Wanted 4Ghz of Phenom power, which board??

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Dr. Righteous

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I have come to realize that my old first gen Phenom is really costing me a lot of time when I'm up against a large project with a lot of rendering to do.

I have read that many have successfully pushed the Phenom x6 CPUs to the 4Ghz mark.

What MB is ideal for this (power and stability) and also which Phenom x6 would you guys recommend??
 
Wait for Bulldozer. Or if you can't wait, go to the 2600K.
 
All desktop CPU's are based off of server CPU's. It's just this time, the desktop version is being released first, then the server version will be released later.

Either way, the least it will provide is lower operating temperatures and lower power consumption for the same amount of power as compared to Phenom II's. Best case scenario includes a much higher IPC to at least match Nehalems, and maybe even Sandy Bridge (unlikely). Overclocking should also be much better, and multitasking should also be better than Nehalems.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
I have come to realize that my old first gen Phenom is really costing me a lot of time when I'm up against a large project with a lot of rendering to do.
Click to expand...

Like everyone is saying wait for the bulldozer it's going to be out in probably a month or two.

If not get a 2600K with a z68 chipset from intel, that will be out on the 8th of may.
 
See sig. 3.8Ghz at 1.39 volts The Asus built boards that I tried all went pop with this setup. This will do 4.0 Ghz at 1.46 volts, but it's not worth the added heat that it creates for me.
 
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Dr. Righteous said:
I have come to realize that my old first gen Phenom is really costing me a lot of time when I'm up against a large project with a lot of rendering to do.

I have read that many have successfully pushed the Phenom x6 CPUs to the 4Ghz mark.

What MB is ideal for this (power and stability) and also which Phenom x6 would you guys recommend??
Click to expand...

what type of rendering....

or other stuff, I would recommend a 2500k/2600k OC'd to 4.5-5ghz, but if your application wants more cores? google for benchmarks?
 
paperwastage said:
what type of rendering....

or other stuff, I would recommend a 2500k/2600k OC'd to 4.5-5ghz, but if your application wants more cores? google for benchmarks?
Click to expand...

Video rendering and transcoding the H.264 codec.
Video codecs will use 100% of all cores available.
But in the near future I hope to upgrade to a HD camcorder that will require much more crunching power for video. The more cores and the faster; the better.
 
Depending on what software ya use, there's intel's quick sync for transcoding which is crazy fast.

There's also cuda / ati's version that speeds up transcoding.

My gtx 460 using cuda was way faster then my i7 860 was at it.

I guess the point is that you might be able to accelerate video transcoding via a different manner then just the cpu
 
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Spudsdude said:
Depending on what software ya use, there's intel's quicksync for transcoding which is crazy fast.
Click to expand...

Believe me; dealing with video you want to avoid as much proprietary software as you can.
That is why I do all my video work with Linux.
Rather stick with AMD on this one.
 
I have to agree with some of the posters here. Wait for Bulldozer. If you buy now, the best you can get is a 890FX chipset with a AM3+ socket. There's speculation all over the place that the older chipset won't completely support all the functions of Bulldozer. Right now the rumor train is running at full force. Patience will be your best ally. But if you absolutely need a 6-core now, get an FX board that fully supports all the current functions of 6-cores. READ, READ, READ. I wasted a lot of time and money on Asus and an Asrock FX board. All claimed full support, but none survived the overclock. Any video rendering that put the cores at full tilt killed the boards. Voltage regs went pop. Luckily that was all that it had killed.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
Video rendering and transcoding the H.264 codec.
Video codecs will use 100% of all cores available.
But in the near future I hope to upgrade to a HD camcorder that will require much more crunching power for video. The more cores and the faster; the better.
Click to expand...

Spudsdude said:
Depending on what software ya use, there's intel's quick sync for transcoding which is crazy fast.

There's also cuda / ati's version that speeds up transcoding.

My gtx 460 using cuda was way faster then my i7 860 was at it.

I guess the point is that you might be able to accelerate video transcoding via a different manner then just the cpu
Click to expand...

apparently the QuickSync doesn't give the most settings(bitrate) etc... but you can search for yourself

though the 2600k does pretty well on h264... 32.2fps vs 27.41fps on a Phenom X6.... imagine the gain with a 4.5ghz OC or better. a X6 cant reach so high of an OC vs the intel Sandy Bridges

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/16


most h264 related benchmarks show 2500k/2600k a good buy over AMD

go search for the specific program u use + 2500k benchmarks
 
1090t IS AWESOME; I'm at 3.8Ghz @ 1.425 volts and less than 41 C.

why run faster? over 4ghz is OK with 1.5 volts and less than 45 C.

See board below. Plus, Asus sends rebates FAST
 
Don Wong said:
1090t IS AWESOME; I'm at 3.8Ghz @ 1.425 volts and less than 41 C.

why run faster? over 4ghz is OK with 1.5 volts and less than 45 C.

See board below. Plus, Asus sends rebates FAST
Click to expand...

I got 4.2 ghz with 1.45 volts... and 3.6 ghz with 1.3 volts...
 
