Athlon X2 5200+ 45nm AM3 may unlock to Phenom FX5200

Uriel · 12 Jan 2011 at 20:51

As stated, IBT sorted out now:

To 20 passes on high anyway.

The raise in vCore means I'm hitting 50°C. Not too worrying. Case fans still on low.

Edit: I was web browsing while running IBT hence the variable times.

Uriel · 12 Jan 2011 at 23:00

Just remember there's a possiblity of getting a native dual core Regor. Confirmed steppings so far are :

NAEGC AE = Regor
CACEC AC = Deneb

Uriel · 14 Jan 2011 at 12:17

Phatzy said:
Im using a bios that is designed for the 5000+, For some reason overclocking in bios is a no go with this mobo, but if i use overdrive i can hit fsb 327 easy with a little added volts.

I presume you're POSTing and booting at stock or a low overclock and then applying overdrive settings in Windows?

Edit: Just a warning to anyone thinking of buying one of these. I'm seeing recent reports of Regor versions popping up too from recent UK stock.

Uriel · 14 Jan 2011 at 20:17

You've given me an idea Phatzy. Just messing with overdrive. Dropped memory speed, CPU, NB and HT a bit just to see how high it'll go and still blend for a few minutes. Bumped up vCore to 1.35, which is what I think some of the higher phenom IIs do.

298FSB for 3.4 GHz hasn't died straight away - so we'll see where we get to...

Edit: Nope - hit the platform limit at 300fsb, same as with the 5000+.

Managed to blend for a while up to 3.45GHz. Anything above that was instant crap out territory though.

Uriel · 14 Jan 2011 at 23:12

Crikey!

The CPU-NB on this thing just destroys my 5000+. Couldn't get that to 2400mhz. Just blending on this with CPU-NB at 3102 MHz and HT at 2820 MHz (the multi is maxed at 10). CPU-NB voltage is 1.275.

Should point out I've put RAM back to stock volts so back at 3.24GHz for the cores.

Edit: spoke too soon. BSOD followed by no POST. I think I'll have to do it more systematically when I have time.

Uriel · 15 Jan 2011 at 17:02

pingu666 said:
whats a good but dirt cheap motherboard to go with one of these? ive got 2gig or ddr2, and a tv card +other bits spare, thinking of building my sister a htpc ish pc if i can do it for under 100quid of new bits (case, psu, mobo,cpu)

Maybe an AsRock board with UCC or ECS board that supports unlocking? However - keep an eye on voltages as the cheaper ones are only rated for 95w CPUs. That's keeping it dirt cheap though. If you get an unlock with them I don't think they'll clock too high.

If you want to unlock and overclock, or just have a bit more voltage headroom for getting unlocked cores and cache stable, I like the look of the Asus M4A88T-M. That offers support for 140w CPUs so I could see it being a decent overclocking board too.

Edit: one AsRock UCC board supports both DDR2 and DDR3. With the others just sell the DDR2 and buy DDR3. Have you seen memory prices lately?

Uriel · 15 Jan 2011 at 22:17

Someone on another forum with a Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 just posted a screenshot of one of these unlocked at 3.8GHz. No stability testing yet.

Darn my 300FSB platform limit!

Uriel · 17 Jan 2011 at 23:03

Speaking of 300FSB platform limit - just posted this in another thread.

No real stability testing at this speed yet, save for 5x intelburn on standard.

Uriel said:
New entry from me on unlocked Athlon 5200+ 45nm AKA Phenom FX-5200
1.35v vCore, 1.3v CPU/NB Voltage
SuperPi 20.461s
Fritz 8034

Uriel · 19 Jan 2011 at 11:36

If they confirm steppings, I'll could be tempted to get some spares!

Uriel · 19 Jan 2011 at 16:32

Heh... Gorilla marketing from AMD? Send out a few early batches as locked Denebs and then release the Regors!

It's not beyond the realms of possibility...

Uriel · 19 Jan 2011 at 17:23

The original allocation from the place I bought from (where I know of several others getting Denebs) ran out. They've had a new batch since then and I've seen some people get Regors from it and no Denebs yet. The odds don't look good

Uriel · 20 Feb 2011 at 23:51

Just an update. I blew a VRM choke on my jetway board after updating my BIOS to accept DDR3-1600 (turns out it didn't like it - Jetway told me as much after the event). Got a Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 for a quick replacement.

Having issues with RAM dividers and timings on this board, so it's difficult to reach the heights I was getting on the Jetway board. I have had the CPU up to just short of 3.6GHz on BIOS F2 but it's in no way stable up there and I'm pretty sure that RAM is the limiting factor. Updating the BIOS to F5A has pushed my max bus speed down a fair bit.

Having said that, the 8+2 Phase VRMs and current BIOS seems to be doing the CPU some favours. As a quad it'll now do 3.1 GHz on stock (1.15v) no problem. Currently running 3.3GHz on the cores at 1.2v and just under 2.3GHz on the CPU-NB at stock volts. That'll take 20x IBT on high.

RAM is running at 1148 mhz C7. If I try to loosen the timings I'm in no-post territory. The current BIOS needs higher RAM volts for this bus speed if approaching DDR3-1600 C9 (I was getting an easy 296 bus on BIOS F2 but can't get over 290 with F5A).

#

Edit: Just thought I'd mention - yes I am running 4 sticks of RAM.

Uriel · 23 Jan 2014 at 21:19

Thread resurrection! Just a long term update - this CPU has been running at the settings in the post above for the best part of 3 years. Rock stable.

Probably the best £30 I ever spent on a PC upgrade. I'm in no hurry to be upgrading any time soon.

Uriel · 2 Dec 2015 at 17:40

Long term update.

