Amd suitability?

i know there are some benchmark websites i can check out but many of them haven't updated all the benchmarks to show me what i want to see.

basically i need a new core system this year. i wont be upgrading my graphics as i don't bother with modern games. i do play guildwars 2 and vrcpro which is directx9. runs perfect on my 5850.
these are both single threaded apps so from what ive been reading the amd is NOT suitable for these..
but on the other hand, i plan to do quite a lot of solidworks cad and slicer for 3dprinting which can definitely make use of threads.

originally i had decided an i5 4670k would be the best overall buy but noting that i can get into a very nice amd for over $100 less, im back on the fence...

seems most of these amds can overclock extremely well? which i guess catches me up to the i5 performance advantage but not i7.. im not really in the market for the i7 unless i get in on one of those crazy bundle deals..
was looking at 990fxa boards like the gigabyte. dont wanna spend more than $170 for a board and similar or maybe just over $200 for the cpu if i go amd. that would be around fx8320/50 territory i guess.

i guessssss im looking to see if i am crazy to be considering what most people consider the inferior product.. but in the past ive been buying the low end and overclocking the snot out of it heh.
im less interested in the tweaking these days and more with stability but i like to play sometimes.

cant think of a better place to post this heh.

Will you be overclocking the CPU? The AMD FX eight core CPUs require a very stout motherboard when overclocking like the Asus Sabertooth, Asus Crosshair V Formual Z or the ASRock Extreme 9 in order to handle the power draw and heat produced when overclocking them. If not overclocking, a less expensive board will do.

originally i had decided an i5 4670k would be the best overall buy [/color=yellow]= Sounds like that is really the system you would like to own. Probably can almost get by with a bout a $100.00 mobo if you want to do so. Many want bells and whistles though. [/color]

but noting that i can get into a very nice amd for over $100 less = You do not sound like you update very often. A $100.00 for what you seem to really want for the single threaded games you still play and yet the 4670K has four cores so not much loss there in real work either; makes $100.00 over the time you use the system, not so expensive afterall.

http://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/M5A99FX_PRO_R20/
M5A99FX PRO R2.0

That motherboard there and an FX-6300 and a CM 212 EVO air cooler in a case the cooler fits into with good air in and out should take the 6 core FX-6300 to 4.5Ghz with g00d stability which to us here means at least 2 hours of Prime95 Blend load. And you can run your solidworks cad and slicer pretty handily I would imagine.

The problem with Gigabyte is their lesser chipset boards like the 970 chipset and entry level versions of the 990X board have been problematic with 8 core cpus and some heavily clocked 6 core cpus. There is rumor around that the latest Rev 4.0 UD3 boards seem much better but have not had backup to the user saying Rev 4.0 of UD3 is back to being pretty good. He said he did not care for the bios though.

You might also consider an AMD APU setup with video inside the cpu. They are going to come with a pretty hefty increased APU first of next year. So FM2+ mobos only need apply for that later Kaveri APU setup.
RGone...

PS: My problem is that when I just count the dollars...well I am not really every truly happy. $100 bucks over three or four years use is not much at all for the real deal.

Its hard to say what ill do wih it. I overheated my c2d board and it has been in limp mode for over a year. Speed isnt terrible with the ssd but an overclock would sure help.
Was gonna get an x38 or similar and just get as much out of it as possible, but i dont know if overheating the board took any of the watercooled components with it. Ssd is also closing on 4 years old.

Im not cheap about a build but an intel is gonna cost about $1200 for all the parts ill replace. If i could get into an amd for say $800 cpu/ram/board/ssd/psu/hdds i wouldnt discount it.
There are also the hidden costs such as replacing some watercooling components, case hardware ect.
Buttttt it kinda looks like ill be happiest to just get in on an i5 bundle. I just like to do a little more shopping for decent mainboards. Cpu is less an issue, i can upgrade that whenever, i just want a strong platform.
Probably will overclock whatever i but but im not expecting the 100% my e2180 did lol. Seems that once overclocked the fx6xxx might bot be a bad way to go.

Well Valk, you are at the place we all come to. Got the deal sort of sorted...but it is the final push of the BUY button that has us all in a delimna. Most of us are that way. I know I am.

Because I no longer do the "benching" for points thing and not a heavy gamer but more a video edit type of guy, I am well pleased with my FX-8350 running at 4.7Ghz. Day in and day out with a huge air cooling on my cpu.

I can put my FX-8350 under various degrees of water and run up to 5.5Ghz for benching. Can even get 2 hours of P95 Blend mode stable at 5.2Ghz. But that 5.2Ghz makes no real sense for daily use. Too much of the heat, volts and noise to make a few more Mhz worth it to me. That is me though.

I had foreknowledge that FX 8 cores and even FX 6 cores run hot when we push them as we do. By that we turn on ALL cores and that is not as AMD designed the cpu to run under load. In fact AMD designed the FX to keep the speed down if most of the cores were loaded. So I am not at all using my FX cpu as AMD intended. When you run not as intended; you pay with HEAT and more HEAT and the mobo has to be able to feed power to the cpu. For this only about 5 boards will do it. I bought the top of the line board to begin with and did not have to then rebuy another mobo because my first would not let me touch the 5.0Ghz that was hyped for FX processors to begin with.

