X4 845 or 880K to go with RX 460 4GB

[DrMrLordX]

If your 880k is anything like my 7870k - and it ought to be since they're basically the same CPU - you should be able to do 4.3 GHz on 1.3v or less. Though 4.2 GHz may be a better point to aim for. Mine will do that with less than 1.3v.

Don't forget the NB! Get that sucker at least to 2000 MHz. There's performance left on the table if you don't bring that clockspeed up some. Mine will do 2100 MHz at default vNB.

 

[chrisjames61]

If your 880k is anything like my 7870k - and it ought to be since they're basically the same CPU - you should be able to do 4.3 GHz on 1.3v or less. Though 4.2 GHz may be a better point to aim for. Mine will do that with less than 1.3v.

Don't forget the NB! Get that sucker at least to 20000 MHz. There's performance left on the table if you don't bring that clockspeed up some. Mine will do 2100 MHz at default vNB.

I have a 845 that I have never used. It is in a box waiting till ITX boards drop in price. I have both a 7850K and a 7870K running at 4.5 GHz and 4.6 GHz respectively. One board is a Crossblade Ranger the other is a UP4. Both have 16 gigabytes of fast ram and 500 gigabyte SSD's. I am amazed at how quickly they do what I need them to do. Admittedly I am not a gamer. For what I do these two rigs seem superior than my 6300 with a Sabertooth R2 and 8320 with a CH5FZ. Both of which are collecting dust.

 

[h3r3t1k]

I'm all about efficiency and quiet. At the stock voltage the 860/70/80K doesn't impress me especially compared to the 845. But after some tweaking maybe that'll change.

I'll start with 4.2GHz then with 0.1V less, then 0.125V and then 0.15V. Then maybe give 4.3GHz a shot.

Do you guys know if there's a Prime95 equivalent for Linux? Maybe just a terminal command? That way I could test system stability from a live session before installing Windows. I know it's probably not an issue but I just don't like blue screens because I don't trust Windows regarding stability as much as Linux.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I have a 845 that I have never used. It is in a box waiting till ITX boards drop in price. I have both a 7850K and a 7870K running at 4.5 GHz and 4.6 GHz respectively. One board is a Crossblade Ranger the other is a UP4. Both have 16 gigabytes of fast ram and 500 gigabyte SSD's. I am amazed at how quickly they do what I need them to do. Admittedly I am not a gamer. For what I do these two rigs seem superior than my 6300 with a Sabertooth R2 and 8320 with a CH5FZ. Both of which are collecting dust.

For anything that requires 4 threads or less, they should be quicker. No matter how cheap the old FX chips get I can never quite justify to myself actually getting one.

I'm all about efficiency and quiet. At the stock voltage the 860/70/80K doesn't impress me especially compared to the 845. But after some tweaking maybe that'll change.

I'll start with 4.2GHz then with 0.1V less, then 0.125V and then 0.15V. Then maybe give 4.3GHz a shot.

Do you guys know if there's a Prime95 equivalent for Linux? Maybe just a terminal command? That way I could test system stability from a live session before installing Windows. I know it's probably not an issue but I just don't like blue screens because I don't trust Windows regarding stability as much as Linux.

Try this:

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/stress-test-linux-unix-server-with-stress-ng/

Another decent way to test for stability is to run y-cruncher which does have a Linux version:

http://www.numberworld.org/y-cruncher/

 

[h3r3t1k]

I'll put the machine together today. On a side note. There was a problem with the delivery of my Corsair 2133MHz CL9 RAM so I got a set of Patriot 2133MHz CL11 (PV38G213C1K) instead. Turns out it is low voltage RAM at 1.5V. I didn't know this existed as I was told anything above 1600MHz is OC RAM. Does this impact performance in any way?

 

[DrMrLordX]

It'll affect CPU performance some, but not iGPU performance. Odds are you can crank up the volts to get the CL down.

 

[h3r3t1k]

I've never messed with memory besides choosing the AMP/XMP profile. In BIOS I noted that choosing the AMP profile does nothing while choosing the XMP profile does result in the correct frequency being displayed. I'm guessing this is becaue the memory is meant for Intel systems.

I have a problem when testing stability with both Prime95 and Intel Burn Test that my CPU load is not at 100% and in HWInfo I can see that there's some throttling going on down to 1.7GHz back and forth to max which is weird because Temperature doesn't go higher than 50 Celsius. I'm assuming this is not a BIOS issue because when I stress test in Linux using 4 threads it shows that all my cores are under 100% load.

