Phenom II 1100T system - upgrade or replace?

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dalewb

dalewb

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Hello, need some advice from you all.

I am looking to upgrade or replace this system:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor
Motherboard: ASRock 890FX Deluxe5 ATX AM3+ Motherboard
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($166.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 290X 4GB Video Card
Power Supply: Antec 750W 80+ Platinum Certified ATX Power Supply ($108.00 @ Newegg)
Total: $274.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-30 04:49 EDT-0400

My intended upgrade is to the level of a AMD FX 9590 or higher CPU. I don't believe my MB can support that CPU so am unsure of what my options are. It's funny that while reading the reviews on Newegg of the FX 8370, most of the reviewers were upgrading from my processor model and were describing the performance as "incremental." That's not what I want - I've had the 1100T for about 4 years now and it's time to get caught up with modern tech. Incremental just won't cut the mustard in my opinion. Thanks for the help :)
 
Solution
M
Some chips just don't overclock well, and at the end of the day, overclocking is often impractical anyway.

If you've lost interest in overclocking, I would advise consideration of an E3-1231V3 on an H97 motherboard. I see no reason not to keep your memory, It can probably be run at 1600-11@1.5V without any issues. CPU+MOBO will set you back about $350. You can probably sell your 1100T+MOBO for ~$200+ on ebay. Thubans have held their value extraordinarily well.
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mdocod

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If you overclock the 1100T to ~4ghz, and overclock the CPU-NB on that sucker to ~3ghz, then you'll have already taken almost all of the possible "incremental" performance step that could be realized with a CPU upgrade on the AM3+ platform. Real-time workload performance of an 1100T that has been performance tuned like this can be very comparable to an FX-83XX/9370. A big chunk of the performance scaling comes from the CPU-NB overclock, which has a strong effect on stars architecture CPUs with L3 cache, but almost no effect on bulldozer/piledriver architecture CPUs. Unfortunately, you won't find many 3rd party test results comparing thuban to piledriver with thuban properly performance tuned.

To be quite honest, the only useful upgrade path you have at this time, is to haswell. Thubans are still strong chips for the right workloads if you don't care about compute efficiency. If you need more execution throughput available to a single thread, or better compute efficiency, haswell is the only thing that will really make a useful step at this time.
 
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dalewb

dalewb

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CPU cooler is a ZALMAN CNPS9700 LED. It has done a pretty good job, but overclocking the processor was just way too problematic for me. I worked on it off and on for months before finally getting a stable overclock to 3.8-4 Ghz. Even then, I found the processor would overheat all the time, getting into the low-mid 60s, and would freeze, crash, and blue screen the PC. Since back then I was using this PC for 3D modeling and rendering I couldn't tolerate the instability and hassle with the overclock and so have been running it at stock speeds for the last couple years.

Would overclocking the fx-8370 be worth the trouble?

I have a Thermaltake Big Water 760 IS sitting around looking for something to do...
 
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amd4lif3

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you should be getting good temps with the ZALMAN CNPS9700 LED make sure you have thermal paste applied correctly . because its a good cooler should be no freezing , also use a guide for overclocking you may be doing it wrong
 
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dalewb

dalewb

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Man I would love to get an expert over here to show me what I did wrong because I'm not a newbie by any measure. I've read many articles on applying thermal paste and have purchased many types over the years. I've studied articles detailing specifics on how to overclock Thubans and followed them to the letter. My experience with this particular processor on this motherboard with the cooler I have been using with correctly-applied thermal paste has been disappointing and problematic. I'm not interested in messing with it any further. It's currently running at 3.3Ghz and is rock solid, which is the way I like it. But you're right, I should be getting better results. Wish I knew why that isn't the case.

I will say that Zalman cooler has been on there since the day I installed it. I applied a pea-shaped bit of thermal paste on the CPU and the heatsink and carefully spread both to cover the entire heat spreader. I know some will argue just put a pea-shaped amount on there and then press them together, but I don't think that has been proven to be significantly more effective at dissipating heat than spreading.

At the end of the day, I've had a good run with my 1100T but I'm ready to move on. I'm not all that excited about overclocking. My research has shown that a Haswell system would cost me upwards of $500. I might be able to sell my 1100T, motherboard and 16GB ram on ebay for $350-425. I wish I could have made AMD work, but their stuff is just way too outdated now. If I could put an fx-9590 in my motherboard, I would do that in a heartbeat.
 
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mdocod

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Some chips just don't overclock well, and at the end of the day, overclocking is often impractical anyway.

If you've lost interest in overclocking, I would advise consideration of an E3-1231V3 on an H97 motherboard. I see no reason not to keep your memory, It can probably be run at 1600-11@1.5V without any issues. CPU+MOBO will set you back about $350. You can probably sell your 1100T+MOBO for ~$200+ on ebay. Thubans have held their value extraordinarily well.
 
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dalewb

dalewb

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Huh. It's an i7 without the graphics core, very interesting - I like it! I am still rolling around the idea of getting an FX 8370 and tinkering with it a bit, but if I have some extra cash I would take your suggestion my second option. Thanks for the help you and everyone else :)
 
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