Still solid as a rock. Coming up for 5 years next month with settings as per post #71. Machine's been upgraded to Windows 10. Not yet run into a game that might persuade me to upgrade but I'm not such a keen gamer these days. Most regular use is Trackmania and Lego Star Wars with the kids.

About the most demanding thing I've thrown at it recently was Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor.

It'll be decision time in a few months on whether to upgrade motherboard and CPU just before the Windows 10 free upgrade deadline. At the moment I'm inclined to keep it. Should run most Xbox One / PS4 Ports acceptably for a few years to come.

Uriel · 1 Jan 2017 at 13:33

6 year (well, nearly) check in.

Still going strong. Not doing so much gaming these days but it handled Everybody's Gone to the Rapture OK. The Doom Demo is also absolutely fine (despite their recommended minimum of FX8320)

I recently found I could get past the Platform FSB limit for my Gigabyte 870A-UD3 (of 287 for 3.3 GHz) by raising RAM voltage. Had the bus up to 302 briefly (3.47GHz quad core) for the chip but I don't fancy running my RAM that high for long. Keeping an eye out for some cheap higher voltage DDR3 as I have a morbid curiosity to see how high this 6 year old CPU will clock.

Uriel · 1 Jan 2017 at 21:08

Yeah, I now have something of an irrational attachment to this CPU. Chances are if I'd just got an equivalent Phenom II x4 I might have upgraded by now.

I'm reasonably tolerant of dips in framerate into the 30s though and I'm quite happy to turn the framerate limiter on to make a more consistent experience (the CPU bottleneck rarely gets any worse than that and in many games I'm still getting 60fps+ minimum framerates). For cross platform games, the consoles are running comparatively weak CPUs and I reckon I'm getting a similar or better experience as someone with a PS4 in the same games (but of course I'll be running at full HD with extra eye candy). Of course I'd be doing better with an I5 or I7 - but if gameplay isn't significantly compromised - who cares?

As for upgrades - well I can't see another CPU for £30ish that outperforms mine yet (well aside from 2nd hand LGA2011 Xeons but the motherboards are quite expensive).

Uriel · 3 Jan 2017 at 21:15

Not much cleaning to do. I made sure there was a filter over every intake and planned for a slight positive pressure with the fans so it shouldn't come in from elsewhere. Other than blowing a bit of dust off the filters I haven't really had to do much.

Uriel · 6 Jan 2017 at 22:20

Being as it's the 6th anniversary of this thread starting, and I'm feeling a bit gung ho with all the kaby lake and ryzen talk, I decided to see if I could squeeze a bit more out of it.

Got past my 287 bus limit by dropping TRFC timings from the SPD rated 110ns to 160ns and setting the core and CPU nb voltages to stock for a Phenom II 980.

Didn't really do any stability testing to speak of. Just pushed up the bus in small increments and ran some benchmarks every 100mhz. Maybe one or two signs of flakiness upwards of 3.6GHz. Last successful set of benchmarks at 3.7GHz. Took the CPU-Z shot just before it BSODed on me running Fritz.

Maybe there's life in the old dog yet - but I don't really have time for a proper OCing and stability testing session at the moment.

Uriel · 7 Jan 2018 at 17:04

Annual check-in. :cool:

That unlocked FX-5200 is still doing what I need it to, while I have a GTX 970. According to the adjustable benchmarks at gamegpu.com they're remarkably well balanced. In the majority of new games, if I turn on all the eye candy at 1080p (which I usually do), I'm still GPU bottlenecked. Sure, in older games or low resolutions, there would be a substantial framerate boost in upgrading platform but it's not something that would improve gameplay much. If I bother upgrading, it'll need to be both GPU and CPU (realistically, platform) as either would cause a bottleneck in the newest games if I only upgraded one.

More of an issue is I can't add or change RAM without upsetting the overclocked applecart (bus limited due to the very low max multiplier on the CPU) and that's sometimes becoming a productivity problem. If I want to go above 8GB (I have some spare sitting unused) it'll mean a platform change - or an AM3 CPU with a more favourable multiplier.

As I'm back to being a full time student due to a career change, with finances further constrained by a new baby, don't think I'll be spending much any time soon.

Most of the gaming this machine does is Lego franchise for my kids, which isn't too demanding anyway.

Uriel · 7 Jan 2018 at 21:10

It helps that I'm fairly tolerant of low framerates, as long as they're fairly consistent. For games that get twitchy I enable vsync or a FPS limit (as long as it's higher than 30fps).

Just Cause 3 isn't really new enough. It's only really the latest games that hammer the GTX 970 hard enough for it to be the bottleneck in this system at 1080p. I've struggled to find many easily comparable benchmarks for Cities.

Below is an example where the CPU is probably the bottleneck - just:

I know it's not an exact science, but an AMD FX-4300 gets 44% in userbenchmark for gaming, which is the same score my Phenom FX-5200 gets. Aditionally the A6-5200 (4 Jaguar Cores at 2.2 GHz - half an Xbox One X CPU - gets exactly half that).

What I suggest I've got, given the low power of Jaguar cores, is a system that may (in the right circumstances with a suitably well-coded cross platform game) perform very similarly to a PS4 Pro or Xbox One S.

The other thing is, nVIDIA drivers are a lot more friendly towards low-end CPUs. Here's that same Assassin's Creed Origins benchmark with a R9-290:

It does suggest that if anyone else is still rocking an older AMD CPU & GPU, it may be worthwhile sidegrading the graphics card to something by nVIDIA.

Edit:
To demonstrate - you can adjust the benchmark scores to show Graphics card scores for a given CPU. The nVIDIA vs AMD CPU-bound driver bottleneck (which is quite well known but disappears once you move up to a CPU with enough grunt - it's the same with lower end Intel Chips like early i3s, rather than an AMD CPU issue - is there for all to see: