Need help with 1090T vs 1055T

[extra]

DDR3 is better. Thubans really come to life with CPU-NB @2.8 GHz+ and DDR3-1600+. And from what I've seen HTT overclocking for Thuban is quite a bit better with 890GX/890FX than 700 series chipsets. Especially for 4 sticks of memory.

Yeah if you are gonna go, go all out imho. Get the 890fx and a 1090! 6gb sata for future proofing...why not? And aye for sure on the cpu-nb and ram. Grab that then when bulldozer comes in pop one in--you've already got 6gb sata for next year's sand force extreme 5000 edition whatever ssd stuff...etc!

Here's the thing...no, you won't be beating those i7 quads in most things...but you will not be far off...and things that use all 6 cores will do very well. Absolutely not saying it's better than Intel, don't get me wrong, I love Intel as well (have i5 750 as well)--but it is competitive, that's for sure.

With the 1090 you get an unlocked CPU-NB multiplier. You'll notice if you peruse through all the reviews...there are one of two sites that had the 1090 and overclocked the thubans PROPERLY (Ie, they raised the cpu-nb and used low latency ram)...those sites show the thubans producing incredible results. The other sites just showed "meh" results. There's a reason for that. 2400-2800 cpu-nb really helps (i use 2.4, i like 3x the ram frequency as recommended by AMD, using ddr3 1600).

 

[DrMrLordX]

Spending over $30-40 on a CPU cooler is sort of like wasting money on fins that you could have spent on silicon.

While there are some very nice aftermarket HSFs out there in the $40-and-under segment, HSFs that cost more are not necessarily wastes of money. There are plenty of instances where you just can't buy silicon that will let you do the things that a good ~$60-$80 HSF will let you do (or water, or phase, etc).

Sure, things like the Hyper 212+ or the Contac 29 (little-known but apparently competitive with the 212+) work just fine until the voltages start to climb too high. Everything has its limits of course.

But I digress.

OP, the choice between the 1090T and 1055T is almost certainly motherboard and RAM related. If your board can hit 260+ HTT and if your RAM isn't going to hold you back much, then the 1055T should be fine. If your board can't go past 240 HTT (or worse) then you might need a 1090T to avoid being board-limited in a big way.

 

[Blueprint]

Well, thanks to all who have contributed to the thread. I finally pulled the trigger on the 1055T with an ASUS M4A890 PRO with 6 GB/s and USB3. The 1055T will be cooled by a Noctua 92mm CPU fan/heatsink and complemented with 8GB of 1.65v 7-8-7-24 RAM. I was considering some 1.35v with 9-9-9-24 timings for the lower voltage, but read mixed reviews about OC results. (All G.SKill modules)

Circling back to the 6 GB/s, is it worth it to get a 7200 RPM SATA HDD like the WD Black in the 6 GB/s instead of 3 GB/s? The price difference for a 1 TB drive is only $5 (100 vs 95)...

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Samsung F3 1TB

You'll be hard pressed to saturate the SATA III interface on a conventional HDD.

 

[lopri]

I love Samsung HDDs and F3 series are one of the best, but in this case a bit of caution is warranted because there was a reported issue with new SB850 south bridge.

http://www.samsung.com/global/busine...bbs_msg_id=308

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Everyday on the way to and from work, the thought of a 1090T crosses my mind.. you wanna know why you say, because Micro Center is just 10 minutes away from my free-way route

 

[DrMrLordX]

Microcenter is a dangerous thing.

 

[superccs]

I drove 100 miles to Houston's Fry's just to pick up my 1055, 890gx, and 4Gbs of 1600 for $350. Damn good deals.

Why not grab up an SSD you probably have a bunch of 1TB sized lumps already.

