{"id":10270,"date":"2009-08-12T01:22:11","date_gmt":"2009-08-12T01:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=10270"},"modified":"2009-08-18T21:25:46","modified_gmt":"2009-08-18T21:25:46","slug":"amd-400-value-platform-performance-analysis-part-1-choosing-the-components","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/amd-400-value-platform-performance-analysis-part-1-choosing-the-components\/","title":{"rendered":"AMD Value Platform Analysis Part 1: Choosing the components"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"front-page-image\"<\/a> While Intel has been the dominant force in the PC industry and has made good use of their position by offering CPUs with unlocked multipliers and charging $1000 or more for them, AMD has always buzzed with the keyword \u201cValue\u201d with everything they sell; be it their recent success with the keyword \u201cValue\u201d in the video card arena, or their CPUs over the years. They have tried to sell their CPUs at lower prices than Intel when they are not able to offer the performance levels of Intel CPUs in order to gain the\u00a0business of their customer. Their recent success with the Phenom II lineup has been due to extreme overclockability due to unlocked multipliers of the\u00a0Black Edition CPUs and the low cost of their platform overall.<\/p>\n

Today we won\u2019t be looking at their quad core lineup, but at a\u00a0\u201cvalue\u201d PC in every sense. Although this PC won\u2019t be able to do any high-resolution gaming, it should be able to offer decent performance at 1280×1024 resolution with most of the games ever released\u00a0for PC. The games have been chosen carefully to represent some of the most graphically intensive games currently available. This PC is far from being a \u201cCrysis<\/a>\u201d beater so Crysis<\/em> is not chosen for this analysis. The resolution 1280×1024 has been chosen because currently this is the most widely used resolution as depicted by Steam\u2019s Hardware survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For this analysis, I will be using a $80 CPU, a $50 GPU, and a $80 motherboard\u00a0to try to demonstrate what kind of performance and overclockability you can expect out of an AMD based platform. If you are playing games on such a PC, a GPU upgrade will provide you with the maximum performance increase. Thus, I will be upgrading the GPU to a $100 one, then\u00a0to\u00a0$130 and finally to\u00a0a $180 video card.<\/p>\n

I have a lot to show you. So without further ado, let\u2019s get started. Choosing the right components<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The motherboard<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-f\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019s MA770T-UD3P for this analysis from AMD along with their Athlon II X2 250 CPU. This motherboard is based around AMD\u2019s 770 chipset. This chipset differs from its 790FX and 790GX brothers in the way that it does not provide ATI CrossfireX technology<\/a>. This chipset has found a\u00a0home in most of the cheaper mainstream motherboards ranging from $50 to $90. The MA770T-UD3P is available from Newegg.com<\/a> for $80 and is GIGABYTE\u2019s 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\u00a0this is not the case.<\/p>\n

The CPU<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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)<\/a> 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, \u201cDie Harvesting\u201d. 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.<\/p>\n

\"athlon<\/a><\/p>\n

Recently AMD has launched its favorite brand CPU, the Athlon in a 45nm avatar. This new lineup of Athlon\u2019s gets a \u201cII\u201d (two) suffix to differentiate from the original Athlon\u2019s. 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.<\/p>\n

\"CPU-Table\"<\/p>\n

The Video Card<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n


<\/p>\n

\"4650\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a0a 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.<\/p>\n

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.Choosing the right components cont..<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Memory<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

As the chosen motherboard is AM3 socket compatible, we would have to choose DDR3 memory. DDR3 has the advantage of running at higher speeds over DDR2 at reduced voltages. As I will be overclocking this PC to see the performance benefit, I wanted to choose a memory kit that wouldn\u2019t hold back the overclock. I also wanted to see how one of the least expensive kits fared. 4 GB is the most commonly used capacity these days. With 4 GB DDR3 kits not that much more expensive than their DDR2 counterparts, I chose a 4GB 1333MHz CL9 1.5V rated kit from Crucial<\/a> to start with. I also got a high speed kit<\/a> from Kingston rated at 1800 MHz CL8 1.7-1.9V. This was the cheapest 1800 MHz rated kit available on Newegg at the time. Corsair sent me their XMS3 4GB CL9 1333 MHz rated kit<\/a>. So now I had three memory kits representing a broad spectrum from low cost to high speed.<\/p>\n

Hard Disk<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Mechanical storage is available for cheap these days. The cost\/gigabyte is at its lowest these days. A decent sized 500 GB hard drive can be had for around $50. This should be enough if you are looking to install your operating system plus some games. If you need more storage space, more hard drives can always be added later on.<\/p>\n

Case and Optical Drive<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Choosing a case and Optical drive shouldn\u2019t be a hard part. To keep the overall cost down, there are many cases available for less than $50 on Newegg. Blu-Ray drives are still very expensive. A $20 DVD reader\/writer should serve you well.<\/p>\n

