Well, as some of you know, I purchased an AMD FX 6100.

Well, I've overclocked it and I get 35 fps average in GTA 4 in 1080p@60Hz with VSync on, 4X MSAA + 4X Anisotropic filtering and all settings maximum. This is during combat/action/explosions.

The only thing I can't push to very max is "View Distance", because of VGA memory limitations.

Skyrim runs GREAT on full settings as well.

Highest temp has been 41C, and I'm at 4.2GHz

No hiccups or stutters. Alt+Tab and multitasking is effortless. I suppose I could post results, so I might do that, but just wanted to point out to all the negative-nancies, "I win, so eff u".

By 'win', I mean succeeded in building a rig that fit my requirements/desires without letting the gawd-awful criticism ruin my optimism.

Bulldozer may not be the i7, or even i5 "destroyer", but I have no qualms with the cpu. 140 bucks was definitely worth it in my book.

Getting Battlefield 3 installed tomorrow, let y'all know how it runs on highest settings, and maybe with a recording device.

Might clock higher, but feel I have no need - Very satisfied!

This is running on an ATi Radeon HD 5770 low-profile 1gb card overclocked (by about 4 percent) with temps of about 43C

The ONLY thing I would have changed about my setup is maybe the motherboard (didn't want to pay nearly 100 bucks more for newest tech/PCI-e 3.0) and processor; Kinda wishing I would have went with an FX 8120 instead, but not bummed over it.

That's good, dude. Don't let these bastards ruin your fun.

omg your computer sucks you need to immediately buy an i7 2 GTX590s and 48GB of RAM with SSDs and Seagate HDs

Give Jim his account back, Tibby.

Haha there's a concept, Tibby with control of Jim's account

i think i should also make a thread about it on yospos

I'm glad your happy with your rig lightside.

I'm glad to see this week's new Q&A with my new rig.

Google + +1

This thread is useless unless it is cross posted to SA. Where's tibby?

My god... he's not posted in nearly a week. I miss him already.

Alone, afraid, and on fire... hopefully.

CM silently perma-banned him

Why didn't you get the 8 core?

Also, my Athlon64 3700+ is clocked at 3.9

A little out of my price range. If I would have went with that, I might as well have gotten a new gfx card. :p

FYI Lightside, Don't know if you saw this yet- MS released the 2nd part of the Bulldozer TaskScheduler fix. MS had released part of it earlier but then pulled it off their site saying it was incomplete. Even now you might want to wait until more people report results.

http://blogs.amd.com/play/2012/01/11/early-results-achieved-with-amd-fx-processor-using-windows®-7-scheduler-update/

Basically it helps in situations were less than half your total cores are being used. If you do decide to try it and get a 'Not applicable to this computer' error, try making sure Windows Update has installed all the other updates first.

Basically it parks every other core until there is enough load that the extra ALU will help. I bet you'd get even better performance if Windows just never scheduled anything to the other cores though, due to the high contention for the shared components, but I doubt AMD's marketing department would like it if Windows saw their brand new CPU as advertised_cores / 2.

Thanks for a more precise explanation. The performance gains people are reporting so far are pretty minor, but every little bit helps.

This is one of the better Q&A with my new rigs we've had recently.

Well, here are videos. Dunno why fraps isn't working, it RECORDED the video. lol I don't have full version, though..

Battlefield 3 full settings

200mb video:
http://www.adrive.com/public/cb1fb7485238244d9b9bf4d973dbae142e462aa9781dd6732d7fce8871d4fc6d.html


30mb settings vid:
http://www.adrive.com/public/1fd3026c02e33af1babd87cfcadf321e1d41887f77f4fc993f2bdfbb37ee3a07.html

computer architecture is a fun subject, I wish it came up more often (i.e. at all.)

Wow that's some surprisingly good performance. Your poor little 5770 must be exhausted.

Heh, yeah, that's what I was thinking. The max I've seen its temps even after a minor overclock is about 52C (5770)


So for all those saying the FX 6100 is OMGAWFUL.... no, it's not. Not for the price, either.

8200-series will be about ~175 soon, and benchmarks on those are a bit of a jump from 6100

It's a cheap(er) 'alternative' to an i7. Not QUITE as powerful, but definitely cheaper.



I have no regrets on what I got.

It's really really awesome that you're happy with your purchase... but yeah, sorry, it is. The fact that your CPU satisfies your needs does not change the fact that it was very badly designed.

I doubt AMD will ever be able to clock a Bulldozer high enough to compete with Sandy Bridge i7s. Even if it is possible, I doubt Bulldozer will be manufactured long enough for us to find out.

mmk.

also fyi I've taken (and aced) graduate-level computer architecture courses so if you are interested in learning more about why your CPU was a bad choice I would be happy to teach you.

Well thankfully I can come right out and say that you're insane if you think it's a fine purchase. Factually. Considering you could spend identical money on a different CPU and get better performance, you would have to be crazy. Also, you are using gaming performance as a judge for CPU, which is absolutely ridiculous in most games.

