New build questions

[Mark]

Only if you're looking to go cheap and get an APU. You should go with
what you're already planning to go with, there's no point in waiting on
any upcoming processor. If the processor is already out and on sale,
then you can go for it.

I haven't really decided yet. I know I mentioned getting a Haswell i5
but this was before I looked at AMD CPUs at all. I assume the Kaveri
APUs will be available here very soon since it is available in other
countries.

Richland and any other APU's are only to be compared with other APU's.
So compared to an i3 or i5 APU, with no video card, the Richland's APU
will look good. Compared to a dedicated video card, it won't.

AFAIK the GPU in the Richland/Kaveri A10 is comparable to a mid-range
dedicated card. Is this wrong? Getting an A10 might save me buying a
card at all, with the associated cost/power savings. The most
demanding game I have is Skyrim and that runs on my current PC (just).

 

[Yousuf Khan]

AFAIK the GPU in the Richland/Kaveri A10 is comparable to a mid-range
dedicated card. Is this wrong? Getting an A10 might save me buying a
card at all, with the associated cost/power savings. The most
demanding game I have is Skyrim and that runs on my current PC (just).

Yeah, that is the main value proposition of Kaveri APU's. The integrated
GPU's in Kaveri are like mid-range video cards.

I'd go with Kaveri over Richland, just to make sure technologies like
Mantle and HSA (Heterogeneous Systems Architecture) work on it. HSA has
the potential to do for general applications that Mantle will do for
gaming. Check out the benchmarks below, a relatively modest Kaveri
system without HSA is a middle of the road performer, and then once HSA
is enabled, it becomes the top performer by a long shot. It just goes to
show how inefficiently we're using GPU's currently, once a GPU is freed
up from having to be fed by the CPU, it completely turns around the
performance rankings of these chips.

http://wccftech.com/amd-kaveri-i54670k-benchmarks-showdown-continued-hsa-features-test/

Yousuf Khan

 

[Mark]

Yeah, that is the main value proposition of Kaveri APU's. The integrated
GPU's in Kaveri are like mid-range video cards.

I'd go with Kaveri over Richland, just to make sure technologies like
Mantle and HSA (Heterogeneous Systems Architecture) work on it. HSA has
the potential to do for general applications that Mantle will do for
gaming. Check out the benchmarks below, a relatively modest Kaveri
system without HSA is a middle of the road performer, and then once HSA
is enabled, it becomes the top performer by a long shot. It just goes to
show how inefficiently we're using GPU's currently, once a GPU is freed
up from having to be fed by the CPU, it completely turns around the
performance rankings of these chips.

http://wccftech.com/amd-kaveri-i54670k-benchmarks-showdown-continued-hsa-features-test/

Thanks, again for the interesting and informative posts (and to the
other posters). I am now torn between Intel and AMD ;-). If I were
on a very limited budget I can see AMD would be the way to go but,
fortunately, I am not.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Thanks, again for the interesting and informative posts (and to the
other posters). I am now torn between Intel and AMD ;-). If I were
on a very limited budget I can see AMD would be the way to go but,
fortunately, I am not.

Split the difference, get an Intel processor with an AMD GPU. You'll
still get the advantages of Mantle.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Paul]

I've done two sample configurations, one Intel, one AMD:

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2Yz50
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2YyCY

Comments welcome

(I might go for faster memory on the AMD version BTW)

Check whether the processor being purchased, comes with its own
heatsink/fan. You've purchased third-party heatsink/fan for each,
but perhaps one of the boxed processors comes with a fan. I
was just going by the picture, that looked like a largish box.
I think the AMD may come with its own cooler. And yes, I buy
third-party coolers myself - I don't always use the in-box ones.
I lucked out on my last Intel purchases, by buying an Intel
CPU with cooler and buying a third-party cooler as well. And
later, I bought a tray (OEM) Intel for a second build, with no cooler
in the box. And then, I had just enough coolers to go around
It doesn't hurt to have an extra cooler hanging around. Just
so you know you're spending money on a extra.