Putting it all together<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Components\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Our focus in this analysis is on the CPU\/GPU\/Motherboard\/Memory combo which should cost you around $280 from the above estimate. Other stuff can be migrated from your previous PC or if you have some extra stuff lying around. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

A look at the GIGABYTE MA770T-UD3P<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-a\"<\/a>\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-b\"<\/a>\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-c\"<\/a><\/p>\n

MA770T-UD3P comes in a box laden with images of the features of the board. The biggest feature images are of Gigabyte\u2019s \u201cUltra Durable 3\u201d technology with a full explanation on the back side. It shows the benefits of using 2 oz copper in the PCB instead of the traditional 1 oz; namely cooler components, enhanced durability, improved energy efficiency, and improved overclocking. Other features advertised include support for 140W TDP CPUs, DDR3 1666+ support, Dual Bios, and a 3 year warranty.<\/p>\n

As this is a value motherboard the accessories are kept to a minimum. You only get 2 SATA cables, 1 IDE cable, an I\/O Shield, the user\u2019s manual, the Driver CD and the\u00a0installation guidebook.<\/p>\n

\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-d\"<\/a>\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-e\"<\/a>\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-f\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This motherboard is adorned with GIGABYTE\u2019s typical assortment of colors. The PCB is traditional GIGABYTE blue, with the blue and white memory slots, yellow SATA connectors, green IDE connector, blue PCI-E 2.0 x16 slot, and white PCI-E x1 and PCI slots. The memory slots are color-coded to easily represent the dual channel configuration. One thing I would like to mention here is that although the board follows the ATX form factor, its dimensions are 30.5cm x 21.0cm. Pay close attention to that width dimension (21.0cm). Normally other motherboards come with 24.4 cm of width in ATX form factor. This is a cost cutting measure that GIGABYTE used in order to keep the cost of this motherboard down. Although this doesn\u2019t cause any serious problems, I did have a few concerns\u00a0that I will inform you of\u00a0later on\u00a0in this analysis.<\/p>\n

This board offers 6 SATA II 3Gb\/s ports.<\/p>\n

\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-h\"<\/a>\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-i\"<\/a>\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-k\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As a result of the above mentioned cost cutting measure, the memory slots are pushed towards the AM3 socket. This may cause clearance issues with\u00a0tall memory module heatsinks such as Corsair Dominator<\/a> placed in the white colored memory sockets. In my testing, the first white slot was directly under the fins of my Zerotherm Nirvana 120mm cooler.<\/p>\n

The 24-pin power connector is placed perfectly on the board on the side, but it is turned other way around so that the latch faces the memory slots instead of side of the board. This might be a problem if you are using the blue slots for your memory and want to get your fingers between the memory stick and the 24-pin power connector wire from your PSU to remove the connector from the slot. You might have to remove the memory stick everytime you want to remove the power connector.<\/p>\n

In the second picture above, notice the processor voltage regulator circuit bare without any kind of heatsink covering it as you might be used to seeing it on the high end boards. GIGABYTE has used cost cutting measures here with the removal of any heatpipes on the motherboard. The northbridge chip only has a small stand alone heatsink covering it. The bare 8+2 phase (8 for CPU, 2 for CPU memory controller) circuit is not a pretty sight for anyone looking to overclock as these components run quite hot during the operation of the PC and their temperature directly affects the overclock.<\/p>\n

\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-j\"<\/a>\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-l\"<\/a>\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-g\"<\/a><\/p>\n


<\/p>\n

The first picture above showcases the expansion slots that are available on this board. The board comes with four PCI-E x1 (small white) slots, one PCI-E 2.0 x16 (blue) slot and two PCI (long white) slots.<\/p>\n

The second picture displays the back panel connectivity options on this board. Looking at this picture you would not expect this to be a budget board with support for eight USB 2.0 ports, two IEEE1394 ports, Gigabit network port, six analog audio-jacks, optical and coaxial SPDIF connectors, and PS\/2 connectors for keyboard and mouse. Onboard pin-connectors can be used to get additional four USB 2.0 ports, one IEEE1394 port, serial COM and Parallel LPT ports.<\/p>\n

Support for IDE hard drives is present on this board as shown by the third picture above.<\/p>\n

\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-m\"<\/a>\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-n\"<\/a>\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-u\"<\/a>\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-o\"<\/a>\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-t\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Pictured above are the various controllers found on this motherboard. From left to right –<\/p>\n

Realtek RTL8111C<\/strong> \u2013 Responsible for the Gigabit ethernet duties<\/p>\n

Realtek ALC888<\/strong> \u2013 Responsible for providing 8 channel HD audio<\/p>\n

Texas Instruments TSB43AB23<\/strong> \u2013 Provides FireWire and i.LINK implementations of IEEE Std 1394<\/p>\n

