AMD Athlon II x4 750K

[inf64]

Bump.
One 750K inbound in next few days, I will post benchmarks when I build the system. I will be running it with 8GB(2x4GB 1600Mhz Crucial CL9 modules) RAM and Asrock FM2A75 Pro4-M. Whole system price is around 217$ (memory is very pricey, CPU is dirt cheap at 77$, board is 76$). GPU will be 6870 1GB. I plan pushing it beyond 4.6Ghz with great OCZ air cooler (vendetta 2, now EOLed;still rocks).

 

[Shinshin]

Bump.
One 750K inbound in next few days, I will post benchmarks when I build the system. I will be running it with 8GB(2x4GB 1600Mhz Crucial CL9 modules) RAM and Asrock FM2A75 Pro4-M. Whole system price is around 217$ (memory is very pricey, CPU is dirt cheap at 77$, board is 76$). GPU will be 6870 1GB. I plan pushing it beyond 4.6Ghz with great OCZ air cooler (vendetta 2, now EOLed;still rocks).

Have you built the system?
What are your thoughts regarding the CPU?

Thanks!

 

[inf64]

Have you built the system?
What are your thoughts regarding the CPU?

Thanks!

Hey there
I have built it and although the CPU is not the best specimen out there (does 4.4Ghz but not very stable ,at 1.5V), I'm happy. I have it at 4.3Ghz @ 1.48V with memory at 1600Mhz. CPU cooler is ocs vendetta 2, it cools the chip nicely although the base of the cooler is not that good (has some scratches and could use a good polishing). Motherboard in the end was not m-atx but full atx version. It's very nice board, has lots of features (sata3,usb3), suspend to sleep works even OCed. CnQ also works when OCed and my chip goes to 1.4Ghz and 0.95V in low load situations. In full load, with the info about currents that hardwareinfo reports in the NB and CPU areas, my full load in the CPU @ OCed state results to ~77-80W under occt under, not bad at all. I suspect that when @ stock clock and volts this thing never gets pass 60-65W in OCCT.

For this peanuts money this chip is pretty good. I have ran planetside2 as a reference benchmark to see if I can notice a difference between this chip and my old X4 @ 3Ghz (DDR2) and I gained around 60% more fps (lol!). That's what I call great performance upgrade . Now PS2 is enjoyable to play, before I was struggling with 25fps in the open areas of the map (now ~40fps). BF3 runs better in maps with 64 players (strike at karkand much better, was CPU limited before). Given the fact that this small Athlon has only 2 FP units (dual threaded though) and 4 integer cores, at 4.3Ghz is very fast chip. I noticed great improvements in video transcoding too, don't know if it's just the clock speed or there are also some IPC improvements (or better ISA support leading to more performance).

All in all, I'm more than pleased with the system. I have a board that is upgradeable to newer parts (Richland, moar cores Kaveri), supports sata3 and usb3,have 2x PCI-E (one is 4x only though but I don't care) so I can add second card in the future. System runs supper cool, power draw is great and power savings work flawlessly even in OCed state. So thumbs up from me :biggrin:

 

[Shinshin]

Thanks for the reply!
I have an old opteron 185 system (which still suits my needs) but I have some compatibility problems with my newly bought Radeon 7870 XT.
I was searching for CPU+MB (and mem) combo to replace my parts and came across this 750K CPU.
The price/performance is great (from the only benchmark I could find www.cpubenchmark.net) and the platform in brand new which means future upgrades are not of a problem.
The lack of reviews and the absence of this CPU from AMD's website worried me a bit...
Since I'm not on a quest for top performance and don't want to spend a fortune I think i'll get this as well.
This will be a great upgrade from what I have now anyhow...

Thanks a lot!!!

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I suspect that when @ stock clock and volts this thing never gets pass 60-65W in OCCT.

Very interesting inf64. Then its as I suspected, its the GPU that consumes the most power. The 750K seems like a very potent budget CPU.

Thanks for the reply!
I have an old opteron 185 system (which still suits my needs) but I have some compatibility problems with my newly bought Radeon 7870 XT.
I was searching for CPU+MB (and mem) combo to replace my parts and came across this 750K CPU.
The price/performance is great (from the only benchmark I could find www.cpubenchmark.net) and the platform in brand new which means future upgrades are not of a problem.
The lack of reviews and the absence of this CPU from AMD's website worried me a bit...
Since I'm not on a quest for top performance and don't want to spend a fortune I think i'll get this as well.
This will be a great upgrade from what I have now anyhow...

Thanks a lot!!!

