Thursday, May 10, 2007

My $1999 K10 setup

Tyan S2927 board ($280). K10 Barcelona 2P CPU ($895), buy one get one later. Still money left for 4GB registered DDR2 and one AMD 2900XT card.

No need to wait for AM2 quad.

50 Comments:

Blogger Evil_Merlin said...

Considering you still can't buy it yet, it's totally vapour for now.

In the mean time I'm perfectly content with my existing C2D and X2 boxes.

9:01 PM, May 10, 2007  
Blogger Randy Allen said...

My quad core system:

Core 2 Quad CPU, $550. ASUS or Gigabyte P965 based motherboard, $150. 8800 GTS 640 video card, $400. 2GB DDR2 memory, $100. Plenty of money left for a nice case, PSU, hard drives and optical drive all within the $2000 budget. I run pretty much that exact same system now. Incredibly quick for video encoding. It's ~75% faster than my E6600 at encoding video.

9:05 PM, May 10, 2007  
Blogger core2dude said...

I wonder how much Penryn would cost. Most likely, $995 in the early days. But if Adobe moves to support SSE4 quickly, it might be well worth it. SS4 gives 33% performance boost in video encoding over SSE4.

However, if Penryn puts X6700 or X6800 in sub-500 range, that would be well worth it.

I always thought that these "extreme edition" CPUs were not worth it. Why spend $500 more for the added 10-20% average performance? Also, you can always overclock the non-extreme CPU to give you almost the same performance.

I am thinking of building a media center PC. Any advice? I am thinking of E4400. Undervolt it, and see how quiet it can go. Also, which is better? MCE 2005, or Vista?

11:05 PM, May 10, 2007  
Blogger Amdzoner said...

Why would you buy a 2900XT? It sucks ass. AMD is officially out of the graphics business. -

12:20 AM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger Unknown said...

I am thinking of building a media center PC. Any advice? I am thinking of E4400. Undervolt it, and see how quiet it can go. Also, which is better? MCE 2005, or Vista?



I heard that Intel CPUs especially the C2D ones is not suitable for media center PC. I suggest you buy AMD5600+ which is cheaper and more reliable in terms of performance constancy compare to C2D E4400 stuffs. In fact it was proven that 5600+ required less energy compare to C2D stuffs according to this site..

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/05/04/which_is_the_best_mainstream_cpu/page11.html

Don’t worry.. All AMD64 CPUs are guaranteed running cool & quiet with Vista.
Ekekekke.. ;-)

12:34 AM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger Randy Allen said...

I am thinking of building a media center PC. Any advice? I am thinking of E4400. Undervolt it, and see how quiet it can go. Also, which is better? MCE 2005, or Vista?

Find the cheapest Core 2 Duo you can get, undervolt it and put a really quiet fan on it. You'll hardly hear it at all.

You can get a silent video card as well, something like a 7300 GT would be perfect, or you could get away with the GMA X3000 graphics on the G965 chipset boards.

That way the only fan in the system will be the CPU fan, and that will be near silent.

This system has four case fans, the video card fan and the CPU fan and I can barely hear it now. The fans get louder under a full load, but even then the noise is perfectly acceptable.

12:41 AM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger Unknown said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

1:33 AM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger Unknown said...

That way the only fan in the system will be the CPU fan, and that will be near silent.

However, don’t forget to get prepared your fire extinguisher near your pc, otherwise you may lose your house.. TQ.. Ekekeke

2:34 AM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger Unknown said...

Tell me again pHd why you think Anand is on the Intel payroll - http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2986

3:16 AM, May 11, 2007  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Tell me again pHd why you think Anand is on the Intel payroll -"

Whenever tech sites start praising Intel, they are paid pumpers and are unreliable. When they start praising AMD, its the other way around.

Pathetic.

5:56 AM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger core2dude said...


You can get a silent video card as well, something like a 7300 GT would be perfect, or you could get away with the GMA X3000 graphics on the G965 chipset boards.


The problem with X3000 integrated graphics is that the only boards with X3000 that have DVI output are in ITX form-factor. That is just bizzarre! I don't understand why they can't put it in ATX or uATX form factor, for which a lot of cool cases are available. And who would want a media PC with a VGA output?

I have a 7300GT on my other computer, but it has a fan on it. Before that, I had a Raedon 600 with a passive heatsink. But it used to crash very frequently--and the only way to get the video acceleration back was to reboot the system. Another Raedon in my office PC (don't know which one it is) keeps crashing every other day--but at least it recovers without having to reboot the system. 7300 does not crash. Are there any good passive-heatsink NVIDA cards with DVI/HDMI output?