The Intel built, I think the 4440S has a GPU in it. And the
motherboard has graphics connectors on it. You've included
a 7770 video card as a separate purchase. For some things,
the 7770 will be a lot faster, because of the memory
bandwidth of the private memory on the 7770 (128bit GDDR5
at 72GB/sec). The 7770 would be a mid-range gamer
card (a level above HTPC video cards). You could do
OpenCL accelerated processing on the 7770 (not CUDA, which
is Nvidia), if an editing program uses such things.

As for the memory speed, and selecting an even faster
memory, check reviews for the motherboard, to see
what luck people had with higher clocks or overclocks
for memory. Just because a motherboard includes multipliers
for a certain memory clock, does not guarantee each and
every processor can reach 2400 or whatever. Two sticks
of RAM is a good choice, if attempting to get high
memory benchmarks.

On the AMD board, check the reviews. An old release of
BIOS appears to be a contributor to some of the reviewers
not giving good marks. (Asus has implemented a USB based
re-flash scheme now, where you don't need to get some
older processor into the board, to update the BIOS. Let's
hope this idea propagates in the future, to all motherboard
designs.)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128653

Also, in the picture of the AMD board, the two video slots
are far from equal. The x16 slot nearest the processor, is
a "real" video card slot, with 16 sets of coupling caps next
to the slot (x16). The green connector further from the
processor, appears to be wired for x4. Which is fine for things
like maybe a RAID disk controller card, but just barely adequate
for a second video card. So it's not really a "super-Crossfire"
setup by any means. They could have used lane switching chips,
and done a x16-x1 versus x8-x8 setup, but that would have
added another $20 to the board retail price. That's only
important, if you have two high bandwidth PCI Express cards
you want to use.

The Intel board, a couple of reviewers noted a drive
recognition problem on a reboot. Which is a bit strange.
Perhaps a BIOS revision will fix that (check the Gigabyte
site to see if there are release notes for BIOS changes).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128603

The reviews on the Seasonic looked OK. Just the usual issues.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151106

Paul

 

[Yousuf Khan]

I've done two sample configurations, one Intel, one AMD:

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2Yz50
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2YyCY

Comments welcome

(I might go for faster memory on the AMD version BTW)

(1) Not sure why you're going with the Noctua CPU cooler on either
system, they should come with their own stock cooler. Unless you're
looking for something a little quieter, or you're willing to overclock.
I don't know if the Noctua cooler will be quieter than the stock one, so
you may have checked into that one, which we're not aware of.

(2) The 650W PSU seems like overkill, if you look at both systems, they
are given an estimated power draw, and both systems show less than 300W
(AMD=218W, Intel=268W). About the only time it might make sense is if
you're planning to use this like a server and have lots of hard drives
attached to it, or if you're going to be doing multi-GPU's in Crossfire
or SLI. I'd say a 400W PSU should be sufficient.

(3) You've chosen a 1TB HDD as your secondary storage. I would suggest
going whole-hog and going with a 3-4TB HDD. Maybe by saving the money on
the cooler and the PSU. I just recently got a 3TB, and even though
specifications-wise it doesn't seem all that different any previous HDD
I had before, it's at least twice as fast as any other HDD in my system.
In fact, it's nearly half as fast my SSD! I was seeing 200 Mb/s
throughput at most file sizes. The data density that they're getting
into these newer 3 or 4TB drives is amazing, and that's how they get the
high throughput, just with more data density. In fact, the 4TB drives
have actually had their rotational rates slowed down from 7200 to 5900 RPM.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Yousuf Khan]

But not HSA?

I don't know, I think it requires that the GPU & CPU conform to a
specific memory bus sharing protocol.

Yousuf Khan

 

[ting]

I picked this cooler since it is very quiet. I think both the Intel
and the AMD CPUs do come with a cooler.

