Gaming cpu question: PhenomII/FX/i5/i7

[crossy]

how full is the drive?

1.4TB free from 1.8TB - and there should be around than 1TB (other drives are 120GB+500GB+1TB, and none are near full). The "2TB" drive is only used for backups so I'm wondering if this is drive support issue - especially as last night I got to 45% through the backup (which took about 8 hours) before it decided that the drive was full, although Windows Explorer claimed that there was still 900MB+ free.

So this morning I backed off what wasn't Windows backups (about 40GB worth) and then did a (slow) format with a 16K cluster size. Figure that it's probably using 4K at the moment, and 'net wisdom seemed to suggest that a larger cluster size might be a good idea for a drive that predominantly contains large files.

Of course, I had some joker opine that AMD's SATA support "sucked" and I wouldn't have had this problem with a Z87-based board. . A better suggestion was to replace the cable and also perhaps try a different SATA port - theory being that a "nominal" cable could be forcing a much slower SATA mode, also got a suggestion to check the drive's SMART stats to see if this (seldom used) backup drive could be developing a hardware fault.

[ik9000]

Yes, BF4 eats cores, and that's good if that's all you play, but most people don't. I would actually get an 8320 and over clock that - the only difference is stock clock speed really. You will most likely be able to get it to 4.7 on air, and maybe 5,but that would mean power consumption won't be far off the sun. If you want the features of a Z87 board, go with that, however I've noticed that gigabyte have started to release some new AM3+ boards with new features, including PCI E 3,so that might be worth taking a look at

can you provide a weblink to the gigabyte boards?

[ik9000]

1.4TB free from 1.8TB - and there should be around than 1TB (other drives are 120GB+500GB+1TB, and none are near full). The "2TB" drive is only used for backups so I'm wondering if this is drive support issue - especially as last night I got to 45% through the backup (which took about 8 hours) before it decided that the drive was full, although Windows Explorer claimed that there was still 900MB+ free.

So this morning I backed off what wasn't Windows backups (about 40GB worth) and then did a (slow) format with a 16K cluster size. Figure that it's probably using 4K at the moment, and 'net wisdom seemed to suggest that a larger cluster size might be a good idea for a drive that predominantly contains large files.

Of course, I had some joker opine that AMD's SATA support "sucked" and I wouldn't have had this problem with a Z87-based board. . A better suggestion was to replace the cable and also perhaps try a different SATA port - theory being that a "nominal" cable could be forcing a much slower SATA mode, also got a suggestion to check the drive's SMART stats to see if this (seldom used) backup drive could be developing a hardware fault.

How long/many windows backups does it go back to? It might be worth scrapping the lot and starting with a new backup from scratch. Looking at my parent's machine they had a HUGE I mean HUGE amount of disk space gobbled up with Windows back-ups going back years. (Dell auto-set up). Getting rid of that lot and doing a fresh back up took ages, but muchos disk space retrieved. I guess it depends if you have it set to incremental or not, but once it's been going on a while I can imagine it getting pretty chocker trying to keep track of what's where and what's changed this time round etc...

[DanceswithUnix]

Is this backup drive internal then?
A SMART scan would indeed be my first thing to try.

You seem to have quite a few drives there, the last couple of ports are usually configured separately in the BIOS for things like booting XP install discs with an IDE mode DVD drive but installing to AHCI main hard drive. If you are on one of the last ports, I would check the BIOS settings.

If the BIOS has marked the drive as external due to BIOS settings, was Windows turned caching off on that drive?

Finally, is virus scanning getting in the way?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

There is a version of the Asus Sabretooth which supports PCI-E 3.0:

http://www.techpowerup.com/178545/as...rocessors.html
http://www.eclipsecomputers.com/prod...FcrpwgodbDMA3g

Its very expensive.

[scaryjim]

There is a version of the Asus Sabretooth which supports PCI-E 3.0:

Yeah, but only by converting a pair of x16 PCIe 2.0 channels, And I'd like some more details on that, because it seems to suggest that the PLX chip shares the lanes with the two 2.0 x16 slots. The only way you could possibly get any benefit from that set up is with a PCIe 3.0 dual-gpu card, I'd guess, as (afaik) a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot still isn't bottlenecking any single GPU card? Personally I wouldn't pay the extra to provide double bandwidth at one x16 slot, when the pay off is you lose the ability to use three or four PCIe slots simultaneously...

EDIT: besides, the HT link will be saturated long before a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, making PCIe 3 on AM3+ particularly futile...

[DanceswithUnix]

Yeah, but only by converting a pair of x16 PCIe 2.0 channels, And I'd like some more details on that, because it seems to suggest that the PLX chip shares the lanes with the two 2.0 x16 slots. The only way you could possibly get any benefit from that set up is with a PCIe 3.0 dual-gpu card, I'd guess, as (afaik) a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot still isn't bottlenecking any single GPU card? Personally I wouldn't pay the extra to provide double bandwidth at one x16 slot, when the pay off is you lose the ability to use three or four PCIe slots simultaneously...

EDIT: besides, the HT link will be saturated long before a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, making PCIe 3 on AM3+ particularly futile...

Doesn't crossfire/sli use the PCIe bus for inter board traffic these days? Single GPU here so fuzzy on the details of tech that doesn't really interest me, but that would seem a decent use of PCIe3 on AM3+.

[scaryjim]

Doesn't crossfire/sli use the PCIe bus for inter board traffic these days? Single GPU here so fuzzy on the details of tech that doesn't really interest me, but that would seem a decent use of PCIe3 on AM3+.

Hmmm, that's true. But then if you add in your second PCIe 3 card it autonegotiates down to x8/x8, and you're back at the same point at running x16/x16 gen 2. A nicely set up 7/8/990FX board should be able to cope with up to 4 PCIe 2 cards at x8 (or two at x16). So adding PCIe 3 but reducing the functionality of the board seems a bit pointless.

Besides, I don't know how much of that communication has to be mediated through the CPU and how much is directly between the cards. Or whether PCIe 3 brings lower latency along with higher bandwidth? That would at least make more sense of using x8/x8 PCIe 3 instead of x16/x16 PCIe 2...

[minicale]

I'd probably get an am3+ board and overclock your cpu until you have played the games and made a better decision whether or not you feel you need a 8350 or an 8320 if you want to save like £30-50

[koyejo]

I would have gone for B. decent cpu for a reasonable price

[Ttaskmaster]

Oh, and if anyone says that the flashing lights on a Ballistix Tracer is a useless gimmick then take it from me it isn't!

You can rabbit on about 1866MHz and 9-9-9-24 CAS all you like, mate - If it has flashy lights on it, it IS a useless gimmick... why else do you think *I* bought a set?

[Uriel]

tbh, I don't think there's any more certainty about intel staying s1150 than AMD staying on AM3+. And how often has anyone actually upgraded *just* their CPU recently? I've done it exactly once, but that was only when I won a new PC to replace the old one and decided to repurpose the hardware. Every other time I've considered it I've ended up upgrading the whole machine.

I miss the upgradability of my old ASRock 939DualSATA2. Took me from a 939 Athlon A64 3000+ with 1GB DDR and an AGP 6600GT to an Athlon X2 4600+,
4GB DDR2 and pci-e HD4850. You don't get that sort of foresight on many board designs these days.