Anyone Building AMD Systems?

[sechs]

Even with the impending price drop, it seems like AMD has the price/performance crown.

Is anyone here building AMD desktop systems, and, if so, what are you using?

 

[ddrueding]

Nope. I don't build anything at a price point that would make it relevant.

 

[Mercutio]

I usually deal with budget systems, but AMD stuff has been off my radar for at least a couple years. Coug and Tannin are probably AMD people though.

 

[CougTek]

Most of my budget computers are AMD-based these days. I use either the Athlon II X3 440 or Athlon II X4 635 on GigaByte 760G-based motherboard. I also use Asus' 760G motherboards, but less often. I tend to use OCZ memory sticks, but they are far more problematic than the Kingston (especially for DDR3), so I moved back to using Kingston. That's for computers I sell around 450$-500$ with a Windows 7 license (and I make a profit, of course). Almost everything above that, I switch to Intel. I suppose I could make something very competitive with a 6-core AMD, but I haven't tried yet.

 

[sechs]

I usually deal with budget systems, but AMD stuff has been off my radar for at least a couple years.

I'm curious as to why that is. The low-end seems like their sweet spot.

 

[LiamC]

Hmm. I don't build for a living so add salt.

I just recently replaced my Q9550 with A Phenom X6. It runs a little warmer, but not a lot. For single threaded tasks, I suppose the Q9550 would have been a better bet, but in my back to back comparisons, I never noticed. The Phenom X6 is better in threaded tasks though. I used an AM2+ board so everything stayed the same except chip and mobo. BTW, the stock Phenom X6 cooler is very good.

I also bought an Athlon X4 630 for a side project that has been on hold. It's running the SMP folding client 24/7. Get this, I replaced the stock heatsink with an Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 64 I had lying around, and the fan stops! Not because it's faulty, but because it doesn't get hot (flat out fully loaded). Admittedly, it's open on the bench (not in a case) in my tin shed, ambient is in the single digits Celsius, but...

I've built a couple of Athlon II 250s for people and I was very impressed with them.

All in all, these are the first AMD systems I've used since Core 2 Duo was released. I've been all Intel since I got my first E6600.

Why not go Intel? To get a meaningful performance boost over a Q9550 o/ced to 3.2GHz, I would have to go something like an i7 960

i7 960 AU$700
Mobo (1366) AU$300
RAM 6GB () AU$195

Call it AU$1 200

Got the Phenom for AU$270 and mobo for AU$95. Not the performance of the Intel, but < 1/3 the price.

 

[time]

Unfortunately, upgrades are now about the only place you can justify an AMD solution.

It's pretty hard for anyone to make a rational case for a mid/high-end i7, so I don't think that's a fair comparison. An Intel i5 760 offers better than 80% of the performance of an i7 960, but costs roughly the same as your AMD X6 (currently AU$250). There are quite extensive test results at places like Anandtech that put the i5 ahead of the Phenom in almost everything, regardless of the two-core disadvantage.

Power consumption is significantly less with the Intel solution, both at idle and full load.

Granted, you can also save AU$10-$24 between equivalent AMD/Intel motherboards (and an extra $10 for your discontinued AM2).

But it's your existing 6GB of RAM that tilts the advantage firmly towards the AMD. I've been considering an AMD X4 635 to upgrade a PC here because I wouldn't have to buy a motherboard, but I would still have to invest in more DDR2 to make it worthwhile.

 

[time]

For budget PCs, you can always cut yet another corner, but for a non-gaming PC, it's awfully hard to go past:

Intel i3 530 AU$135
Gigabyte GA-H55M AU$105 (or GA-H55M-USB3 $130)
Kingston 4GB DDR3-1333 AU$115
-----------------
Total AU$355

The extra $25 gets you USB 3 and DisplayPort video connections.

Depressingly, that i3 will probably out-perform my proposed X4 while using maybe half the power.

 

[LiamC]

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/18448

depends on the task. The tasks that interest me (converting free to air recorded TV mpeg2 to mpeg4 primarily) seem to benefit from real cores rather than HT. I don't do enough file compression to care, making mp3s takes little enough time on any processor for me to care, and the stuff that Intel wins convincingly like piColor I don't use, so an upgrade made more sense to/for me. Other people will have different needs of course.

Just to be clear, I don't have 6GB of existing RAM, just 4GB of DDR2, but if I was going the DDR3 upgrade, I'd have to go 6GB

 

[sechs]

An Intel i5 760 offers better than 80% of the performance of an i7 960, but costs roughly the same as your AMD X6 (currently AU$250).