I have a different Noctua cooler, and I would highly recommend them. They are significantly quieter than stock coolers. In fact, stock coolers seem asloud as airplane engines in comparison to very good CPU coolers like Noctuas.

I know the 650W PSU is overkill. I do want a (semi)modular PSU from a
good brand and there seems a lack of choice of lower power output
supplies right now.

I have a different SeaSonic PSU, and again, I would highly recommend SeaSonic. Modular PSUs make building a computer much easier than non-modular PSUs, and the fan on my SeaSonic does not even turn on when under half load, making it completely quiet, which is the reason I also went with a bigger than needed PSU.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

I picked this cooler since it is very quiet. I think both the Intel
and the AMD CPUs do come with a cooler. I've no idea about the noise
levels from the AMD stock cooler. The Intel ones I have are both
quiet (mostly) but do get noiser when spinning faster. And I guess
the newer CPUs will require more cooling than my C2D.

Well, all stock coolers that come with the processors are chosen so as
to be adequate to properly cool the processors that they are shipped with.

I've used nothing but stock coolers on all of my processors, not really
had any problems with their noise levels. When the case is closed up,
it's all muffled inside anyways.

I know the 650W PSU is overkill. I do want a (semi)modular PSU from a
good brand and there seems a lack of choice of lower power output
supplies right now. I'll keep checking. I don't intend to run
multiple graphics cards or fit loads of HDDs. Maybe a Corsair
CX430/500M would be a good alternative.

I personally have a Corsair 750W PSU, but I also have 6 HDD's, 1 SSD,
and an HD 6870 inside.

I had a 600W PSU before that, but it was proving to be inadequate for
the job, believe it or not. But not because it didn't have enough
overall power. One thing you should be aware of is that EU has some
pointless nanny-state power safety standards for PSU's. The power is
split over multiple rails in a PSU, and the main part of the wattage is
sent over the +12V rails. Notice I said "+12V rails" as in plural? There
isn't just a single +12V rail there could be multiple rails. The reason
for this is because of an EU requirement not to send more than 20A
through each rail, so PSU manufacturers had to split up the +12V into
multi-rails to make sure that no more than 20A went through each rail.
So you'll see PSU's advertised as triple-rail, quad-rail, etc. For
years, manufacturers sending to North America just followed the European
standards, rather than make separate models for NA and EU. So my 600W
was an EU standard PSU, which had quad-rails. It turned out that each
rail went to feed different parts of the system separately, so for
example one rail might feed the motherboard, another rail was for the
video card, another rail would feed the hard drives, fans, and leds,
etc. So even if one some of the components had plenty of power going to
them, other components didn't have enough. I used to find that my hard
drives were occasionally crashing. It took me several months to figure
this out. So I sold off the old 600W, and bought a 750W. By the time I
bought the 750W, PSU designs had changed, they were no longer adhering
to the silly EU design standards, and they now came with single-rail
+12V. So if these sorts of PSU's were around before, I wouldn't have
even needed a 600W, a single 500W would've been sufficient to power my
whole system. But since I was upgrading anyways, I figured it made no
sense to go backwards in power, so I went upwards to 750W.

I picked the HD 7770 for the Intel board because I believe the Intel
integrated graphics won't be adequate for the games I play (e.g.
Skyrim). The 7770 needs relatively little power compared to its
performance and it has axial fans (which are quiet).

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim system requirements | Can I Run The Elder
Scrolls V: Skyrim
http://systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/requirements/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/11231/?p=a

Skyrim is not a very difficult game to run. Some integrated Intel
graphics might be sufficient to run it, such as the Intel GTX3+ graphics
in some of the high-end i7's.

According to some benchmarks memory speed makes a big difference to
the performance of the AMD APU so it is probably worth spending the
extra to get DDR3-2133. I haven't seen any similar benchmarks for
Intel CPUs.

