My first FX build.

[trickson69]

First off yes I know they are old and all that but let me start by telling the story.
Went to Goodwill one day seen this killer Thermaltake Armor case for $30 dollars, In it was a MSI MB 970A-G46 4 GB PNY RAM an AMD Semprom single core CPU, A Blue-ray DVD/CD ROM. and A 750W Tt PSU. I brought it home it was covered in soda pop grease dust and all kinds of FILTH!
I removed everything and proceeded to clean and clean I did. I thought why to myself while cleaning the MB that it would really be nice to see it run ( If it even did) so I set it up on the 4GB PNY RAM and the Semprom CPU, AND run it sis! I then did some research on this MB, EVERYONE said the VRM's are crap and get hot or just burn out. And I still thought why not? if the MB does fry out I will get a New one anyway. So I bought an FX 8300 and 16GB of Ripjaws DDR3 1866 RAM. the FX came with a really small really bad cooler so I pickup the Cryorig H7 Quad Lumi. (BEST COOLER EVER!) For $60 dollars. I am using an old HD5870 Video card soon I will replace it.
SO roughly $360 dollars so far and WOW I am loving this!

My poor old video card.....

 

[Johan45]

Looks good, that was a nice find for $30

 

[trickson69]

I think so too! It was really nice to find that the side fan was not broken and works. I actually like this setup a lot!
It may not be the fastest CPU MB and all that but that is NOT what I am after. It is however one killer gaming setup even with the old HD5870 card this thing chews through games at max setting and NO stuttering at all! Was massively stuttering and jerking around with just 4GB of PNY ram now it is smooth as butter in all my games. amazing gaming build for the price. I plan to put a more up to date video card in it soon and maybe SLI or Crossfire since it has both!!

 

[Mandrake4565]

I think so too! It was really nice to find that the side fan was not broken and works. I actually like this setup a lot!
It may not be the fastest CPU MB and all that but that is NOT what I am after. It is however one killer gaming setup even with the old HD5870 card this thing chews through games at max setting and NO stuttering at all! Was massively stuttering and jerking around with just 4GB of PNY ram now it is smooth as butter in all my games. amazing gaming build for the price. I plan to put a more up to date video card in it soon and maybe SLI or Crossfire since it has both!!

I gamed for years on my Fx 8350 and 5850 Gpu, like you said it may not be the fastest setup but it works. I also experienced the same issues when only having 4 gb of ram on board. Specifically, how long it takes for BF4 to load a new map, once I stuck 8gb in I had no issues.

 

[Blaylock]

Very nice find Trickson! Any plans to overclock and see what you can get it up to? FX is just OK for gaming but very fun to clock. Like you mentioned your board will likely be the weak link, but for only $30...

 

[UltraTaco]

Very cool! How come cinebench show it as 4c/8t though?

 

[trickson69]

LOL good Question. I think it is because the Cores share L2 Cache and since there is shared resources the CPU is seen as a 4 core 8 thread CPU. Junk benchmark anyway more of a novelty well all benchmarks are just that novelties. They do not in anyway reflect real time real operating performance. They are just some thing we use to say LOOK see MY EPEEN!

 

[UltraTaco]

Yeah, probably software just reading it wrong. It kinda does drive me mad when my 4ghz overclock is shown as 3.8 just because I use turbo multi. Well it's **ON** all the time! Thank you Asus

I used up my thanks button again..need to enjoy it in moderation.

 

[EarthDog]

Whats funny is cinebench is actually closer to real world functions than alot of benchmarks. It reflects pretty well in realtime performance for rendering.

 

[Johan45]

LOL good Question. I think it is because the Cores share L2 Cache and since there is shared resources the CPU is seen as a 4 core 8 thread CPU. Junk benchmark anyway more of a novelty well all benchmarks are just that novelties. They do not in anyway reflect real time real operating performance. They are just some thing we use to say LOOK see MY EPEEN!

It's a lot more than just L2 cahce
FX cores are arranged in modules 1 module is 2 "cores" there has been a lot of debate over whether it's truly two cores or one. Each module shares cache controller, branch prediction, prefetch, and floating point unit. This was their weakness.
That's why there are some trying to sue AMD for false advertising but it comes down to the definition of what a core really is and did AMD really mislead anyone.

 

[caddi daddi]

mislead, maybe.
underperforming, yea.
hella fun to clock, hella yea!!!!!

 

[UltraTaco]

O gee, what a combo, Dad
Intel pretty boring, just punch it in and werks first try..

 

[caddi daddi]

I keep old denabs, old thubans and fx in the stable just because they are great fun.
the denabs and thubans are better than fx and they and fx, except the 9xxx FX chips, are plug and play, kickem in the pants with multi and vcore and GO!!!!!!!!

 

[trents]

LOL good Question. I think it is because the Cores share L2 Cache and since there is shared resources the CPU is seen as a 4 core 8 thread CPU. Junk benchmark anyway more of a novelty well all benchmarks are just that novelties. They do not in anyway reflect real time real operating performance. They are just some thing we use to say LOOK see MY EPEEN!

An element of truth to this but also a significant overstatement.

 

[trickson69]

An element of truth to this but also a significant overstatement.

Matter of opinion really. I have run all the benchmarks out there and there all the same and 99% do not reflect real world performance. For sure there not as consistent as one would think they should be.
Forinstance CPU-Z maybe able to give you numbers but not only are them numbers always changing but they are far from reflective of the real performance of your system. Just like Cinabench and the rest.
It is just my honest opinion. I see one relevant use of benchmarks and that is to give you an idea of what you MIGHT expect, but from what I have seen over the years it is just that a pure estimation, because once you get the things in hand and test them they always seem to fall short of the mark they set for them. It's again my opinion not fact.
And it's awfully funny how benchmarks are always skewed to perform exceptionally well on Intel Hardware, I remember Cinabench was actually made and designed around Intel so it runs like crap on AMD setups so much so there is a BIOS setting to optimize cinabench! WTF?!

 

[EarthDog]

Opinions can be wrong.

While there are benchmarks out there which dont really directly apply to specific tasks and give a score that doesnt really mean much, many actually give relevant resuts. Cinebench happens to be one of them. Again, its rendering and will give a relative value of its performamce against others. Winrar is one for compression, pov ray for rendering, etc...

Blanket statements here are making your opinion tough to swallow.

 

[trickson69]

Opinions can be wrong.

While there are benchmarks out there which dont really directly apply to specific tasks and give a score that doesnt really mean much, many actually give relevant resuts. Cinebench happens to be one of them. Again, its rendering and will give a relative value of its performamce against others. Winrar is one for compression, pov ray for rendering, etc...

Blanket statements here are making your opinion tough to swallow.

Again they IMHO only represent what you MIGHT get I have yet to see any benchmark that gave me the real world performance scores before I put the hardware together! You can say rendering and compiling till you a blue in the face, A benchmark is nothing more than a MIGHT be possible if your epeen is as big as mine!

 

[EarthDog]

If a cpu scores 1000 and another scores 1100 in cinebench, its going to be ~10% faster for that rendering. Same pov ray for encoding. Or 7zip testing for compression. It gives users a relative idea of performance between processors.

 

[trickson69]

LOL and all you have to do to score tons of points in any benchmark is use Intel! LMFAO!

 

[EarthDog]

Sweet jebus... youre clueless, sorry.

... good luck trickson.