Currently I have a Q6600 with 4GB RAM, a smaller SSD and a larger HDD and a 8800GT graphics card.

 

Bearing in mind I depend on this, I'm looking at an upgrade and have a couple of options I'm considering. There is a fly in the ointment to the obvious go intel route and that is that I have an AMD A10-7850K sat here doing nothing.

 

So which would you do as an upgrade, bearing in mind costs:

 

 - AMD A10-7850K

 - Suitable A88X mobo

 - 16GB DDR3 2400RAM

 - 2 * 4TB HDD

 - Keep the SSD as it's newish

 - Use the built in R7 GPU

 

 - Intel i7-6700K

 - Suitable mobo

 - 16GB DDR4 2133+

 - 2 * 4TB HDD

 - Keep the SSD

 - Use the built in GPU

 

Another option is to add an NV GTX750 Ti GPU to the system, as it's good power/price/performance option.

Both would have a sealed water cooler for the CPU, which is targeted at low noise.

 

Obviously the AMD option is about £200-300 less, which is why it's rather tempting.

 

The other option would to be pull in a couple of E5-Xeons and 64GB on a server board, but frankly I think that's overkill for a home PC

Edited 30 November, 201510 yr by cheezemonkhai

What are you gonna ise it for?

If its mostly desktop work the onboard gfx in the i7 is enough. For gaming not so.

I would go for i7, its simply more powerful.

Some render work, some simulation models, the usual other bits and pieces, a little bit of gaming.

 

The issue I have is I actually have an AMD sat in a box next to me, which didn't cost me anything, the motherboards and RAM are cheap.

The skylake desktop stuff isn't bad in terms of performance, but the cost is high (That 200-300 more is just by adding a CPU, never mind the other bits.

 

In terms of GPU, the AMD GPU is miles ahead of the i7 stuff, but the 750ti would kill them both for not much outlay.

If out and out performance was the issue, then I'd look at using bits from an HPC server, as I probably wouldn't pay that much more for those than for the 6700k system.

 

Then of course you have the AMD Zen cores, which should be very interesting too.

 

Ahh got to love the fun and games of cost trade off, knowing something much better is around the corner

Or of course, I could just crank the 6600 up to a 6850, overclock the RAM in there (Which does work) and then deal with a couple of extra months of waiting to see what AMD come out with.

Decisions decisions.

As I understand it, the AMD cpu handles rendering and similar jobs better than the Intel, but is nowhere near as good at games; so you need to decide which is the priority.

As I understand it, the AMD cpu handles rendering and similar jobs better than the Intel, but is nowhere near as good at games; so you need to decide which is the priority.

 

The AMD cores are also 2 integer cores to 1 FPU core, which puts it at a disadvantage compared to a 4 core intel for FPU work.

The new Zen cores do away with this, so hopefully we'll have some competition soon.

 

I've now overclocked it from 2.4GHz to a touch over 3GHz (it went up to 3.4, but I turned it down a bit).

Ram is running at 1066MHz and it's all seeming stable.

 

I think I'm going to sit on it for a bit and have some conversations over the next weeks.

Might even be able to blag some samples if I'm lucky

1066MHz is quite slow, I have stock 1600MHz, it was the cheapest 8GB DDR3 I could find. - I recently upspecced my old main PC to the maximum cpu it could take, a 6 core Phenom II running at 3.2GHz stock.

How does modern DDR3/4 compare to memory on dedicated graphics cards?

 

Is 16GB really required? Given you're on 4, even an upgrade to 8 is more than doubling the memory available for applications once the system has its say.

 

I think you could go for a minimal upgrade and still come out streets ahead.

1066MHz is quite slow, I have stock 1600MHz, it was the cheapest 8GB DDR3 I could find. - I recently upspecced my old main PC to the maximum cpu it could take, a 6 core Phenom II running at 3.2GHz stock.

 

I'm aware of that, but then it is in an 8 year old system that uses DDR2-800, so a modest increase for the short term.

 

How does modern DDR3/4 compare to memory on dedicated graphics cards?

 

Is 16GB really required? Given you're on 4, even an upgrade to 8 is more than doubling the memory available for applications once the system has its say.

 

I think you could go for a minimal upgrade and still come out streets ahead.

 

DDR4 is still slow compared to that on a good GFX card, as a good card has a very wide memory bus, so very high bandwidth.

 

In terms of the 16GB, I'm going for that, because 4GB DIMMS are very expensive/hard to get hold of compared to 8GB in the area I work in.

As such I can get 16GB (2*8GB DIMM) are only a tiny bit more than 8GB (2*4GB).

 

Also the 4GB is very restrictive, but there's no way I'm spending money on DDR2 any more.

Edited 1 December, 201510 yr by cheezemonkhai

I'm aware of that, but then it is in an 8 year old system that uses DDR2-800, so a modest increase for the short term.

 

 

DDR4 is still slow compared to that on a good GFX card, as a good card has a very wide memory bus, so very high bandwidth.

