Assembly, Overclocking, And Core Unlocking
Assembly went without a hitch on the hardware side of things, but the software installation wasn’t quite as smooth.
It seemed that Gigabyte's Radeon HD 5830 cards weren’t happy with AMD's general-purpose Catalyst 10.4 drivers and required older release candidate drivers on the bundled driver CD to be properly detected by Windows. Fortunately, the new Catalyst 10.5 drivers were released during our testing, and these seem to work with the Gigabyte cards. So, we used the newer drivers for our benchmarks.
Even so, we did bump into a problem with one of our game tests, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat. This benchmark simply will not run on this system with both Gigabyte Radeon HD 5830 graphics cards installed. Turning CrossFire off in the drivers helps, but the benchmark continues to crash until the second card is physically removed from the system. This isn’t something we’ve experienced with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat in the past, so it’s a bit baffling.
After a little online investigation, we noticed that other people have problems with Gigabyte's Radeon HD 5830 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat as well. We hope it's a driver issue that can be worked out in the future.
Overclocking and Core Unlocking
Since our CPU comes from a generic Newegg order (it's not cherry-picked by the manufacturer), unlocking the fourth dormant CPU core is fair game for the purposes of this comparison. If successful, this will turn our Phenom II X3 CPU into a Phenom II X4, allowing the $1,000 system to be a lot more competitive in multi-threaded application benchmarks.
The MSI 790X-G45 motherboard allows core unlocking through a simple Unlock CPU Core option in the BIOS menu. Flicking the switch rewarded us with a fully functioning quad-core CPU, and after proving this with some tests, we moved onto overclocking.
It's hard to complain after modifying this sub-$100 CPU into a fully functional Phenom II X4, but our overclocking efforts didn’t pan out as well as we hoped. With the CPU voltage upped to 1.5V and the northbridge increased to 1.26V, our maximum overclock was 3,424 MHz. The unlocked multiplier didn't help us all that much in this case, and our highest overclock employed a 16x multiplier coupled with a 214 MHz bus speed.
While the overclocked CPU ran 624 MHz above the stock setting, our final result was only 24 MHz faster than a stock Phenom II X4 965. Then again, we're not sure any other sub-$100 CPU would have been a better choice. An Athlon II X3 440 might overclock a few hundred MHz higher, but might not core unlock at all, leaving us without that fat 6MB of L3 cache. As it is, we think this overclock will at least get us within arm's length of the stock $1,500 system's numbers from our last SBM.
Our Gigabyte Radeon HD 5830 graphics cards weren't particularly overclock-friendly in a CrossFire configuration, delivering a meek 20 MHz core overclock (820 MHz total) and a more respectable 100 MHz (1,100 MHz total/4,400 MHz effective) memory overclock. When we ran them independently, we managed to squeeze higher clock rates out of these cards (in the 875 MHz core/1,150 MHz memory range), but these higher clock speeds didn't work when the cards were paired up in CrossFire.
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When you say SBM: Enthusiast System, I am expecting this to be more than just another gaming rig. You may have your own reason for sticking to a Phenom II x3 720 and HD5830 crossfire but I believe a Phenom II x4 955 and HD5770 crossfire would make more sense or more well-balanced (instead of trying your luck by unlocking cores). In fact, we could also grab a HD5870 and downgrade our mobo a little and that would make a truly well balanced enthusiast system.
Nice CPU choice you morons. My grandma could build a more balanced system.
I'm with one-shot, 6core AMD for $200 can't be beat.
It would have been nice to see the PII X6 1055T with a moderate downgrade in GPUs to afford the higher cost of CPU and motherboard. The i7 embarrasses the PII X3.
I find it surprising that you are always successful in unlocking the 4th core
not a fan of the 5830's or the 720 cpu choice is all.
Would have rather seen a dual 5770's or a 5870 with a i5-750 or a 955
games more and more are using cpu for doing things. I also tend to use a comp for other things more then games.
Bad choice of components especially CPU and GPU
A phenom II 955 BE:160$+2 Xfx hd 5770sfor320$+GIGABYTE GA-890GPA-UD3H for 140$=620$ would certainly have been a better choice than your 670$ for CPU+GPU+mobo.
A phenom II 955 BE:160$+2 Xfx hd 5770s for 320$+GIGABYTE GA-890GPA-UD3H for 140$=620$ would certainly have been a better choice than your 670$ for CPU+GPU+mobo.
