Just looking for a recommendation

[ssjwizard]

I have liquid cooling on the VRM and northbridge in my main rig which is running the 990FXa-UD3 my none of my motherboard temp sensors ever goes over 40C. Well unless I crank the voltage irresponsibly(benching) to like 1.65v then my VRM got up to ~55C.

 

[visiblegorilla]

Huh. Does keeping the VRM that cool contribute to stability?

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

The 4X, 8X and 16x on the PCI-e slots does not mean 4 bits or 8 bits, it's the speed of that slot over PCI slots.

It really isn't the chipset that's the big problem but it's the lighter duty power phase components associated with the chipset. The 970 chipset limits the bandwidth of the second PCI-e lane to 8 bits when used by itself and to 4 bits I believe when used in tandem with another card placed in the first PCI-e slot. The power phase components are down-scaled accordingly and since the power phase components also support the processor it poses some limitations on the CPU power draw. The higher end chipset boards will do two or three PCI-e cards at the full 16-bit lane width and have sturdier power phase to support that which also benefits overclocking the CPU when it is a high TDP processor.

 

[ssjwizard]

The 4X, 8X and 16x on the PCI-e slots does not mean 4 bits or 8 bits, it's the speed of that slot over PCI slots.

Actually its the number of channels available to transmit data on. You could look at that as speed, but its similar to how more cores != more Mhz. Your correct that they do all run at the same bit depth though. Most motherboards now days offer 8 or 16 bit width on the PCIe lanes, I assume for backwards compatibility to some odd part of the specification since ive never owned an 8bit PCIe device...

Anyway there are very few video cards that can choke an 8x port enough to make the difference to an x16 slot even measurable.

 

[trents]

As treants pointed out the biggest drawback to your current motherboard has less to do with the chipset and alot more to do with the particular board. If you look up the specs on your board you will find its 4+1 analog power phases. For the FX 8XXX chips we definitely recommend 6+2 digital, or 8+2 analog power phases. On the plus side your board does have a heatsink on the VRM which most 4+1 phase boards dont have. Its not that it cant run the 8XXX but if you really try to push the clockspeed these guys like to chew up ~200W(133Amps @1.5v) for the 81xx or ~170W(113Amps @1.5v) for the 83xx which puts alot of strain on the voltage regulator.

The gigabyte 970-UD3 sports an 8+2 analog VRM, and the asus M5A97 rocks a 6+2 digital VRM, so in the 970s those are what we generally recommend. If you go up to a 990X chipset board the entire field has either 8+2 analog or 6+2 digital VRM.

I don't think you get to 6+2 power phase until you get to the M5A99FX PRO series. I think all the M5A97 boards are still 4+1 with the Evo version having digital power phase control.

 

[ssjwizard]

Ah after looking them up on Asus site your right I had that wrong. The regular M5A97 carries a 4+2 VRM, the EVO has 6+2. I only briefly looked at the listings at newegg when making that post and didn't notice they have 2 versions of the 970 . Anyway good info all around in here.

 

[trents]

Okay, 4+2. Thanks for the correction. That's good to know. I have the non Evo version of the M5A97.

 

[Osnaps]

ok so now im curious, how high would i have to oc a 6300 to match/beat a 4170 @ 4.7? I am not a huge multitasker, it is primarily gaming, and to not have to replace mobo now would be a plus. I've got a $300 budget, and i was looking at a cpu upgrade and maybe a nice water cooling kit, either the corsair h100i or antec 920. Which would leave me a little extra for w/e else i can come up with.

What do y'all think?

 

[RGone]

It does not really matter what we think. Not really.

You have a budget of $300.00 and that is where all the thinking really comes to the front.

Your gaming and streaming songs and basketball is multi-tasking for sure.

1. I am not sure that you are slowed except in streaming Pandora or that is what you say.

2. In theory the 6300 will benefit you some. If the 4170 does not bottleneck your GPU then I doubt the 6300 would either.

3. Are you running the 2 bulldozer patches for Win 7. You should be.

4. A lot of games don't utilize 3, 4 or 5 cores anyway, so why not try a test?

5. Put the two bulldozer patches on in the correct order.

6. When you open the "application/s" you intend to run, then set the affinity of the game to the first two cores and the last two cores to say Pandora. See what happens. See if Pandora brings your 4170 to its' knees like that.

In the end your current board in theory limits you to the 6300, so much else about a cpu requires little thought when dealing with a $300.00 budget.

 

[Osnaps]

It does not really matter what we think. Not really.

You have a budget of $300.00 and that is where all the thinking really comes to the front.

Your gaming and streaming songs and basketball is multi-tasking for sure.

1. I am not sure that you are slowed except in streaming Pandora or that is what you say.

2. In theory the 6300 will benefit you some. If the 4170 does not bottleneck your GPU then I doubt the 6300 would either.