I'm glad you're not terribly upset with it, but I can't fathom how you can have no regrets. It's like buying a candy bar, when if you'd actually done some research, you could have bought a much larger candy bar for the same money.

post it, fgt

Nah, that's fine. I'm glad you are happy with being smart and all, but I don't care to learn that right now.

The "mmk" was a simple affirmation. Nothing more, nothing less.

Knowledgeable, not smart. There's a difference. Being knowledgeable is why I know a lot about computer architecture. Being smart is why I bought an Intel CPU.

[sub][sub]Was that too much?[/sub][/sub]

Just right.

No, not too much. If it was too much I might shut down and cry for days on end.

And pretty sure knowledge & smarts are the same thing, unless you were just trying to be OH-SO-WITTY (which is also characterized as 'smart')


If my processor is the worst choice, how come it beats my friend's Phenom II X6? He has the same setup except faster memory [same amount] and bigger PSU.

the X6 1100T is SUPPOSED to beat mine when it comes to games, especially.

Maybe I just got lucky?

Answer me that, oh knowledgeable one.

Or, your best guess will do....

If he has that CPU, then his CPU DOES beat yours. I have no idea what gives you the idea that it doesn't. Several well made, intelligent benchmarks have proven this.

Seriously, this isn't just some crap we're making up. It's based on proper, standardized testing methods by trusted people in the tech world. Any anecdotal evidence you could come up otherwise could be explained away as not being a proper comparison (software differences, hardware differences, improper testing methods, not understanding how to benchmark a CPU, etc).

Intelligence != Knowledge != Smarts

It's not a matter of being witty.

There's obviously a lot of different variables involved in your comparison, you are overclocked to 4.2ghz is your friend's 1100T stock (3.3ghz)? Im guessing your friend doesnt have the exact same motherboard or videocard either. Obviously what games you are testing affects the results too - some games are CPU limited and others are GPU limited.

But there are alot of reviews showing the 1100T outperforming Bulldozer cpu's in games at stock settings.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-fx-8120-6100-4100_6.html#sect0

And the only benchmarks where the Bulldozer outperforms are not useful for benchmarking modern general-purpose computers (Whetstone, Dhrystone.)

The closest you're going to get is SPEC CPU* or SPECint. Review sites don't like them because running them and analyzing the results is more involved.

Edit: lol, intel did it for them http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2011q4/
Guess that's why AMD pulled out of SPEC, saying it's owned by Intel.

I apologize for my snark comments, but I guess I just can't get my head around why the FX is so terribad. Yes, AMD made it out to be more powerful than it really is. Sure, it's not an i7, but I can go toe-to-toe with buddies' i5s.. I suppose I am just defending my purchase, but I usually see past my decisions and reasoning. That's why it's so frustrating for me.

The last thing I can say is that every game I own runs without any hiccups [unless it's BF3 ultra, in that case I need a better gpu] and that it operates smoother than any of my friend's and co-worker's rigs. I must just have everything finely tuned or a good combination or both.

So in the end, I guess the smart thing to do would be to concede.

I never claimed to be smart though...

hahaha. Finally got home so I could look at the SPEC results more closely. Mother of Christ, Intel is a bunch of *******s. They basically did everything they could to make sure the AMD CPU was operating at its best performance.

Celeron G540 at 2.5 GHz (dual core), systems integrator grade motherboard, 2 GB RAM on a 1 TB hard drive: 27.7 spec score.
AMD FX-8150 with Turbo CORE technology 4.2 GHz (8 cores), $200 badass ASUS gaming motherboard, 8 GB RAM, SSD: 22.3 spec score.

Same software, neutral compiler (Visual Studio 2008.) AMD FX-8150 gets its ass handed to it by a $60 budget CPU.

So Intel's saying their celeron can beat up an fx81XX, according to the results?

First, here's how SPEC scores work: SPEC CPU is a suite of a whole bunch of different benchmarks, which are intended to represent a typical workload for a desktop computer (note: games are not representative for several complex reasons.) You have stuff like script interpreters, compilers, file compression, pathfinding, game AI, quantum mechanics simulation, and kernels from frequently-used real world applications - the idea is, even if you don't actually run these programs yourself, the programs that you do run are approximately similar. You run each of these benchmark programs an odd number of times (more than three) and take the median result, then divide it into the reference time for that test from some old computer (usually something like an Alpha or SPARC) and then finally take the geometric mean of all of the scores.

The SPEC score implies the mean speedup for the Celeron G540 over the reference machine is greater than the speedup for the FX-8150. This means, yes, their Celeron can beat up an FX-8150.

If you look at the breakdown, the Celeron G540 is significantly faster than the FX-8150 in every test except for bzip2 (I'm pretty sure this is because bzip2 is I/O bound.)

It has nothing to do with tuning. Game performance is 95% video card, especially at higher resolutions. You think your CPU is good because it handles some games, but the reality is that other CPUs would do the same given the same video card. Hell, I can run Skyrim on my pc at near max as well, only my video card holds me back. And I have a Core 2 Duo.

All we can do is educate you for the future since you couldn't return it. Always, ALWAYS research beforehand. There's a damn good reason a supposedly high end CPU is under $200: because it is god awful.