R9 290x with an 8150 w/old mobo?

Vincent Tempus

Limp Gawd
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Aug 20, 2012
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Hey everyone, one of my friends really wants to upgrade his pc soon but I am a bit unsure of how to advise him. Currently he is running an 8150@ stock, some 50 dollar mobo (I think gigabyte) and a 680 FTW. All I know is his mobo was purchased as a combo deal at microcenter when the 8150 came out.

Anyway So far I felt the best approach would be to wait for the next AMD processor release and possibly grab a 290X and a cooler to OC his current 8150 decently. I'm not entirely sure how much performance he would even gain just switching out the gpus and leaving his processor stock. Any suggestions on this matter?
 
Kaveri should be out Q1 2014 so you could wait for that and then get the 290X with aftermarket coolers in November. Or he could really hold out until AMD Pirate Island GPUs in 2014 that brings the whole new architecture but that will most likely be around the same time next year.
 
AMD has no plans in releasing processors to the AM3+ as far as I know now. Only new one CPUs coming from them in the foreseeable future are APUs, nothing like the FX line.

I doubt you will be able to clock that 8150 too far because of that $50 motherboard. If you try it'll probably blow due to not being designed to handle a load like that. BD loves sucking juice.

With all that in mind. The 680 is still a damn good card. I am guessing he has a upgrade bug. If that is the case I would tell him to get a whole new system. I think a 290X would be a waste being paired with that processor especially with no new FX processors coming and not being able to OC it. Hell he may even see a boost going to a Haswell based system with just that 680.
 
Okay we've been talking about it for a bit. Sounds like maybe waiting for that Kaveri that NickJames' suggested would be the best option. He's planning on running all AMD parts and putting that 680 into his mac tower. I wonder if there will be an 8/6 core apu from amd though..
 
A single GPU system shouldn't be that bound by an 8150. While not the fastest CPU out there, scaling is pretty nominal for mid-range to high end CPU's as games are normally GPU bound.

Example using a GTX 580 here:
CPU_03.png


I would go ahead and do the upgrade to the 290X using the old 8150 and enjoy the extra GPU horsepower :)
 
Doesn't sound like a bad idea. Maybe a small oc wont kill his old mobo, something like 4 ghz, and the 290x would be a good temporary upgrade. He's running surround(5760x1080p) right now btw.. I forgot to mention that earlier and realized I probably should have.
 
Normally I'd say overclock the 8150 but with a cheap, $50 motherboard you're not gonna get a very good overclock before it starts throttling. It could probably do 4.2 since it should do that on stock volts the UT he'd need a little better cooling. Wouldn't need anything really expensive. A Hyper 212 would don't he job.

That said, I agree with the above poster that a GTX680 is still a beast of a card and should max pretty much anything out at 1920x1080. Might just be a better idea to upgrade CPU and motherboard instead of GPU.

Off topic: what's this about no new AM3+ chips? I'm not always on the cutting edge of current events but I thought there was still going to be 1 more run of AM3+ chips coming out with steamroller. What did I miss?
 
It depends on what the "old" mobo is.
If it's anything less than an m4a89gtd-pro,Crosshair4,or TA890FXE..I wouldn't risk OCing with
any voltage increase at all on it.
If it's some 890 UD3 that would be OK.
..but Giga sucks for AMD
 
Well its old and cheap.. it was the free mobo in the microcenter bundle. I have a feeling this kid will most likely buy the R9 when it comes out and wait on getting a new cpu and mobo. Being it was the free MC board, I'm pretty hesitant to even oc that 8150 to 4 or 4.2 and on top of that he's using the stock cooler.
 
You could still sneak it up a little. Go in and set the voltage manually to 1.32V or maybe a little lower and try 4.2 which it should be able to do. Turn Turbo mode off cause it jacks the voltage up to 1.475V at the drop of a hat. Also turn the CPU/NB voltage down to 1.15V which is lower than stock (usually at 1.25V) and usually doesn't hurt stability.

Keep Cool N Quiet on instead of disabling it. That'll keep idle cores at 1.4 GHz @ .85V and only jacks the voltage up in the cores that are actually being used.

That should be doable even on a stock hest sink but of course would be better with a $30 Hyper. That would be a big help and shouldn't be a problem for that motherboard. It is possible to overclock a FX-8000 and not suck down a jigawatt of power or heat.
 
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Excellent! Thanks Mac, when he grabs the new card this information will definitely be useful for keeping the temps low. The 212 evo would be good, I agree, but I don't think he wants to spend any more money on the 8150. I know he has an interest in getting a water cooler too so if the next processors released by AMD are on the same sockets, it shouldn't be hard to find something he can just transplant when he upgrades the rest of the rig.
 
The problem is with his current motherboard and not so much with cooling in that it won't handle the power. That'll be the roadblock to overclocking more than temps will. It'll start throttling down before he ever runs out of cooling. That's why I was suggesting the Hyper. It'll handle that 8150 at his boards limits do he'd get the most out of it. Stock AMD coolers are actually pretty decent so even if he keeps it, he'll still be able to get some decent clocks on it.
 
