My main system is a Phenom II X6 1055T running on a Gigabyte MA78LMT-US2H with 4GB of Corsair Value RAM… It’s overclocked slightly and runs stable at 3.5GHz. (250 x 14)
Had been thinking of upgrading one of my other systems to a Hex core, but didn’t really want to spend too much.
First upgrade was motherboard and memory. I quite like Gigabyte stuff so another MA78LMT-US2H was acquired, along with another 4GB of that Corsair DDR3 stuff - it seems to work well with my HEX core…
Then started looking at Quad Core Phenom II Blacks instead of a Hex core, but didn’t really want to pay too much… Just by chance I came across an ad over on avforums.com for a 955BE that was for sale, unused and in a sealed box - the guy had bought it and never used it. A deal was done for £75 delivered and it was soon in my possession.
I put it all together and then left it overnight running on stock just to make sure it behaved itself. Then the itch started to see how it would perform with the AMD Overdrive utility…
Kicked off Overdrive and sat watching it whilst it slowly ramped up the settings… It eventually reached 4.307Ghz on stock voltage… impressive!!! Played around abit and would boot and load Windoze at 4.35GHz but then BSOD
I have now settled at 4.2GHz with default voltages… And it is quite happily munching away at Docking units… looks like it’ll do over 6K per day easy…
The upgrade has cost a total of £150 and I am well impressed by the results. Had read about some of these 955BE reaching 4.2GHz but with more expensive motherboards and tweaked voltages… I must have got a good un!!!
Have done a wee bit more upgrading as a result of the 955BE system build…
I was using a Dell C521 as a HTPC… well, that has been replaced as a result of component swaps and some wheeler dealering…
Was given a cheapo ASUS “branded” mATX case which then got my Gigabyte M68M-S2P freed up from my 955BE build, The 955BE build also freed up a Phenom X4 9550 to replace the Athlon X2 5000 used in the Dell. I then added the HD4350GFX card, HDD and DVD-RW from the Dell and added a bargain priced Auzentech X-Mystique 7.1 sound card which I got for £10 off avforums.com. A Xigmatek S963 CPU cooler has been used and that is fitted with a nice and quiet Noctua 92mm fan (Cheers DaveS) meaning it’s very quiet, even under full load.
My “upgraded” HTPC now has optical out to my AV Amp, and looks much better in a black case rather than the silver and white combination of the Dell…
A bit more wheeler dealering has meant the cost of my upgrades has been reduced. I managed to sell my Phenom X4 9650 for £55 meaning the 955BE effectively only cost me £20!!!
Got another slight upgrade about to be performed, after some more wheeler dealering… sold the C521 Motherboard and power supply on fleabay, the proceeds which have now gone towards a BNIB Gigabyte GTS450 gfx card which i got on a winning bid of £47!!!
Going to do a wee bit of GPUGRID crunching with it, as a side project to Docking.
Just made another upgrade… Using the proceeds of the CPU/mobo/RAM i’ve just sold to BigSheff I have just acquired an EVGA GTX550ti and it is now in my X6 system and merrily crunching away on GPUGRID…
It’ll probably be my last upgrade for a while, except perhaps for a larger HDD.
BD performance per thread is apparently worse than the PhenomII, however you do get more threads so depending what you’ll be using it for, you may be very happy, or quite disappointed
From the early reviews the architecture doesn’t sound that crunching friendly unless you like a lot of integer work only. The shared single FPU per two integer units have made people compare it to a 4 core Sandy Bridge with HT, and there 'dozer loses more often than not. And power consumption isn’t great either. All in, it sounds like getting either get a SB or x6 and clocking the nuts of them will be far better bang for crunching buck.
The Asus M5A88-V EVO motherboard is tempting me… onboard graphics + 2 PCIe X16 slots plus it’s Bulldozer compatible so upgrade path is there. Probably order one next week.
The BD I fancy is the FX 8120 Black Edition, rather than the 8150…
What it does in boinc rather depends on the specific project I’d imagine. As as before if it uses lots of integer instructions it should be ok, but fpu heavy calcs would likely do poorly.
The Asus M5A88-V EVO has arrived… just waiting for another couple of bits to arrive now.
Sold the Phenom II 945/ Asus mATX board I was using in my HTPC… this has been upgraded with the “repaired” MA78LMT-US2H and 955BE… With it being in a small case I’ve dropped the clock it to 3.5GHz and under-volted which has dropped the temps a good few degrees.
Using the proceeds from that I have acquired a 1090T BE… this will go with the M5A88-V board as my main system, with the 1055T getting swapped into what was the 955BE rig…
Will be interesting to see what I can get out of the 1090T… The M5A88-V has the ideal VRM stage (8+1) for a good overclock…
And I’ve got a GTX460 coming as well… :Plot:
So both my crunchers will be X6’s… and my HTPC/part-time cruncher a X4 BE
My 1090T arrived yesterday and the latest upgrade is up and running…
Got the 1090T currently running at 3.5Ghz and will run it at that for a week before slowly winding her up to see what she will do… Hope it clocks as well a the 955BE!!!
Hmmmmmm… sad to say but couldn’t get a very stable overclock with the 1090T on the ASUS board
So in a moment of madness swapped processors between the 2 systems to see if I could get any more performance out of the 1090T. The 1055T seems to be quite happy running at 3.5GHz on the ASUS board… and using AMD Overdrive the 1090T got up to 4.1GHz on my Gigabyte board… now just trying to get it stable and Docking without errors at ~4Ghz.
As it stands these two systems can generate up to 100K credits per day on Docking and GPUGrid.
