Give me a reason to get a Phenom 9600...

[jiffylube1024]

Is there a better board than the MSI? I've never been a fan of MSI motherboards, and much prefer the steady supply of BIOS updates that a company like ASUS provides their boards with. Especially since you have "longevity' in your list of reasons to pick a specific setup.

 

[batmang]

Gigabyte, DFI and Asus make a 790fx board but they are more expensive then the MSI. I may just go with a Gigabyte over the MSI. I dont NEED 4 pci express slots, i will never run more than two.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...cription=790fx&x=0&y=0

 

[batmang]

Ordered my stuff. I'm anxious to get a 200MHz overclock! I really am stoked about this machine. I plan to keep it a long time and actually utilize it properly. Hopefully future Phenom's bring the competition back. If so, I'll be ready with my Spider platform.

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: batmang
Ordered my stuff. I'm anxious to get a 200MHz overclock! I really am stoked about this machine. I plan to keep it a long time and actually utilize it properly. Hopefully future Phenom's bring the competition back. If so, I'll be ready with my Spider platform.

Good stuff! I was asking about AM2+ MB's a few weeks back, and no-one seemed to know much about them. At the time it looked like my Computer had given up the ghost, and I was tihnking I would need to buy new. I have since figured out the issues and don't need to buy a new computer, but would greatly like to know your experiences with this prcessor/MB combination. Please keep us informed on how it goes for you!

 

[batmang]

Originally posted by: Martimus

Originally posted by: batmang
Ordered my stuff. I'm anxious to get a 200MHz overclock! I really am stoked about this machine. I plan to keep it a long time and actually utilize it properly. Hopefully future Phenom's bring the competition back. If so, I'll be ready with my Spider platform.

Good stuff! I was asking about AM2+ MB's a few weeks back, and no-one seemed to know much about them. At the time it looked like my Computer had given up the ghost, and I was tihnking I would need to buy new. I have since figured out the issues and don't need to buy a new computer, but would greatly like to know your experiences with this prcessor/MB combination. Please keep us informed on how it goes for you!

Will do.

 

[nerp]

Go AMD!

 

[batmang]

Phenom 9900 putting down some decent numbers. AMD pride!
http://www.neoseeker.com/Artic...e/Reviews/phenom_9900/

If your interested in the CPU cooler they used, it can be bought here:
http://www.acousticpc.com/noct..._120mm_cpu_cooler.html

I may buy it, hah.

 

[v8envy]

Erm. Not much to be proud of there. The 9900 barely bested a Xeon 3210, a cpu I bought for $226 shipped. At stock clocks. Why not test vs a $250 Q6600? The QX6700 is barely faster than a Q6600 at stock clocks. It's more expensive simply because it offers an unlocked multiplier. If the tests aren't max OC vs max OC, the comparison isn't very valid.

A very slanted article to make the Phenom look much better than it really is. The 9900 is still a terrible value, and a middling performer at best.

 

[batmang]

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo

Originally posted by: batmang
I must admit that Im very surprised no one on these forums is running a full Spider setup (790x/fx / HD 3800+ / Phenom, etc). I was hoping to see some AMD fan's chime in but NO ONE has one? Thats just weird. I know Intel is killing it right now, but NO Spider enthusiasts on AnandTech forums!? Someone's gotta do it!

I've had an MSI K9A2 Platinum 790fx for a week.

For $630 I got the mobo, 5400+ 2.8GHz Brisbane 65nm 65w, 2 x HD 2900pro 512mb 256-bit, 2Gb DDR2 800 - and a tube of AS

I used a stock Opty copper heatpipe cooler I had laying around (which looks pretty cool with the mobo), a black Enlight case, a Silencer 650w EPS PS, 80gb IDE, 2 80mm & 1 120mm case fans and an OEM copy of XP.

So far I'm a really happy camper

A wee bit more 'burn-in' and I'll start to tweak. At (stock) idle, cpu is 27c. I'll OC as high as I can at stock volts and leave it at that ... a guy at hardforums claimed 3.5GHz on air at stock volts but I'm not counting on that ...

I do plan to crank up the HD 2900's but need 8-pin connectors. The rumahs on the internets seem to favor 25% - and maybe 15-20% on the memory.

Counting all the 'stuff' I've added I'm in for less than $1k. When AMD gets the L3 cache up to speed Phenom/Kuma may be on the road map ...

Woot, AMD pride! Very good build up for the price.