ITF IT8720F<\/strong> – Highly integrated Super I\/O providing support for the most commonly used legacy Super I\/O functionality such as IEEE 1284 Parallel Port, Floppy Disk Controller and Keyboard Controller plus the latest Environment Control initiatives, including H\/W Monitor and Fan Speed Controller.<\/p>\n

ICS 9LPRS477CKL –<\/strong> Main clock generator.<\/p>\n

\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-s\"<\/a>\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3Pv\"<\/a>\"Gigabyte-MA770T-UD3P-p\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The first picture provides a look at the CMOS battery and the BIOS reset jumper. The reset jumper is placed between the two expansion slot. Reaching it maybe a hassle if you have any cards installed in these slots.<\/p>\n

The second picture provides a view of the 8-pin CPU Power connector. Due to reduced width of the board the power connector has been moved towards the center of the PCB. This can be a nuisance if you are trying to route the power cable behind the motherboard tray and the power supply is mounted on the bottom of the case as is the combination in some cases. In this case, the power cable would not be long enough to reach the connector.<\/p>\n

The third picture shows the front panel connectors. <\/strong><\/p>\n

A look at the AMD Athlon II X2 250<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"athlon2die\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is the die shot of the Athlon II codenamed \u2018Regor\u2019. The CPU runs at 3.0 GHz, carries a TDP of 65 Watts and is expected to give competition to Intel\u2019s E5400.<\/p>\n

\"Athlon-II-X2-250\"<\/a>\"Athlon-II-X2-250-a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is the AM3 socket compatible AMD Athlon II X2 250 CPU. It features a DDR3+DDR2 controller. As a result it can work in AM2+ motherboards too. It uses 938 contact pins to interface with the AM3 socket.<\/p>\n

\"Athlon-II-X2-250-c\"<\/a>\"Athlon-II-X2-250-d\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You might be disappointed to know that the Athlon series feature no Black Edition parts which means that these CPUs will have their multipliers locked. The \u201cBlack Edition\u201d title will be reserved only for Phenom I & II lineup. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

A look at the Memory Kits<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Kingston-HyperX-1800-MHz-e\"<\/a>\"Kingston-HyperX-1800MHz-4GB\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The fastest memory kit for this analysis comes from Kingston. This is the Kingston HyperX 1800MHz DDR3 4GB (2x2GB) Kit<\/a> model no. KHX14400AD3K2\/4G. Although it is deactivated on Newegg now, it was the least expensive 1800MHz rated kit on Newegg at $84 at the time of start of this analysis. It is rated for 8-8-8-24 at 1.7-1.9V operation. I have to say that this is best looking kit out of the three.<\/p>\n

\"Corsair-XM3-4GB\"<\/a>\"Corsair-XM3-4GB-ab\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 Memory Model TW3X4G1333C9<\/a>. It is rated for 9-9-9-24 at 1.6V operation.<\/p>\n

\"Crucial\"<\/a>\"Crucial-a\"<\/a>\"Crucial-b\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The final memory kit used in this analysis is the Crucial 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 Memory Model CT2KIT25664BA1339<\/a>. This kit is rated for CL 9 at 1.5V operation. The third picture might interest overclocking enthusiasts. This memory uses D9JNM memory chips which means you can expect some good overclocks from this RAM.<\/p>\n

We will see in the next part how all these memory kits fare in our memory overclocking test.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I would like to end this article with a glimpse of what\u2019s in store in future parts of this series.<\/p>\n

I will be testing the Athlon II at stock with a HD 4650 in 6 games and with\u00a011 synthetic benchmarks. Then, we will\u00a0overclock the Athlon II and HD 4650 and retest all those benchmarks. Then the GPU gets upgraded to HD 4770 and all the games and synthetic tests are rerun. The GPU gets upgraded again to HD 4870 512 MB and finally to HD 4890 1 GB. The 4870 and 4890 will also be tested at 1920×1200 resolution. This will provide an accurate representation of the numbers you can expect from this platform with a low-end GPU and a high end one. Later in this series I will be upgrading the CPU to Phenom II X2 550, then to Phenom II X3 720 and hopefully rounding the series off with Phenom II X4 Quad Core to see how the numbers change with the change in hardware.<\/p>\n

Now when I say that this board is no pushover when it comes to overclocking, believe me. I would like to leave you with two screens as a testament to what this board and platform can do and something you can look forward to for our next part.<\/p>\n

\"Athlon-Overclock-&-Memory\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Everest-Memory-&-Cache-Benc\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Join me next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7814,6,7],"tags":[72,1088,1463,73,842,249,1439,1988,794],"class_list":["post-10270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-news","category-technology","tag-amd","tag-athlon","tag-athlon-ii-x2-250","tag-ati","tag-cpu","tag-gpu","tag-graphic-card","tag-hd-4650","tag-processor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}