Hardware Discussion Thread

Unregistered.

kaisersose77 wrote: »

can anyone tell me if the performance of intel quicksync depends on how powerful the sandybridge processor you have? or does the quicksync feature works at the same speed on all sandybridge processors?

I THINK it depends on the IGP (ie GPU), in which case all the K series processors have the advantage, where all the rest have the lower rated one. (in terns of performance)

Monotype

Llano previews are showing up.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4448/amd-llano-desktop-performance-preview/1

Very interesting is the impact of the RAM speeds.
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/amd/llano/review/desktop/ddr3scaling-16x10.png

Not bad GPU performance - I would like to see these thrown into peoples HPs and Dells so that they would be capable of more than emails and word processing. The performance in general is not that far from current consoles.

deconduo

Looks awesome for a tight budget build actually.

Tar.Aldarion

Monotype wrote: »

Llano previews are showing up.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4448/amd-llano-desktop-performance-preview/1

Very interesting is the impact of the RAM speeds.
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/amd/llano/review/desktop/ddr3scaling-16x10.png

Not bad GPU performance - I would like to see these thrown into peoples HPs and Dells so that they would be capable of more than emails and word processing. The performance in general is not that far from current consoles.

I'm buying 1600mhz gskill ram, would you suggest OCing it so? Looks like a good difference there, well a little

Monotype

You wouldn't see the same difference since you will be using a dedicated graphics card. Also you will be overclocking the 2500K with the multiplier, so memory doesn't play a big part. Start with overclocking your 2500K and 560ti/570 and then when you get a bit more obsessed, you can move onto the RAM.

Solitaire

deconduo wrote: »

Looks awesome for a tight budget build actually.

Only in the portable space. There seem to be extreme bottlenecking issues particularly on the desktop versions as the memory controller just doesn't have the guts for handling the CPU, GPU and (from what I've seen) also PCIe transactions with just a single 128-bit memory bus to do it all on. CPU gets priority of course, so even with DDR3-1866 the HD6550d can't touch a discrete HD5570, let alone HD5670. Its not even that far ahead of the full version of Sandy's iGPU, although driver support is better. At least until you do something silly like try Hybrid Crossfire...

And with all this chipset gunk going into the CPU, I'm not sure if Llano will be OCable. A major issue, given that CPU and GPU multipliers are locked on all models! :eek:

But really, the big issue is that they're way too slow (fastest will be 2.9GHz, but there's already Athlon quads past 3GHz!) and to add insult to injury have 1MB L2 per core and no L3. Stupid stupid stupid AMD!

Tea_Bag

can anyone point out cans of compressed air on hardwareversand for me?

Tea_Bag

Tea_Bag wrote: »

can anyone point out cans of compressed air on hardwareversand for me?

bump..

anywhere? anyone?

search results turn up nothin, but that can happen on loads of things on HWVS.

Jonathan

Tea_Bag wrote: »

bump..

anywhere? anyone?

search results turn up nothin, but that can happen on loads of things on HWVS.

You can get them in Tesco for €6 a can.

Leman

Yeah you are best off picking them up from a B&M store. Dab's have them too but since they are not "In Stock" you'll probably be waiting months for them.

But now onto hardware, I just bought a OCZ Agility 3 60GB from Komplett (which have some nice prices all things considered and free shipping) which I am looking forward to. Everyone I know has said the difference is Day and night compared to a HDD, so here's hoping it works!

Need to upgrade to a Sata6gb/s mobo though, so I don't know if I should go for the new I5's now or wait for the next Mobo generation. I'm waiting for the new smaller chipset GPUs to arrive, so would I be best off waiting? I'm a bit out of the loop when it comes to CPUs, but I know the 1555 is the new hotness right now but has been out for a while. Are there any plans to change socket again soon or is the 1555 going to go the distance ala 775?

Solitaire

I've searched and searched and never seen a can of compressed air in a Tesco

Burgo

Solitaire wrote: »

I've searched and searched and never seen a can of compressed air in a Tesco

Have a 400ml can in Peats for a tenner, had a quick look in tesco jervis centre and couldn't find any myself.

Solitaire

Same in Click. God I hate shopping there, it feels like the IT equivalent of giving foreign aid to a third-world country knowing full well it'll only be used to buy more tanks...

Tea_Bag

related to my compressed air blight (I'm in Limerick so no peats near me) where is the cheapest place online to get it? ill be needing it in 2 weeks ish so shipping time isn't that much of an issue.

on a different note, I'm almost able to get a second hand i7 2600k for €40 more than ill be paying for my new i5 2500k. ill only really be gaming on my pc, and a tiny bit of video encoding occasionally, so not a great justification but 40 more, is it worth it? it apparently hasn't been OCd but the reciept was lost so no warranty I guess. fairly regular and I find to be trustworthy seller is a poster here on boards so not too worried. should I get it? someone knock some sense into me? is it much worse to game with over the i5?

Leman

Yes, actually.

Both Anecdotal and Benchmarking have shown that Hyperthreading actually causes gaming performance to DECREASE rather than increase.

Since you say it's only occasional video encoding, the extra cost and loss of warranty isn't worth it IMO.

