168 or 1.184 V at 800 MHz idle, and 1.200 V with Cinebench multi-core running at full tilt 2.8 GHz. (This is with the BIOS-based Cool'n'Quiet turned off as well.) The highest I've ever seen this CPU run is 1.376 V, which ironically is when it is not running at full tilt. It could have to do with Turbo though, since occasionally I've seen the speed jump to 3.3 GHz when the voltage was fluctuating around 1.3xx V. Geekbench 4 is interesting because the voltage will fluctuate from 1.1xx to 1.3xx during the test. This is what CPU-World says the Vcore ranges are:

1.075V - 1.375V (at rated frequency)
1.225V - 1.425V (Turbo Core mode)
0.975V - 1.175V (Minimum performance state)

Total system idle power for this machine is 72-74 Watts. With surfing and stuff I'm around 100 Watts (at 1.2xx V), and with Cinebench multi-core, it's at 134-136 Watts, which means the delta from idle to max is about 62-64 Watts. So it looks like it is likely behaving within its 95 W spec.

According to this review, with wPrime, the delta from idle to max is 72 Watts.

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/26122-amd-phenom-ii-x6-1055t-95w-cpu-review/?page=6

The delta for the Athlon X4 635 in the same review is 69 Watts, or close to the same. The 1090T in the same review maxes out at 32 Watts higher than the 1055T, which makes sense since it is a 125 W part.

 

[Replay]

Nice 25% overclock: 3.510 GHz normal speed, and 4.125 GHz Turbo. On air?

I'm happy with my stock 2.8 GHz / 3.3 GHz though.

On air. I think the chip had more to give, if it had better cooling, but I probably would have fried this budget MSI mobo. Had lots of fun tinkering with this 1055T. Started with an OCZ Vendetta 92 mm fan heatpipe cooler. Put on a Zalman CNPS 10X since then, but backed off on the overclock as I'd built another rig for gaming.
VCore 1.4375. 3 of 6 Hexacore (1,2,3). CnQ and TurboCore off. CPUz idles 1.464 1.472 1.488, load 1.496 1.480.
300 14x 4207.3 OS loads. HT & NB 7x, Dram 1:2.66. Prime 20m+ Bluescreen. Peaks 53c mobo, 40c die, VRM 59c short FFT.
*296 14x 4151.2 OS loads. HT & NB 7x, Dram 1:2.66. Prime ok 1hr11m+. Peaks 53c mobo, 40c die, VRM 59c short FFT.

 

[Selena Anderson]

https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/147?vs=699

FX-6300 is not very far in front of a 1055T.

Still newer generation than previous Phenom II architecture

 

[NTMBK]

https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/147?vs=699

FX-6300 is not very far in front of a 1055T.

Vishera at least has more modern instruction set support. Phenom II doesn't have SSE4.1 or SSE4.2, meaning that new games like Assassin's Creed Origins flat out will not run on it.

 

[Eug]

Vishera at least has more modern instruction set support. Phenom II doesn't have SSE4.1 or SSE4.2, meaning that new games like Assassin's Creed Origins flat out will not run on it.

1. FX will not run on this motherboard.
2. It's not a gaming machine.

If my upgrade were to require both a new CPU and motherboard, it would also have necessitated new memory and probably even a new Windows licence as well. If that were the case, I would have just gotten a new Kaby Lake or Kaby Lake Refresh Core i3/i5, or else perhaps Ryzen 2200g/2400g.

 

[SPBHM]

I think there is a decent hit to performance for h265 without SSE4.1? but with 6 cores I think it can still handle most videos?

 

[NTMBK]

1. FX will not run on this motherboard.
2. It's not a gaming machine.

If my upgrade were to require both a new CPU and motherboard, it would also have necessitated new memory and probably even a new Windows licence as well. If that were the case, I would have just gotten a new Kaby Lake or Kaby Lake Refresh Core i3/i5, or else perhaps Ryzen 2200g/2400g.

