AMD help

[Archlvt]

So, I've always been an intel guy. I don't know a ton about it but I do know that I wanted to upgrade to an intel i7 920 in the coming weeks.

However I've discovered that intel and radeon don't get along like best buddies, and after doing a little research, I find that a lot of other people feel this way as well, ontop of the fact that (from what I understand), AMD is more power per dollar (in other words, AMDs equivelant is cheaper than intel).

I was wondering if someone could take the time to give me a little lesson on AMD, what's new, what's cheap, what's high value for the money, etc. I'm doing a bunch of research to learn this as quickly as possible because I'm finding that I'm not happy with my gaming rig, despite having an hd5770.

I also know NOTHING about mobos, other than to say I know mine needs to be replaced before buying a cpu.

And please don't get the idea I'm just being lazy, I'm using other resources as well, and while I'm pretty good at figuring things out, I tend to be a little off or outdated with my information when drawing my own conclusions, so having some expert help will go a long way.

As far as a budget goes... I'm really unsure. I don't wanna overkill with it. Something that will measure up to an hd57701gb would be nice. I'd like my components to be relatively equal so I don't end up with bottlenecks.

Also, I don't know how to overclock my cpu, and I'm a little hesitant to learn because I don't have the money to replace my mistakes. Maybe I'll practice on my e6550 once I get a new one, but for now, let's leave OC comparisons out and stay in the safe zone with factory default speeds.

*edit*

Huh...So I browsed on newegg for about, 20 seconds, and this immediately stood out.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103674

It has a ton of reviews, all of them good, it seems very newbie friendly. Is it just me or is this the one and only bread and butter cpu from amd?

Or would this be a better idea?

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103727

 

[lewblue83]

personally i have the AMD 965 black edition. i love it. is it worth the extra 30 bucks?? i dont know. but i knew it was ONLY 30 dollars more so thats why i went with it.

im also a newbie with overclocking. and dont know much about it.

i bought this motherboard:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...3131631&cm_re=m4a89gtd-_-13-131-631-_-Product

right now its on sale for 140 with free shipping. it has SATA 6.0gbs and USB 3.0 support. so its pretty future proof when we start seeing usb 3.0 and sata6 come around soon. and it also supports the new amd 6-core chips. so if you ever felt like upgrading to the new 6 core when they come down in price, you dont need to worry about buying a new mobo.

Also for newb's, it has a "turbo" switch on the mobo, i just flicked that on and instantly went from 3.4ghz to 3.7ghz. and i liked that i didnt have to do anything else. lol.

but it does come with overclocking software that you can use and set all the different parameters yourself if you learn how.


i basically went with the 965 because i do not know how to overclock, and i wanted to start off with a higher GHZ rating right off the bat.

 

[Luke_Uk_Baggy]

Budget for the Mobo and/or CPU roughly?

And are you just replacing these 2 items? In this case, what case do you have (Im assuming its a normal ATX case and not Mini ATX or anything)

Theres plenty of good guides out there for overclocking, its basically the practise of changing / tweaking settings in the BIOS, and getting more core speed than comes with the standard factory settings (will wear and tear your CPU more than usual though and reduce its life slightly)

It is actually quite hard to do damage to you CPU overclocking if you know what your doing, and do small tweaks, and test thoroughly.


The 965 / 955 are nice CPU's and still fairly high end at the moment - as In will run most games on max settings, with a nice GPU(and dont cost the earth) Although there are new 6 core AMD Processors out, at the moment, personally I dont think they have been refined enough, and are still very costly. The 965 is worth the little extra money.

Like mentioned, if you get a decent mobo, it will support the 6 core CPU's for future upgrading. The USB 3.0 is the newest and fastest USB technology so that also helps in future proofing your system

 

[Archlvt]

Budget for the Mobo and/or CPU roughly?

And are you just replacing these 2 items? In this case, what case do you have (Im assuming its a normal ATX case and not Mini ATX or anything)

Theres plenty of good guides out there for overclocking, its basically the practise of changing / tweaking settings in the BIOS, and getting more core speed than comes with the standard factory settings (will wear and tear your CPU more than usual though and reduce its life slightly)

It is actually quite hard to do damage to you CPU overclocking if you know what your doing, and do small tweaks, and test thoroughly.


The 965 / 955 are nice CPU's and still fairly high end at the moment - as In will run most games on max settings, with a nice GPU(and dont cost the earth) Although there are new 6 core AMD Processors out, at the moment, personally I dont think they have been refined enough, and are still very costly. The 965 is worth the little extra money.

Like mentioned, if you get a decent mobo, it will support the 6 core CPU's for future upgrading. The USB 3.0 is the newest and fastest USB technology so that also helps in future proofing your system

That's just the thing about overclocking, I DON'T know what I'm doing, therefore I may cause damage, and yes I know what overclocking is I just don't want the risk involved. Besides, there's nothing that will even utilize the power of a 965 or even a 955 even at factory price right now for me, so there's absolutely no sense in overclocking other than to show off my big sexy number.

I'm actually replacing my case (dell inspiron 530, it was a prebuilt originally and I'm upgrading. Yes I know, prebuilts, boo urns, it was like 5 years ago before I knew anything about hardware), I'm replacing the mobo, the cpu and the ram. My psu and gpu are brand new (antec 650w and hd5770).

I don't really need recommendations on the case though, that's something I'd rather pick for myself. A case is a case, and I can always read up about adequate cooling and whatnot.

I forget if I mentioned a budget here or if it was somewhere else, but it's not really a "budget" per se. I just want components that are on equal ground or maybe a little stronger than the hd57701gb (I'd say a little stronger, since I'll eventually crossfire it when the need arises). I'm not tied down by a money limit, but I also don't want to spend more than I have to, to buy a beast of a computer that I won't need. I DON'T play shooters of any kind, so a crysis 2-ready pc doesn't help me.

I think I'm pretty settled on the amd 965, I didn't know picking a cpu would be so easy, amd really laid it out easy for me, I expected this to be harder than picking a gpu.

So I really just need a mobo...and some ram. Ram should be easy enough, and I saw someone picking similar components to this and everyone approved with his setup so maybe I'll use his mobo (he had a 5770 and either a 965 or a 955, cant remember which).

 

[an0nym0us1]

i would head on over to xtremesystems.org and search for the cpu you're running and look for the safe range for vCore/vDimm etc and see what you can achieve by upping the base clock with those voltages. modern motherboards and cpus will simply not work if you have unsafe voltages or too high of clocks and in Gigabyte boards they just post loop until they realize your settings were failing and boot with stock or safer settings.

that said, my x4 635 really sucks balls. it only achieves a 652mhz overclock, it's slower than my i3 530 dual core at stock settings even when multitasking and using multi-threaded applications. and well, the i3 also achieves a 1.69 ghz overclock over stock. the components used on both systems are comparable in price and motherboard quality.

i'd love to see what the 635 can do at 4ghz, but for some reason that's simply not going to happen with this processor. i may buy another one just to test it and see what limits i can get that to.