 

[batmang]

I got most of my stuff in today, waiting for the cpu and motherboard to arrive tomorrow. Spider yo.

 

[Arkaign]

I respect your enthusiasm, and I hope your system turns out decently (and most importantly, satisfies YOU).

Personally, I can't think of any credible reason to buy a slower product, at a high price, with a new platform, with known errors that can cause serious instability, when you're (A)- An overclocker, and (B)- someone who can RTFA that show over and over, C2D/C2Q >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> *** (at this point)

I sincerely hope that a revision of Phenom brings AMD back to the ballgame. But as it sits, it's a total KO.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: richwenzel
ill tell you where it makes sense for me to get an AMD (please note I just bought an e8400 and am building a new system from scratch)....

my mother needs a new pc, hers is fairly old and since she is also fairly old refuses to give up AOL and all her bloatware. her pc would be much better if she would just let me remove services. however, she is my mother, and mom said no, so that's that.

so, my mother uses photoshop, plays some games, watches some videos, has a small business etc and tends to keep everything open on her pc all the time....

she will not change her habits...

buying her a phenom over a q6600/e8400 makes sense for the following reason, i won't OC this pc because if anything happens she can't fix it and i may need over a week to get back to her place, which would bother her...im not an expert OCer so i am not going to take the chance...

since she runs a lot of things at once, a quad may be more beneficial than an e8400, and she needs at least 3 gigs of ram cause of everything she has up...

so i might as well save the money on the phenom versus the quad and put it into ram...

btw, AOL is really the devil...that crap eats up more ram than anything i have seen....not even WoW eats up that much ram....at one point it was like 800 megs

An E8400 will cost the same as a phenom or LESS, and will ANNIHILATE it at anything you could throw at it. Keep in mind that the stock speed is 3ghz and it is a MUCH faster architechture (speed per mhz)

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: taltamir

Originally posted by: richwenzel
ill tell you where it makes sense for me to get an AMD (please note I just bought an e8400 and am building a new system from scratch)....

my mother needs a new pc, hers is fairly old and since she is also fairly old refuses to give up AOL and all her bloatware. her pc would be much better if she would just let me remove services. however, she is my mother, and mom said no, so that's that.

so, my mother uses photoshop, plays some games, watches some videos, has a small business etc and tends to keep everything open on her pc all the time....

she will not change her habits...

buying her a phenom over a q6600/e8400 makes sense for the following reason, i won't OC this pc because if anything happens she can't fix it and i may need over a week to get back to her place, which would bother her...im not an expert OCer so i am not going to take the chance...

since she runs a lot of things at once, a quad may be more beneficial than an e8400, and she needs at least 3 gigs of ram cause of everything she has up...

so i might as well save the money on the phenom versus the quad and put it into ram...

btw, AOL is really the devil...that crap eats up more ram than anything i have seen....not even WoW eats up that much ram....at one point it was like 800 megs

An E8400 will cost the same as a phenom or LESS, and will ANNIHILATE it at anything you could throw at it. Keep in mind that the stock speed is 3ghz and it is a MUCH faster architechture (speed per mhz)

Wrong again fanboy...

A quad will always ANNIHILATE a duo on software that is multi-threaded, like encoding, 3d cad, DC projects...

 

[batmang]

Heres some pics of some of the stuff that came in today:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jm...rPlatformComputerBuild

The rest should be here tomorrow.

 

[v8envy]

Originally posted by: Markfw900


Wrong again fanboy...

A quad will always ANNIHILATE a duo on software that is multi-threaded, like encoding, 3d cad, DC projects...

Duno about that. Russian posted a comparison of a Phenom 9900 vs E8400 clocked at 4+ ghz, and even in MT-friendly apps it was a *very* close contest, mostly in favor of the E8400. Since Phenoms aren't going to scale with clock rate (1.8ghz async L3, anyone?) faster Intel dual cores will widen that gap.

Now granted, a 3.6 ghz Q6600 (heck, even 2.8 ghz!) would have painted a completely different picture. My point is not every quad > every dual core.

