Thinking of buying BD

LizardKing · 6 Jul 2012 at 13:45

Ok you can stop laughing now

Seriously though, you can pickup a FX6100 for £83 and get £15 cash back. Everything aside that price is not to be sniffed at.

Currently got a X3 720 that I'd sell making the upgrade very cheap. but is it really worth it?
ta

Martini1991 · 6 Jul 2012 at 13:48

They're cheap for a reason.

You'd be better off getting a Phenom II X6 as you're able to get them for the same type of price and they're better.
For gaming, your X3 720 is likely to be better than the FX6 too.

LizardKing · 6 Jul 2012 at 14:10

Interesting, i'm under no illusion to how sub par they performed. But even at a cost of £30-£40 thought it may have been worth it?

Martini1991 · 6 Jul 2012 at 14:12

You'd be paying similar for the Phenom II X6 which is a better performer.

Hagar · 6 Jul 2012 at 14:26

I bought my 1090T from gareth a couple of months back for £85, a good buy at the time. I would certainly buy an FX6 or 8 core for around the ton if I wanted another Linux box but looking to see what the next gen brings ATM.

I always thought the hex core FX at £80-100 was the right release price and the octo at about £120 which would have made the quad £60-70 but who am I to say

Orcvader · 6 Jul 2012 at 14:41

Unlock the X3 and overclock? Then you'll have a CPU better than Bulldozer. Money saved for a better upgrade in the future

.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 6 Jul 2012 at 14:47

LizardKing said:
Ok you can stop laughing now

Seriously though, you can pickup a FX6100 for £83 and get £15 cash back. Everything aside that price is not to be sniffed at.

Currently got a X3 720 that I'd sell making the upgrade very cheap. but is it really worth it?
ta

£68 for an FX6100??

What motherboard do you have??

The FX6100 has Turbo upto 3.9GHZ:

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Bulldozer/AMD-FX-Series FX-6100.html

So,it probably will be an upgrade overall,just due the massive increase in clockspeed,which should negate the IPC decrease in lightly threaded applications.

It might be worth checking if you can unlock your Phenom II X3 720BE first though. That would cost you nothing and if you can get it to 3.2GHZ to 3.4GHZ,it should last you a while longer.

LizardKing · 6 Jul 2012 at 14:57

Martini1991 said:
You'd be paying similar for the Phenom II X6 which is a better performer.

Only 2nd hand though, not that I'm against 2nd hand but you know what your getting from a shop.

Orcvader said:
Unlock the X3 and overclock? Then you'll have a CPU better than Bulldozer. Money saved for a better upgrade in the future .

Unfortunately its not stable unlocked, the chip clocks to 3.4/3.5 happily though.

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
£68 for an FX6100??

What motherboard do you have??

Yep from the rainforest place.

Motherboard is a Gigabyte 990XA-UD3,

Marine-RX179 · 6 Jul 2012 at 17:40

The thing is if you did "upgrade" to the FX6100, it would be a bit of more or miss depending on the games (miss more of the time).

In games that use up to 6 cores like BF3, the FX6100 would perform better than your Phenom II X3 720; but in games that use less than 4 cores, the FX6100 would no better than what you currently got.

Vast majority of the games out there are using less than 4 cores...so it questionable if it's worth the upgrade, especially when it involve costing more money.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 6 Jul 2012 at 18:14

LizardKing said:
Only 2nd hand though, not that I'm against 2nd hand but you know what your getting from a shop.

Unfortunately its not stable unlocked, the chip clocks to 3.4/3.5 happily though.

Yep from the rainforest place.

Motherboard is a Gigabyte 990XA-UD3,

TBH,if your Phenom II X3 720BE does the job ATM,I would stick with it.

It is not easy to find FX6100 reviews which compare it to other AMD CPUs outside a higher clocked Phenom II X4.

I had a look around at FX6100 reviews which compare it to AMD CPUs too:

1.)http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,8...200-FX-6100-FX-4170-und-FX-4100/FX-4100/Test/

They use an overclocked GTX580.

Generally the FX6100 seems to be a bit quicker than a Phenom II X4 960T which runs at 3.4GHZ for two cores and 3.0GHZ for four cores.

Your Phenom II X3 720BE is clocked 15% lower for lightly threaded games than a Phenom II X4 960T.

2.)http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/238...ulldozer-review-benchmarks-tom-clancys-hawx-2

Uses an HD5870 and they have a load of AMD CPUs in their charts. The nearest approximation to your Phenom II X3 720BE is the 3.4GHZ Athlon II X3 460.

3.)http://ht4u.net/reviews/2011/amd_fx_6100_4100_review/index24.php

Uses an HD6950 2GB. The nearest approximation is the A6-3650 which should have similar performance over three cores to your Phenom II X3 720BE. However,it does have an extra core which will give it a performance boost in some games.

