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Current situation with dual/tri phenoms with overclocks and unlocking?

drunkenmaster

drunkenmaster

drunkenmaster

Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
33,188
I know, its probably around several times and I'm against being lazy in general but I've got to order stuff tomorrow and am borrowing a comp right now to post.

My main comp dfi am2+ mobo wouldn't turn on this morning, 940 P2 in it, 8gb ddr2, pretty sure the motherboard is dead so thinking rather than dump £100 on a new 790FX board I may aswell make the jump to AM3.

The question, I'm going cheap for now so probably the X2 555BE or the Tri core for about £10 more. Do either still unlock easily/often with a little voltage added maybe. Do Tri cores unlock more/less often than a dual core, do neither unlock very often anymore and what kind of overclocks can you expect at the moment. Are the older versions like the 550BE more likely to unlock than the newer version?

I'm thinking a 890gx mobo, which means Asus/Gigabyte right now, either a dual/tri core P2 based core and memory.

What memory do you need for AMD, not used DDR3 before, do most people go for high speeds or low latency, both, or are AMD still generally limited on memory overclocks for ddr3 at the moment.

ANyone offer any advice in terms of whats the best value/best clocking sets of memory you can get at the moment?

Cheers

EDIT:- I forgot that in a lot of the Cebit coverage there was a lot of talk about 890 and removing of the features for unlocking cores, Asus added it in separately, as did Asustek boards, have Gigabyte aswell, will there be any issue there? I've got 2 ssd's now and if/when prices come down and newer ssd's come out would be happy to get Sata 6gb/s ones so seems silly to not go for the 890gx chipset.
 
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Pendu said:
Just bare in mind mate, unlocking is hit and miss.
Click to expand...

That, tbh. If you feel you want 3-4 cores, and you won't be happy if your CPU doesn't unlock - buy quad. Beats getting a dualie, discovering it won't unlock or overclock, rage-ebaying it and then buying a quad :]
 
Nah, deffo the mobo, now gone through the whole gammit of things, its got a led post code thing on it, no matter what I remove of change its the same code every time which in relation to DFI generally means its not getting past the first stage, even the manual lists the code as first reset CMOS, second, RMA.

I've had boards go bad on me and die over a pretty long time, I've had a DFI where the network just stopped working, then slowly got more unstable then was dead. Gigabyte which went from fine to slightly unstable to can barely post to dead over a few weeks. I've never just turned off a comp normally, gone to turn it on next day and nothing.

Gfx, mem both work in other comp, diff mem and gpu in same board give same code.


As for a quad, frankly I just can't be bothered, I think a tri core will be fine but its bad timing, not a whole lot of choice on 890gx's but seems a not great time to go for an older mobo and the southbridge would be great as more than anything the 750sb really isn't great for my SSD's in raid, its got decent enough performance, good 4kb read/writes, but sequentials seem to suck on it compared to same drives on Intel mobo's.

Quad core really doesn't matter for me much right now, I'd prefer to save a bit and either grab a dropped price 965 , or even better a 955 95W version (due Q2, not checked if they are out and about yet) but hex cores will be out end of April and I might depending on price go straight to one of them.

A dual/tri will last me till next year anyway, a quad for the same money would just be a nice bonus and increasing chances is sensible but not essential.

I think i'll end up with the tricore because, it will likely offer more than enough juice for any games through till next year and Bulldozer as is, an extra core just increases the value.

Just a shame on memory, bought 8gb's of ddr2 for around £80, prices have gone through the roof since then.


Actually now I remember, I had a problem with my 5850 in this mobo, no matter what I did when I first installed it, same slot as a 4890/4870x2 previously I couldn't get 16x pci-e speed and it just wasn't working great, in the second slot it was working at 16x and scored about 25-30% higher, which wasn't just down to the pci-e speed, I assume there was a further fault with it. But that was literally within the first week of launch of the 5850, not a hint of another problem till this morning.
 
Hmm, anyone happen to know the date the 95W quad core 955 is supposed to be due? Big Wayne with all your power saving, you should appreciate that one. Seen it on pre-order with no date mentioned, same price as the 125W version of the same chip.

If I was going to stretch to a full quad, a nice low power version would be the one to get.
 