Oh yeah, sorry, I wasn't meaning for your upgrade specifically. I think that the 1055T was a great upgrade for your system I was just talking more generally.

 

[Eug]

I think there is a decent hit to performance for h265 without SSE4.1? but with 6 cores I think it can still handle most videos?

4k 10-bit HDR HEVC h.265 is a total lost cause on Phenom, but for the demo files I tried, even a Kaby Lake i7-7700K can't decode it cleanly in software, so that's not a surprise. Way too CPU intensive. An i7-8700K could do it in software but with high CPU usage. Luckily, both i7-7700K and i7-8700K have hardware decode.

OTOH, the 1080p 8-bit SDR HEVC h.265 demo files I tried are fine on Phenom X6 1055T in software. That is actually a major improvement, since it would be a big problem on Athlon II X3 435. Obviously CPU usage can be quite high on Phenom, but luckily it runs reasonably cool.

For 4K HEVC I have a Kaby Lake i5-7600 and a Kaby Lake m3-7Y32, both of which have hardware HEVC decode including 4K 10-bit. On the m3 with hardware decode, the Sony Nature Camp 4K HDR demo file uses about 25% CPU, and it's much lower on the desktop i5-7600.

 

[Eug]

I also tried some YouTube VP9 4K video. I'm pleasantly surprised.

For example, for this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z1eMy2FoX4

1080p utilizes up to 40% CPU max even accessing various interface features.
1440p utilizes up to 55% CPU max even accessing various interface features.
2160p utilizes up to 85% CPU max even accessing various interface features.

Trying other 4K VP9 vidoes, 2160p usually plays fine, but sometimes accessing the menu or stuff like that will cause frame drops. IOW, 2160p 4K on Phenom X6 with YouTube is like 1080p on Athlon X3 in Netflix, but 1440p YouTube works well. This is a huge improvement and matches the system well, since it doesn't support a 4K monitor anyway. I believe the GPU's resolution support maxes out at 2560x1600 or 1440p.

 

[OnTheOrme]

Sorry (not sorry) to reply to an ancient thread but just thought I'd share my Covid-lockdown adventure

I had an old Acer X3400 kicking around so decided to use it as the basis of a new desktop PC build - a cheap way to see if I still remember how!

Firstly I transplanted the motherboard in to a Corsair 750D case - cavernous!


I had the Athlon II x4 635 (100w) model - I did the bios update and installed the Phenom II x6 1100t (125w - eBay £80).
At the same time I added a cheap 600w power supply (Amazon £40) and a Corsair H45 watercooler (Amazon £50) - this made an annoying quiet ticking noise when mounted on the top, so I moved it to the rear exhaust instead.
I also swapped out some old 1033mhz RAM to 8gb 1333mhz (£20) - they actually sent me 16gb worth but it can only use 8gb.
I'd already put a 240gb Kingston SSD in (SATA-2 / 300 limit on the motherboard) - Windows 10 activation linked to my Microsoft account.
I've used Windows 10 soft-raid to stripe a 1tb and the original 600gb HDD to give me a faster 1.2tb "storage" drive (noting the risk of one drive failing and killing the combined set).
Hadn't realised earlier that the motherboard has four SATA connectors - may install a DVD/Blu-ray writer.

And to finish...
I've got a Palit Geforce 1050 TI 4gb graphics card in the post (£50 Facebook) - replacing a low profile 1gb ATI graphics card I had in the original case.
I'm also taking a punt on a a PCIE x1 NVME m2 SSD adapter (£20 Amazon) and a Kingston A2000 240gb SSD (£50 Amazon) - not sure this will be bootable though but 2000MB/s is worth a risk (knowing the PCIE 2.0 bus will be the limit)!
I did put a USB 3.0 adapter with internal 19-pin header in the motherboard's x1 slot in order to feed the case's front USB 3 port, but I'll sacrifice this for the NVME if it is bootable. I've seen a cable to convert the 19pin USB3 header to a 9pin USB2 - there's a couple spare headers on the motherboard.

