athlon x2 7750 BE

[Anthias]

I just ordered myself a Athlon X2 7750 black edition processor, chiefly because my gygabyte s2 mobo doesn't list phenoms or quad cores as compatible. That and I am getting it quite cheap, so bang for buck is good.

Its the black edition, the one with 3mb of cache on die.

It should be a nice upgrade from my sempron 2800!

For reference, the system has 5gb ram, and my new nvidia 9600gt allready in there, this is the "stage 3" of my upgrade process. (thinking I might pull 1 gb of ram - the original 1 as it is a slower mhz than the other 4)

Has anybody had any experience with these processors? Are they overclockable? performance? (I am aware of the long standing core 2 duo superiority - but I have an am2 mobo, and am not about to change it - hence getting the fastest dual core I could cuyrrently order through work)

I have beeen finding a lot of games that will love the 9600gt, but are simply gutted by the poor performance of the current sempron. I am hoping to remedy this by upping to the 7750.

 

[Phoenixx]

It should be a nice upgrade from my sempron 2800!

No doubt about that. If you dont want to go all high-end it is a very good choice, performancewise comparable to the X² 5200+, which is highly overclockable.

I myself use an 5200+ on a Biostar TA690G AM2. With the V6 Mode of its AutC feature the 5200+ runs 100% primestable at 3GHz (used that setup from the beginning and never had it crash) and in some tests it even beats an X² 6400+ even though the memory bus only runs at 660MHz instead of the RAMs normal 800MHz. I think this is because at 800MHz the RAM would only run in 2T mode whereas at 660MHz it goes into 1T mode. And since the RAM fortunately turned out to be excellent this seems to not only make up for the lost cycles, but to even exceed the performance it would have at nominal specs.

In the end this has saved me an enormous amount of money because a 6400+ would have been way more expensive than a 5200+ at the time. In retrospect i even think it was probably the best choice i could have made, because im nearly certain that the group that makes up the models from 2600 to 3000MHz are really all the same thing anyway and simply forced to a certain max speed (when used without OC) by locking the multiplier to have the resulting speed reflect the model which it is being sold as. Hence the excellent OC qualities, which is probably not even really overclocking since the 5200+ definitely behaves like the 3000MHz were totally normal for it. In fact it doesnt even get any warmer than on 2700MHz. If it does then it is not measurable by the sensor. (<1°C.)

So if the 7750+ is anything like its older equal specced brother 5200+ then you should have some nice OC potential on your hands. But be aware that the right mainboard is important too, in the end it all depends how well that works together with the CPU. If only one parameter is not right then you can forget it, i know this from experience because my Biostar only overclocks decently when i use the inbuilt AutC Modes too. Example: The V6 Mode sets the FSB to 220MHz, the HyperTransportBus to 1100MHz, and the MemoryBus to 330MHz. (Thats pretty much all i can tell since all performance paramaters in the BIOS are being greyed out and cant be viewed when AutC is active.) The result is, like i said, 100% primestable, but when i set the above mentioned parameters to the same values manually the board barely manages to boot. That means the AutC feature does any kind of internal 'magic' to make this work, (whatever parameters that means), and unless these parameters are all 100% right the result might be rather unsatisfactory. The only way here is trial and error, or you use a combination that is known to work well in the 1st place.


Oh, and before i forget; you do know that the 7750 is an AM2+ CPU, right? That means if your board is only AM2 and there is no BIOS upgrade available you might need to get an AM2+ mainboard too,...

 

[Phoenixx]

Heres the results from my benchmarking at 3100MHz if youre interested.

It was stable too but i didnt want to overdo it, 3000MHz are more than enough for everything i do with my PC,...

AMD64 X² 5200+ @ Biostar TA690G AM2 / OC 3100MHz

 

[Anthias]

Thanks for the info Pheonixx! yes - I know about the am2+ bit - my motherboard claims compatibility, but states it cant run a phenom..... The 7750 I am getting is the 2.7ghz black edition, not the older 2.5 ghz one, and has no lock on the multiplier. However, I haven't checked firmware upgrades yet. The new 7750 BE is RUMOURED to be a phenom quad with two cores locked, but I have read confilicting reports of that. Apparently it can overclock buy 600mhz, to 3300 without drama too. (have recieved several reports of succesful ocíng such)

When I built my system a few years back, am2 was farily new, and I wanted it upgradable into the future. I guess I'll find out soon how well I chose (i'll feel stupid if I need to upgrade mobo - cause then I should've just gone quad )

 

[Anthias]

well, it FINALLY turned up today - at a substanital discount after the incredible delay, and also its actually the newer 7850 BE instead. Will do a bios update and install it soon, and let you all know if little johny can walk again!

