Curse

Krill · Apr 30, 2011, 11:58 PM // 23:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by cebalrai

Incidentally I do have my eye on the June 11th Bulldozer release date. I think they'll drop into AM3 boards right?

No they won't, it has an extra pin and needs an AM3+ socket. There are a few boards out now with AM3+ sockets (again they are black sockets) but support is unofficial for the 800 series chipsets (900 series comes out with Bulldozer).

The L3 cache with Phenom's doesn't really make that big of difference for gaming either, i.e. an X4 Athlon II @ 3.4 GHz would be almost identical to a Phenom II X4 @ 3.4 GHz. The only difference is black edition Phenoms are simpler to overclock.

cebalrai · May 01, 2011, 01:10 PM // 13:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Krill

No they won't, it has an extra pin and needs an AM3+ socket. There are a few boards out now with AM3+ sockets (again they are black sockets) but support is unofficial for the 800 series chipsets (900 series comes out with Bulldozer).

The L3 cache with Phenom's doesn't really make that big of difference for gaming either, i.e. an X4 Athlon II @ 3.4 GHz would be almost identical to a Phenom II X4 @ 3.4 GHz. The only difference is black edition Phenoms are simpler to overclock.

Yeap, I'm behind the times on this info. Late last year the web was buzzing with compatibility fantasies.

Being simpler to overclock isn't much of a benefit to me as I'm content to fiddle with conventional BIOS-level oc'ing till my eyes hurt. The benefit of unlocked Blacks is mostly in not overclocking the RAM at the same time as the CPU, right?

Elder III · May 01, 2011, 03:33 PM // 15:33

an AMD BE CPU has an unlocked multiplier; what that means is that to achieve a nice respectable OC you merely have to raise that multiplier. It makes it easier and faster with higher headroom for those extreme Overclocks. It's worth the premium if you intend to OC at all imo.

Krill · May 01, 2011, 09:45 PM // 21:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by cebalrai

The benefit of unlocked Blacks is mostly in not overclocking the RAM at the same time as the CPU, right?

Basically yes, and it's easier. Since you are overclocking with the multiplier it keeps the FSB fixed at 200, which in turn keeps the memory at a standard clock since that is set as a ratio of the FSB. That's a plus for stability and simplicity but a negative if you want to squeeze more performance out of your memory (which is usually negligible outside specific benchmarks).

Elder is technically right too, higher FSB and hyper transport speeds can boost performance slightly but again it's usually a negligible amount outside benchmarks. Somewhere on the overclockers.com forum there is scientific analysis of optimum FSB and HT settings, and by optimum I mean an advantage of a fraction of a second in benchmark or fraction of frame in an actual game.

Oh and the AM3 / AM3+ business. I think AMD wanted to make Bulldozer backwards compatible with AM3 sockets but needed the extra pin for a new power management feature that can turn off idle cores. Considering how small the enthusiast market is and how many people would actually take advantage of backwards compatibility, and that they make money producing chipsets (new mobo = chipset sale) it didn't really make sense in the end though. Power efficiency is a very big deal in enterprise environments and is becoming more important in consumer level products too.