Wish me luck!

p.s. this was a useful reference:

Site Under Maintenance

 

[Eug]

Sorry (not sorry) to reply to an ancient thread but just thought I'd share my Covid-lockdown adventure

I had an old Acer X3400 kicking around so decided to use it as the basis of a new desktop PC build - a cheap way to see if I still remember how!

Firstly I transplanted the motherboard in to a Corsair 750D case - cavernous!
View attachment 24374

I had the Athlon II x4 635 (100w) model - I did the bios update and installed the Phenom II x6 1100t (125w - eBay £80).
At the same time I added a cheap 600w power supply (Amazon £40) and a Corsair H45 watercooler (Amazon £50) - this made an annoying quiet ticking noise when mounted on the top, so I moved it to the rear exhaust instead.

Nice!

Also, it's Interesting it worked with the higher power CPU. I wasn't sure it would so that's why I stuck with the 95 Watt 1055T. Also, I'm still in that slim case with the crappy 220 Watt power supply.

Is the connector for the power supply standard? I can't remember.

At this point though I won't upgrade it again. It's fine for my needs (Office, email, and VPN Remote Desktop, on a 24" 1080p screen, as well as very occasional Netflix), but if I were to get another Win desktop, it'd just get a small Core i3 or i5 machine with Win 10, built-in 4K HDR streaming support, USB 3, SSD, and 8 GB RAM (to start). I could get that for under US$500.

 

[OnTheOrme]

Nice!

Also, it's Interesting it worked with the higher power CPU. I wasn't sure it would so that's why I stuck with the 95 Watt 1055T. Also, I'm still in that slim case with the crappy 220 Watt power supply.

Is the connector for the power supply standard? I can't remember.

At this point though I won't upgrade it again. It's fine for my needs (Office, email, and VPN Remote Desktop, on a 24" 1080p screen, as well as very occasional Netflix), but if I were to get another Win desktop, it'd just get a small Core i3 or i5 machine with Win 10, built-in 4K HDR streaming support, USB 3, SSD, and 8 GB RAM (to start). I could get that for under US$500.

Yes it’s a normal 24pin ATX power connector, and a 4pin CPU connnector.

Next step for me would be a motherboard/CPU/ram bundle now that I’ve got my confidence back - did not want to trash a £1k set of components on my first outing!

That being said, I’m an XBOX gamer so it should last me a while as is.

 

[OnTheOrme]

Just to finish the story...

I've now swapped the motherboard to an ASRock 970A-G/3.1 (£70) to give me a bit more "everything" - SATA-3, more RAM capacity, more PCIE slots, onboard USB 3.0 & 3.1/C, an m2 NVME slot.
It turns out the RAM was only 8gb after all - not sure why the old motherboard was reporting 16gb with a usable 8gb.
I've decided not to bother with hardware RAID - I'm sticking with the m2 NVME SSD, the SATA SSD, and the 1tb HDD.
The Windows activation carried over from the SATA install against the original motherboard & CPU, over to the m2 NVME & new motherboard - linked to my MS account.
I was surprised when I removed the watercooler CPU contact to see the pre-applied thermal paste had only contacted with the CPU over about 50% of the surface - no wonder it was running hot (50degs+), removed with nail-varnish remover and then applied loads of Artic MX-4 has it running at 25degs now.
Edit: the NVME m2 SSD in the PCIE adapter was NOT bootable on the original motherboard.

I bought a Samsung T7 1tb USB drive to help with transfers and backups. New, speedy and fairly pricey at £200 - but the colour matches my car so...

Nothing remains of the original Acer AX3400 - it's all been very quickly replaced.
Reminds me of a bit of classic BBC comedy:

Or, Greek philosophy if you prefer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

See you next time! Confidence restored!