9:01 AM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger core2dude said...

Just to clarify, I had an X600, not R600 :).

9:13 AM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger Unknown said...

Wow, AMD is getting it's ass kicked everywhere.

"Nvidia boasts that its profits soared 44% and that revenue went up 24% compared to the same time period last year. A good part of that growth can be attributed to the success of Nvidia's GeForce graphics cards, which generated year-over-year revenue growth of no less than 71%."

http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/12443

9:25 AM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger Ho Ho said...

core2dude
"Are there any good passive-heatsink NVIDA cards with DVI/HDMI output?"

Knowing how to use search functionality can be so beneficial some times :)

DX10 level with DVI
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125062
DX9 with DVI and HDMI
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127267

11:44 AM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger PENIX said...

"No need to wait for AM2 quad."

So true, since a 2 core system will obliterate every single thing Intel has on the market.

11:59 AM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger core2dude said...


Knowing how to use search functionality can be so beneficial some times :)

Having Sharikou provide a place to meet other folks is even better :).

Thanks for the DX10 link. That cards looks interesting. Overall, is Gigabyte build quality as good as EVGA? In other words, is paying extra $30 for EVGA worth it?

12:18 PM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger Ho Ho said...

core2dude
"In other words, is paying extra $30 for EVGA worth it? "

Only difference is between cooling, bundled stuff and in same cases clock speed. GPU and PCB are the same for all producers.

12:32 PM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger Evil_Merlin said...

PENIX said...
"No need to wait for AM2 quad."

So true, since a 2 core system will obliterate every single thing Intel has on the market.



Doing what? I don't think being more expensive counts for much...

1:19 PM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger Ho Ho said...

evil
"Doing what?"

Heating the room?

1:29 PM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger R said...

“Bubba said...
Wow, AMD is getting it's ass kicked everywhere."

"Nvidia boasts that its profits soared 44% and that revenue went up 24% compared to the same time period last year. A good part of that growth can be attributed to the success of Nvidia's GeForce graphics cards, which generated year-over-year revenue growth of no less than 71%."



Come on now Bubba, you know there was a channel problem directly related to the merger and as a matter of fact AMD stock price rose today due to bullish words from Nividia.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?type=hotStocksNews&storyID=2007-05-11T183121Z_01_N11480783_RTRUKOC_0_US-AMD-SHARES.xml

3:02 PM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger Unknown said...

Clearly, DAAMIT's ATI division is losing market share everywhere while Nvidia increases revenue and profit.

While AMD demonstrates quad core and DX10 video cards and talks and talks Intel and Nvidia will sell you the good today.

AMD's BK in Q2'08 is assured.

8:05 PM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger Unknown said...

More R600 benchmarks:

http://it-review.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1325&Itemid=91

In many cases two R600 cards in Crossfire are fragged by a single 8800 GTX. Pathetic. No one will buy this crap.

AMD BK Q2'08

8:09 PM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger abinstein said...

"In many cases two R600 cards in Crossfire are fragged by a single 8800 GTX. Pathetic. No one will buy this crap."

You could well change your name to "Giant FUDer".

You are what is called pathetic.

10:04 PM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger Unknown said...

Why? The results clearly show this is the case. Who would want to buy this junk when Nvidia's existing cards are far superior?

The fact that a single 8800 GTX can keep up with TWO R600 cards in many benchmarks is telling. Imagine 8800 Ultra SLI being included in those results. It would be a total Ati slaughter. First you have a card that is 10 -> 15% faster than the GTX, then you add a second.

DAAMIT has a total flop on it's hands this generation, that's for sure.

10:13 PM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger Wise lnvestor said...

Giant said...
More R600 benchmarks:
http://it-review.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1325&Itemid=91
In many cases two R600 cards in Crossfire are fragged by a single 8800 GTX. Pathetic. No one will buy this crap.
AMD BK Q2'08


That review site is a bit fishy...
Look at this :
Review on Wednesday 4xAA/16xAF, 2560x1600

And this:
Review Thursday/Friday 4xAA/16xAF, 2560x1600

Notice anything unusual? Look at FEAR GTX's scores. On Wed it was 43 frames. On Thursday/Friday it's 57 frames! Now I don't believe changing mobo can do miracles like that(+32.5% increase in performance)

Next, look at Oblivion. Wed they had 32 fps on 8800GTX. Then Thursday/Friday they got 52 fps on a single 8800GTX!! I don't know if just by changing parts alone can achieve 62.5% increase in performance...