Xbitlabs has the info you need:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/trinity-vs-ivy-bridge_8.html#sect0

The 750K is essentially equal to the A10-5700 minus the iGPU. So that should give you an idea of its performance.

 

[SocketF]

Does your mainboard offer NB-overclocking?

Some do and you can gain an additional +5%. Even though the APUs dont have an L3, the cores are prone to memory starvation. Basically both modules can only utilize a bit more than one memory channel.

If I remember correctly, than the default clock was only 1.8 Ghz, oc should be able up to the 2.4-2.6 Ghz range.

Good luck

Edit:
@Shinshin:
The 750K is currently really the best bang for the buck, because you can overclock it. You cannot do anything wrong by upgrading to it. Just hurry up, DDR3-RAMs are getting more and more expensive.

 

[inf64]

Hey guys, thanks for the comments .

@SocketF
Strangely my Asrock board, when all is at setup defaults, sets the NB at lowly 1.6Ghz. I have no idea if this is the case in general and I was under impression that 1.8Ghz was the default (as with A8/A10 parts). Anyway, I pushed NB volts a tiny bit (to be on the safe side when OCing NB) and changed the NB multiplier from very low 8x to 10x which results to nice 2Ghz NB clock. I have noticed slight improvements in scores (CPU @ the same 4.3Ghz) in tests like Winrar 4.2, C11.5 and povray. Nothing earth shattering, 2-4% increases. Still not bad and my temps are virtually the same in either case so I just gained performance and lost nothing . I will try to see if 2.2Ghz @ 1.285V for NB is stable during this weekend.

As for DDR3 prices, it's true. They are climbing up and are 2-3% more expensive than 1 week ago when I bought the parts. The trend is not reversing from what I can see.

 

[blckgrffn]

Thanks for sharing - I have an mitx lian-li case inbound and this is going to be compared to the lowest Intel Celeron @ $35 and the i3 3225 @ $120 + MB discount at Microcenter.

What's a little sad is that at Microcenter, the A10 + motherboard is ~$25 more than the i3! Plus I'd have to invest in pricier ram to get the GPU really cooking.

Either way I have a 6570 to pair with it, so if the price is right, well, the price is right

 

[SocketF]

@inf64:
Thanks for testing
It might be interesting to run any memory benchmark like AIDA or Sandra, we should see the improvement there.

@blckgrffn:
Well the APUs are still kind of expensive. But you shouldnt buy now, there will be price cuts in ~2 weeks, because the Richland models (6800K etc) are launched a bit after that:
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20130320PD216.html?mod=2

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Thanks for sharing - I have an mitx lian-li case inbound and this is going to be compared to the lowest Intel Celeron @ $35

What model would that be?. G465, G530 or G1610?. If its the G465, I can give you some results right away...

 

[AtenRa]

I have also purchased a 750K, ill give you some numbers soon

 

[inf64]

I look forward to your results AtenRa . List the whole system specification please (board, memory, PSU, voltages needed, cooling ).

@inf64:
Thanks for testing
It might be interesting to run any memory benchmark like AIDA or Sandra, we should see the improvement there.

AIDA does not recognize 750K , gives me all zeros in memory benchmark . Sandra does recognize it and my chip performs roughly like A10 @ 4.2-4.3Ghz with 1600Mhz ram, which it basically is .

 

[AtenRa]

I look forward to your results AtenRa . List the whole system specification please (board, memory, PSU, voltages needed, cooling ).

ASUS F2A85-M
2x 4GB Kingston 2133MHz @ 1866 (10-11-10)
ASUS HD7950 1GHz DirectCU II
Be-Quiet DarkPower Pro 1000W


For cooling I'll use the CoolerMaster cmhk8-7j52a-a1-gp. It is a cheap two heat-pipe copper based cooler.
Later ill try Water

 

[inf64]

Great Aten . I'm interested how high you can clock with that cooler and what kind of temps Core temp reports (my specimen at 4.3Ghz @ 1.48V under load hits 68C , 2 degrees below Tj. max ).

edit:
just to add , the odd thing is that heatpipes on my ocz cooler are not hot at all when core temp reports those temps. So either the temps are not that high (my power draw is rather conservative even then) or there is not so stellar contact between Trinity die and IHS, which is very possible.

 

[SocketF]

Sandra does recognize it and my chip performs roughly like A10 @ 4.2-4.3Ghz with 1600Mhz ram, which it basically is

Thats of course expected, but I was interested in the difference between the 2 modes with oc'ed NB @2.x GHz and without oc'ed NB @1.6GHz.
Can you try that out, too?