As far as I am aware:

x2 550 - unlocks fairly regularly to quad and a few triples. Some failures.

x2 555 - seems to have much better unlock chance than 550. Not seen any failures but also not seen any collated data.

x3 720 - most seem to unlock but that is just anecdotal and not many people seem to have them.

I personally would go for the 555. But as above if you need a triple / quad then that what you gotta buy.

EDIT: drunkenmaster I sent you a trust.
 
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I ended up ordering a 555 late last night for a few reasons, price, though a 545 is a great deal with lots of mobo's now doing 300fsb pretty easily the multi isn't really required anymore. But a mix of where I could get a mobo and memory and free delivery meant going elsewhere for a 545 would save £15 but cost another £8 to get delivered.

Judging by the leaked hexcore pricing today it was a good move. This will last me a while and the 2.8ghz hexcore is apparently going to be $199, so around the quads pricing now, and the 3.2Ghz which is apparently coming, at 125W(which is very impressive) is only supposed to be $300, so not far off £200.

It will likely push the 965/955 to I reckon around £120/100 , or go up to £150 for a hexcore.

If I don't get unlocked cores i'll decide between a newly cheaper quad or a hexcore, if it unlocks fine I'll probably stick with it till Bulldozer next year.
 
Stuff arrived today, got the non USB3 Asus 890gx board, other than a USB mouse I don't need it at all so seemed a waste for £15. G-skill 1600mhz 7,7,7,24 ripjaw mem, 555be.

The 555BE, on first boot went instantly to 3.8Ghz using some overclocking option within the bios. I thought it would take me to an overclocking submenu but changed some stuff, rebooted and basically whacked the HT up 30Mhz. Tried the core unlocker, 4 cores worked straight away.

Went through a little missing one raid 0 drive problem, which was down to one of the Sata 6g cables that came with it being faulty, changed cable, got into windows which was a bit dicey. Ended up in safe mode, drivers I had installed changed a few things around automatically, used the AMD folder to install the proper drivers as I assume they were included in the 10.3 or 10.2 package. Finally got to windows, dual core was stupidly easy to get to 3.8Ghz, its giving WAY lower voltage than bios thinks it is so got a lot of headroom.

Was doing 3.8Ghz dual core at about 1.38actual, didn't break 36C, under full load :o

Got the quad going at the moment, 3.8Ghz also, went a little higher on V-core to give it some headroom, its passing a bunch of CPU load tests on all cores. So £82 for a quad core, can't really beat that in terms of value. Feels like its got a LOT of headroom left to be honest. But already much cooler and faster than my 940, only hit 43C full load with higher voltage on the quad.

The only thing I don't like, is how easy overclockings getting these days, two options in the bios, no settings changed and I was at 3.8Ghz quad core with zero messing around.

AMD just kill Intel on value, ok a bit pot luck on unlocking but so many chips seem to do so. This is AMD's problems, they have fantastic yields, xtreme sys seems to be showing a huge number of cores unlocking. I'd hazard a guess that quite a few that aren't are down to bios/board rather than anything else.

In a couple months we could be seeing £100 quad cores that will unlock to full 6 core chips, with turbo modes and great overclocking with lower power usage than Intel.
 
Passing prime at 4.2Ghz 1.58v or so under load. Using load line calibration, there are two options, one cpu and one cpu/nb, using both.

Without the load line calibration what was set for 1.4v in bios was 1.36v idle in windows and 1.315-1.325 ranging under load. With it set 1.4v would give almost spot on result idle and would go to about 1.42v under load.

With full load in prime, all 4 cores, 1.58v under load at 4.2Ghz I'm only hitting a max of about 53c and the rooms quite warm now, was mid 40's early this morning with a cold room.

This cpu is completely ridiculous for £80, overclocking WAY better on HT/NB than my 940 P2 was doing, which wouldn't go above 230mhz and NB wasn't really stable above 2.2Ghz, also ran WAY hotter so was pushing very high temps at 3.8Ghz, only ran it about 3.4Ghz in general. This one is doing 2.6GHz Ht/NB, judging by others results most people seem to be able to do 4Ghz at around 1.45-1.5v load. Seen quite a few people on half decent air cooling hitting 4.3-4.4Ghz with around 1.6v.

Quite literally the best chip I've ever bought for value.
 
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