Now, why would I pay more for 80% of the performance?

 

[Pradeep]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/di...Microprocessor_for_Back_to_School_Season.html

 

[time]

There are quite extensive test results at places like Anandtech that put the i5 ahead of the Phenom in almost everything, regardless of the two-core disadvantage.

Having gone back and reread the tests, I need to correct this. It would be more accurate to say that the i5 is comparable to the X6 in most tasks and sometimes faster, but many programs can't use more than 4 cores. Where all 6 are actually used, such as in some media encoding applications, the X6 is superior.

Power consumption is significantly less with the Intel solution, both at idle and full load.

Although that's true at idle, there's no difference under load when comparing i5 and X6 at the same clock speed (I was comparing 2.67GHz with 3.2GHz). Which is a remarkable achievement for AMD.

Weighing it all up, I think it's the power consumption that's ruled it out for me. AMD needs to halve idle power; I wonder if their inactive cores shut down like Intel's?

I think the AMD solutions will become more competitive as more applications take advantage of 6 cores, so they could be a better long-term investment than at first glance.

 

[Gilbo]

Time,

I think the new X6's can shutoff cores when they aren't needed now, but all the older offerings cannot. It's one of the big advantages of the new chips, and was key for the Magny Cours chips that share the X6 microarchitecture.

However, Intel's new Westmere derivatives (anything 32nm) can all regulate their uncore, and even put it to sleep. AMD's X6's haven't learned that particular trick yet so the memory controllers, L3, etc. still cost AMD idle power advantage.


Also, because the Westmere derivatives have superior single-core performance, they spend more time in their idle states than X6 cores do.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm curious as to why that is. The low-end seems like their sweet spot.

I can justify the slight additional cost of the Intel-based system because of the somewhat more robust Intel-branded motherboards and generally lower power consumption. With USB3 on AMD but not Intel, I might look again, but given my audience, I doubt it's much of a selling point right now.

 

[sechs]

Maybe your low-end isn't as low as I thought....

 

[Mercutio]

I'm generally building computers that I can sell for $350. That's pretty low end.

 

[time]

I think the new X6's can shutoff cores when they aren't needed now, but all the older offerings cannot.

Gilbo, I can't find anything to support that - do you have a reference?

 

[Gilbo]

Gilbo, I can't find anything to support that - do you have a reference?

Now that I went looking for it, I'm realizing I might have imagined it .

What the X6 series added, that I confused with power gating, was clock scaling like Intel's "Turbo". AMD can downclock some cores, and up-clock others, but it's not power gating (i.e. it doesn't solve the leakage current issue).

 

[sechs]

I'm generally building computers that I can sell for $350. That's pretty low end.

Netbook+monitor, keyboard, and mouse?

 

[CougTek]

Please refrain from posting your masochist fantasies on the forum.

 

[Mercutio]

Netbook+monitor, keyboard, and mouse?

C2D E5300, 2GB RAM, 250GB drive, Intel or Gigabyte board, HEC or Foxconn case, Win7 license.

 

[Santilli]

HMMMM.
While I've been buying Intel, I can't help but notice that value wise, at least using Passmark's cpu Value the AMD chips seem to dominate.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html

 

[Bozo]

I don't build AMD systems because I don't trust the motherboards. Supermicro makes AMD motherboards, which I would trust, but they are pricey

 

[Gilbo]

The longest surviving motherboards I presently have in service are Gigabyte AMD motherboards.

Can't remember make or chipset off-hand, but the last competition died off about 2 months ago.

 

[sechs]

C2D E5300, 2GB RAM, 250GB drive, Intel or Gigabyte board, HEC or Foxconn case, Win7 license.

I think that my solution is more elegant.

Certainly, it includes the monitor, keyboard, and a pointing device, at least twice.

 

[Mercutio]

I think that my solution is more elegant.

Certainly, it includes the monitor, keyboard, and a pointing device, at least twice.

Most people already have those things. I only provide them if someone asks me to do so.

 

[sechs]

Most people already have those things. I only provide them if someone asks me to do so.

Said same people also already have a computer....

 

[ddrueding]

I think that my solution is more elegant.

Certainly, it includes the monitor, keyboard, and a pointing device, at least twice.

More elegant, but much slower, and more likely to fail. I have a couple dozen netbooks out there, and have already had 4 go bad.

 

[paugie]

for my purposes, AMD suffices. I have 2 desktops. both with Sempron procesors. one is still SocketA the other, is of the next newer sockets. but it's also 3 years old, i think.

