-
Competitor rules
Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.
which amd chipset
- Thread starter ikledud
- Start date
http://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/M4A78E/HelpDesk_CPU/
You board doesn't support any FX cpus as it is AM3 only.
It is also limited by being DDR2.
Time for a total change I feel as it would mean needing new RAM+board etc when you can get i5 bundles for £220 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-010-AS&groupid=2833&catid=2836
You board doesn't support any FX cpus as it is AM3 only.
It is also limited by being DDR2.
Time for a total change I feel as it would mean needing new RAM+board etc when you can get i5 bundles for £220 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-010-AS&groupid=2833&catid=2836
It all depends.
There were two types of Phenom 2.
One was AM2+. The other was AM3.
The differences were slight. The AM2+ had less pins, so won't fit an AM3 socket. The AM3 one had the extra pins, and more importantly the DDR3 memory controller.
Anything up to the Phen2 940 was AM2+ only. From the P2 955 they started introducing the DDR3 controller.
Sadly it seems there's some poor advice going on here... Check your CPU, check the batch number, pull up the code. There are some pretty good boards for £60 that will offer you all of the latest trimmings (the Asus M5A97 R2 Evo for example).
There were two types of Phenom 2.
One was AM2+. The other was AM3.
The differences were slight. The AM2+ had less pins, so won't fit an AM3 socket. The AM3 one had the extra pins, and more importantly the DDR3 memory controller.
Anything up to the Phen2 940 was AM2+ only. From the P2 955 they started introducing the DDR3 controller.
Sadly it seems there's some poor advice going on here... Check your CPU, check the batch number, pull up the code. There are some pretty good boards for £60 that will offer you all of the latest trimmings (the Asus M5A97 R2 Evo for example).
How much do you want to spend?
As you will need new RAM too.
Pretty sure you can afford a i5 setup that will blow the doors off an equivalent AMD CPU.
Also are all your drives SATA?
Are you into overclocking as a hobby?
YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £61.99
1 x Intel Pentium K Anniversary G3258 Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £55.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD38G1600HC11DC01) £53.99
Total : £181.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).
That could give you something to mess around with and see what sort of clocks you can get out of it (a bigger aftermarket cooler would be wise).
The Z97 board is also rumored strongly to be able to run intels Broadwell CPUs when they are released so you do have an upgrade path, something AMD doesn't have.
YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £61.99
1 x Intel Pentium K Anniversary G3258 Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £55.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD38G1600HC11DC01) £53.99
Total : £181.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).
That could give you something to mess around with and see what sort of clocks you can get out of it (a bigger aftermarket cooler would be wise).
The Z97 board is also rumored strongly to be able to run intels Broadwell CPUs when they are released so you do have an upgrade path, something AMD doesn't have.
If you're planning to go FX in the future then try to get a 990FX like the Sabertooth, not so much because the chipset is better but they have superior power delivery and VRM cooling which is needed if you want to avoid throttling and such.
You'd be better off going i5 though if you're planning any sort of upgrade, Intel motherboards are far more modern and have plenty of other advantages aside from just performance.
You'd be better off going i5 though if you're planning any sort of upgrade, Intel motherboards are far more modern and have plenty of other advantages aside from just performance.
Not the quad core, because it wouldn't be any sort of upgrade.
I would look at the FX 6300 however I would try and wait just a little while longer because apparently AMD are launching the first 'budget' 8 core CPU soon and it should come in at £80.
If that's the case then you can drop one into a M5A for an outlay of around £135 or so.
The Pentium is a fun chip and definitely overclocks but IMO is no foundation for a modern system. Two cores just don't cut it any more and even in the Bit-tech review in Custom PC they were clutching at straws because the FX 6300 walked all over it in every test but two and they were both dual core only tests (GIMP for example).
The Pentium is a good stop gap if you want to invest in Z97 but want to start off cheaply and then work your way up. As I say, it's not really a chip that would make for a decent gaming system, especially in the long run. As usual, Intel know what they are doing and have given away as little as possible trying to get back the budget buyers who were all completely pushed to AMD when Intel decided that only two of their CPUs would be overclockable and they're both expensive.
Gone are the days of great I3s.
But yes, not the time to buy AMD right now IMO. Did you look at what CPU you have? because if it's a 955 or later you could buy the board first and then just drop in an FX 8 when the price drops (it's imminent apparently).
The 990FX has about everything you could need or want. Intel chipsets are usually no better, they leave the OEMs to add better features (like SATA 3 for example).
You don't need a 990FX to go with an 8 core. The M5A97 will clock to around 4.4ghz on an FX8 which is more than enough. IMO the 990FX is only really worth having if it has 8 phases and you want to chase 5ghz. All of that extra outlay (£80-£100) gets you 400mhz day to day at best. It's just not worth it in most cases. I only paid £150 for my CHV because I wanted to have fun overclocking. For the most part it lives at 4.7ghz and £90 extra isn't really worth it for 300mhz.
I can bench and indeed run the system higher than that but it's not worth it.
Last edited:
I agree an 990fx sabertooth is just spending money where it's not needed, I mean look at Humbug he manages 4.6ghz on an expensive m-board.
I managed 4.8ghz 24/7 stable and 5ghz benchable on a £38 rev5 78lmt usb3 no throttling. So the luck was down to the silicon of my 8320. Of which is my next point, I think generally around xmas last year Amd refined the process of their fx silicon.
Whilst we are seeing people claim the fx8370, and E versions are clocking better than the original first gen fx83's etc, I believe the refinement in clocking vs voltage scaling happened earlier around the same time I bought my fx8320. It's like the c3 vs c2 phenom II. Whilst it is subjective to the silicon lottery, From my experience and results seen, the refined fx 83,63,43 series have a greater chance of hitting the sweet spot of 4.6-4.8ghz without requiring lot's of juice.
.
You only have to Google "FX8350 throttling" to see the extent of the problem, of course it's going to depend on how heavily you load your CPU but 90% of reported throttling cases involve lower end motherboards which purposely throttle to protect the VRM's from physical damage.
Even with the throttling failsafes overly stressing VRM's is also not going to be very good for long term lifespan so investing that little bit extra for a decent motherboard will probably pay off in the long term.
Even with the throttling failsafes overly stressing VRM's is also not going to be very good for long term lifespan so investing that little bit extra for a decent motherboard will probably pay off in the long term.
Last edited:
Caporegime
- Joined
- 9 Nov 2009
- Posts
- 25,747
- Location
- Planet Earth
If you are going to stay AMD,then the 970 motherboards are perfectly fine if they are the 6+2 phase and 8+2 phase ones from both Asus and Gigabyte for around £60 to £70. The Asus M5A97 EVO has VRMs rated to 275W. I can attest to the stability of the Asus as one of my mates has one with a Phenom II X6 running at nearly 100% CPU load for months at a time running bioinformatics stuff.
Also,it increasingly appears the FX8320E,FX8370E and FX8370 seem to be a slightly newer revision with reduced voltage and power consumption.
Regarding,that Intel bundle Stulid linked to earlier,that is actually looks not bad value at all. The motherboard is basic but functional but remember its a smaller than mATX form factor and you have only two RAM slots,but still it is far cheaper for the bundle than getting the parts individually.
Also,it increasingly appears the FX8320E,FX8370E and FX8370 seem to be a slightly newer revision with reduced voltage and power consumption.
Regarding,that Intel bundle Stulid linked to earlier,that is actually looks not bad value at all. The motherboard is basic but functional but remember its a smaller than mATX form factor and you have only two RAM slots,but still it is far cheaper for the bundle than getting the parts individually.
Last edited:
The EVO R2.0 won't throttle until it gets to silly temps (like 75C socket temp) since has pretty beefy VRMS on it. I have pretty poor VRM cooling on mine due to my old case but it's still sufficient for 4.5GHz. The value Gigabyte boards with the 8 phase VRM are pretty good too apparently.
Your right with most of that, althogh as Andy said a 970 Chipset is perfectly fine for an FX CPU. an Asus M5A-97 board is adequate for an FX-8350 up to 4.5Ghz.
Lastly, the only thing thats missing from my Sabertooth 990FX when compared with "Modern Intel Boards" is PCIe 3, which we still don't need
Its has 10+2 Phase Digital VRM's, UEFI, USB3, SATA3 6GB/s, 4 PCIe lanes, 3 of which are 16x......
Last edited:
If you know what you are doing then you will always get the maximum from your board and chip. First up - people overclocking with stock coolers. No, no no no. It just doesn't work. You need a good cooler, that's a given.
Second up, people not using the FSB as it should be used (90% of the overclock). Just adding multi requires a horrendous amount of voltage. It's FSB first, then multi.
You can not harm the VRMs because the throttle is a hard throttle and there is no way around it. So they are designed to be perfectly safe no matter what. The same goes for the CPU, heck, any CPU (even Intel's full range). My Coolit AIO failed and my chip was hitting 103 and shutting down. Yet, I could not see the coolant (as it was pooling inside the hard drive box) so I tried to boot the rig a few times thinking it was just an error in Realtemp. No damage at all....
So I repeat, you don't need 990FX. That is pure indulgence and pure luxury. I ran a M5A with a 8320 at 4.4ghz and 670 SLI and it absolutely kicked ass. In Nvidia benchmarks it clearly beat the 7990 rig with the 4.9ghz 8320 in so it definitely wasn't bottle necking either.
Even the X79 chipset does not even have native USB3. So as chipsets go? actual down and dirty spec for spec 990FX has more options actually on the chipset IIRC.
Intel usually leave a lot of it to the board partners to add.