 

In terms of the 16GB, I'm going for that, because 4GB DIMMS are very expensive/hard to get hold of compared to 8GB in the area I work in.

As such I can get 16GB (2*8GB DIMM) are only a tiny bit more than 8GB (2*4GB).

 

Also the 4GB is very restrictive, but there's no way I'm spending money on DDR2 any more.

 

If you are stuck with DDR2 then I would say that any upgrade is really futile, you can spend lots of money getting it up to maximum potential, and still be able to go out and pay £200-£300 for a budget mobo bundle that will blow the old rig away; that is what I did with my no.2 system, bought a latest generation budget AMD bundle for £150, stuck in the Corsair 2x4GB DDR3 left over from upgrading the main PC to 2x8GB., and reused the 1TB HDD from the main PC (which now boasts a SSD for the OS drive)

 

An 8 y/o board will mean little or no USB3, no PCIe 3, no SATA III, and limited USB2 ports/headers. No PCIe means any modern GFX card with be kneecapped, performance-wise.

If you are stuck with DDR2 then I would say that any upgrade is really futile, you can spend lots of money getting it up to maximum potential, and still be able to go out and pay £200-£300 for a budget mobo bundle that will blow the old rig away; that is what I did with my no.2 system, bought a latest generation budget AMD bundle for £150, stuck in the Corsair 2x4GB DDR3 left over from upgrading the main PC to 2x8GB., and reused the 1TB HDD from the main PC (which now boasts a SSD for the OS drive)

 

An 8 y/o board will mean little or no USB3, no PCIe 3, no SATA III, and limited USB2 ports/headers. No PCIe means any modern GFX card with be kneecapped, performance-wise.

 

I just overclocked the DDR2 as it was gaming RAM I picked up very cheap when building it which claimed to be stable up to 1333MHz.

 

Anyway it's overclocked and running fine. It does indeed have no USB3 or PCIe 3, but has a pair of PCIe x16 slots and some others, SATA a couple of IDE, a floppy drive controller, dual GbE and bucket loads (10 + the internal ones) of USB2

 

I'm not trying to turn it into anything fancy, was just turning the wick up on what I had without spending anything, to see if it helps.

 

At the end of the day, the debate is still Free AMD chip or pay for an Intel skylake.

Edited 1 December, 201510 yr by cheezemonkhai

I understand, I try to stretch out the life of my PCs, but when you have to start looking at massive coolers to handle the over-clock, heat sinks for the over-clocked RAM, and extra case fans, when only a bit more will give you something much newer, faster, and more reliable, you have to take a deep breath and let go.

 

On the other hand, if you are determined to keep it, you can get a PCI card fitted with USB3 ports; they dont seem to be as fast as a native USB3 board, but they do run about 50% faster than USB2, even with USB2 devices.

 

What have you done system config-wise to speed things up?? Removing the swap file helps if you have plenty of RAM, or setting a fixed size on a separate HDD, cutting down on recovery file space, and keeping at least 10% free on each and every HDD. There are also a lot of background programs running that have no earthly use for most people, so can be safely disabled and stopped from starting; one of the reasons I used to use TinyXP was the speed improvements from cutting the carp. Search indexing is another one that can slow you down - if you dont mind a search taking a few extra seconds the one time per year you use it.

 

The biggest speed improvement I have found is replacing the spinning rust with an SSD, you dont need anything big or expensive, even a cheap Chinese 60GB is enough for the OS to boot and run pretty darned fast, just use CCleaner to remove the unneeded hotfix files that build up in the Window folder.

I don't need the USB3 and I don't need massive coolers, as the one I built the system with to be quiet has stacks of overhead and will happily run at 3.4GHz through benchmarks.

 

The spinning rust was already supplemented with an SSD for the OS and apps, so it was just about getting everything out of it I could.

 

As it turns out, a vendor had a bit of a clear out offer on, so I got a high end 88X AMD motherboard, 16GB RAM and a sealed system water cooler for about £150.

At that point it was a no brainer as it's cheaper than adding anything and in 6 months or so it can be moved to a new home with a relative who has an identical PC to my original.

 

Not bothered with a dedicated GPU and if I need it will use the 8800GT, although I don't think that'll be much better than the on board in the APU.

Did you reuse the case?? I am still using the case that came with my mothers first PC, an Evesham Micro machine she bought in 1997.

Did you reuse the case?? I am still using the case that came with my mothers first PC, an Evesham Micro machine she bought in 1997.

 

No point doing anything else when I'm after cheap and short term to keep things ticking:

 

http://www.aberdeeninc.com/abcatg/imcatg/sc750a.jpg, with a fair bit of sound dampening material on the sides.

 

It's actually the 760 model http://www.cnet.com/products/supermicro-sc760-p4-full-tower-4u-extended-atx/specs/, as that has a 120mm fan bay at the back behind the CPU.