3. Are you running the 2 bulldozer patches for Win 7. You should be.

4. A lot of games don't utilize 3, 4 or 5 cores anyway, so why not try a test?

5. Put the two bulldozer patches on in the correct order.

6. When you open the "application/s" you intend to run, then set the affinity of the game to the first two cores and the last two cores to say Pandora. See what happens. See if Pandora brings your 4170 to its' knees like that.

In the end your current board in theory limits you to the 6300, so much else about a cpu requires little thought when dealing with a $300.00 budget.

i am going to do my best to answer your bullet points. For someone who has limited knowledge aside from reading here and other places on the net, what people think who have forgotten more than ill ever know, does matter to me. But i get what you are saying

1: I know i play some cpu intensive games, and outside of some occasional lag and microstutter, its not that bad i guess. Most of my settings are on high and i get playable fps between 35 and 60. It does bog down in pretty intensive situations. I don't really notice to bad of a hit when watching a movie or the game.

2: ill be honest here, i am not 100% sure on the bottleneck. It is more of an assumption on my part. In guild wars 2 for example my cpu Will be pegged around 55 - 65 %, while the gpu is usually around 60-65%.

3 and 5: yes i have downloaded the fx patches for win 7, but i don't know if i installed them in the right order.

4. Very true

5: ill have to give that a whirl tonight, that would be going into task manager and changing the affinity there correct?

If it doesn't end up being a bog down or maybe its just some limitation somewhere else, i have no issues with scrapping the idea of the 6300. Im not opposed to just going with a cooler and other goodies.

I apologize for the long winded nonsense. But i really just want to make a good, smart and sensible choice.

 

[ssjwizard]

Ill be honest piledriver is a pretty sizable improvement over bulldozer as I own and have benched both in 3d and 2d benchmarks. In every single one my 8320 beats my 8120 200-300 mhz lower in speed. In the case of wPrime32m it was pretty drastic I beat my old 8120 submission by ~10% while clocked almost 500Mhz lower. In 3dMark Vantage I matched my [email protected] while clocked at 4.4Ghz and crushed it at 4.84Ghz on the 8320.

With $300 an your current motherboard you could easily afford a 6300, and a very nice cooler. If you wanted an LCLC system definitely go for a 2x120 setup anything less can be beaten by mid range air cooling. Sadly a custom loop is probably unattainable at this budget.

In the end the choice is yours but your current CPU is probably the weakest link in your current system, 2nd would be the mobo. If motherboard is out of the question then CPU would be the only other choice that makes sense.

Now if you feel like your current chip is still good enough you could take that $300 and use it for something else. How nice are your periferials? Do you want a 2nd monitor? These are things that you generally overlook when building a new rig that can drastically improve your computing experience.

Best of luck, let us know what ya do!

 

[Osnaps]

Peripherals aren't to bad, got 3 monitors going already, and yeah it would be nice to have them all 1080p. ( my main 23" is and my other two are 20" 1680x1050 ) and that's been a blast so far. Decent speakers ( 1 sub, 4 surround), solid mouse, ok keyboard.

Ill have to take a look at the coolers to get and idea of what you are talking about.
I am heavily leaning towards the 6300 and a good cooler and maybe some faster ram. Ride that to steamroller and then go for a new mobo with that.

 

[caddi daddi]

I have been looking for a block for my chv-f vrm section so if any one knows of one I will be more than happy to find out if they work.

 

[RGone]

Ill be honest piledriver is a pretty sizable improvement over bulldozer as I own and have benched both in 3d and 2d benchmarks. In every single one my 8320 beats my 8120 200-300 mhz lower in speed. In the case of wPrime32m it was pretty drastic I beat my old 8120 submission by ~10% while clocked almost 500Mhz lower. In 3dMark Vantage I matched my [email protected] while clocked at 4.4Ghz and crushed it at 4.84Ghz on the 8320.

Now that is the type of information review sites seldom put into words that really make sense.

RGone...ster.

 

[tungureanu]

I have been looking for a block for my chv-f vrm section so if any one knows of one I will be more than happy to find out if they work.

here you go my friend

 

[caddi daddi]

sweet find, I'll have to find the heatkiller line here in the U.S.
his antec case is a mid tower, the antec kuler is so thick it covers the vrm section in my mid tower coolermaster so it should be out off the list.

 

[Osnaps]

his antec case is a mid tower, the antec kuler is so thick it covers the vrm section in my mid tower coolermaster so it should be out off the list.

That I didnt know thanks for letting me know on that. It was one of the ones I was considering. Corsair H100i or maybe even the 80 was the other one. Any recommendations on that from you guys in here?

 

[tungureanu]

you can allways cut the case to mout the k920rad outside. that`s what i`m gonna do
PS the h80 rad is allmost identical to the 920

 

[Osnaps]

Wow, it looks like I would have to do some serious modding or buy a whole new case for watercooling. Idk about all that... knowing my luck i'd mess something up.

 

[tungureanu]

If you can wait till after the holidays, i`m thinking of making a tutorial on how to mount a closed loop system rad on the outside. Since i`m in need of top vents and cutting the case might as well mount the rad outside