FM2 mobo, Phenom II 965 vs A10-5800K APU

digitalwanderer

digitalwanderer

wandering
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Hello strangers! Long time no bug for help, how's tricks? ;)

I just won some memory and an APU over at a weekend giveaway at Rage3D, and I was curious if anyone had any advice on mobos for it? I'm currently using an AM2+ with a PII 965 in it running at around 3.7Ghz, not sure if the A10-5800K would be faster or not?

BTW- GREAT to be back, damn I missed all of you. Real life just isn't as interesting and knows damn near nothing about PCs, y'know?
 
digitalwanderer said:
Hello strangers! Long time no bug for help, how's tricks? ;)

I just won some memory and an APU over at a weekend giveaway at Rage3D, and I was curious if anyone had any advice on mobos for it? I'm currently using an AM2+ with a PII 965 in it running at around 3.7Ghz, not sure if the A10-5800K would be faster or not?

BTW- GREAT to be back, damn I missed all of you. Real life just isn't as interesting and knows damn near nothing about PCs, y'know?
Click to expand...


Gratz on winning!

A10-5800K when overclocked will usually be faster than your PII 965.
It all boils down to your usage patterns.
In 3D rendering A10 might be a bit slower depending on applications due to only 2 FPU's (but much more powerful) vs 4 in older CPU. New FPU heavy programs and games which can use FMA and AVX will perform very good and beat old Phenom.
In games Trinity is competitive and often wins in new titles compared to Phenom II (again when overclocked).
New APU have all the latest instructions like AES, AVX, FMA, XOP, SSE4.x which Phenom II lacks. On top of that it has much better power management and therefore uses less power on average.

I'm personally quite happy with my A10 5800K and I've set it up for best efficiency by slightly lowering vCore and upping clocks to 3.9GHz all cores and 4.3GHz Turbo. When properly overclocked I can hit 4.5GHz stable on all cores in my HTPC case with normal air cooler. I do use iGPU which also is overclocked to 900MHz, when disabled it leaves even more headroom for CPU clocking.

Regarding motherboards, I'm using very solid and not that expensive Giga F2A85MX-D3H. I can also recommend ASUS boards as a lot of people are using them with great success when overclocking. Best to look for A85 chipset based units.

If you want more specific info let me know. I'm tired now as it's 2:30AM here and I should be in bed, but will be here back in just few hours! :smile:
 
Thanks Lightman, lots of good info to digest. I'll ask about it after I sleep too, it's almost 1am here.

Good question on the GPU, not sure. Right now I'm running an 8800 GTS due to a few malfunctioning 5870s and me giving my 7950 to my son, but I got some friends sending some cards so I'm waiting to see what shows up. :)
 
Wynix said:
If that is the case it is not worth the investment of a new motherboard.
An APU is only worth using if you use the iGPU, otherwise you are better off selling it and redirecting that money to a CPU that is a significant upgrade.

Also the A10-5800k is only slightly faster than the 965.
Click to expand...

since he is using at 3.7GHz I would also add this
http://anandtech.com/bench/Product/675?vs=362

but, you can OC the 5800K to around 4.2-4.4GHz

as for the GPU, yes, the 8800GTS should be comparable or faster (but when DX11 or vram is a factor it could be different).

the A10 is probably also going to use 40w less for comparable CPU performance.
 
HMBR said:
since he is using at 3.7GHz I would also add this
http://anandtech.com/bench/Product/675?vs=362

but, you can OC the 5800K to around 4.2-4.4GHz

as for the GPU, yes, the 8800GTS should be comparable or faster (but when DX11 or vram is a factor it could be different).

the A10 is probably also going to use 40w less for comparable CPU performance.
Click to expand...

Exactly! Most energy saving will be had in day to day internet browsing and light usage scenarios where my tweaked system (whole unit with 8GB of 2133MHz RAM, BluRay recorder and 640GB Samsung F1 + 3 fans) consumes as little as 29W from socket in W8 desktop! Please note, you will not get this low on most popular ASUS boards for some reason as many of my friends had trouble getting to 35W-40W with similar system. Maybe this improved lately or with newest models for FM2, but initially Gigabyte did their work to sustain low idle power!

Also important to get as fast DDR3 as possible if you want to use iGPU. I'm running memory at 2.2GHz and it's great match for 900MHz iGPU, but to push above 1GHz ideally you want 2.4GHz RAM otherwise you are hitting bandwidth wall.
 
Gonna save me pennies and pick up an FX-8350 for my current rig, buy a mobo and build my daughter a new rig around the APU. I'm NOT gonna keep gaming on the 8800GTS, it's just a temp until I can get something better.

The memory should be fun, I'm only running 4GB right now. :)
 
digitalwanderer said:
Gonna save me pennies and pick up an FX-8350 for my current rig, buy a mobo and build my daughter a new rig around the APU. I'm NOT gonna keep gaming on the 8800GTS, it's just a temp until I can get something better.

The memory should be fun, I'm only running 4GB right now. :)
Click to expand...
Sounds like a plan, the APU is a brilliant general purpose processor.
Concerning the 8350, i suggest trying to find a combo deal such as this from Microcenter for $220.
 
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