Excavator Athlon in practice - first experience

[FlanK3r]

I was interesting for Excavator for FM2+. Its fresh, new and I have not time for deep testing. Good news is, the TDP of this CPU is 65W and running most of time at 3800 MHz because dont reached TDP base.
So for you guys I tested Superpi at stock single RAM vs dualchannel 2133 MHz and quickly Cinebench R11.5 at stock. Next week Im doing at Wraith cooler review and going to holiday time to the mountain (at weekend Im out of my home also).


Athlon x4 845 has basic clock 3.5 GHz and include Turbo up to 3.8 GHz. The multiplier is locked of course, this is not K version. I used highend board Crossblade Ranger and 1702 BIOS.



As First 1600MHz DRAM in single channel and Superpi. Srry for 1M quality, its some bug of software


- 17.581s at 3.8 GHz is better than FX-8370 at stock or than Kaveri a little. And we are still at single channel only...


- Superpi 32M is much smoother than everything from AMD. At 3.8 GHz single channel in 13m 6s. Wow, for this you need FX Vishera with dualchannel and some light tweaks at 5300 MHz or Kaveri at 4900 MHz!


What about if I put second modul, so dualchannel and set the clock to 2133 MHz at DRAM


- 16.317s is solid

- in 32M run 27s quicker than before! And result? Wow...As 5 GHz hard tweaked Kaveri or as 6 GHz FX Vishera Lol, its my personal record at AMD AIR :-D


Its interesting, tke Kaveri and Excavator are more effective in 32M than i 1M.

Cinebench at stock is again better...Its in comparison as 4.3 GHz Kaveri So in practice 500 MHz advantage.




But main question is...It will be able to overclock? I hope so...tried quickly light OC from BIOS to boot system....So, lets go someone try break AMD WR in 32M with LN2! Unfortunatelly, I have AHCI, so post with blck 115Mhz was not problem, but I got BSOD in Windows logo With AHCI I can get into the WIndows max with 105 MHz, its not better than stock settings, cause your freqency without turbo is 3674 MHz..


Im sure, Zen will be clear winner, but we have still many months time and chance break AMD WR in SUperpi. This is the best bulldozer architecture for this one old benchmark...And hope, the BCLK issue wil be not with IDE mode

 

[cdawall]

Have you tried a board with a secondary controller for SATA? That was the trick for getting my AM1 stuff into windows at higher bclk's

 

[Johan45]

Nice stuff man, that's a great improvement on the BD core. I can't wait to see how Zen does with a revamped arch.

 

[FlanK3r]

I think, in SUperpi could be Zen the best AMD CPU. Excavator shine specialy there. Others is similar os slighty better than Kaveri. But I think, Bristol RIdge will be another core (some small improvements) than this pure Excavator in FM2+

 

[Johan45]

I sure hope AMD pulls it off. They can't afford another BD

 

[FlanK3r]

Now Im installing Windows for IDE mode. Next two days Im out of home, so at Friday I can tets few benchmarks. And after next week (weekend is rest time for God, friends and sport activity )

 

[phanbuey]

all you need to do is change a registry setting and your windows will go back to IDE...

 

[FlanK3r]

I reinstalled complete all :-/ Its almost finished, now only install benchmarks

 

[phanbuey]

dang... well if you ever want to go back to AHCI and not blue screen :
http://www.vistax64.com/general-discussion/271218-switch-ahci-ide-tutorial-howto.html

 

[FlanK3r]

No rush, but its very great CPU for SUperpi. Mr Chew* or mr Stilt must to find 70 dollars and buy this CPU for late evenings :up:



I had IDE mode and the issue of this piece was IDE BCLK black screen. I tried another ways as lower RAM, lower APUNB or higher voltages at SB, VDDNB, CPU and doesnt change the issue. So this was my highest stable BCLK. I believe piece of piece of 845 Athlon will be little different. Maybe PCIe card slot with M2 could be solution (into the last PCIe x4 slot). Friend told me, old HDD raptor is more SATA stable also. I used SSD.
Seems CPU si scaling very well. Next time I must tweak the OS or to use XP for SUperpi. Clear 10 minutes is with these CPU/CPUNB clocks doable. Interesting, for this CPUNB was OK only around 1.17V! I dont tested, if CPU has coldbug or not. With few liters of LN2 I left around -50 C temperatures.