I guess what I am trying to convey is that I actually "knew" what I was getting into with the FX-8350 type cpu. Was about a prepared as one could be. No unrealistic expectations and ready to deal with the heat as I understood it. So I do not have to look back and say >> woulda, coulda or shoulda. Parts of that always attack us as humans but at least this time with my 8 core FX heater...I knew what I was getting. That is why I suggest a mid-level mobo and 6 FX cores and reasonable expectations. OR better yet get what you originally thought was fit for you.
RGone...ster.

Ive always relied on water cooling so heat isn't a concern at all. The money i could save on cpu though lets me spend on other things i think are more important. Bleh ill have to mull over it again maybe. If i could get i5 performance with a moderate overclock and less money id totally be down for that. Then i can actually afford the 16gb ram and ssds lol.
Ideally i spend as little as possible but has to last a little while. I was even considering the crosshair with fx 4300 and treating the 4300 as disposable lol.
Also noteworthy is the 9370 on sale. Cant find comparisons with that cpu which id nothing else tells me how the 8320 ect would scale with oc.

anyone try out the gigabyte ga-970a-ud3p? seems to meet the requirements to oc alright. im not looking to do a monster oc, but if i could get a 8320 to around 4.5ish ghz on water id be happy. the asus m5a99x isnt a lot more expensive, but if im looking at cheaper stuff, im curious what i get for how much cheaper
if i did a board like these two, id probably get a fx6300 then i can get the whole core with 8gb/ram for like $300...
after looking at the anand bench of these cpus or cpus very similar, im gonna get more than double performance boost over my e6750 it looks like, somewhat more if i went i5.

in the past ive never spent more than $200 on a cpu and rarely $200 on a board.. my last build was an experiment with a $100 board and $150 cpu.. was a beast.. but unreliable.

bah.. too many choices..

I did a quick review for the 990FXA-UD3 (REV4)with the FX 8150 for poops and giggles. This system was a XMas gift and I had a bit of time to play before rapping it. I just figured it might be good to see first hand what the board was all about as eventually they will show up here on some budget systems. Have a read.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=741239

Although I was able to get a decent OC and considering the amount of issues people had with previous versions of this board I am not sure if this is a one of scenario where I got lucky or how well these boards will work for real. I guess I am kinda waiting for someone else to come forward with similar findings to support what I have seen before I would give this a two thumbs up and recommend it. Just thought I would bring this up and let you make up your own mind about it.

bassnut Happy New Year my friend!!

AJ.

Thanks AJ ..... Happy New Year to you as well

if i dont plan to run multiple gpus, i guess the 970 chipset would be fine? keep coming back to gigabyte boards. 970a-ud3p or 990fxa-ud3 r4. i guess the 990fx is the choice, but the 970 seems to have the requirements for a half *** decent oc. like $50 less. cpu/ram/mobo for under $400 is now very attractive. id be 5-600plus for a decent i5 for sure.

Honestly it has proven pretty much universal across the motherboard manufacturers that the entry level 970 chipset boards also have the rest of the components more or less cheapened to go along with the cheaper chipset.

990fxa-ud3 r4 if you are still hung up on boards other than the ones we have mentioned, then I would say the 990fxa-ud3 r4 board in R4.0 might do an adequete job. However there is one thing to KNOW for sure and that is those of us who help with many issues and most of the overclocking are on the better Asus boards and use some of the top of the line Asrock boards. Gigabut went berserk with their BS about a year ago and in general we just moved on and away from Giga boards since most people were buying the cheaper shett and it was just a double wide pain in the booty as evidenced by many other websites. So there is little we will be able to do in guiding in overclocking that Giga board if you choose it. We can try and help if you do as you said and decide to overclock as you often did, but it will not be as assured as buying a board we are sleepig with daily.
Happy New Year and good fortune to you.
RGone...ster.

I get that for sure. i guess ill have another look at the m5a99evo as well. i just dont see the point in spending the money on a crosshair, and basically spending as much as an i5 that is still in most cases better ha.
i really want to love amd again. A look back at my oc history really does favor them. my fondest memory is probably my Agoia Y xp1600+ that did 2ghz on super cooled air lol. my most trouble free system was probably the denmark 170.

meh. ive missed the crazy sales for boxing day. the 970a-ud3p was coming in at $89 and that was hella hella tempting. i suppose a asus m5a99x-evo will come in around $140 so its not really a deal breaking. most of the z87 boards id be looking at were the "Gamer" spec ones between $165-$200. and the 8320 is $100 cheaper than the i5-4670k. so there is still kick to this i think.
What kind of ram works well with these cpus or does it matter? all multiplier oc?

The most consistent ram for AMD for me and most often seen here is GSKILL, I have had plenty of issues with Kingston's compatibility and some Patriot and Mushkin Blacklines I had just didn't seem to like to be OC'd much on my systems. So for me it is simple ...... GSKILL is my choice.