Yeah, that's probably true. The Kaveri supports some overclocked
editions of DDR3 RAM that the Intel systems don't. Intel systems top out
at PC-1800, whereas the Kaveri goes upto PC-2133 XMP or AMP. Apparently
the Kaveri's GPU wants as much speed as it can get.

My current feeling is I will go for the AMD option since I don't a see
a big advantage (for me) to pay the extra for the Intel one. Both
options will be much faster than my current PC.

Interesting.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Mark]

Well, all stock coolers that come with the processors are chosen so as
to be adequate to properly cool the processors that they are shipped with.

I'm not concerned about the ability to cool. It's the noise levels. I
have 3 Intel PCs with stock coolers already: one is very quiet, and
the others make some noise. This seems to be entirely down to the
speed of the fan.

I've used nothing but stock coolers on all of my processors, not really
had any problems with their noise levels. When the case is closed up,
it's all muffled inside anyways.

I can defintely (sometimes) hear an Intel stock cooler outside the
case here.

I personally have a Corsair 750W PSU, but I also have 6 HDD's, 1 SSD,
and an HD 6870 inside.

--snip part about multirail PSUs--

I guess this means that all the reviews for PSUs I have read are
invalid owing to the different designs here in the EU. :-(

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim system requirements | Can I Run The Elder
Scrolls V: Skyrim
http://systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/requirements/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/11231/?p=a

I had to upgrade my 7600GT card for a HD6670 to run Skyrim. From what
I understand the Intel integrated graphics is about as fast as the
7600GT (ignoring i7s). If this is true then I would need a dedicated
card for Skyrim. Anyway I might buy some more games if I have a fast
enough PC.

Skyrim is not a very difficult game to run. Some integrated Intel
graphics might be sufficient to run it, such as the Intel GTX3+ graphics
in some of the high-end i7's.


Yeah, that's probably true. The Kaveri supports some overclocked
editions of DDR3 RAM that the Intel systems don't. Intel systems top out
at PC-1800, whereas the Kaveri goes upto PC-2133 XMP or AMP. Apparently
the Kaveri's GPU wants as much speed as it can get.


Interesting.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

I had to upgrade my 7600GT card for a HD6670 to run Skyrim. From what
I understand the Intel integrated graphics is about as fast as the
7600GT (ignoring i7s). If this is true then I would need a dedicated
card for Skyrim. Anyway I might buy some more games if I have a fast
enough PC.

Well, if you had an HD 6670 already, wouldn't you just transfer that
your new computer? Or are you planning on keeping the existing computer?

The 7600GT is about a 7 or 8 years old now, circa 2006 or 2007.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Mark]

Well, if you had an HD 6670 already, wouldn't you just transfer that
your new computer? Or are you planning on keeping the existing computer?

I intend to keep the old computer. It will replace an even older one
that's currently in use for the family. Also it's the only PC I have
with Firewire and I still need this.

The 7600GT is about a 7 or 8 years old now, circa 2006 or 2007.

Yes. However it was adequate for all the games I play, except Skyrim.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Just in case anyone's interested here is the final parts list:

CoolerMaster Silencio 650 case
AMD A10-7850K CPU
Gigabyte GA-G1.Sniper A88X motherboard
Kingston HyperX 2*8GB DDR3-2133 RAM
Hitachi Ultrastar 7K4000 2TB HDD
BeQuiet L8 CM 430W PSU
Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD
Pioneer BDR-209DBK BD/DVD/CD Burner

Interesting! So you totally did away with a separate GPU, then? It's
like a few years ago when people stopped buying home phones, and just
made do with cell phones. People from earlier times would go, how can do
that?

Yousuf Khan

 

[John Doe]

Mark wrote:

Interesting! So you totally did away with a separate GPU, then?
It's like a few years ago when people stopped buying home
phones, and just made do with cell phones. People from earlier
times would go, how can do that?

Looks like the motherboard does not have built in video.

