Will I regret replacing my Phenom 965 @4.5ghz with a FX8530?

[Mandrake4565]

I am no expert on RAM, but from what I have read here most of the experienced people say ram is ram. I'm sure RGone or Wizard can better clarify that for you.

 

[RGone]

I am no expert on RAM, but from what I have read here most of the experienced people say ram is ram. I'm sure RGone or Wizard can better clarify that for you.

"Mandrake4565" I believe that to be so except at certain times. Headroom for running the ram over its' rated speed is one of those times.

The results 'ssjwizard' reported a few posts earlier comes just a little too late for me to try the Mushkin. I probably would not have anyway, but for sure after ordering 2 kits of Gskil DDR2133 Cas 9 stuff and the success I have had in the ram working and also having at least 200Mhz of headroom to overspeed it; well I guess I did the right thing by going on with my Gskil favorite stuff.

I have about 5 kits of Gskil that I use since OCZ went out of business and all of it has very good overclocking extra headroom. Now that is 5 or 6 kits only but they are across a number of memory type ICs and they all will overclock by 200Mhz and I am well pleased and no RMAs to date. Hehehe. Wish I had not made that statement. Like Basketball anouncer saying he has not missed a free-throw all night and blammo the miss.

Anyway that is my $0.02 worth of stuff.
RGone...

 

[ssjwizard]

The standard AMD chips IE, Phenom II, Bulldozer, Vishera are not to picky about memory, the massive cache helps to aleviate the differences between brands and sticks. AMD APUs on the other hand really want the memory to behave a particular way, and as a result suffer from more restricted memory compatibility. Even at that though 97% of any such stick you grab and throw into any random FM2 board is going to work QVL or not.

Whats more important than the brand of the RAM is the brand of the IC's. Ask any bencher what brand of "hypers" they prefer and you will get the answer any of them. Latest generation Samsung IC and Hynx IC will both do 2200+ on any decently built PCB. What it boils down to is how highly "binned" the sticks are, and what you think of the heatspreader. We all know that RAM heatspreaders are for looks and make no appreciable improvement to memory performance, so those sticks with the giant fins on the top only serve to limit your heatsink compatibility.

I prefer Mushkin RAM because before the days of memory equality(everyone getting the same ICs) Mushkin made some of the best RAM around. It was considered top shelf then, and IMO is still top shelf. The difference? there heatspreaders are short, sleek, and the memory is priced for its performance not its brand/styling. Yea all the Mushkin black use the same HS and the reds use the same HS but painted a diff color, but what your paying for is the RAM on the inside.

 

[Mandrake4565]

Whats more important than the brand of the RAM is the brand of the IC's.

How does one find out what brand IC's a company is using?

 

[RGone]

How does one find out what brand IC's a company is using?

Unless 'ssjwizard' knows a way other than the one that was used about 5 years ago, somebody was removing heat spreaders and looking and there was a list kept, well sort of kept over at Xs forums.

I think, if I understand what ssjwizrard' said, there really is almost full parity in the IC's used today and what is under the spreader is not so important but the circuit lay-out on the mobos. I could have read, reading wrong again. Done it before.

By the way and lest I forget it, let me just say things have changed in the last 2 years or just a shade longer. There never were a whole lot of IC makers and there are less now. Ram is not making money is my guess. Well if there are now only just a few IC makers there maybe a little money to be had. I mean with ram at $50 bucks for DDR1866 ram that I know will do DDR2000, why did I spend $60 bucks for DDR2133? So there is just not a lot of money to be made in the ram business. There were too many selling it and the price was pushed down lower than it should be and that pushes competition out of the market place. Sometimes we want it just too cheap and get it and lose something in the mix. IMO. Odd ole faht.
RGone...

 

[Xenohitsu]

Unless 'ssjwizard' knows a way other than the one that was used about 5 years ago, somebody was removing heat spreaders and looking and there was a list kept, well sort of kept over at Xs forums.

I think, if I understand what ssjwizrard' said, there really is almost full parity in the IC's used today and what is under the spreader is not so important but the circuit lay-out on the mobos. I could have read, reading wrong again. Done it before.

By the way and lest I forget it, let me just say things have changed in the last 2 years or just a shade longer. There never were a whole lot of IC makers and there are less now. Ram is not making money is my guess. Well if there are now only just a few IC makers there maybe a little money to be had. I mean with ram at $50 bucks for DDR1866 ram that I know will do DDR2000, why did I spend $60 bucks for DDR2133? So there is just not a lot of money to be made in the ram business. There were too many selling it and the price was pushed down lower than it should be and that pushes competition out of the market place. Sometimes we want it just too cheap and get it and lose something in the mix. IMO. Odd ole faht.
RGone...

it's been the one of the cheapest years to buy RAM. All older RAM went up in price, and DDR3 will too, eventually DDR4 will come along, and initially, the prices will be higher for both DDR3 and 4. This is coming from someone who spent $80 on 4x2GB sticks of DDR2 800mhz. I won't be needing DDR3 anytime soon, but if I needed it, I would be happy with many of the ones available- Mushkin, Gskill, etc.

 

[TeknoBug]

Honestly if your Phenom II X4 965 is running @ 4.5GHz (I haven't heard of anyone successfully doing that without some crazy liquid nitrogen cooling, and I thought Phenom II's hardcap at 4.2GHz) then you won't really notice a big difference between the 965 and the FX 8350.

My 955 @ 4.1GHz flew, unfortunately the pins got bent and no longer works so I'm using a 1090T on my spare PC I took along with me on the road.

 

[OCMusicJunkie]

Honestly if your Phenom II X4 965 is running @ 4.5GHz (I haven't heard of anyone successfully doing that without some crazy liquid nitrogen cooling, and I thought Phenom II's hardcap at 4.2GHz) then you won't really notice a big difference between the 965 and the FX 8350.

My 955 @ 4.1GHz flew, unfortunately the pins got bent and no longer works so I'm using a 1090T on my spare PC I took along with me on the road.

The things definitely get skiddish after ~4.2ish, but there are a couple people I know who have actually hit 4.6 stable with their 975 BE on air only. As best I can tell, it's all about the board. Both of my 965's hit the same level on their respective M5A99FX Pro R2.0 boards, and the person I am recalling with the 975 overclocked was using a Asrock 890fxD5. When I was running a M5A97, I had no hope of <4.1ghz.

Still fighting this stupid RAM issue. Actually realized, I think the last BIOS update might have been when I started having issues. Going to just try rolling that back for the fact it's the easiest thing left to test.

 

[storm-chaser]

keep the Phenom II, pound for pound its quicker than the FX. you can bump your nb clock up to achieve similar FX memory throughput

 

[OCMusicJunkie]

Okay, that was bizzare. Memtest86 failed every one of the four modules. I took apart the whole rig, put it back together, and suddendly all is well again. Had to remove one of the heatspreaders to allow clearance for the push/pull fan config, but no biggie. No clue what on earth caused that chain of events. I looked all over the desk, and there wasn't anything that came out of the case that could have been causing some sort of a short.

The machine is definitely faster from the prospective of real-world use. This rig is being turned into a F@H setup though, so I'll have the Phenom back up and running in the next few days as well. This is getting a little absurd- need to stop building things long enough to actually run some benches for HWBot points!