Valk said:

I get that for sure. i guess ill have another look at the m5a99evo as well. i just dont see the point in spending the money on a crosshair, and basically spending as much as an i5 that is still in most cases better ha.
i really want to love amd again. A look back at my oc history really does favor them. my fondest memory is probably my Agoia Y xp1600+ that did 2ghz on super cooled air lol. my most trouble free system was probably the denmark 170.

meh. ive missed the crazy sales for boxing day. the 970a-ud3p was coming in at $89 and that was hella hella tempting. i suppose a asus m5a99x-evo will come in around $140 so its not really a deal breaking. most of the z87 boards id be looking at were the "Gamer" spec ones between $165-$200. and the 8320 is $100 cheaper than the i5-4670k. so there is still kick to this i think.
What kind of ram works well with these cpus or does it matter? all multiplier oc?

Click to expand...

Valk, I totally understand where you're coming from with wanting to not spend top dollar on a board and chip when something less expensive will perform as well for less money. While on paper the 970a UD3 Giga board has all the specs to run the Fx 8 series cpu and I know of one user on this forum using that board on a Fx 6300 overclocked without a problem. We have see a lot of people come on here running Giga boards having issues. It seems as if it is different revisions have caused these issues. Some of the boards are really good and work great and some are just crap. Maybe another option is picking up a high end board used? Just food for thought.

As far as AMD vs Intel, I have a few of both and I do find my AMD cpu's more fun to turn the knobs on. Just to reiterate what was said above, when the knobs start getting turned on these Fx's they get hot. You said you run water so that shouldn't be an issue but you may still be surprised even on water.

As far as memory, I'm with Bassnut, I've run G.Skills on my AMD's without issue and that's what I stick with. Though I do gave a set of GEIL's that Oc nicely on my Amd setups as well.

$0.02...oops more like $0.03.

.
In keeping with "bassnut" and "mandrake4565", I will just add this and a little more I have come across.

The kit below does not hinder air coolers. Mine runs DDR3-1980 in my CHV with FX-8350 most of its' life so far. And the overclock to DDR3-1990 can be done at stock ram voltage however as most of us that clock FX's know...we fudge and add 0.05 to our ram. So my set of DDR3-1866 runs 1.55V on it day in and day out and has for over a year.

I have a kit of G Skil Ares DDR3-1600 that I bought before I realized that DDR3-1866 was the really really sweet spot for ram on an FX processor. Once finding that I could use 16Gig fairly handily and speed up my video editting >> I took the kit of G Skil Ares DDR3-1600 and matched it with my kit of DDR3-1866 Ares and was able with a little secondary memory tweaking get the two kits to play together at DDR3-1980 with absolute stability. Now to my feeble, aged mind, that is some freeken ram for sure and why I stick with known to work G Skill kits for my AMD stuff.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231550
G.SKILL Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model F3-1866C9D-8GAB

Let me make one note here and to ME it was and is important. I have besides my CHV non-z board an Asrock 990FX Fatal1ty Professional motherboard. It will push my FX-8350 as far as my more expensive CHV non-z board will. The catch is that the secondary memory timing that I changed to run my mis-matched 8 gig kits "together" is NOT in the bios of the once top of the line Asrock 990FX Fatlady board.

So if I had not had my g00d CHV to test with; I would never have known just how well my two mis-matched kits of ram could run together. To me just another good reason to stay with boards that we know and use regular.

I have seen users in the AMD Cpu Forum section struggling with 16gigs of ram; on non-Asus mid-level and up boards. They likely could have eased their pain if they could have changed just one secondary ram timing had the setting been available to them. Of course it is still strokes for folks. Hehehe.

Dang that is more than $0.02. That is more like $0.03. Sorry.
RGone...ster.

EDIT:
I still have to never forget that any electrical system can be DOA.
END EDIT.

bassnut said:

The most consistent ram for AMD for me and most often seen here is GSKILL, I have had plenty of issues with Kingston's compatibility and some Patriot and Mushkin Blacklines I had just didn't seem to like to be OC'd much on my systems. So for me it is simple ...... GSKILL is my choice.

Click to expand...

Ditto

My complete build costs for a AMD setup ran me $900 but that included a gpu, ssd, case, psu, everytning in my sig.
On air I run 4.4Ghz everyday 24/7 and have been as high as 5.2Ghz but only 6 cores active
I have beat on mine for over a year and have never had any issues and it does all I can throw at it.
Plus Rgone and the others here know all in ins and outs to OCing these bad boys
I would buy a good board like Asus, the money spent will be worth it.

Let me make one note here and to ME it was and is important. I have besides my CHV non-z board an Asrock 990FX Fatal1ty Professional motherboard. It will push my FX-8350 as far as my more expensive CHV non-z board will. The catch is that the secondary memory timing that I changed to run my mis-matched 8 gig kits "together" is NOT in the bios of the once top of the line Asrock 990FX Fatlady board.

Click to expand...

Interesting point that I didn't know, thanks Rbobgonstignator!

Thanks for the input guys. Is the sabertooth still a decent 990 board? Found a couple deals on the asrock extreme 3 in he us. Prices are pretty consistant with ncix so no advantage newegg. I guess is prob be happiest with a crosshair. At least its not a maximus formula lol.