The board I have in my sig isn't very fancy but it has an 8-pin CPU power connector which allows it to take quite a bit of power for the CPU. I have found it very effective in overclocking an X4 955 to 4.0Ghz. It would probably overclock an X6 very well.
 
I encode video for my anime streaming site shitteru2.net, and I have a Phenom II X6 1055T at 3.7GHz, 1.525V with all cores running full bore. Anything higher than that and it's not 24/7 stable (I admit, probably not a very good sample, but hey, 900MHz for free). This is on a Asus M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3. Initially when I changed the cooler from a top down blower to a tower style cooler it would throttle down to 2GHz for some time because the VRMs were getting very hot, the chokes in particular would burn my finger. I made a baffle for the rear exhaust fan on my case, pointed the fan inwards, and the VRMs are now cool and the CPU never throttles. Temperatures are 50C load with 15C ambient and a Alpenfoehn Brocken cooler. Setup is documented here on my blog. Pictures of the overall system as well.

My main tool is Avisynth and MeGUI. You definitely want to avoid as much proprietary crap as possible when encoding video. In my case, it's mostly because proprietary software doesn't load .avs scripts, which I need to hardsub the subtitles into the video. This is one reason why Intel's Quick Sync does absolutely nothing for me. Unfortunately, Dark Shikari (x264 dev) is quite against using any form of hardware acceleration in x264, he claims they all suck, Quick Sync included. The thread's on doom9 somewhere. So I don't think I'll be going for a SB for video encoding anytime soon.

I encode with pretty high quality settings (--crf 23, --merange 24, --me umh, 5 bframes and reframes, --b-adapt 2) and I get about 60-80 fps with a bilinear resizer in the script, using around 90% of the CPU. There's a bottleneck in there (probably the resizer, I'm not using AvisynthMT because it's a bitch to setup) but I usually start encoding the episodes while I watch them myself, and since they finish encoding when I'm halfway done with the episode I don't really mind.
 
I think you are doing something majorly wrong if you require 1.525v for 3.7 ghz. My 1090T runs at 3.7 ghz with only 1.35v, and hits 4.2 at 1.45.

I think you need to lower your RAM, HT, and NB multipliers.
 
Sure, mine can do 3.7GHz on 1.3V too, if there's 0% CPU usage. But when I put a load on the CPU, for instance folding or anything CPU intensive, the motherboard cranks up the voltage to 1.525V to compensate for Vdroop. If I turn off CPU LLC, the voltage drops down 0.1-0.2V and it locks up hard a few seconds later.

Plus, if I set the voltage any lower, for instance 1.4625V, it's not stable either. Did you check your voltages while your CPU is loaded?

Also if I lower my NB multiplier, I'm afraid that might take away from some of the performance benefit I got from overclocking it, because the NB speed also influences performance quite a lot (there's this Anandtech page that I'm too lazy to look up). For some weird reason, my motherboard refuses to POST when I set the RAM multiplier to anything other than the default, but it doesn't matter because the RAM passed memtest86 at BCLK 286MHz while the CPU wasn't perfectly stable at that point. Which means it has more headroom than the CPU.
 
How about posting your exact settings? Because my motherboard only does 1.365v in CPU-Z under load for 3.7 ghz. Without any problems whatsoever. Voltage is set to auto (default), LLC set to full. In windows, my processor voltage never goes above 1.38v, and that's only when it's coming off load.

What is your NB multiplier at? Most, if not all Phenom II's will not do more than 2.4 ghz NB speed without increasing CPU/NB voltage. That is probably your culprit right there, you need to increase CPU/NB voltage rather than CPU voltage.
 
At 265MHz*14: kept CPU multiplier the same, CPU NB frequency lowered to 1855MHz, HT Link also lowered to 1855MHz. CPU voltage set to 1.45V ([email protected] is 1.425V), CPU/NB voltage increased to 1.30V from 1.175V. Under load the LLC will make the voltage around 1.48V or something, and it will fail LinX after 5-6 runs. Next step up is 1.475V, and when you load that the LLC cranks up the voltages beyond 1.525V, up to 1.548V. Temperature difference compared to 1.45V - around 4 degrees C.

There, you cost me a day's worth of folding. I believe it will do just fine at 275MHz*13.5 though, the NB (at 2750MHz in this case) seems like it can take higher speeds than the cores. The 13.5 mult keeps core speeds around the same level as 265*14.
 
That is really interesting. Guess you did end up with a crap Phenom II 1055T.
 
I really dont think board matters, I owned ~20 am3 chips. My monitor has a new ghetto lift comprised of 4 am3 boxes.

The best ones I had I tried on a $70 gigabyte 880gm-ud2h board, and on the top of the line 890fxa-ud7 board I had....

They hit the same exact clocks at the same voltage
 
I can vouch for the Crosshair III with my 1090T at 4.0, w/ 1.49v ..... i can get high i know, just need a better overclocker, 790FX chipset is at its limits here it seems.....
 
Dozer will be out in about 25 days or something like that. Just wait. Im gonna sell my 2500K HTPC and get a bulldozer instead if the price is right.

And if they somehow beat the 2600K clock for clock core for core I will sell this instead and get a bulldozer.
 
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