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QX9650 vs PhenomII X6 with max O/C?

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DrPop

Junior Member
First, thank you to everyone who pitched in on my other thread in the distributed computing section. That discussion and many hours of reading reviews afterward, has got me to this point.

My second rig needs a new mobo w/ 2pci-e slots. It will be a dedicated BOINC cruncher with two high end (5870s) ATI GPUs crunching 24/7 as well as the CPU. The GPUs get most of the points; the CPU just has to be fast enough not to limit them, and give as many points as it can by crunching AQUA or PrimeGrid.

At this point I'm at 2 choices:
1. Keep the QX9650 I have, sell DDR2 and buy new socket 775 mobo & DDR3
2. Sell the QX9650 & DDR2, and buy PhenomII X6, AM3 mobo & DDR3

Any thoughts on which rig would be better for what I want to do? Not gaming (well, occasional Counter Strike Source :biggrin: but not often) - I am looking for the most raw grunt calculations per second here. And it's got to drive the GPUs as well (either should not have a problem).
I do like the features on the new AM3 mobos better than the 775 mobos I can find, but is there any other considerations I might be missing or not thinking of? In the Anandtech Bench, both these CPUs would be really close. I'm thinking it's more of which platform is better?

I will O/C either one to the max as well. So which ever platform usually gives higher O/C might be best?
Thanks for any thoughts before I commit. It all helps.
 
What is wrong with your current DDR2 and motherboard? I don't believe that the X6 will be that much of an improvement over the QX9650, considering the lions share of the work is being done by the GPU's. I don't believe that you are bandwidth constrained with DDR2 in BOINC either (although I may be wrong).

However, you probably could get enough from selling your QX9650, MB, and RAM to buy a AMD 1090T, MB, and DDR3 RAM, since it is the top of the line S775 processor that is EOL and should fetch a marked up price due to lack of supply. So if you want to go through the trouble of changing, you may actually make out ahead.
 
He needs a new motherboard so he can run two video cards. I'd say sell what you have and get AMD x6 + Mobo + DDR3 or Intel i5 + Mobo + DDR3. Seems like most of your work done for BOINC will be in the video cards so get whichever platform you like better. Maybe Markfw can chime in with some hands on experience, I know he is a big folder.
 
Go with the better budget.. you will not see performance difference in either CPU doing normal stuff and even gaming etc..


Stick with what you have until you use it to 100 percent CPU usage.. play a game and watch the CPU usage if its at 100 percent then upgrade the CPU but I bet you these games like Mafia 2 and UT3 and Crysis will use about 40 to 70 percent of your CPU power. so you have a little left there ,, Why would you want a new CPU for you think your framerate will go up your wrong it wont. You dont need those 2 other cores cuz gaming at least it uses only 70 percent at max avg CPU power. If you run a vide editing or daw and if rendering is taking up 100 percent then by all means upgrade but the new CPU will take 100 percent of it as well I bet you..

pointless upgrade if you ask me, I dont know what you want,, its already REALLY fast,, its not gonna make a difference especially if your a gamer.

Plus you will have better latency times with DDR2 ... I dont think you need the bandwidth my friend.
 
In pure points with a CPU client, the X6 will equal or best an I7 system in DC at the same speed. Not counting the "bigadv" units in F@H, my X6@3.6 almost always beat my I7@3.6 even with HT.

If it costs the same or less, its not even close IMO.
 
Thank you everyone. I will probably sell the QX9650 then. The main reason is I like the features on the new AM3 mobos better than any socket 775 mobos w/ 2 pci-e slots I could find.
I am sure the X6 and the QX9650 are close - I just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to lose anything big (performance wise) going to the AMD X6 cpu / mobo platform.

I don't know why people are still thinking I'm trying to "upgrade". If it was up to the CPU alone, I would leave well enough alone - I have a mild O/C at 3.6GHz and that QX9650 is FAST! The thing is, I'm doing this only to get a 2 PCI-E slot mobo. This is because I need another slot for my second high end 5800 series GPU to crunch with.

So when I sell all the 775 gear, do you think I should opt for the highest X6 with the unlocked multi, or are the lower priced ones good enough? They are all the same chip, right?
Also, does the chipset matter a whole lot for what I want to do? I mean any AM3 mobo with 2 PCI-E slots ought to be capable of running the 5870s flat out for crunching, right?
Thank you all, I appreciate your time and help.
 
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the 1090T has proven to be a better and easier OC, though some 1055t's are great clockers, it takes alot more work to get them at the same OC as a 1090T

as for the 1075T, i dont have much experience, but i figure if you want to save $ go for the 1055, otherwise just bump up to the 1090T
 
I've got a 1075T (OCed to 3.5) that was on sale at Fry's for 180.00 a few weeks ago. But unless you can find a really good deal like that, I'd go with the 1090T.
They are really fast at certain things like transcoding video. I converted a 14GB HDTV recorded movie to a 3.5 GB MKV and it took a bit over 3 hours.
 