A Thermaltake V3 instead of the Antec 300 would have saved you $15
I find it surprising that you are always successful in unlocking the 4th core
I've succeeded in unlocking cores in 3 out of 3 tries, but the point stands, buy the processor you want right off the bat. Imagine if it were a dud. 1055T is the only AMD processor on the market worth thinking about.
It would have been nice to see the PII X6 1055T with a moderate downgrade in GPUs to afford the higher cost of CPU and motherboard. The i7 embarrasses the PII X3.
If you're going to make this about i7, you can point to the $2000 system and I can point out the 100% price difference. Do you really think the $2000 system is "more" than 100% better?
If you're going to make this about i7, you can point to the $2000 system and I can't point out the 100% price difference. Do you really think the $2000 system is "more" than 100% better?
This isn't about i7, but rather a better CPU choice. I would rather point to the $1500 system that the current system is being compared to. The $2000 system is twice the price, hardly comparable to a $1000 system. We both know there are marginal gains the higher the system cost is. In the graph above, it says September 2010, but I'm going to assume it was a misprint intended to be September 2009. Even so, prices have changed in that time frame.
From the stock speeds of the June 2010 $1000 SBM, to the overclocked $1500 September 2009 SBM, one can see the large difference in performance for a relatively small increase in price. Even the overclocked speeds of each system leave a lot to be desired from the PII X3 system. However, another i7 build would be more of the same. It would be nice to see something different rather than two powerful GPUs limited by a slower CPU.
From the stock speeds of the June 2010 $1000 SBM, to the overclocked $1500 September 2009 SBM, one can see the large difference in performance for a relatively small increase in price. Even the overclocked speeds of each system leave a lot to be desired from the PII X3 system. However, another i7 build would be more of the same. It would be nice to see something different rather than two powerful GPUs limited by a slower CPU.
I probably would have started the list with a n X6 1055T, but I can appreciate Don's desire to save money for graphics. Were gaming my overwhelming concern, I would have angered everyone by picking an i3-530 for its overclocking capability. Either way, I wouldn't characterize the X3 720 as an embarrassment.
That's a whooping 48,000 pesos in the Philippines, I could build a more powerful rig with locally available parts.
i5-750 or the 955 (as mentioned in another post)is where you should have gone unless you want hyper threading, in which case i recommend the i7-930 though it costs a bit more total system-wise, i would have been able to do it), or the 1055T (even if it doesn't have HT 6 physical cores is as good in my opinion, especially for the price.)
also i would have gotten the Seagate 7200.12 500GB you can find it for 42 and free shipping. my system that im building now (bought 4 JUNE)
specs:
Phenom II x4 955
ASRock 870 Extreme 3 (allows for xfire on a 870 board)
Sapphire 5770
OCZ platinum DDR3 1333 7-7-7-20
Xigmatek Midgard
$20 optical drive
Antec EarthWatts 650W 80Plus
Seagate 7200.12 500GB
Total: $742
If i added another 5770 would perform simmiler and even if i added another 5770 it would only cost $890, at that price you could also add in a good air cooler, and more fans for the excellent case i got. and i would only be at $960, oh i forgot to mention that the price includes the operating system, if i take that out (since it isn't included in the system builder marathon) the price is actually $870 for everything mentioned.
i received discounts from combos and searching Google shopping, and came up with a savings of about $210 on this system.
I really can't see why they always stick to high end crossfire and skimp on the CPU either, at $1,000 it simply doesn't make sense to me to have anything less than a Phenom II x4(or x6) or an i5-750. I'd much rather see a slightly higher end single card, or 5770's if you really insist on crossfire to make up the price difference. Then again I do a fair amount of CPU-intensive things and have yet to want to play anything that didn't run fine on my 8800GT imo, so maybe I'm biased.
I built one for under a thousand
amd x6 1055t
GTX 470
700 w Corsair
haf922
4gb 1333
gigabyte 870
dvd rw asus
and 500 gb 7200rpm
and this beats this system by a huge margin
I built one for under a thousand amd x6 1055tGTX 470700 w Corsairhaf9224gb 1333gigabyte 870dvd rw asusand 500 gb 7200rpm and this beats this system by a huge margin
How does it do that?