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Waiting for Piledriver?

Bradtech519

Senior member
Anyone else holding out on upgrading to see some Piledriver benchmarks? I'm currently running a 965 BE Phenom2 X4. I don't game on the PC anymore other than old quake 2 games. Main thing I do is BOINC projects. Milkyway@home and SIMAP along with other Cosmology/Physics projects. Thubans seem overpriced on auction sites and prime so I've held off on dropping in an upgrade. Could go the Intel route but think I'll wait it out to see how Piledriver performs and the price that will be offered. I hope at the very least the power consumption is lowered as claimed online.
 
On SIMAP AMD still offers good performance. Thubans and Bulldozers are top performers. Granted most people aren't running that project and mainly game. I expect Piledriver to offer the same or a little worse performance in PC gaming. All I really play is quake 2 so I could have a Pentium 2 and Voodoo 2 if I wanted to game lol
Itll be a downgrade, especially if your 960 unlocks.
 
At the moment I have no intentions of using crossfire. I am thinking a mid range or maybe low end Gigabyte board. GA-970 UD3 or GA-990x UD3. I got a 790x UD3 right now and it's been flawless on stability.
i already have a bulldozer so ehh. questions do you want to crossfire with your pc
 
I've got an Asus Sabertooth 990FX, it's really nice. I want to get an 8350 when it is released, I think it will be the fastest processor that will ever be compatible with it. Should be fun to play with.
 
I've got an Asus Sabertooth 990FX, it's really nice. I want to get an 8350 when it is released, I think it will be the fastest processor that will ever be compatible with it. Should be fun to play with.

i'm debating on getting that or the Crosshair V Formula
 
The current low price of the Bulldozer CPUs is tempting, especially the 6200, but I'm holding out for Piledriver.

I really don't know what to expect. Based on Trinity I'm expecting a pretty good reduction in temperature along with an increase in speed. But other articles claiming temperature will drop but performance will remain the same. Its kind of frustrating. And not knowing when PD will be released is making it worse. I keep seeing these nice deals on Intel CPU+MB combos, but I don't want to go there until I know PD is not competitive.
 
I will likely be holding onto my i5 for some time to come, so Piledriver looks good enough to jump back into the AMD camp again. I knew AMD's motivation for Bulldozer was noble, but they simply did not have the technology to make up the performance penalty of shared resources. I almost feel dirty by saying that I like the idea of them having to stuff all that crunching power back onto the wafer, because technology is suppose to get smaller and more efficient.
 
lifeblood, do you plan on a whole new build, or will you use you mb, psu?
I generally upgrade individual components rather than building whole new rigs at once. It keeps my purchases under my wife's radar.

My MB is AM3+ and BD ready. I've got plenty of RAM and the PSU is powerful enough, so I'll just swap the CPU. Of course, if PD is not compatible with my MB for some reason then I will go Intel, just because I'll be pissed at AMD.
 
i'm debating on getting that or the Crosshair V Formula

The Sabertooth is its sister board - same chipsets, only the Crosshair is equipped for max overclockablitiy and features related to such, while the sabertooth is geared for durability and cooling.

I really like the Sabertooth and will buy a new one soon for my girlfriend. The Crosshair is great as well no doubt, probably better, but quite expensive.
 
lifeblood, the reason I asked is though the Asrock 970 Extreme4 is an AM3+ mb ithink it is a 4 phase not 8 phase mb which might limit the OCing of the Bulldozer. I bought an Asus 990FX Sabertooth for that very reason. Trust me the 8150 is a power using CPU when you ramp up the clock speed. From what I read the PileDriver will also be an AM3+ socket CPU. The improved "thermals" might work better in the Asrock 970. I have a 8150 OC'd to 4.5 Ghz in an Asus Sabertooth 990FX. It's powerful but per my KILL - O -Watt meter the system (a single 5850 with a Corsair H100 cooling system) was drawing up to 435 Watts when running Intel Burn Test at the 4.5 Ghz speed.
 
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