Socket FM1 Athlons

[Halnerd]

Hey everybody,
I was hoping to start a conversation about the new FM1 Athlons from AMD. I was planning on using one of these chips in a Mini-ITX SFF gaming rig. They appear to be well suited for this application; mature architecture (K10.5 I think, and no modules), lots of headroom with the GPU dissabled, and cheap to boot. What are your thoughts? Hey Staffers, can we get a formal review of these CPU's?

Thanks

 

[sm625]

There's already threads about the FM1 athlon. Supposedly there are some who are getting these up around 4.5GHz. I dont know what happened its like everyone lost interest.

 

[blckgrffn]

I think we were all waiting for the A8-3870 BE or whatever to get an unlocked multiplier to overcome the relatively weak FSB capabilities of the FM1 boards.

It doesn't look like AMD is going to release it, and I think that is a sad thing - but it makes sense since it would likely embarrass anything less than an 8xxx series bulldozer in all aspects.

 

[lau808]

a8-3870K and yes i am waiting for one, but still nothing. month and a half left to release it in Q4 as was mentioned/rumored.

 

[Soulkeeper]

without the unlocked multiplier the platform is worthless for overclocking.
many of the early reports of overclocking were false ie: the bios allowed changing the mult, but it had no effect. MSI has a bios feature called "lab burst" that might be the real deal for unlocking these, I dunno.

I'm very skeptical of anyone claiming to have overclocked an FM1 cpu over 3.2GHz personally

if you don't care about overclocking or cpu performance then FM1 is perfect
ie: if low power usage and good gpu performance are high on your list

I've tried two mini ITX fm1 motherboards neither gives me more than 3%-5% overclock

I spent over $1000 building the highest quality itx fm1 setup I could ... it performs slightly worse than the Q9450 that it replaces but uses about 1/2 the power. A few 100MHz overclock and i'd maybe feel like I got my money's worth.

Waiting for the 3870 and/or trinity here.

 

[know of fence]

lots of headroom with the GPU dissabled, and cheap to boot.

Well CPU performance is the same as Llano, and Anand unfairly and harshly trashed that one, even though it may be the best and most power efficient thing for general desktop computing ever.

Funny thing is that all A75 FM1 Socket mainboards list support for 2.8 GHz AMD Athlon II X4 641, even though it doesn't exist on AMD's page, while the 3.0 GHz Athlon II X4 651 on sale is not present on any of the Gigabyte,MSI or Asus' CPU support lists.

Moreover I assume that headroom (for frequency tweaking) depends on process quality, and these are revised "defective" parts coming from those often quoted bad 32nm yields.

Since Bulldozer is a bit of a disappointment in terms of power efficiency, the FM1 APU socket may have some future in it, so saving 50 bucks on a 32nm Athlon (and saving another 50 on an inexpensive mainboard) for a gaming PC makes sense now! Together with a GTX 560 Ti, a 120 GB SSD this makes for an adequate quad core gaming PC for 700 bucks, which is more upgradable down the line than any Intel PC ever could be.

Alternatively this 450 Watt machine can be re-purposed as a HTPC in a year or two by purchasing an APU, when Playstation 4 and Xbox 420 make PC gaming commercially irrelevant once again.

 

[soccerballtux]

There's already threads about the FM1 athlon. Supposedly there are some who are getting these up around 4.5GHz. I dont know what happened its like everyone lost interest.

cant imagine why!!!!

 

[sm625]

The concensus seems to be that the RTC really does get messed up, causing the benchmarks to be inflated. But still I have seen no one record a video of a 1M super pi running. We'd easily be able to tell if its taking 15 seconds like it says, or 23 seconds like it would if the RTC clock was messed up. Anandtech really dropped the ball on this one. This is like the biggest overclocking story since the E4300 was released. And not a damn word about it.

 

[antisocialmunky]

The RTC goes wonky on that MSI board after your exceed 133mhz.

 

[formulav8]

The concensus seems to be that the RTC really does get messed up, causing the benchmarks to be inflated. But still I have seen no one record a video of a 1M super pi running. We'd easily be able to tell if its taking 15 seconds like it says, or 23 seconds like it would if the RTC clock was messed up. Anandtech really dropped the ball on this one. This is like the biggest overclocking story since the E4300 was released. And not a damn word about it.

I don't expect Anand to do anything AMD. Its all Intel/Apple/Arm, ect... I've been here much longer than most and in the past I can remember even when the AMD news/releases was weak he would still do something, like AMD mobo reviews, overclocking, ect.. He didn't even do a test of the new BD CPU Cooler that he got when doing the BD review. He said he would play around with it and let us know. Yeah sure... :\


Jason

 

[Rifter]

I don't expect Anand to do anything AMD. Its all Intel/Apple/Arm, ect... I've been here much longer than most and in the past I can remember even when the AMD news/releases was weak he would still do something, like AMD mobo reviews, overclocking, ect.. He didn't even do a test of the new BD CPU Cooler that he got when doing the BD review. He said he would play around with it and let us know. Yeah sure... :\


Jason

Well in his defense AMD has gone downhill like a landslide over the last 3 years. But i agree AMD coverage was better in the past, ive also been here since the beginning in 99(diff account before thats why join date is 2005)

 

[Soulkeeper]

Has anyone tried to rip the IHS off these things yet ?

possible there are bridges like the old XP's ?
maybe they can be worth a damn ....

I guess I'll have to look into breaking out the torch and buying one of these just for that purpose ....
I'll do it tomorrow, they are cheap enough

 

[formulav8]

You can be sure there are No bridges to manipulate the clock ratios and such like the Athlon days. I would like to see the die though...