A single GPU system shouldn't be that bound by an 8150. While not the fastest CPU out there, scaling is pretty nominal for mid-range to high end CPU's as games are normally GPU bound.

Example using a GTX 580 here:
CPU_03.png


I would go ahead and do the upgrade to the 290X using the old 8150 and enjoy the extra GPU horsepower :)

Nice single player benchmarks :rolleyes: that 8150 will bottleneck the shit out of a 290x in a bunch of titles. Intel quad would smoke it.
 
Yea.. That's why I was asking about ocing it on the stock cooler. Im not even sure if the stock 8150 is fully using the gtx 680 ftw 4g he has. I haven't had enough time to test out the rig but I would like to be a bit more prepared on what to do if he just shows up with the R9. I know hes going to do it in steps though so I wanted to get a few opinions on the matter. Oh again he also uses 5760x1080 so I again have no idea how that effects cpu performance. For all I know, he may already be up shits creak with that 8150 and may need a complete upgrade.
 
I'd like to see some BF4 benchmarks with Mantle before I start hollering bottleneck. Too many people yell bottleneck on the forums for no apparent reason. The most advanced games run fine on on my FX-8120 and they will definitely run fine on his system.
 
Nice single player benchmarks :rolleyes: that 8150 will bottleneck the shit out of a 290x in a bunch of titles. Intel quad would smoke it.

Mantle changes the game of the IPC race once its out for BF4.
people changing cpu from intel high end to amd 8350 tells the story, it works just great.

do you notice 5 fps difference in between different videocard brands?
its what review and benchmarks shows one card is faster than the other, and while that might be true you wont notice difference in the game playing it.
hardocp testing shows that different cards give the same playing experience.

percived value vs actual value.
 
I'd like to see some BF4 benchmarks with Mantle before I start hollering bottleneck. Too many people yell bottleneck on the forums for no apparent reason. The most advanced games run fine on on my FX-8120 and they will definitely run fine on his system.

yea my opinion is amd is changing their whole business to remove the Intel/Nvidia difference from the market due to Mantle changes the workloads with games.
its might even be feasible to see a 8core amd for BF4 to beat the Intel system with >mantle.

seeing what a 290x can do Mantle will be interesting to see in action.
 
LOL who has switched from intel to AMD. Doesnt matter what mantle does. Does cuda make games faster when its not supported. Intel is still faster no matter how much crap AMD offloads onto the gpu to make their cpus not seam so slow. Anybody who changes from intel high end to 8350 must have loast a bet or something.
 
Yea there is quite a bit of unknowns when it comes to upgrading right now. It's the whole reason I'm having these difficulties helping my friend with his purchases. He does prefer AMD so I'm almost 92% sure he would purchase their next cpu unless it is a complete turd. I think hes banking on AMD taking back the performance crown with mantle so hes not even considering an intel processor. Honestly if it was me and I wanted to stay AMD, I would just grab an evo and the 290x and sit tight for the next cpu.

Before I settled with this 4930k I tested out a 8350 and maximus board and was not really impressed with the performance compared to my old 3770K. When I had the 8350 cranking at 4.8 it felt relatively the same as my 3770k. This little bit of testing made me worry about him trying to game on that 8150 at stock using something like a R9 290x. I feel like without any of the updates AMD will be releasing, he may install that new gpu and get the same performance as the 680 he has now. The way I see it, from what I know about the 290x, its similar to pairing a cpu with a titan. Who here would even pair an 8150 with a gpu that powerful then not overclock it?
 
Even with the 8150 being slower than an Intel chip, its not like the 290X wont work at all with the 8150. A 290X with a 8150 will still be faster than a GTX680 with a 8150. End of the day youre still coming out with considerably better frame rates and when he does upgrade his motherboard and CPU to Intel or the new AMD chips (assuming they even have any), he'll be set in the GPU department. Get the 290X, put a mild overclock on the 8150, enjoy the better performance and then later on, upgrade to a proper motherboard and CPU.
 
LOL who has switched from intel to AMD. Doesnt matter what mantle does. Does cuda make games faster when its not supported. Intel is still faster no matter how much crap AMD offloads onto the gpu to make their cpus not seam so slow. Anybody who changes from intel high end to 8350 must have loast a bet or something.

Mantle works with AMD hardware :). And yes you can't make up for the difference but you can however optimize it beyond what is possible today using DX.

CUDA is something totally different you are talking compute vs thin layer api gpu commands.

AMD cpu are not slow. just that software tends to have 0 optimizations for AMD. If you ever seen Linux benchmarks you know this.

Mantle promises thin layer API for the gpu and allows other optimizations for AMD. And it makes no sense to do this for small 15 to 20 percenty increase.
 
We'll see how xfire benchmarks go with mantle and 8350. My guess is intel will still win. Intel is considerably faster by huge numbers when it comes to multiplayer battlefield or crysis. Like massive difference.
 
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