Something else that annoys me is that in the Gigabyte BIOS the CPU voltage value cannot be lowered. The options are "auto", "normal" and the option to increase the voltage (plus sign and then a number). There's no option to decrease the voltage. I'm running 4.3GHz at stock voltage atm.

The system seems stable but there are strange "hickups" when the system hangs for a moment no matter in which application. The situation resolves itself after a bit but happens frequently and is annoying.

In this pic you see the "Dynamic Vcore" option. I don't have it. I disabled Cool 'N Quit but it didn't change anything about the options under "advanced voltage settings".

 

[DrMrLordX]

If you are getting throttling to 1.7 GHz I would look at your motherboard VRMs first. Also what kind of thermal margin are you seeing during stress testing? Remember, for most applications that monitor thermal margin "properly" the higher the number, the better. When thermal margin gets near 0 then you have problems.

 

[h3r3t1k]

Still struggling with the freezes. I'm back at default clocks on the CPU just to make sure it's not that. It isn't. Microsoft calls it a "Generic freeze" and attributes it to a faulty driver or maxed out hardware. ("Your PC becomes unresponsive for a period of time, and then becomes usable again without taking any action. You don't need to restart your PC for it to be usable again. This behavior seems to affect all apps.") The only thing I installed myself though is the graphics driver. The rest Windows installed itself. Windows installed the graphics driver automatically at first but I didn't trust it. I've then uninstalled the utility (all there was to uninstall) and then reinstalled the proper driver. I then thought that maybe there was something messed up after two installs and used the AMD utility to properly uninstall the driver and clean the registry entries. Reinstalled after but problems persist.There's no hints in device manager that a driver is missing. I can usually move the cursor and alt-tab but nothing happens. I also notice subpar performance in games contrary to what benchmarks say about the performance of this GPU with big framerate drops. I've noticed this in Doom and Overwatch. FPS are all over the place. Far Cry Primal was fine. The CPU shouldn't be bottlenecking the GPU. Both are not OCed. The CPU gets up to 69C during gaming but that's below the 72C max temp. That's disappointing though as the cooler is supposed to be quite good. It revs up to max rpm from time to time when playing Doom to keep the CPU at stable temps. There's a case fan right next to it removing hot air from the case. The GPU stays relatively cool. I'm at a loss. I've built many PCs and I'm sure I didn't break/short anything.

 

[AtenRa]

I will suggest you use the AMD removal utility and uninstall the GPU driver,

Then first install the Chipset driver provided with the Motherboard CD, then download the latest dGPU driver from AMD (careful not to download the APU driver).

 

[h3r3t1k]

I did just that but it didn't help. I also ran a memory test and it's fine. What are the chances that it's either the CPU or motherboard? The PC is freezing up even as I'm typing this. It's driving me mad. I'm thinking about sending back the mobo, and CPU as well as RAM. Amazon is gonna take back my RAM even if it's not faulty and the vendor I got mobo and CPU from I'm gonna tell I got issues and made sure it's neither GPU, RAM oder drivers. The gaphics card I'll keep and test on another mom with another CPU/RAM.

 

[AtenRa]

Last test,

Go to BIOS, load optimized defaults and check again. If nothing change return the mobo.

 

[h3r3t1k]

I've already disassembled the PC after testing the RAM to test GPU and SSD on another board with another CPU. It's all good. No freezes. A CPU can hardly be faulty right? so it's gotta be the mobo.

Some guy on the AMD reddit mentioned this:

"It could be related to aniversary update AHCI/SSD driver problem,if you google it you will find alot of info.The known fix seems to be setting AHCI Link Power Management(google it) setting in power options to active."

No idea what he means.

Edit:

I've got the rig set up with a G4400 on a ASRock H110M-DGS with 2*4GB Crucial DDR4-2133 now. Same GPU, SSD and case. It's working beautifully and the total cost is 400 with the SSD because the CPU and RAM were cheaper. I can return the AMD CPU/mobo and the RAM luckly.

One thing I've got to say about the FM2+ CPUs is that they run hot. No matter the TDP. It was the same when I tried the X4 845 a while ago. I don't know why that is. But the 880K maxing out it's thermal envelope with the improved cooler which looks really good during gaming and non OCed is just strange. If the 845 didn't run super hot for me as well I'd say it's a coincidence.

The G4400 with an equally capable cooler as the 880K never goes above 50C during gaming.