AMD enthusiast rig - AM3

[old.Osy]

Parts landing in on Wednesday / Thursday

What we have:

Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition - youtube lame voice review YouTube - AM3 AMD Phenom II X3 720 BE - Review

Asus M4A78T-E Motherboard - extensive review here

Corsair 2x 2GB 1333 XMS3 (pdf)

Sapphire 4870 1GB

Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB - Tom's conclusion here

Scythe Kamariki 4 550W PSU


The aim is to build a decent priced gaming rig while maintaining a solid performance edge.

Planning to do that by attempting to unlock the 4th core in the X3 720 BE (motherboard is specifically selected to meet the 790GX chipset requirement for this to be possible). Instructions here.
If that will succeed, next I'm aiming for a mild overclock, somewhere in the range of 3.2 -3.4 Ghz (Apparently it's safer to stick with a smaller OC once you unlock the 4th core).

Failing that, I will try to OC to stable, yet high speeds.

Will update the thread with details once I play with the thing.

Oh, total amount for the lot was 530 GBP (converted from my currency, at today's exchange rate).

Can't wait

 

[Kryten]

Pretty good price - people often underestimate the performance from the newer generation Phenoms, and that platform also gives you the best upgrade platform possible. Easy to see why when you look at the different sockets Intel are throwing around with abandon.

Can't go too far wrong with those 1gb 4870's at under 100 notes either, happy days!

 

[Scouse]

Yep, did the same thing with the same hardware apart from a 4850 a while back. Haven't unlocked the 4th core yet though as I don't need it

 

[old.Osy]

Aight, details on the processor:

Stuff written on the box:

* HDZ720WFGIBOX

Stuff written on the processor itself:

* HDZ720WFK3DGI
* CACZC AC 0906BPKW

Motherboard:

ASUS M478T-E rev 1.02g
BIOS ver 1604


Unlocking story:

First off, removed the full screen logo and crap, so i could see the POST in clear.

Went on to the Advanced Calibration Control menu, set it to AUTO. Reboot - Still X3. Meh. Strike one.

Set ACC to ALL CORES. Reboot - Still X3. Wah wah. Strike two.

Set ACC to ALL CORES, and calibration to -2%. Reboot. No luck, strike three. By now i'm getting all mushy, mouth corners begin to tremble in anger and dissapointment.

Set ACC to ALL CORES, and calibration to +2%. Reboot. Yet again, bastard thing from hell would not flinch - Still X3.

Set ACC to PER CORE, and calibration as follows:

Core 0 | 0%
Core 1 | 0%
Core 2 | 0%
Core 3 | -2%

Reboot. Aaaand............. YouTube - Family Guy: Jackpot

System boots up, POST screen reports Phenom X4 20.

Will get on to installing Windows 7, and report will follow.

Fingers crossed

 

[Scouse]

Cool

Let me know if Win7 copes with you switching between three and four cores in between reboots will ya?

 

[old.Osy]

I tried everything, in order to make the system stable while unlocked - VCore modification, either up or down, tuning down the multiplier, upping the FSB, modifying the calibration individually per core -- nothing worked.

While I can unlock the 4th core just fine, the system is unstable when booted - artifacts in the OS, erratic behaviour, etc.

It was probably bad to begin with, and that's why they made it a X3.

Oh well, the system still runs like a cheetah. Windows experience index says 5.9 (Windows 7 Ultimate), with 3 cores.

Benchmarking and OCing to follow.

 

[Scouse]

I heard it's a stab in the dark as to whether they work or not. Not to worry tho - the X3's still pretty fab

 

[old.Osy]

Well, I didn't give up, and two BIOS updates later, I managed this:

All nice and stable, below are the BIOS options and benchmarks:

The original BIOS that came with the board was 1604, I updated to 1703 (improved ACC) and then to 2001. The latter allowed to unlock and be stable, even though I did have to set the calibration to -4% on all cores.



3DMark 06 results:

X3, stock speed:

X3, OCed to 3100 mhz:

Unlocked, stock speed:

Unlocked, OCed to 3000 mhz:

 

[old.Osy]

More tinkering:

 

[TdC]

awesome! not a bad result at all

 

[Scouse]

Nice big win that! I'm running mine at stock speeds, but I daresay I'll bump it up in a year or so when the class-A games start to make it chug

 

[old.Osy]

What's interesting is that the GFX scores went up after OC-ing, means the 4870 is slightly held back by CPU power. Might prove to be a keeper, even when AMD moves to next CPU gen.