Buy a Pizza and Beer instead.

farna_boy

First Llano Cores released July 3rd!

These two CPUs will be aimed at core i3.

AMD announced two of its first Vision A-Series accelerated processing units (APUs) for desktops today. Built in the socket FM1 package, the A6-3650 and A8-3850 are fabricated on the 32 nm HKMG process. Both pack four x86-64 cores, and while the A6 has 320 stream processors in the GPU component, the A8 has 400 of them. Both chips have 4 MB of cache, dual-channel DDR3-1866 MHz IMCs, and PCI-Express 2.0 hubs to drive discrete graphics.

The AMD A8-3850 has its four x86-64 cores clocked at 2.90 GHz, with the Radeon HD 6550D GPU engine clocked at 600 MHz. This chip has a TDP of 100W, it is priced at US $135. The AMD A6-3650 has its CPU component clocked at 2.60 GHz, and Radeon HD 6530D GPU engine clocked at 443 MHz. This chip goes for US $115. With these two, AMD is targeting higher models of Sandy Bridge-based Pentium Dual-Core and Core i3 Sandy Bridge chips. Both will be available in stores by July 3.

Edit: Now with a few reviews

HarwareCanucks

Toms

Anandtech

Overall, the reviews seem favourable. This CPU seems to be aimed at people who will just be using the onboard graphics. When the Llano is compared to the equivalent i3 it seems to do well (for the most part).

Jonathan

Solitaire wrote: »

I've searched and searched and never seen a can of compressed air in a Tesco

Burgo wrote: »

Have a 400ml can in Peats for a tenner, had a quick look in tesco jervis centre and couldn't find any myself.

Tesco Clarehall definitely have them.

Now that I think of it, it might be over in one of the car isles rather than with the computer stuff.

Solitaire

IT Derp/Facepalm/Faceplant of the year, surely?

Needs a proprietary socket, slower and more expensive than the previous generation, cannot be OCd and the laughable justification for all this Fail - a decent integrated GPU - is a gimmick hamstrung by an absurd shared memory controller that bottlenecks it to death, with anything above DDR3-1600 becoming nearly useless as a result if the CPU bit isn't idling. And that means no option to add fast sideport GDDR for it either.

So... Llano just pretty much sucks. Aside from a near-mythical Black Edition part coming out SOON³ the line just sucks. Way to go AMD...

Monotype

Too expensive. About the price of current X3s is enough.

deconduo

Solitaire wrote: »

IT Derp/Facepalm/Faceplant of the year, surely?

Needs a proprietary socket, slower and more expensive than the previous generation, cannot be OCd and the laughable justification for all this Fail - a decent integrated GPU - is a gimmick hamstrung by an absurd shared memory controller that bottlenecks it to death, with anything above DDR3-1600 becoming nearly useless as a result if the CPU bit isn't idling. And that means no option to add fast sideport GDDR for it either.

So... Llano just pretty much sucks. Aside from a near-mythical Black Edition part coming out SOON³ the line just sucks. Way to go AMD...

Well it was never intended to be for gamers, its a notebook chip in reality that they decided to make a desktop version of. It completely destroys Sandy Bridge's integrated graphics in everything.

The biggest problem is that its 'only' an Athlon II X4. In any CPU based tasks it fails a lot. I would wait to see how it gets priced first of all. What is basically an Athlon X4 + HD 6670 for €100 would be quite a nice deal for a low budget or HTPC, especially given how cheap RAM is at the moment.

farna_boy

Solitaire wrote: »

IT Derp/Facepalm/Faceplant of the year, surely?

Needs a proprietary socket, slower and more expensive than the previous generation, cannot be OCd and the laughable justification for all this Fail - a decent integrated GPU - is a gimmick hamstrung by an absurd shared memory controller that bottlenecks it to death, with anything above DDR3-1600 becoming nearly useless as a result if the CPU bit isn't idling. And that means no option to add fast sideport GDDR for it either.

So... Llano just pretty much sucks. Aside from a near-mythical Black Edition part coming out SOON³ the line just sucks. Way to go AMD...

Like I said earlier, this range (that was announced today) is targetted at the i3 arena, it is not for gamers/enthusiasts. These processors are primarily intended for the low end/HTPC market. The A8-3850 will cost approximately €90. Although you won't be able to play games at 1920x1080, you will be able to play some stuff at a lower resolution and it is just an entry level processor and when compared to the i3 it comes out very favourably.

For someone looking for a baic/budget build these processors are fantastic. For the rest of us, we will have to wait until the "real" processors coe out (whenever that will be).

PS more reviews:

Guru 3D

Overclockers.com

Hardware Heaven

Tea_Bag

Help guys. the MSI Z68A-GD65 just came into stock on HWVS, and i was going to put through an order for the Asrock z68 extreme4. The MSI board is only €2 more, but is it better or worse? i cant find anywhere comparing the 2, or even a review of the MSI.

any advice?

ive thrown out the Asus z68 pro-v as a contender cause they took some serious short cuts with the pci lanes and switches. eg, you cant use the PCIx1 lane or the USB3 header if you populate the 3rd PCIx4 slot (may be using a wireless card here)
and im not going gygabit cause they decided to keep using an old style BIOS. so it looks like the asrock (with its handy USB3/SSD front load 3.5" thing) and the MSI are my only choices in the €150 bracket? anything im missing?