I would have a look through the reviews carefully.

LizardKing · 6 Jul 2012 at 18:27

Nice one Mr Cat

Had the same problem trying to find reviews that gave a good comparison!
Will have a read through them but definitely looks to be more of a side step than an upgrade.

Marine-RX179 said:
Vast majority of the games out there are using less than 4 cores...so it questionable if it's worth the upgrade, especially when it involve costing more money.

But good deals are far to tempting!

Nuclear Fusion · 6 Jul 2012 at 18:53

'Thinking of buying BD'

Don't even think about it.

chris_geeza · 6 Jul 2012 at 18:57

Bought an fx6100BE to replace my II X 4 640 which war running @ 3.6 oc.
wasnt very impressed as ive been an amd man for over 12 years now.

in cinebench 11.5 my 640 was 3.86 and the fx6100 was 4.37 @3.84 oc.
my board is an am3 but not an am3+ board, so thats what held me back with the overclocking of this chip, also that was on air and running at 48c under pressure for the fx6100.

Sold my 640 on eb_y and not impressed with these fx chips ,but they are good your are on a tight budget.
3dmark 2011 default, same graphics card the 640 quad got p4040 and the fx6100 got p4836.

So ive ordered an i5 3570k and asrock extrem mirco board, hopefully if the delivery man gets here have it set up by saturday afternoon :0

psychas · 6 Jul 2012 at 19:08

would anything like phenom 2 955 and higher would not be better then that ?

chris_geeza · 6 Jul 2012 at 19:18

got an 955be in my duaghters pc,so the plan is to put my board into her pc which is an asus m4a89gtd pro, as her board isnt as good for overclocking.
The fx6100 will be going on to an auction site soon.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 6 Jul 2012 at 19:22

LizardKing said:
Nice one Mr Cat
Had the same problem trying to find reviews that gave a good comparison!
Will have a read through them but definitely looks to be more of a side step than an upgrade.

Have a look through them,as they do test performance over a wide range of software.

LizardKing said:
But good deals are far to tempting!

I know the feeling,especially with the cheaper SSDs ATM. However,I realised that my current system does the job,so I will stick with my current parts for the time-being.

trickynickyuk · 7 Jul 2012 at 15:06

i have an fx-8150 and i am very happy with it i went from a 1090t which is still in my sig and it is great i have blown every game out the water that i have played everything on max settings as well i would defo getting recommend one especially if you can get it as cheap as you are able to.

everyone goes by benchmarks now and not on how they perform real life ye they may not be intel performance but they re still a good chip and able to handle games @ 1080p with no problems

Martini1991 · 7 Jul 2012 at 15:18

trickynickyuk said:
i have an fx-8150 and i am very happy with it i went from a 1090t which is still in my sig and it is great i have blown every game out the water that i have played everything on max settings as well i would defo getting recommend one especially if you can get it as cheap as you are able to.

everyone goes by benchmarks now and not on how they perform real life ye they may not be intel performance but they re still a good chip and able to handle games @ 1080p with no problems

Benchmarks are how they perform in real life, it's a measurement of the performance.

The OP is best off with a Phenom II X6.
Who mentioned Intel?

Smoogels · 7 Jul 2012 at 15:20

trickynickyuk said:
i have an fx-8150 and i am very happy with it i went from a 1090t which is still in my sig and it is great i have blown every game out the water that i have played everything on max settings as well i would defo getting recommend one especially if you can get it as cheap as you are able to.

everyone goes by benchmarks now and not on how they perform real life ye they may not be intel performance but they re still a good chip and able to handle games @ 1080p with no problems

Yes, some benchmarks are pretty irrelevant. However, some benchmarks test games - which is pretty much real world usage and do give a 'good' idea of what FPS it will give you.

I have the FX 8120 and I'm happy with it, only recently picked it up because of the low price and cashback.

From overclockers the 8120 is £135 and with the cash back (£20) it equals to £115, which is just a little more than a i3. They both perform pretty evenly, but the 8120 has '8 cores' (well, 4 then 4 "fake" ones?

, I guess it can somewhat relate to Intels hyperthreading) so I think the Bulldozer is pretty much a fair price. Especially for myself where I do a lot of virtual machine work it fares much better than I would expect a i3 too.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=289 (8150 V i3 2100).
Grab a 8120 for a few pounds extra than a i3, overclock it past a 8150 and you got pretty good performance considering it's low price.

They where badly priced at the beginning, but not to bad now, in my opinion at least.

Edit: Doh! For some reason I though it was a "should I get a i3 thread" =/ I think I need to go back to bed.