AMD Build

[happita]

What games do you play or will be playing in the near future? I would recommend a 6950 to about any medium - hardcore gamer at this moment in time.
And as for the CPU cooler, if you aren't going to be taking it past 4.0GHz, I would say go for the cooler that gives you the best value for your money. And the CM Hyper 212+ is definitely the way to go. Decent price, quiet, and not too big. Just about ANY aftermarket cooler will be much better than stock.

 

[_Zod_]

I would have saved a couple bucks and went with a Phenom II x6 instead. You would see no difference in performance, lower power consumption, holdover until AMD fixes their power and performance issues with the next revision of BD in a year (hopefully).

 

[MegaMan]

What games do you play or will be playing in the near future? I would recommend a 6950 to about any medium - hardcore gamer at this moment in time.
And as for the CPU cooler, if you aren't going to be taking it past 4.0GHz, I would say go for the cooler that gives you the best value for your money. And the CM Hyper 212+ is definitely the way to go. Decent price, quiet, and not too big. Just about ANY aftermarket cooler will be much better than stock.

I would be happy with 3.5ghz really, I may get another 6950 next year when the 7000 series cards come out and do crossfire.

 

[eidairaman1]

I would suggest you not go bulldozer as a BD owner, but if you want to, I say pull the trigger everything looks solid other than the CPU cooler, you won't get far with it BD puts out crazy amounts of heat.

Id say another stepping or Piledriver would be the next major upgrade. It would appear that Global Foundries is having troubles with their fab plants. To Be honest I think AMD was better off fabricating their own CPUs like they did with K8 and K7.

I would say go with a PH2 X2 555 and unlock it to a B55/955 n overclock it

I would have saved a couple bucks and went with a Phenom II x6 instead. You would see no difference in performance, lower power consumption, holdover until AMD fixes their power and performance issues with the next revision of BD in a year (hopefully).

 

[MegaMan]

I already bought the CPU and I had a real amd quad core before.
That wouldn't really be an upgrade.
Anyway tomorrow I will most likely be buying the 6950 and the cm evo.

 

[Super XP]

Id say another stepping or Piledriver would be the next major upgrade. It would appear that Global Foundries is having troubles with their fab plants. To Be honest I think AMD was better off fabricating their own CPUs like they did with K8 and K7.

I would say go with a PH2 X2 555 and unlock it to a B55/955 n overclock it

AMD Working on Bulldozer B3 Stepping (It's coming, and I assume it will be Piledriver in Q1 2011)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4997/amd-working-on-bulldozer-b3-stepping

 

[xxdozer32]

mind me asking what this "bulldozer" is?

 

[RevengE]

mind me asking what this "bulldozer" is?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldozer_(microarchitecture)

 

[Volkszorn88]

As someone who too was hoping to make the jump onto the bulldozer bandwagon I'm glad I didn't. Across the board, BD doesn't deliver. Don't get me wrong, it's a great CPU.

Whats bad about Zambezi is that Thuban is out. If it came after the Phenom x4, it would of been amazing, especially for the price. But again, the problem is Thuban. Which is a great CPU for price/performance. Especially if you put it on a 990fx board and OC it.

My PIIX6 1090T@ 4ghz runs cooler and doesn't need as much power and it still beats the 8150 in some benches. You're buying an 8core cpu, if you don't plan on using the 8 cores, don't bother. You won't see gains.

Just buy the 1090T and OC it. People think just because something newer comes out it automatically means the pervious what ever sucks, which is not true. Perfect examples are video cards.

Take the GTX 480 or 5870, yes the 580 and 6970s are out, doesn't mean the 480/5870 won't destroy anything you throw out at them.

So for your AMD build, definitely go 990fx (since they're fairly cheap compared to high end Intel mobos) and the 1090T.

 

[Inceptor]

AMD Working on Bulldozer B3 Stepping (It's coming, and I assume it will be Piledriver in Q1 2011)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4997/a...er-b3-stepping

I think that that is a bit too much wishful thinking. If you read the text on the linked page, it gives you some perspective. A B3 stepping will help a bit, but any architecture improvements will require an updated design. As I understand it, new steppings are simply additional layer(s) on the chip, not a redesign, just a small tweak(s) to incrementally improve a design feature(s).
The B3 stepping is not Piledriver.

That said, I wish the OP luck with his 8120, if he's not overclocking too much, it should be fine, and he won't notice much (if any) of a single threaded performance difference compared to his x4 970. But he would have been better off buying an x6 Thuban black edition, which would last until Piledriver goes into its later stepping(s) -- at which point, one would hope they would outperform an overclocked Thuban.