So is prey and X3. The nvidia # have almost all been beef up...

On 8xAA/16xAF, 2560x1600 some of the # for RD600 HD look like they been cut...

Can any 1 else confirm what I see?

11:23 PM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger Unknown said...

This is to be expected. The Core 2 Duo is a far faster part than the Athlon they used on Wednesday. The Athlon CPU was a bottleneck for the video cards. The results prove that.

The results from Dailytech show the same thing:- A clean kill for the GTX.

11:30 PM, May 11, 2007  
Blogger Wise lnvestor said...

At the bottom of the page :
Very special thanks to all of the companies that supported us while we invested roughly 100 working hours on these tests, so, this one goes to OCZ, Corsair, Intel, DFI, ASUS, WD and EVGA.

I see....

12:26 AM, May 12, 2007  
Blogger Unknown said...

Intel provides some hardware from them to use for the benchmarks, is that a crime?

It doesn't matter to Intel who out of Nvidia and Ati has faster graphics; Intel is focused on low end IGPs only for now.

1:50 AM, May 12, 2007  
Blogger Unknown said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

3:23 AM, May 12, 2007  
Blogger Unknown said...

Wednesday Test

So, here's the "short" list of hardware used in our insane amount of testing, all of the platforms, all of the components:
- ASUS P5W DH Deluxe
- EVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1
- ASUS M2N32-SLI Premium
- DFI ICFX3200T2R/G
- AMD X2 6000+
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6700
- OCZ Platinum XTC PC2-8500 (2x2x1GB)
- AMD Radeon HD2900XT
- OCZ and EVGA 8800GTX
- ASUS 8800GTS 640MB
- OCZ GameXstream PSU (new revision, rewired for 8-pin PCI-E connector)
- Corsair HX620
- OCZ Vindicator coolers
- WD RaptorX's 150GB
- Pioneer DVR-110BK's

- Dell 3007WFP 30" LCD monitor (up to 2560x1600)
- Benq FP241W (up to 1920x1200)



Thursday/Friday Test

The rest of the system is the same as in the previous article, so, we used:
- ASUS M2N32-SLI Premium
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6700
- OCZ Platinum XTC PC2-8500 (2x1GB)
- AMD Radeon HD2900XT
- OCZ and EVGA 8800GTX
- ASUS 8800GTS 640MB
- OCZ GameXstream PSU (new revision, rewired for 8-pin PCI-E connector)
- OCZ Vindicator coolers
- WD RaptorX's 150GB
- Pioneer DVR-110BK's



I suggest AMD do some investigation to those sites that seems like trying to sabotage AMD stuffs, especially this site thats looks suspicious. And also investigate who is giant and what is his relationship to this site.

3:34 AM, May 12, 2007  
Blogger Evil_Merlin said...

Here we go again, poor little AMD fanboi's can't handle the truth...

It just has to be Intel trying to sabotage everything...

Nah, it couldn't be the fact that since AMD took over ATI, things have been behind the curve, short staffed and late to ship.

What a bunch of crap. Get over it. Nvidia frags the holy heck out of ATI this round.

Stop your whining and deal with it.

3:49 AM, May 12, 2007  
Blogger Unknown said...

Indeed. These AMD fanboys can't accept the fact that AMD is totally fragged by Intel and Nvidia.

AMD BK 2Q08.

4:01 AM, May 12, 2007  
Blogger xgrayz said...

QuadFather gets more from Vista then QX.
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=it_en&trurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.hwupgrade.it%2farticoli%2fcpu%2f1611%2fquad-fx-la-ricetta-amd-per-i-quattro-core_12.html
Imagine what K10 will achieve...

5:39 AM, May 12, 2007  
Blogger Ho Ho said...

wise investor
"I see...."

Is it their fault AMD did not give them HW that day?


serge
"QuadFather gets more from Vista then QX."

That is also for 32->64bit. In 64bit Core2 looses macro-op fusion that can bring performance down.

Btw, can anyone tell me what is shown on the second chart?

9:43 AM, May 12, 2007  
Blogger netrama said...

And also investigate who is giant and what is his relationship to this site.
giant, bubba , evil etc are neither fanboys nor investors...they repeat the same bs FUD over and over again and are most likely Intel paid button pushers....all their profiles are hidden as well.

4:02 PM, May 12, 2007  
Blogger abinstein said...

"Why? The results clearly show this is the case. Who would want to buy this junk when Nvidia's existing cards are far superior?"