I realize that this is sorta OT, but relevant to the OP :

Isn't the CUDA/Nvidia setup a lot faster for Seti crunching than Steam/ATI? Last check I saw (may '10), Seti@Home didn't support ATI GPUs 🙁 I wanted to test it out with my lowly 5770, but I couldn't find any Seti support for GPGPU with ATI.

I would definitely get the PhII setup for SETI@Home dedicated box. FWIW, I also don't think an X6 is necessary, as good CUDA speed is much faster at that particular workload than a couple extra CPU cores. Maybe a lower-end PhII X4BE combined with better GPUs?

Edit : I know ATI GPU are supported pretty well for acceleration in F@H, just unsure about Seti.
 
Thanks everyone again for the help. A big thanks to Markfw for the real world Distributed Computing results (X6 vs i7). I had been contemplating that for a while.
That said - anyone want to buy a QX9650 and 4GB DDRII 1066 ram? :biggrin:

Arkaign, the high end ATI cards will beat the pants off the Nvidia / CUDA cards at BOINC (distributed computing). I'm talking points per day. I have heard this is because Nvidia has crippled some of the CUDA ability of the GTX series so they can sell more Quadro series for the high end workstation users. Don't know if that's true or not? But I do know that if you want points in BOINC, go with ATI...in a big way.
Only thing is, there are just a few projects that support ATI cards yet - Milkyway, Collatz, and DNETC. SETI has created a beta ATI app now, and is testing this. GPU grid is getting much closer to an ATI app as well. I think there will be more to come when OpenCL gets bigger, of course.
Hope that helps!

EDIT: The reason I want a high end CPU still, is not necessarily for all the points - the GPUs get you high points. The powerful CPU is for challenges like the PrimeGrid series, where only a CPU can be used. My team (SETI.USA) enters these, and I like to help out.
Jed
 
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Is there any reason to get a more expensive mobo than this for the X6? This one seems really good for the price (I know it's open box and a risk, but I'm OK with that considering Newegg's track record.)
I like the double spacing for the GPUs as well. The 5870s are pretty big.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16813130275R

Thanks for any thoughts on this,
Jed
 
DrPop said:
Is there any reason to get a more expensive mobo than this for the X6? This one seems really good for the price (I know it's open box and a risk, but I'm OK with that considering Newegg's track record.)
I like the double spacing for the GPUs as well. The 5870s are pretty big.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16813130275R

Thanks for any thoughts on this,
Jed
Click to expand...

Well, if you are overclocking then I think yes. I burned out a $70 mobo with my X6@4.2
 
DrPop said:
Is there any reason to get a more expensive mobo than this for the X6? This one seems really good for the price (I know it's open box and a risk, but I'm OK with that considering Newegg's track record.)
I like the double spacing for the GPUs as well. The 5870s are pretty big.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16813130275R

Thanks for any thoughts on this,
Jed
Click to expand...

To be honest, I doubt that mobo will be able to sustain decent clocks, or even achieve them on a 125W processor.

And also, yes it has 2x PCI-E slots, but it says 1 is 16x one is 4x will this make a difference on your points?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157191 this would probably be a better buy, but do you need USB 3.0 and SATA 6? you could save some more $ by going with an AM3 790X board.
 
Thank you, I have been running Intel for so long now, I haven't had an AMD since the Athlon 64x2 very first came out. I'm not sure what to look at on an AMD mobo anymore.

Can you guys tell me your method of choosing that good mobo? I mean, what is the biggest factors to look for? The biggest difference that I saw is the 880G northbridge vs the 870 northbridge. Is that the main thing, or is there something else I'm not seeing?
I definitely don't need to pay extra for built-in GPU, as I will not use it, but I guess it doesn't hurt.
The speed of the PCI-E 16x slots won't matter for crunching. The GPU sits and crunches a WU for several minutes, before shuttling the data back and forth across the bus. You can crunch pretty good on 1X speed, actually.

Would that mobo I linked to be OK for a Phenom II X4 810? It is only a 95W CPU, and I was thinking about giving my daughter that CPU and a "low cost" mobo. I was hoping something like that might be OK for it?
Sorry I am such an AMD newb these days! Just trying to get back into it.
Thanks for all your help,
Jed
 
sell em and get new parts. if you're a big cruncher the extra 2 cores is worth it, and MSI has their 890FXA-GD70 which can take 4 cards if you want. built my file server around it, got a newegg open box (board bag was still sealed so it was actually new, just not factory sealed), and some good ram. currently running it with every SATA port filled as my file server and running an 8800GT and 4670 in some apps, but im gonna be doing some card swapping soon, moving a 5870 and 5770 into it, another 5870 into the box the 5770 came from (friends box, but i paid for it), and sending the 8800GT to a friend in japan whose 8600 died, then getting a 6970 for my sig rig where said 5870s came from.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16813130274R
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231321 <1.35v 1600 ram
pick your x6
 
OK, thank you for the mobo links. What I'm trying to figure out is what exactly makes those better for O/Cing than the other (cheaper) MSI board? Is it the chipset? For example, these boards are 890 and the other one was 870?
Thanks for explaining it to me, I am just trying to learn!
 
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