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AMD A6-3650 on the way ...

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David

David

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Joined
Feb 20, 2001
I needed a cheap upgrade (long story) so I've just bought the following:

  • AMD A6-3650 CPU (quad core, 2.6 GHz)
  • 4 GB (2x 2GB) Kingston HyperX Blu 1600 MHz CL9 RAM
  • Biostar A75MH Motherboard

There seem to be limited reports of Llano overclocking - I'm going to give it a bash though. Does anyone have any pointers?

I'll probably put my GTX260 in it and have a go at getting some boints :)
 
That board has come a little later than most to the fray, so have not seen much about it...well make that any of Llano types seem scattered.

Onboard VGA seems to disappear above 103 FSB or so.
 
I'm not sure which machine it will replace, yet. If it replaces the Phenom HTPC/gaming machine (runs Win 7) I can use the GTX260 and perhaps (if possible) disable the onboard VGA.
 
I considered 1866 MHz RAM, but I'm on a bit of a tight budget - I opted for the extra two cores and to keep the price of the other two parts down.
 
I got that APU in my HTPC. I am loving it! I don't know about OCing it though. I put it in there to achieve a low power usage HTPC and it worked.

There is an option in my BIOS to under volt by %, so I chose that (I forget what % I chose) and the thing idles/web surfs at 0.3v and plays Blu Ray at 0.8v. Voltages according to CPU-Z.

Pretty awesome
 
Doing similar build for friend. I went with the Asrock HVS board to start but have to return it because it fails to post which did not turn up when I first searched for reviews on the board. Buying the biostar now, while I send the asrock back to newegg.
 
Woot!

Just waiting on the board and RAM now.
 

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I've used that motherboard and the Gigabyte a55m-ds2, love both of them.

Both with the new A4-3300, performance wise it's a Radeon 6410 and Athlon II X2 210e glued together... great for low end computers, with good ram and gpu overclocked you can actually game on them a bit.
I really liked those two computers, wish I had them around to play with more.

OC the RAM to 1800+ and keep the timings, tightening them didn't seem to help as much as raw speed because the GPU is bandwidth hungry, you'll get a small boost in performance from that.
OC the GPU core, it can go a lot higher, you can get pretty impressive performance for integrated.
 
Excellent - I'm going to pick the board and RAM up from the Post Office in about half an hour then I'll get setting it up :p

My old 550W PSU is playing up a bit so I've ordered a Corsair CX600 to replace it, which should give me plenty of headroom. I'll probably play with the integrated graphics first, then put the GTX260 in. All going well I'll probably swap the GTX260 out for something newer in the summer.

I think this will replace my gaming/HTPC rig at the moment, and I'll perhaps swap the X4 9650 for the X2 7750 in my linux box... decisions decisions!
 
Clock for clock it'll be similar to the 9650, then again I'm going off the bottom-end llano, the GPU looks like it could perform as well as a 4830 if it gets enough bandwidth and Hz.
 
There are a few tips on llano overclocking mentioned in hokies review. I havnt had enough time to play with mine to come up with any more. Mainly what we have seen so far is that you want to us IDE mode instead of AHCI. You also want to use one of the digital outputs for video connection. I found that the VGA bugs out around 108FSB on my A8-3850 but the HDMI and DVI ports still remain stable when overclocked. I would also recommend that if you decide to make this a gaming rig you should really look at setting up hybrid CF with one of the supported cards rather than an nvidia card.
 
Last edited:
ssjwizard said:
There are a few tips on llano overclocking mentioned in hokies review. I havnt had enough time to play with mine to come up with any more. Mainly what we have seen so far is that you want to us IDE mode instead of AHCI. You also want to use one of the digital outputs for video connection. I found that the VGA bugs out around 108FSB on my A8-3850 but the HDMI and DVI ports still remain stable when overclocked. I would also recommend that if you decide to make this a gaming rig you should really look at setting up hybrid CF with one of the supported cards rather than an nvidia card.
Click to expand...

Cheers for the tips. Digital output is fine as this will probably spend most of its time hooked up to a HDTV via HDMI anyway, and I have the GTX260 so will probably just disable the on-chip GPU after playing with it.

I completely agree about GPU choice - I'll most likely look for a 6670 to pair it with eventually, but I already had the GTX260 to hand.

This is the first time in aaaages I've bought new hardware, so I need to be careful I don't go overboard :)

I have access to copious amounts of liquid nitrogen and dry ice at the University, so I better not get my hands on a pot ... :D
 
Right, I'm probably being a total newb here - the last bit of serious overclocking I did was on Athlon XPs, Thunderbirds and Durons....

I bumped up the multiplier to 35x, just to see what would happen. It boots, and Core Temp says its 3.5 GHz. It runs Prime95 for 15 minutes on stress-test mode without crashing. I'm running 3DM Vantage right now to check for a performance difference.

I thought these were multiplier locked ...
 
How would you say this CPU performs overall? I'm probably looking to build a Linux-Box as I'm sick of rebooting everytime I wanna play a game on Windows.
 
Nechen said:
How would you say this CPU performs overall? I'm probably looking to build a Linux-Box as I'm sick of rebooting everytime I wanna play a game on Windows.
Click to expand...

From first impressions, it feels pretty smooth, and the benchmarks place it better than a Phenom (first gen.). However, I've not played with the IGP yet.
 
David said:
From first impressions, it feels pretty smooth, and the benchmarks place it better than a Phenom (first gen.). However, I've not played with the IGP yet.
Click to expand...

The IGP looks fine for Compiz-Fusion and whatnot. I'm not going to be attempting anything major on a LinuxBox at this point. Was just hoping these new APUs were snappy :)
 
David said:
Right, I'm probably being a total newb here - the last bit of serious overclocking I did was on Athlon XPs, Thunderbirds and Durons....

I bumped up the multiplier to 35x, just to see what would happen. It boots, and Core Temp says its 3.5 GHz. It runs Prime95 for 15 minutes on stress-test mode without crashing. I'm running 3DM Vantage right now to check for a performance difference.

I thought these were multiplier locked ...
Click to expand...

It is a multiplier locked chip, its a bug in the bios that reports that the multi is changed but it isnt actually running any faster.
 
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