A single test result without repeatablility shows nothing. As wise investor said, the whole setup and tests could be invalid. Nobody outside the testing party actually know what has been done, and what need to be done to repeat the experiments.

Even if its repeatable, whether they use the standard the benchmarks or data sets are not know. Also, R600 is yet to be publicly available. Making tests and your pathetic, unscientific arguments before the part is actually available for verification is FUD.

In short, you are a pathetic FUDer.

5:50 PM, May 12, 2007  
Blogger Unknown said...

http://it-review.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1325&Itemid=91

"All of the tests for HD2900XT were done with 8-37-4-070419A-046506E driver (again, the new driver came out today), AND CARDS NOT PROVIDED BY AMD."



So , who provide the cards if the R600 still not yet available for the public?????? Where the hell they get it???? AMD should not just keep quiet on this thing..

6:49 PM, May 12, 2007  
Blogger pointer said...

netrama said...


giant, bubba , evil etc are neither fanboys nor investors...they repeat the same bs FUD over and over again and are most likely Intel paid button pushers....all their profiles are hidden as well.

abinstein said...
In short, you are a pathetic FUDer.


Yeah, I concur. They only managed to quote anandtech, toms hardware, tech report, etc, and failed to quote FUDzilla, TheInq which is the reliable sites.

They also failed to judge the toms or anand content. They do not know that when toms or anand said bad about AMD or good about the Intel, it's wrong, but when they say good things about AMD, they are right.

They also stupid enough not to argue strongly when those site publish good data point for AMD. Not like the smarter AMD fans, who will argue that those are intel pumper, single test, not repeatable, etc.

9:47 PM, May 12, 2007  
Blogger Unknown said...

That is totally untrue abinstein. The facts speak for themselves. Multiple sites have confirmed the same thing, for instance:-

http://dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7052

The facts are clear: Ati has lost this round to Nvidia. Hopefully they'll come back stronger next time. Having one graphics supplier would be no good for consumers.

11:02 PM, May 12, 2007  
Blogger Unknown said...

Yeah, I concur. They only managed to quote anandtech, toms hardware, tech report, etc, and failed to quote FUDzilla, TheInq which is the reliable sites.


~Yeah.. and they are also failed to quote computing-intensive.site which is far more reliable compare to the FUD&TheInq + free from any fanboism but pro to Intel side.




They also failed to judge the toms or anand content. They do not know that when toms or anand said bad about AMD or good about the Intel, it's wrong, but when they say good things about AMD, they are right.


~Yeah.. They are just like you.. When scientia, Sharikou and those amd fanbois try to back up and point out the truth about AMD, you judge & mark them as an AMD fanbois, but when all the Intel fanbois say bad things about AMD and they are damn right to you..




They also stupid enough not to argue strongly when those site publish good data point for AMD. Not like the smarter AMD fans, who will argue that those are intel pumper, single test, not repeatable, etc.


~Yeah.. You are far superior clever compare to them to argue when those sites says good things about AMD especially when AMD says no more K8L but K10 and you are still fighting to death says no it is not K10 but Barcelona.. ;-) And who will argue that name you will mark them as AMD fanbois.

11:08 PM, May 12, 2007  
Blogger Unknown said...

What's your point pezal? Sharikou, you and others would brand us all Intel fanboys.

12:34 AM, May 13, 2007  
Blogger Unknown said...

What's your point pezal? Sharikou, you and others would brand us all Intel fanboys.


am i look so serious giant? Ekekekeke... Sharikou, scientia, me and the others are on AMD side, meanwhile you, evil and the others are on Intel side.. ;-)

Hehehehee... Damn ATI still cant compete Nvidia 8800GTX.. I bet, ATI will be back this Q3 to kick Nvidia ass.. hehehe.. Barcelona will kick Intel ass... ;-)

1:44 AM, May 13, 2007  
Blogger Randy Allen said...

am i look so serious giant? Ekekekeke... Sharikou, scientia, me and the others are on AMD side, meanwhile you, evil and the others are on Intel side.. ;-)

Correct. It's fair to say that you Sharkou, Scientia are "on the AMD side" while I, and others, are "on the Intel side".