 

[ShawnD1]

When the CPU multiplier is unlocked all you have to do to overclock the CPU is increase the multiplier. This avoids changing any other settings

I don't think it works like this. For the most part, "black edition" processors are bullshit and here's why
-My Phenom II X2 550 black has a stock multiplier of 15.5. Do you know what the highest allowable multiplier is in the bios? 15.5, so what the fuck?
-The highest multiplier allowed in AMD Overdrive software is 16.5 so that too is a complete waste of my time.

I bought the 1055T and I think I made the right choice. The bios overclocking stuff is intimidating, but it's not hard. Here's the lazy man's way of overclocking:
-keep all voltages except your CPU voltage at "auto"
-manually set the CPU voltage to its stock rating (1.425) and use this as your starting point
-manually set every speed just so you know it won't set itself to something unstable.
--stock HT and northbridge were 2000MHz (200*10), but mine is running at 1920 just to be safe (240*8)
--stock memory was something like 1333MHz (200*6.66), but I have it set to 1279 (240*5.33) to be safe
--PCI Express bus is supposed to be 100MHz, so make sure you lock it at that speed


And that's all there is to it. Right now I have the 1055T running at 3360MHz (240*14). Voltage is just a little above stock; currently 1.450V. Stock cooling. Temperature at full load on all 6 cores is 43C at the moment. Seems to be perfectly stable so far.

It seems like there's a lot of room for extra overclocking since I'm only at 43 degrees loaded, but that just isn't the case. Going from 240 bus to 250 bus requires a huge increase in CPU voltage. Going from 200*14 to 240*14 is done near stock voltage, but increasing it to 250*14 requires a very minimum of 1.525 volts. The power consumption goes through the roof at that point. It seems like all of my processors hit a wall at around 20% overclocking. My E6600 was like this, my Athlon X4 only does about 15% overclocking before requiring a dramatic voltage increase, OG Phenom hit this wall at about 10% overclocked.

 

[richierich1212]

Shawn, what mobo? Did you disable Turbo?

 

[ShawnD1]

Shawn, what mobo? Did you disable Turbo?

It's an Asus M4A78T-E. It's a nice board, but I don't think it has any option to disable Turbo.

edit: manually setting the multiplier to 14 instead of "auto" will disable turbo mode. Unfortunately it also disables c1e and c&q

edit

Man this thing is way faster with turbo off. Instead of hitting the wall at 250 bus, it goes all the way up to 275. 280 absolutely does not work; it can't boot into windows regardless of voltage.
275*14 = 3850MHz (37.5% overclocked).

 

[DrMrLordX]

How in the heck did you wind up with a Thuban that has a stock vcore of 1.425v? It should be 1.3v.

 

[richierich1212]

It's due to turbo, and his mobo doesn't have a better BIOS out that fixes the turbo issue it seems.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Okay, that makes sense. I was under the impression that Turbo will only raise vcore when it is engaged, but if his board's Turbo implementation is buggy, then . . . yeah.

Of course he will also be running speeds quite a bit faster than 3360 mhz with Turbo enabled, at least with some of his cores anyway.

 

[ShawnD1]

How in the heck did you wind up with a Thuban that has a stock vcore of 1.425v? It should be 1.3v.

It doesn't say 1.425 anywhere in the bios or on the box. CPU-z, which always reads a bit lower due to droop, says something like 1.41. AMD Overdrive says 1.425 when looking at the CPU Status screen.

I'm still dicking around with this as I'm posting. 275 bus is pretty much the limit for my computer, and the required voltage to pass linpack for a few minutes is 1.525 which pushes the temperature close to 60C. This is still a new heatsink with no dust, so that's a bit too high. I turned it down to 270 bus at 1.500 volts. Looks like a nice stable setup.

270*14 = 3780MHz, turbo off
1.500 volts
stock cooling
mid tower case with no special cooling
temperature is 48C during linpack testing

I'm impressed. That's totally worth $200. The stock cooling is pretty good too.

 

[richierich1212]

try 13.5x multi, or 13x.

 

[richierich1212]

Oh you have stock cooling. That is pretty good, lol.