Advice on AMD build

[Humbug]

Hi

 

I'm helping out  a friend with an AM3+ build. CPU will either be the piledriver fx-6350 or fx-8350. I chose the higher clocked variants because he will not be overclocking so I wanted a decent clockspeed out of the box.

 

Motherboard will be a full ATX gigabyte board. But I can't choose which one. Just checking on newegg there are so many different chipsets available, which one is best? Also I noticed variations in hypertransport bandwidth from 2200Mhz to 2600Mhz; what effect does this have?

This is not an overclockers build so what would be important are a decent featureset, stability and performance, plus the best possible chance of supporting future steamroller processors..

 

ps- he will be using it for gaming, probably paired with a radeon 7850.

[david cassar]

If i were him i would get the fx 6350 and save the money for a future upgrade. 

[Godlygamer23]

The 970 chipset should work great for your friend. As for a CPU, I'd go with the 6350.

[Humbug]

If i were him i would get the fx 6350 and save the money for a future upgrade. 

Ya that's what I said; but he prefers to go 8-core. Any ideas on the how to choose an am3+ chipset?

[Godlygamer23]

Here's an MSI motherboard. 970 chipset and costs $70. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130679

[Godlygamer23]

Ya that's what I said; but he prefers to go 8-core. Any ideas on the how to choose an am3+ chipset?

The chipsets really revolve around multi-GPU abilities. The 970 chipset should work fine for him. If he decides to do Crossfire in the future, I wouldn't do more than two cards with that CPU.

[BlackOutCrisis]

Well I have to point out that if you go with a 8350 you are going to have to get a quality motherboard or else it will get throttled, has happened to multiple users on the forums here. If you decide to go with the 6350 though I would just get a 970 board because he won't be Overclocking so you will save even more money for a better GPU.

[david cassar]

Ya that's what I said; but he prefers to go 8-core. Any ideas on the how to choose an am3+ chipset?

since he is not overclocking no need to go and get the higher end 990 chipset. Get a 970 chipset .

[Humbug]

The 970 chipset should work great for your friend.

Good; I see the 990s are more expensive... are those more for overclockers?

[Godlygamer23]

Good; I see the 990s are more expensive... are those more for overclockers?

They're more about multi-GPU configs. The slots are higher bandwidth from what I remember.

[Godlygamer23]

If your friend decides to do CrossfireX in the future, this is the cheapest board I found that'll support it. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128514

[Humbug]

Thanks for the great, speedy replies....

 

Well I have to point out that if you go with a 8350 you are going to have to get a quality motherboard or else it will get throttled

By quality motherboard do you mean opting for 990 chipset instead, or simply being careful about which 970 I choose?

[BlackOutCrisis]

Thanks for the great, speedy replies....

 

By quality motherboard do you mean opting for 990 chipset instead, or simply being careful about which 970 I choose?

By quality motherboard I mean a quality 990fx because 990fx are the only ones that have enough power phases for it. I recommend going with a 990fx MSI board if you go with a 8350.

[Humbug]

By quality motherboard I mean a quality 990fx because 990fx are the only ones that have enough power phases for it. I recommend going with a 990fx MSI board if you go with a 8350.

Thanks; in that case I suppose it's wiser to opt for a 990fx. Becasue even if he is doing fx-6350 with a single GPU now... in future if he upgrades to an 8 core steamroller it may get throttled...

 

Just to clarify when you say throttled does that mean it cannot provide enough power to reach the 4.2Ghz turbo clock? Or do you mean it will actually throttle down to lower than the 4Ghz standard clock?

[BlackOutCrisis]

What happens is the power phases get over heated from the 8350 pulling so much power so they throttle the cpu under stock clocks (like down to 2ghz) so that the cpu pulls less power and the phases can cool down.

[TechFan@ic]

Here is what I'd recommend : FX 8320 + Asus M5A97 motherboard + HD 7870 Tahiti LE.

 

I wouldn't recommend an FX 6350 with the 8320 so cheap, you can run the FX 8320 on FX 8350 speeds with the stock voltage, so it's very simple all you need to do is go into the BIOS & raise the base clock to 4.0 & the boost to 4.2 & you're done. There will be no need to mess with the voltages.

 

The Asus M5A97 motherboard is the best on the 970 chipset & there is really no need to get an 990FX chipset unless your friend wants to spend money on the more expensive boards like the Asus Sabertooth or the Formula for the extra features or he intends to use two cards in Crossfire.

This Asus M5A97 board supports both rear & front panel USB3, Sata 6GB/s, UEFI BIOS & basically all the features he needs.

http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-Radeon-PCI-Express-Graphics-11199-20-20G/dp/B00AWKYB1M/ref=aag_m_pw_dp?ie=UTF8&m=A2DEYGP5YBKJ0Z
http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-M5A97-R2-0-SATA-Motherboard/dp/B008V9959O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370801035&sr=8-1&keywords=m5a97
http://www.amazon.com/AMD-FX-8320-Eight-Core-Processor-FD8320FRHKBOX/dp/B009O7YU56/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370801056&sr=8-1&keywords=fx+8320

[BlackOutCrisis]

Tech with the MSI 990fxa -gd65v2 being only 20$ more I personally couldn't justify getting the m5a97

[TechFan@ic]

Tech with the MSI 990fxa -gd65v2 being only 20$ more I personally couldn't justify getting the m5a97

There are BIOS issues with the 990fx MSI boards, that's why I generally avoid recommending them.

[iSuzak]

I can confirm it, the Asus m5a97 is really an awesome board if you're not planing to go crossfire ;)

[Alex Dimitri]

My suggestion would be:

 

FX990 with FX 8350

 

they are resonable priced (specially the CPU) you don`t need top notch board if there will be no OC !

hands down Intel combos are better but not so much when you take price difference into calculation !

[Humbug]

Hi.

My friend finished this build and he went with a GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 and FX-8350. It's very fast and feels great to use. Thanks for all the inputs.

 

I just ran Intel Burn test for 5 minutes as an initial stability test. It was stable and the max CPU temperature under load was 58 degrees C (stock cooler and not overclocked).

 

But was monitoring using coretemp during the stress test and we noticed that at any given time generally only about 4 of the 8 CPU cores were running at 4Ghz (20x multiplier). For the other cores it would drop to 17x multiplier or 3.4Ghz. Which cores were at 4Ghz kept changing fast. All this despite the CPU utilization being at 100% on all cores.

 

Is this normal behavior?