Hehehehee... Damn ATI still cant compete Nvidia 8800GTX.. I bet, ATI will be back this Q3 to kick Nvidia ass.. hehehe.. Barcelona will kick Intel ass... ;-)


Yes, I have heard these rumors. The 65nm shrink of R600 is coming soon. The thing is that Nvidia is hardly standing still. G80 has been out for over six months. 680M transistors, plus another 70M transitors for the NV I/O chip is huge for a 90nm process. That's 750 million transistors, the biggest GPU ever. It's so big they had to split the I/O off into another chip. You can bet Nvidia is shrinking G80 to an 80nm or 65nm process to make this cheaper to produce and to increase performance plus lower power consumption. There were also rumors that Nvidia has purposely left some of the stream processors on the current G80 GPUs deliberately disabled, though I have no idea if that's true. They might try to cram a 512 bit memory interface onto a 65nm version of G80, that would give a nice boost to memory bandwidth, and really help out at 1920x1200 and above.

As for Barcelona, it's too soon to sell. AMD has been very vague with specific performance numbers. Barcelona vs. Penryn will be an interesting battle. It's sure to drive CPU prices even lower, I'm liking that!!

2:24 AM, May 13, 2007  
Blogger Evil_Merlin said...

pezal said...
am i look so serious giant? Ekekekeke... Sharikou, scientia, me and the others are on AMD side, meanwhile you, evil and the others are on Intel side.. ;-)

Actually jackass, I'm on no one's side. I'm intelligent enough to realize being a fanboi makes you look, well like a Ph(ake)d.

I use both AMD and Intel products, and it just so happens that in this battle of the war, Intel has won. It may change with AMD's next release, and it may be another Intel win when Penryn hits.

Either way its good for me, cause brand loyalty for the sake of brand loyalty is simply foolish.

7:33 AM, May 13, 2007  
Blogger pointer said...

~Yeah.. You are far superior clever compare to them to argue when those sites says good things about AMD especially when AMD says no more K8L but K10 and you are still fighting to death says no it is not K10 but Barcelona.. ;-) And who will argue that name you will mark them as AMD fanbois.

what's so wrong about this? The moment i posted the view, there was no confirmed code name, and K8L was indeed used for it (or at least this is what my AMD friend told me). I also realized recently that the K10 name is firmed for the coming AMD processor. I do not even bother to delete the post that i have and make myself looks like without error.

Yes, i was wrong about the code name? so what? is that really important? even my AMD friend was wrong about. :)

go ahead and have a look, see if i'd defend myself for what i was wrong. I'm not as smart as you all, knowing the 'twist and turn' technique inside out :)

7:41 AM, May 13, 2007  
Blogger pointer said...

~Yeah.. They are just like you.. When scientia, Sharikou and those amd fanbois try to back up and point out the truth about AMD, you judge & mark them as an AMD fanbois, but when all the Intel fanbois say bad things about AMD and they are damn right to you..

nope, it depends on the the blog contents and the reason that you visit the blog (eg. for having fun). While i'd disagree on AMD BK by 2Q 2008 and some similar note, but i won't even comment on it. The reason? if you visit this blog since last year, then you know where these terms come from. some ppl are just having fun here, making some kind of parody comment base on the host's post :)

7:55 AM, May 13, 2007  
Blogger Randy Allen said...

I think pezal is the only jackass here. wakakakakakkaka!! kekekekekeke!!

7:56 AM, May 13, 2007  
Blogger core2dude said...


While i'd disagree on AMD BK by 2Q 2008 and some similar note, but i won't even comment on it.


Why would you disagree on that? It is a distinct possibility, if Barcelona is not nearly as good as AMD claims it is.

To get out of the current mess, what AMD needs is pricing power. They simply don't have that with their aging K8 line. If Barcelona turns out to be inferior to Penryn on majority of relevant benchmarks, AMD would again be reduced to nibbling on what falls from Intel's dinner table.

In the past they have survived that way. But this time, it is different. This time they are pregnant with the ATI debt. And irrespective of how much you are eating, the fetus will suck what it needs.

5:25 PM, May 13, 2007  
Blogger pointer said...

Why would you disagree on that? It is a distinct possibility, if Barcelona is not nearly as good as AMD claims it is.

yup, any company stands a chance to BK, with certain possibility. Relatively compared to Intel, AMD has higher possibility as of current situation. But, if you look at the absolute possibility, i would think that it is still very low. Even if Barcelona is not as good as it claims, it should at least on par with the current C2D.

Anyway, it's really fun to see those AMD fanbois (not referring to genuine reasonable fans) jumps up at down with the BK statements that some of you all put :). They didn't realized (or purposely forgot) it was the host started out the BK claims on the side:)

8:26 AM, May 14, 2007  
Blogger Unknown said...

So Doctor, how's that 2900xt looking to you?

"AMD has built hardware with the performance of an 8800 GTS in a power envelope beyond the 8800 Ultra"

9:33 AM, May 14, 2007  

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