Probably just an omission.

 

[Paul]

Looks like the motherboard does not have built in video.

Probably just an omission.

It's an APU.

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Bulldozer/AMD-A10-Series A10-7850K.html

Integrated graphics

GPU Type: Radeon R7 series
Shader cores: 512
Base frequency (MHz): 720

The rear of the motherboard has VGA/DVI/HDMI.

http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/13-128-653-Z02?$S640$

Paul

 

[John Doe]

It's an APU.

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Bulldozer/AMD-A10-Series A10-7850
K.html

Integrated graphics

GPU Type: Radeon R7 series Shader cores: 512 Base frequency
(MHz): 720

The rear of the motherboard has VGA/DVI/HDMI.

http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/13-128-653-Z02?$S640$

Yeah, I should have wondered about those outputs when looking at
the motherboard. So this is a recent configuration from AMD that
includes graphics processing in the CPU. I wonder if it's better
than integrated motherboard graphics. Or maybe cheaper. And if
it's good technology, Intel should follow suit.

 

[Paul]

Yeah, I should have wondered about those outputs when looking at
the motherboard. So this is a recent configuration from AMD that
includes graphics processing in the CPU. I wonder if it's better
than integrated motherboard graphics. Or maybe cheaper. And if
it's good technology, Intel should follow suit.

There are benchmarks here.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

It's better than the old motherboard video. By quite a bit.
(Say, something like a 945G.)

The trick, is tracking down an identifier for each internal
video, so you can find it in the chart. Apparently, both the
Intel high end internal one (Iris), and the AMD one in the 7850,
are stronger than my current plugin video card. So they're
no longer scraping the bottom of the barrel. Maybe they're
equivalent to about $100 worth of video card now.

You still won't be playing Crysis on them, at 30FPS, but
your SimCity will scream

One of the Wikipedia charts claims some line of Intel
CPUs have "eDRAM". Meaning, graphics RAM chips were
added inside the CPU packaging. Perhaps that's some
mobile version of their processors or something. That must
be a tight fit, to put that and the CPU in the same package.
As Intel now puts a power converter thin film circuit in
there too (Haswell).

They can never get too powerful, for thermal reasons.
If a high end video card draws 200W, you can't do that
with an APU design. It'll cook. And you also wouldn't have
the RAM bandwidth to do that. The discrete video card
eventually wins, because it's covered with GDDR5.

I saw mention of using GDDR5 with a CPU, so you never
know how crazy this AMD idea will eventually get. Maybe
instead of DDR4, they'll go with GDDR5 instead. (And
solder it down to the motherboard.) Many things are possible
in the SOC era. The only thing really constraining the fun,
is not enough pins on the IC packages.

Paul

 

[PAS]

Interesting! So you totally did away with a separate GPU, then? It's like
a few years ago when people stopped buying home phones, and just made do
with cell phones. People from earlier times would go, how can do that?

Yousuf Khan

I can't imagine life without a home phone but I'm a 54 years old - when I
was young we didn't have cell phones. I recently replaced the wireless
phones in my house. The new system allows for a bluetooth connection with
our cell phones so we can use the home phone to answer calls to our cell
phones.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Yeah, I should have wondered about those outputs when looking at
the motherboard. So this is a recent configuration from AMD that
includes graphics processing in the CPU. I wonder if it's better
than integrated motherboard graphics. Or maybe cheaper. And if
it's good technology, Intel should follow suit.

It's not that recent, I've got a laptop processor, released back in
2011, that also has a GPU built into the CPU. Intel's processors are all
like this, although their GPU's are very basic, not capable of gaming much.

And yes, these GPU's are much better than the old integrated GPU's
inside motherboards.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Yousuf Khan]

You still won't be playing Crysis on them, at 30FPS, but
your SimCity will scream

Actually, you *can* play Crysis at 30FPS on the Kaveri processors. Just
dial down the details a bit.

Yousuf Khan