 

[time]

I see Sechs' point and I'm inclined to agree, but that's not the original question (s)he asked.

Ddrueding, I'm not surprised, but I think we'd all still like to know which brands/models ...

I don't think I've seen a robust design yet, but surely the point is that there isn't much at stake with a netbook?

 

[time]

Paugie, I'm still running a Sempron 1.8GHz. MOST of the time, it's just fine.

 

[LiamC]

When netbooks and CULV pentiums (1.1~1.3GHz single core) came out, I dug in the parts bin:
VIA 694T motherboard + Tualatin 1266MHz P!!!-S (512KB L2). Reasonable HDD but not super modern. 1.5GB SDRAM (Ebay, AU$10) and Radeon 9800. Add WinXP and it's surprisingly snappy.

Heck, swap out the Tualatin and substitute a socket 754 Sempron 3000 and it's even better. Even better, 22 degrees C when the processor is loaded (> 50% but not flat out) with the bog standard aluminium AMD heatsink. If all you want to do is browse & email, why do you need a quad core?

Caveat: I didn't try watching HD video on either rig.

System 3: 754 Athlon 64 3400+. Radeon 9600XT, Samsung HD322J ~120MB/s hard drive & Vista Business SP2. Snappy.

Caveat 2: Vista's Windows experience index gives a higher score to a Radeon 9600XT (256MB) than to a 128MB Radeon 9800SE (flashed to Pro--it was one of those BIOS castrated Pro's, not the "genuine" SE that really was a dud chip.

The moral is, people are too ready to discard "old" hardware, and then buy shiny new hardware that is little better in any objective performance measure.

 

[Buck]

I think the AMD Athlon II X2 250 still make for good budget systems. Anyone who says otherwise is a dolt.

 

[CougTek]

New english word learn of the day : Dolt

"A mental retard who is clueless not only about current events, but also has the IQ level of a rock."

 

[Santilli]

"System 3: 754 Athlon 64 3400+. Radeon 9600XT, Samsung HD322J ~120MB/s hard drive & Vista Business SP2. Snappy."

HTPC is similar, with a 3200+, and Nvidia 9600 Sparkle, and, perfect match for it, Velociraptor, with XP Pro, SP current. Also Explosion 7.1 sound card.

I recently installed a 30 gig SSD, but, for some reason, the sound control panel didn't install, and, I would need to reinstall everything. A big deal, since this doubles for the girls computer in the house. So pulled the SSD, and went back to the Velociraptor.

The speed difference is hardly noticeable in any of the things the computer is used for.
The drive was a Vertex Turbo, and, it is snappier in somethings, but the system just doesn't seem to be fast enough to really show much improvement, perception wise.
Benchmarks say the Turbo is much faster.

Suspect an old, breaking down XP disk is the cause of the lack of sound control, which is a real peta.

PS this is REALLY weird, since in my laptop, a IDE SSD seems to make a huge difference, with really poor test numbers. Kingspec SSD.

 

[LunarMist]

"System 3: 754 Athlon 64 3400+. Radeon 9600XT, Samsung HD322J ~120MB/s hard drive & Vista Business SP2. Snappy."

HTPC is similar, with a 3200+, and Nvidia 9600 Sparkle, and, perfect match for it, Velociraptor, with XP Pro, SP current. Also Explosion 7.1 sound card.

I recently installed a 30 gig SSD, but, for some reason, the sound control panel didn't install, and, I would need to reinstall everything. A big deal, since this doubles for the girls computer in the house. So pulled the SSD, and went back to the Velociraptor.

The speed difference is hardly noticeable in any of the things the computer is used for.
The drive was a Vertex Turbo, and, it is snappier in somethings, but the system just doesn't seem to be fast enough to really show much improvement, perception wise.
Benchmarks say the Turbo is much faster.

Suspect an old, breaking down XP disk is the cause of the lack of sound control, which is a real peta.

PS this is REALLY weird, since in my laptop, a IDE SSD seems to make a huge difference, with really poor test numbers. Kingspec SSD.

What is a Samsung HD322J? I don't see them listed for sale.

 

[LiamC]

Sorry HD322HJ. Spinpoint F1. 320GB platters.

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/productmodel.do?type=94&subtype=98&model_cd=238

 

[time]

New english word learn of the day : Dolt

Dynamic Older & Larger Tech-head.

 

[Buck]

Dynamic Older & Larger Tech-head.

Dodgy, Older, Lagered Techy?

 

[time]

Ah yes, that was it. You might need to add an "F" for forgetful. I think that comes out as OLDFT.