EDIT: Arrrg! My motherboard, it appears, in spite of manufacturers portestations, and claims form the cpu suppliier, even after an upgrade to the latest bios, does not support the 7850 and its phenom core. Only one thing for it:

Stick the old chip back in (done) Pilfer one gb of the 5 of ram in there since the sempron can't address it anyway, put it aside. Order a new motherboard to fit the 7850 (shouldn't cost much - 50 to 100$). When it turns up, rebuild my pc around that, swap the 4gb ram onto it and the 9600gt graca. Then take my old graca, the old mobo, and the sempron, rebuild with the single gb ram into a spare case with a spare HDD (both available) and use it as the beginnings of the pincab. Not high spec, but will allow me some fun while I get all the rest of it right.

Which reminds me - I'll have to show some pics of my current pincab plan when it gets started. It is partly inspired by a youtube vid I saw, and will use my generic vertical big screen arcade cab, with two screens, layed like a pin (pf and bg), back into the guts of the cab, leaving the tinted glass on the front. No glare or reflection on either screen as they will be inside the cabinet. Safe from spills too. And it'll be a full mame cab as well, since the controls are allready there.

 

[Phoenixx]

I had a feeling the CPU wouldnt run on your mobo,...

Anyhow, if you buy a new one (and youll have to) i recommend a T-Series Biostar. These boards are unbelievably well built, very performant, and they also have about the best BIOSes i have seen to date, including an AutC function that really works. In V6 Mode it makes my 5200+ run as a 6200+ and it is 100% rock-stable. All it takes to accomplish this is to set the BIOS to V6 Mode and thats it. No further fiddling required, and best of all, the CPU doesnt even get any warmer than at default.


Next time i upgrade the mobo i will probably take this one. Perhaps this would be something for you too. Nice µATX board with SolidCaps, PCIe 2.0, HT 3.0, HDMI/HDCP, 128MB SidePort RAM, HybridCrossFireX, and even AM3 CPU support. (Of course the AutC V-Modes etc. are present as well.) If you need a FullATX board for some reason check out the 'Socket AM2+' dropdown menu on the left for other models,...

 

[lovejenete]

<meta http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <title></title> <meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 3.0 (Linux)"> <style> <!-- BODY,DIV,TABLE,THEAD,TBODY,TFOOT,TR,TH,TD,P { font-family:"Nimbus Sans L"; font-size:x-small } --> </style> <table border="0" cellspacing="0" cols="1" rules="none" frame="void"> <colgroup><col width="720"></colgroup> <tbody> <tr> <td align="left" width="720" height="19">Hi have one nanya 512 pc2-5300 memory modue in pc. Tried to install more memory, tried what I believe to be a 1GB pc 5300 chip, would not boot up just beeped. Then got 512 pc 5300/4000 chip marked up as Kingston kvr800d2k2/1gr. googled kingston ref apprears to be pc2-6400, is this the same? No brand on the 1GB chip. Any suggestions welcomed. </td> </tr> </tbody> </table>

 

[Rockinghorse]

Hey Guys,

In August I got the 7750 2.7 ghz and a new ASUS M2N68-AM Plus mobo plus 4 Gb Kingston DDRII. All working fantastically now but I had to do a BIOS upgrade before it would all work properly.

The funny thing with this mobo, which I'd check if anyone wants to get a new mobo for this level is that the memory runs at a 1066Mhz clock speed if you have one Dimm in place but if you have two then it cuts the speed back to 800 Mhz

Anyway, well worth the buy and a bargain basement price. The 7750, mobo and memory cost a total of $267.00 AUD.

 

[Anthias]

forgot about this thread - some long time ago I sorted it - with a new (then) gigavyte ma780g-udh3 mobo. its a great board - no complaints. eventually I will replace my nvidia card with twin ati's crossfired with the onboard dedicated card I currently have disabled. - that'd give 3 gpus to play with. (yes, it has dedicated graphics on board - but only I think it was 128MB or 256 mb dedicated video ram but was enough to run fp - allbeit not quite as good as having the fancy pants ddr3 9600GT in there) the whole system was rebult, and now I still have the old one - though it is stlil in pieces, to become the initial workhorse for my pincab