 

[batmang]

Originally posted by: taltamir

Originally posted by: richwenzel
ill tell you where it makes sense for me to get an AMD (please note I just bought an e8400 and am building a new system from scratch)....

my mother needs a new pc, hers is fairly old and since she is also fairly old refuses to give up AOL and all her bloatware. her pc would be much better if she would just let me remove services. however, she is my mother, and mom said no, so that's that.

so, my mother uses photoshop, plays some games, watches some videos, has a small business etc and tends to keep everything open on her pc all the time....

she will not change her habits...

buying her a phenom over a q6600/e8400 makes sense for the following reason, i won't OC this pc because if anything happens she can't fix it and i may need over a week to get back to her place, which would bother her...im not an expert OCer so i am not going to take the chance...

since she runs a lot of things at once, a quad may be more beneficial than an e8400, and she needs at least 3 gigs of ram cause of everything she has up...

so i might as well save the money on the phenom versus the quad and put it into ram...

btw, AOL is really the devil...that crap eats up more ram than anything i have seen....not even WoW eats up that much ram....at one point it was like 800 megs

An E8400 will cost the same as a phenom or LESS, and will ANNIHILATE it at anything you could throw at it. Keep in mind that the stock speed is 3ghz and it is a MUCH faster architechture (speed per mhz)

Not true entirely. I won't get into it as it has already been answered/explained (LINK). I'm hoping the B3's will show some promising results. Either or, I'm happy with what I purchased and I feel it will last me a while. My motherboard and CPU should be in today....its Crysis time.

 

[narreth]

oh cool
how much did that spider rig cost in all?

 

[batmang]

Originally posted by: narreth
oh cool
how much did that spider rig cost in all?

$996.71 shipped for everything. I bought everything except the video card from NewEgg. The card I got from AllStarShop.

-Phenom 9600 Black Edition 2.3GHz
-MSI K9A2 790FX Platinum
-G.Skill DDRII 800MHz 4x1GB
-Sapphire ATi HD 3870 512MB
-Acer (AL2016W) 20" Widescreen LCD
-Generic Case with 585w Power Supply
-Samsung DVD+/- CD-RW SATA

All for under 1k.

 

[Thor86]

Originally posted by: batmang
$996.71 shipped for everything. I bought everything except the video card from NewEgg. The card I got from AllStarShop.

-Phenom 9600 Black Edition 2.3GHz
-MSI K9A2 790FX Platinum
-G.Skill DDRII 800MHz 4x1GB
-Sapphire ATi HD 3870 512MB
-Acer (AL2016W) 20" Widescreen LCD
-Generic Case with 585w Power Supply
-Samsung DVD+/- CD-RW SATA

All for under 1k.

Ahh, you should have bought the Gigabyte 790 board. Oh well, set her up and post some gaming numbers/images, and you'll be the mang, mang.

 

[Ebichan]

Could you get your 200 MHz overclock?

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: Ebichan
Could you get your 200 MHz overclock?

He should be able to do that easily enough just by increasing the multiplier.
I hear that the Phenoms are very HT limited compared to the X2's however. Maybe the B3 stepping chips will have a little more headroom to overclock.

 

[batmang]

Originally posted by: Martimus

Originally posted by: Ebichan
Could you get your 200 MHz overclock?

He should be able to do that easily enough just by increasing the multiplier.
I hear that the Phenoms are very HT limited compared to the X2's however. Maybe the B3 stepping chips will have a little more headroom to overclock.

I sure did, running at 2.5GHz now. Multiplier is at 12.5x instead of 11x. I tried getting 2.6GHz but that wasn't going to happen. Still running stock voltages as well. Its surely an awesome system. I will be looking forward to the B3's.

validation: http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=309070

Doing some light benchmarking now. Crysis is running pretty good. I'm anxious to get a second 3870 in hopes of crossfire adding some more frames in the future.

Heres my current FPS results in Crysis 1.1 with my CPU at 2.5GHz.

- 1680x1050 - DX10 - 64Bit - Medium Quality - 33.3FPS Average over 3 tests
- 1680x1050 - DX10 - 64Bit - High Quality - 20.67FPS Average over 3 tests

I'm pretty much spot on with this review fps wise:
http://www.techspot.com/articl...-performance-multigpu/

And heres some pics:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jm...rPlatformComputerBuild

 

[bunnyfubbles]

:thumbsup: thanks for taking one for the team AMD needs your money

:beer: cheers!

 

[batmang]

Originally posted by: bunnyfubbles
:thumbsup: thanks for taking one for the team AMD needs your money

:beer: cheers!

Just doing my job. lol

 

[aigomorla]

Me having own a phenom rig wishes you the best of luck.

I also hope you have a return capability on that.

As i said, i wasnt very happy playing with one, after playing with 5 kentfields. :T