Leman

When deciding between AsRock and any other company, just look outside. If there are pigs flying, buy the AsRock one.

In all seriousness, AsRock are a terrible brand both from my own experience and anecdotal reports. Get the MSI one.

deconduo

Leman wrote: »

When deciding between AsRock and any other company, just look outside. If there are pigs flying, buy the AsRock one.

In all seriousness, AsRock are a terrible brand both from my own experience and anecdotal reports. Get the MSI one.

ASRock have improved drastically over the last year, in fact they make the best value Sandy Bridge motherboards at the moment.

Tea_Bag

to be fair, ive heard nothing but great things about the extreme4. its very popular over in the uk forums. there is nothing quite so feature rich in its price slot. The Asus z68 pro-v is a crippled board that sells for more than the asrock. otherwise, you're left with a few meh gigabyte boards or the MSI GD65.

besides the name, is there any other reason to take the MSI over the asrock? im worried about being an early adopter of something that costs €160. hate to get burned when money is so tight. i need this to last a long long time. anyone know what kind of warraty's each maker supplied? i heard Asrock's CC is pretty poor? anything on MSI?

Solitaire

So long as you don't get the absolute cheapest ASRock mobos you're usually okay. Same issue with their cousin Asus actually - the super-cheap models are dogs.

And as for Llano... its just... it shouldn't be so rubbish. Just a few truly goppingly retarded design decisions made what should have been a very nice product pretty rubbish :mad: Its so close to awesomeness yet truly idiotic decisions have hamstrung it:
- Why the L2? We already know that 2-4MB of L3 beats 256KB-1MB L2 into the ground for many types of apps - its the reason Phenoms are better than Athlons. So why on earth 4MB L2 rather than 1-2MB L2 and 2-3MB L3? Each core would have superior internal communication with each other as well as an effective 2.5+MB of cache per core instead of just 1MB each!
- Why the simple (and narrow!) memory controller? You have two devices using it, logic states that loading both of them will result in a fight over memory bandwidth and ensuing fail. Plus its hugely sensitive to CAS latency and bottlenecks with DDR3-1866. But the killer is that with no differentiation between CPU and GPU you lose the option to let board partners add some GDDR3 or slow GDDR5 to mobos to help fix the bad bandwidth issues and let the GPU function as it should.
- And why on earth copy Intel and stick the clockgen on-die??!? Intel haver the performance advantage, they can afford to do that! You don't even have an unlocked die in your current lineup! More than even the CPU and GPU the memory controller needs a big speed boost to get it working well but as soon as you hit 110MHz bang! Bye bye PCIe and friends!

Sure, AMD can cite "OEM purchasers" as the reason for some of the above, but the stuff above isn't a huge step up in silicon complexity or transistor count so the cuts have reduced performance far more than they've saved money. And what OEMs? I haven't seen an Athlon X3/X4-based machine on the shelves in a year now! Intel has once again squeezed AMD out of the OEM trade. The bulk of desktop Llano's buyers will be gamers and HTPC users on a shoestring budget, and they're hit by the lost functionality. AMD has clearly forgotten their target market, and that's a plank to perdition for any business.

Leman

So, I got me a superfast OCZ Agility 3 for a bargain price of €115 from Komplett, loved every second of it, ultra fast etc etc.

The catch is of course that a huge chunk of them have fault controllers that cause it to brick itself within a week. 5 days in my case. >.>

Sending it back to Komplett today (not their fault, it seems like OCZ is using untested controlers to save a buck) and getting a Crucial M4, which I have researched twice as hard and found only good things about.

Monotype

I've been hearing a lot of bad things about the sandforce drives of this generation and the stories are only getting worse. The crucials seem to be the way to go for reliability - or intel if you have the money.

Leman

Monotype wrote: »

I've been hearing a lot of bad things about the sandforce drives of this generation and the stories are only getting worse. The crucials seem to be the way to go for reliability - or intel if you have the money.

Intel may be rock solid, but they sacrifice speed, with really abysmal (SSD wise) read and write speeds. I've heard nothing but good things about the M4s even if the small ones (aka the sanely priced ones) are a bit slow on the writes (though that's not an evil conspiracy, it's just a hardware limitation :pac: ).

Hopefully it won't take long to replace and I can report back. :P

Also, I may as well ask here because I don't really need a new thread, but where can I buy a cheap Sata cable and 2.5>3.5 HDD bay adapter online? Komplett doesn't seem to have any and I am loathe to go near DABS again. I found both on expansys.ie but I have never used them before.

Monotype

You can find brackets around which do the job pretty well.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingston-Storage-bay-adapter-3-5/dp/B002HJFSKO/

Edit: Sorry, wrong link.

Edit 2: Postage is a bit dear so here's a better alternative.

http://www.memoryc.com/storage/hddaccessories/neonadapterbracketsfor25inchssdhdd.html