 

I probably ought to look at something smaller at a future date (And yes it's still got a floppy drive)

Edited 2 December, 201510 yr by cheezemonkhai

No point doing anything else when I'm after cheap and short term to keep things ticking:

 

http://www.aberdeeninc.com/abcatg/imcatg/sc750a.jpg, with a fair bit of sound dampening material on the sides.

 

It's actually the 760 model http://www.cnet.com/products/supermicro-sc760-p4-full-tower-4u-extended-atx/specs/, as that has a 120mm fan bay at the back behind the CPU.

 

I probably ought to look at something smaller at a future date (And yes it's still got a floppy drive)

 

One of my cases has a stupid custom floppy slot that cant be removed or reused; if it wasnt built like a tank I would ditch it, but modern cases are made of cheap tin in comparison - even the expensive ones.

http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2TB-SSD-Hard-Drive-Solid-State_1889461144/showimage.html

 

Here is something for you to drool over; I am tempted myself, but my only spare x8 slot is obscured by my R265 gfx card.

 

1.Product Specifications of 2TB SSD Hard Drive

Product Code E9801

Interface PCI Express 2.0 x8

Flash MLC Density                                              128GB             256GB             512GB            768GB         1TB

Read Speed                                                       1086MB/s        2160MB/s     2909MB/s        2850MB/s   2916MB/s

Write Speed                                                        970MB/s          1903MB/s    2737MB/s        2724MB/s   2797MB/s

ECC Support ECC checking technology

Operating Voltage 12.0V(±5%)

Power Consumption                                              15W               20W               29W                 25W             30W

Operating Temperature 0°C-70°C Storage Temperature -40°C-85°C

Humidity 5%-90%

MTBF 2,000,000 Hours

Shock 50(G),11(ms),half-sine wave Vibration 2-500Hz at 3.1G

Dimension(mm) 190*83.4*20mm Weight(g) ≤185.00g

 

 

 

And look at the prices, it makes you weep when you compare to what we pay for a 250GB SSD drive here in the UK, anyone fancy a group order??

Edited 4 December, 201510 yr by GentleGiant

Some render work, some simulation models, the usual other bits and pieces, a little bit of gaming.

 

The issue I have is I actually have an AMD sat in a box next to me, which didn't cost me anything, the motherboards and RAM are cheap.

The skylake desktop stuff isn't bad in terms of performance, but the cost is high (That 200-300 more is just by adding a CPU, never mind the other bits.

 

In terms of GPU, the AMD GPU is miles ahead of the i7 stuff, but the 750ti would kill them both for not much outlay.

If out and out performance was the issue, then I'd look at using bits from an HPC server, as I probably wouldn't pay that much more for those than for the 6700k system.

 

Then of course you have the AMD Zen cores, which should be very interesting too.

 

Ahh got to love the fun and games of cost trade off, knowing something much better is around the corner

 

 

The answer is either a Lenovo TS140 or a Dell T20 - whichever is cheaper with cashback.  (my Xeon E3-1225 TS140 was £180 after cashback) - you cant build comparable machines for that!

They are also pretty much silent machines.

The answer is either a Lenovo TS140 or a Dell T20 - whichever is cheaper with cashback.  (my Xeon E3-1225 TS140 was £180 after cashback) - you cant build comparable machines for that!

They are also pretty much silent machines.

 

Actually when you've got everything and just need a mobo, ram and cooler, you can, but it wasn't a new build just a small part swap.

I'm waiting for some of the future cores.

http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2TB-SSD-Hard-Drive-Solid-State_1889461144/showimage.html

 

Here is something for you to drool over; I am tempted myself, but my only spare x8 slot is obscured by my R265 gfx card.

 

1.Product Specifications of 2TB SSD Hard Drive

Product Code E9801

Interface PCI Express 2.0 x8

Flash MLC Density                                              128GB             256GB             512GB            768GB         1TB

Read Speed                                                       1086MB/s        2160MB/s     2909MB/s        2850MB/s   2916MB/s

Write Speed                                                        970MB/s          1903MB/s    2737MB/s        2724MB/s   2797MB/s

ECC Support ECC checking technology

Operating Voltage 12.0V(±5%)

Power Consumption                                              15W               20W               29W                 25W             30W

Operating Temperature 0°C-70°C Storage Temperature -40°C-85°C

Humidity 5%-90%

MTBF 2,000,000 Hours

Shock 50(G),11(ms),half-sine wave Vibration 2-500Hz at 3.1G

Dimension(mm) 190*83.4*20mm Weight(g) ≤185.00g

 

 

 

And look at the prices, it makes you weep when you compare to what we pay for a 250GB SSD drive here in the UK, anyone fancy a group order??

 

Just found the PCI 3.0 version, but at over £2,500 for 2TB, I cant quite afford it.

 

Has anyone here tried any of the PCI-E mSATA raid cards?? I am getting tempted, but unsure if I should go for the 2x240GB KingSpec with the Asus controller, or the unpopulated x4 with the Marvel controller.