Thanks

 

[cytg111]

Given AMDs cutting back on wafers, paying GloFo hundreds of millions for the privilege, I don't think this is the same supply issue as with the A64. The bottleneck is convincing vendors to actually use the chips in devices people would want to buy. Maybe this year we'll see more than just an endless parade of 15.6 inch Brazos/lowest tier chip notebooks often not even passing on much of the discount to the consumer.

But "Mubadala Development" is running glofo, right? And getting into position of running AMD too, is that not in the cards? If so, it is pretty much shuffling money from one hand to the other AMD<->GloFo.
I have no idea what the endgame is but it all sounds ... weird

 

[AtenRa]

Ahahaha, CPUz registers 1.808V under load.

Also, measuring the temperature is not working correctly, every program shows very low temps.

 

[AtenRa]

4.0GHz and 2133MHz memory
NB at 1700MHz

 

[inf64]

I found out that 2.4Ghz NB clock is stable at 1.28V for NB section. Scores are not much higher in synthetic benchmarks (2-4%) but I noticed increase in min fps on BF3 MP (cannot measure it exactly as it's not exact science but I think I got around ~2-3 fps more min fps on 64slot Karkand).

 

[AtenRa]

Im still playing around with the setup, how high did you OC on air ??

 

[inf64]

I can run it at 4.5Ghz with 1.55V with default LLC and no offset (vdroop to 1.5V under load) but it fails stress tests. It can finish C11.5 and similar shorter load tests but I'm not willing to run unstable OC for 24/7. I have settled for 4.3Ghz on 1.48V (occt stable) with 2.4Ghz NB @ 1.28V. Memory is 1600Mhz 8-8-9-24 , 2x4GB Corsair. Cooler is OCZ vendetta 2, temps can get rather high according to core temp but I"m suspicious it's either bad readout or bad IHS contact since base of my cooler and heatpipes are cool to the touch under occt (or mildly warm at best).

At 4.3Ghz it's very speedy chip. Heck even at stock settings it was running at 3.6-4Ghz under load thanks to Turbo, so very quick. But most important thing is that it runs anything I throw at it with no problems and it costs peanuts . Best buy for the money at the budget segment at this moment , in my humble opinion.


edit:
Some module efficiency tests:
Fritz chess (2 threads,C1+C2): 3626pts
Fritz chess (2 threads,C1+C3): 4510pts <- 24% difference when threads are scheduled on different modules! That's a lot of performance left on the table , something SR can address ( a low hanging fruit- 30% AMD cites is not impossible looking at the penalty due to shared decoding stage). If there was no module sharing penalty , 8T PD would be a bit faster than 8T haswell(same clock) in this benchmark .

Hyper PI: scores are lower by ~13% when threads are scheduled on the same compute units Vs when they are scheduled on 2 cores in different CUs.

I will do C11.5 but I suspect the results will be similar as above. I also have Win8 installation on another drive and I may do some tests to see how much better (if at all) is Win8 scheduler.

 

[AtenRa]

OK thx, still playing with the setup,

3D MARK at 4GHz with HD7950

 

[inf64]

Here is mine:
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/513652

 

[discoeels]

I think this is the first time I've posted on Anandtech forums so with that: Hellooo!

I'm wondering if either the 740 or the 750k would be a good move for itx. Would the process power of the 750k be more or less equal to an A10, just less the GPU? At $100(on Amazon) for either its a tough call

The tdp for the 740 is 65w, a good deal lower then the 100w for the k. It seems like those are high numbers from the benchmarks however

Versatility would be best, I'm taking the number of mini-itx builds on Ebay as fair warning..

Heh, with all that said, with the i5 3570k & H77M-ITX bundle @ Microcenter $238.48 its tempting..Still,seems a bit silly.

 

[NTMBK]

I think this is the first time I've posted on Anandtech forums so with that: Hellooo!

I'm wondering if either the 740 or the 750k would be a good move for itx. Would the process power of the 750k be more or less equal to an A10, just less the GPU? At $100(on Amazon) for either its a tough call

The tdp for the 740 is 65w, a good deal lower then the 100w for the k. It seems like those are high numbers from the benchmarks however

Versatility would be best, I'm taking the number of mini-itx builds on Ebay as fair warning..

Heh, with all that said, with the i5 3570k & H77M-ITX bundle @ Microcenter $238.48 its tempting..Still,seems a bit silly.

If you're making a compact build, it seems a little odd to go for the version without an integrated GPU! What're you going to be pairing it with?

If you're definitely set on not using the integrated GPU, I'd say go with an i3 to be honest. The lower thermals will make a real difference in a compact build.