AMD Value Platform Analysis Part 1: Choosing the components

Choosing the right components

The motherboard

The motherboard arena is dominated by two companies, ASUS and GIGABYTE. GIGABYTE has been receiving heaps of praise with their latest lineup of motherboards for both Intel and AMD based platforms. Currently they only have 5 motherboards for AMD’s AM3 socket CPUs. Just a quick reminder here that AM3 socket is the successor to AM2+ socket for CPUs with integrated DDR3+DDR2 memory controller. I received GIGABYTE’s MA770T-UD3P for this analysis from AMD along with their Athlon II X2 250 CPU. This motherboard is based around AMD’s 770 chipset. This chipset differs from its 790FX and 790GX brothers in the way that it does not provide ATI CrossfireX technology. This chipset has found a home in most of the cheaper mainstream motherboards ranging from $50 to $90. The MA770T-UD3P is available from Newegg.com for $80 and is GIGABYTE’s only 770 chipset-based motherboard. At this price point, one would think that this board would not offer great overclockability options and use cheaper components, but as you will find out later in the review that this is not the case.

The CPU

After the recent success with 45nm based Phenom II Quad Core parts, AMD has started to offer tri-core and dual-core CPUs based on their 45nm Silicon On Insulator (SOI) technology. These tri-core and dual-core parts are salvaged quad-core CPUs as a result of a technique manufacturers use to improve yields called, “Die Harvesting”. Die Harvesting is a technique where instead of throwing away the defective parts of the wafer, certain features are disabled in these defective dies to sell them as lower-end parts. For example, a dual-core Phenom II part is a Phenom II quad-core CPU with two cores disabled, which may have failed quality control testing due to being entirely non functional or requiring higher voltage than the other 2 cores to be stable. Similarly, a tri-core Phenom II is quad-core Phenom II with one core disabled. As a result, the die size of these CPUs are the same as the Phenom II quad cores.

Recently AMD has launched its favorite brand CPU, the Athlon in a 45nm avatar. This new lineup of Athlon’s gets a “II” (two) suffix to differentiate from the original Athlon’s. Athlon II differs from Phenom II dual-core parts in that it does not have disabled cores. It is a native dual-core part composed of two cores based on the Phenom II architecture. Additional changes include the increase in L2 cache to 1 MB and no L3 cache.

The Video Card

For starters, I wanted to see what kind of performance a $50 AMD/ATI video card would provide, so I checked on Newegg and saw the HD 4650 nearest to $50. As I said earlier in this analysis, with a $50 video card you should not expect to get a playable experience in the latest games at a resolution above 1280×1024. If you are looking to play older games, then this video card should handle them fine.

In this analysis, I will upgrading the the video card from a $50 HD 4650 to $100 HD 4770 to $130 HD 4870 512 MB to $180 HD 4890 1 GB to see what kind of benefits upgrading the GPU provides.