A-Series A8-3850 2.9 GHz HD 6550D

[Heretic]

So what does every on think about the Video coming from the processor as it does with the AMD A-Series?

[flip]

Probably alot more efficient and a lot less upgradeable.

[Heretic]

I'm also looking at

I am an AMD fan for a long time and am looking to build bareboned. Just processor, memory and Mainboard. Was hoping Krom would chime in.

[Krom]

AMD's Bulldozer chip is actually pretty disappointing, if they wanted to compete with Intel on performance its more than a couple years late. The only major thing Bulldozer has going for it is the better integrated GPU courtesy of the ATI acquisition, but it still isn't fast enough to handle a lot of games. Performance in some cases is worse than older AMD Phenom II processors, and almost never competitive with Intel Sandy Bridge quad cores. Single threaded performance is especially poor considering the time and competition; and for desktop users single threads are still pretty important.

If you are going to spend $200+ on a processor right now, I would have a hard time recommending any current AMD chip over an Intel Sandy Bridge. I was hoping for more from Bulldozer than it actually delivered, which was disappointing because it means we probably won't get any relief from the Intel Tax any time soon.

[Heretic]

And that is why I wanted you to chime in. I could go with the Phenom II but I have the quad core 945. The AMD Phenom II X6 1090T will fit in my machine but with the upgraded bios support for that processor I get memory errors. Where as with the current bios I don't.

Could I get memory errors by not having the 1090T in the socket with the updated bios?

I might have to go to Intel for the first time in my life. I know nothing about them. HELP

Motherboard

Processor

Memory

Is all I need for now. Well that just double my budget.

*Edit*What about the gulftown 6 cores Intel has? Are they Really any better than the quad sandys?

**Edit** What about the graphics on board the Sandys the "Intel HD Graphics 2000"? I know the cpu socket has direct access to memory but is it really any better the a separate card? Shared memory sux the worst IMHO.

[Krom]

It takes effort to buy a separate video card that does worse than the integrated graphics on Intel or AMD CPUs (although Bulldozer and AMDs Fusion initiative is making it easier). The graphics portion on Intel CPUs is reasonably fast and could easily run a game like Descent 3 or even newer games, but it is the driver support that is lacking and generally buggy (although it has improved since Intel was consistently getting a lot of flak for it). All integrated video chips share the system memory for both Intel and AMD CPUs so that playing field is equal regardless of the brand, only separate cards have their own memory. AMD has better driver support since their integrated GPU is a Radeon and has many years of AMD/ATI driver support working for it.

As for the Gulftown 6 core, it does have more compute power than a 4 core Sandy Bridge but keeping all the cores running and actually extracting that performance isn't something the ordinary user does very often. Sandy Bridge CPUs also have considerable improvements in Hyperthreading and other architecture enhancements along with lower memory latency which helps them close the gap between them and Gulftown quite well. In a fair amount of testing a 4 core Sandy Bridge CPU will frequently hit very close to a 6 core Gulftown, so much so that it really brings the higher price of the Gulftown into question.

The question you need to be asking is how often do you manage to get your existing CPU running at 100% on all 4 cores? If the answer is "rarely" then getting more cores won't really help you, but if the answer is "often" then more cores should help and scale quite well. If its "gaming" then the answer is still "rarely"; few games take advantage of 4 cores, let alone 6.

Another thing to keep in mind is Intel is working on a refresh of Sandy Bridge dubbed "Sandy Bridge-E" which will come out as the Core i3/i5/i7 3000 series of processors within a few months; the higher end i7 chips will be 6 core / 12 threads and will definitely outperform Gulftown.

[fliptw]

Heretic, try slower memory timings.

[Heretic]

The problem is as Krom stated My CPU runs 100% for days on end doing simulations and renders. I've got to where I'll do 50 to 75 frames and the let it set till the fans slow down. Have been also looking into these http://www.xoxide.com/corsair-hydroseri ... ooler.html

[Heretic]

About a 10 minute sim and 5 min render above.

Since that post I have done improvements and machine is still rendering a run with even more detail. Just got finish since last post. click pictures to see Animations.