TJ rips into a New APU - 5800k on ga f2a85x-up4

[xsuperbgx]

how's the apu's? Did you try to delid one?

there's another FM2 contest at hwbot. Looks to be some sweet prizes. I am contemplating buying one of these. What is the board to get? Asrock?

 

[TsunamiJuan]

I haven't, I just haven't had the time, or energy lately to play around with them.

I really like the ASrock Ex6, its a really nice board to work with. Though I haven conformaled mine yet and ran it on ln2, I need to Get rid of some of these chips i bought to bin though, Hit me up later if you do end up playing around with em, I'll give you some other interesting tips.

 

[xsuperbgx]

Have you tried any of the other fm2 stuff besides the 5800k?

 

[TsunamiJuan]

I haven't i thought about picking some up, but you can disable the cores on the 5800k which makes it the best of both worlds if you need 2 core plust stronger IGP

 

[Nil Einne]

<snipped>
As for review data I have a fairly complete list of data points now between the up4 and ex6 boards. Which I am in the process of compiling into a spread sheet. I Will probably add to this As I procure more boards. Even if they aren't review boards. It will be a nice comparision point as new bioses come out to show the performance improvements.

Will be picking up ln2 on wensday for sure. Leaving me two days To run these chips before the ECS fm2 contest @ hwbot. I'll probably toss in some entrys for the Gigabyte Fm2 contest at the same time. There is a good chance I will be live streaming the runs. So if your interested Check the Live benching thread on those days and see if something pops up from me.

Hi, did you ever post or do you plan to post the spread sheet? I couldn't find it although I may have missed it.

Either way, I just wanted to check you'd generally recommend the Extreme6 over the UP4 right? That seems to be the general recommendation from most people and reviews I've seen. The Asrock seems to have a slightly better feature set (well if we don't count the PCI/PCI express slot choice) and Asrock seem to be providing much better BIOS support compared to GB. In fact I've seen some suggest it may be the best FM2 board for its feature set. Although one thing is price wise the GB is usually a fair bit more then the Asrock, but they're about the same price here. (The ECS just seems way to gimmicky as does the Biostar. The Asus doesn't seem to bad but isn't available here.) I'm not planning extreme OCing but I do hope to run my RAM (2x8GB) at 2166 or even 2400 if possible and that does seem to be one of the Asrock's strengths.

Cheers

 

[TsunamiJuan]

I didn't go through and post one though theres bits and pieces of it represented in my review on funkykit. If you want to see how it generally compares to a base UP4 as of 1.4 for the bios on the extreme6. My understanding is the new bioses have decreased this margin. However I haven't had the time to re run the benches to see how this has changed.

 

[Nil Einne]

I didn't go through and post one though theres bits and pieces of it represented in my review on funkykit. If you want to see how it generally compares to a base UP4 as of 1.4 for the bios on the extreme6. My understanding is the new bioses have decreased this margin. However I haven't had the time to re run the benches to see how this has changed.

Since you seem to understand mobo power supply/regulation design fairly well, any comments you could share on this discussion (you can ignore my posts)

http://www.overclock.net/t/1375081/gigabyte-ga-f2a85x-up4-or-asrock-fm2a85x-extreme6

Thanks for your help so far BTW.

 

[TsunamiJuan]

I kinda skimmed through your thread quickly, hopefully I am touching on the main points.

I own both boards. I have killed Two UP4's due to limitations in the power phases during extreme overclocking. I admit to that the EX6 the power phases are higher strung than the UP4. However I think the failures are probably due to overheating in the EX6 not an actual limitation in the power phases.

When Running a ex6 with limited airflow you will notice that the VRM's get incredibly hot quite quickly under load. The up4 not quite so much. Partly due to the way the up4's power phases are designed. They spread the load out across more mosfets run at around 1/2 the load. This is mostly for power efficiency and they use this same design method across a lot of the gigabyte boards.

The Ex6 just runs less mosfets overall and runs that same load across less mosfets per phase than the up4's do.

Generally I find the power control more to my liking on the EX6 than the UP4. It tends to be a much more enjoyable board to work with than the gigabyte board.

 

[Odd1]

I must say that this is by far the most helpful thread that I have come across in regards to overclocking the 5800k and specifically on the extreme6. Thanks TJ.

I am currently trying to find my limits with the 5800k & the Asrock A85x extreme6. There are so many options to tweak in the bios that I am a bit overwhelmed. I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction...

This is what I'm running today. I am planning to start from scratch (default) and see where I can get in an orderly fashion. I have changed so many settings I've gotten a bit confused as to what affected what etc...

First, my setup:
A10-5800K
Asrock A85x extreme6
Antec 902 v3 case (good airflow. 2x120mm intakes front, 1x120mm & 1x200mm exhaust rear & top respectively.)
Phanteks PH-TC14PE cooler w/stock fans (full speed) & stock thermal paste (awesome cooler BTW. keeps cpu cool & happy)
2x4GB Samsung green "miracle" RAM (rated 1600mhz but have seen it go to 2600+)
Antec earthwatts 380W power supply
Crucial M4 128GB SSD & WD 400GB HD
NZXT Sentry LXE fan controller (love this BTW)


Looking at my OC Tweaker screen in the bios, here are my settings. For the sake of completeness & clarity, I'm listing everything. And again, I will be starting over from defaults soon. This is just what I happen to be running today...

EZ OC Mode ----------------- Manual
Overclock Mode -------------- Manual
APU/PCIE Freq - --------------120 (anything over 120 & my 3rd monitor connected to vga won't come on)
Turbo ----------------------- disabled
AMD APM ------------------- disabled
Multi/Voltage change --------- manual
CPU Freq. Multi - -------------x40 (x120 gives me a CPU speed of 4826Mhz in cpuid)
CPU Voltage ----------------- 1.55V
CPU V offset ---------------- +0.200V
CPU NB Freq Multi ------------ x9 2160Mhz
CPU NB/GFX Voltage ---------- 1.44375V
CPU NB/GFX offset ----------- +0V
APU LLC --------------------- 100% Auto
NB LLC ---------------------- 100% Auto
GFX engine clock ------------- Auto
GFX engine V ----------------- Auto
DRAM freq -------------------- DDR3-2239
DRAM V ---------------------- 1.6V
APU PCIE voltage VDDP ------- 1.258
SB V ------------------------- 1.10V (Auto)

Sorry if any of that was unnecessary.

My problem is stability. Sometimes it will run through a stability test (LinX) or a benchmark and sometimes it won't. For instance, the VGA monitor won't come on over 120 bus freq. or I had to bump the VDDP to get my SSD to be recognized & boot Windows. Little things...


I think my main question is this:

Is there a procedure I should follow when trying to OC the system as a whole? Like CPU first. Test. Mem next. Test. Etc...

It just seems as if every setting has an effect on sub-systems other than the one that it's obviously related to and it's hard to keep track of whether the change I just made had the desired effect or threw something else off.

As I stated earlier, these settings are not my end result. I have yet to start dialing back the various voltages to get to my lowest stable numbers and so forth.

From reading your threads here and reviews on funkyit, I have come to the conclusion that you may be the most knowledgeable person regarding these Trinitys, the extreme6 and putting it all together to really unleash what they are capable of.

Thanks again and I appreciate all of your hard work, uh, fun...