Legit Reviews

Is It Worth It? AMD Spider Platform Benchmarked

For most consumers, upgrading you system is an every 3-4 year ordeal. Most people do not have the typical enthusiast mentality that says "UPGRADE" every time something can give you a .005% increase in frame rates. The question for every upgrade has to be, "Is it worth it?" AMD tried to make it worth it with the Spider platform. Did they make the case that an upgrade is in the works for you?

The most interesting part of this article is how Jason got the AMD Phenom processor to work on the Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H motherboard. This board was originally released last summer, so it is great to see a BIOS (F4) released that supports AMD AM2+ Phenom processors. When one installs an AMD AM2+ CPU on AM2 motherboard, the system bus speed is downgraded from HT3.0 (3600MHz) to HT1.0 (2000 MT/s); however, the frequency of AM2+ CPU is not be impacted. This, along with the fact that the board doesn't support PCI Express 2.0 means that the 690G motherboard was at...

Article Title: Is It Worth It? AMD Spider Platform Benchmarked
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/657/1/

Nice work Jason.

No they did not make the case to upgrade for me...not even close. My current rig makes this one cry.

Either AMD is that far behind, or I missed the point of this article entirely.

Seriously Jason, that torture rack gets more dusty everytime we see it

When is it time for spring cleaning?

Dan

i was about to say the same thing dan. really man, is it that hard to just get somecanned air and spray it in there?

Ummm... yeah, i guess I need to clean it up a bit... or turn the fans on so you can't see it so bad...

pastorjay wrote:Ummm... yeah, i guess I need to clean it up a bit... or turn the fans on so you can't see it so bad...

Even with the fans going, the short camera exposure time with the flash wont let you hide it. So get cleaning (or photoshopping, but it's easier to clean).

Dan

yeah I was really being silly. I am gonna get her cleaned up. Gotta get some canned air and it will be done before the article I am working on now is finished.

ibleet wrote:Either AMD is that far behind, or I missed the point of this article entirely.

AMD is like Hillary Clinton atm. Not enough funds to compete.

pastorjay wrote:yeah I was really being silly. I am gonna get her cleaned up. Gotta get some canned air and it will be done before the article I am working on now is finished.

Yey for positive peer pressure

Dan

Really is it worth it ? Like a CORVETE with a VW engine...

Lets see it fully blown ... 9900 + 4 x 3870 8GB vista X64 VS Q6850 + 3/4 8800 Ultra
price/performance see who scales and which one you have to sell your car for

after all with the pace of hardware change these days it is all or nothing ... ready who spends 300$ on a MB with 4 x PCI-e 16x and only uses on slot id that is the case your better of buying a 1/2 PCIe 16x MB and save 100$ or so

I am currently think 3870X2 X 2 as the power requirements seem to be less than 4 x 3870
also here in Australia the A$850 for a good brand 8800 ultra(DX10) vs A$600 for an 3870 X2(DX10.1)
and thinking the 9800ultra will be about A$1400 the 2 x x2 sounds like the go to complement my HP LP3065 monitor

or does one wait for the R700 4000 series

MMC65 wrote:Lets see it fully blown ... AMD 9900+

AMD 9900+? Isn't that a telemedicine device that's been on the market for a few years already?

The AMD-9900+ Care Companion is a home device that will ask a patient, for example, "Are your feet swollen?"


http://www.amdtelemedicine.com

he probably meant the phenom

you have to consider the price point also

My Alzheimer's might be acting up, did any one do a Phenom 9900 compared to Q6600 or equivalent Intel offering. I know which one would dominate, but would like to see the comparison before I make the agonizing decision to give up a Phenom ready system and move into the Intel camp.

Nice review on the two boards, makes a person wonder if the PCIE 2.0 makes no difference opinions will change. I think it shows a noticeable difference having run a pcie card on 1.0 and 2.0 but with the difference in chip sets it makes for a hard call.

Methious wrote: Nice review on the two boards, makes a person wonder if the PCIE 2.0 makes no difference opinions will change. I think it shows a noticeable difference having run a pcie card on 1.0 and 2.0 but with the difference in chip sets it makes for a hard call.

I took that into consideration before I bought my last board. All my research indicated that 2.0 did not make enough of a difference to sway me.

I think you already know the AMD / Intel choice is obvious...time to switch camps.

Methious wrote:My Alzheimer's might be acting up, did any one do a Phenom 9900 compared to Q6600 or equivalent Intel offering. I know which one would dominate, but would like to see the comparison before I make the agonizing decision to give up a Phenom ready system and move into the Intel camp.

Nice review on the two boards, makes a person wonder if the PCIE 2.0 makes no difference opinions will change. I think it shows a noticeable difference having run a pcie card on 1.0 and 2.0 but with the difference in chip sets it makes for a hard call.

Yeah in my original review back in November I did...

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/597/1/

Thanks Apop don't know how I missed that one!

It musta been the Alzheimer's now that I've rebrowsed it I remember how underwhelmed I was.

Not quite time yet ibleet, getting good mileage outa what I got. Tax time sales are up, upgrade money tucked and tucking away, 8 more machines to sell, 6 builders waiting parts, E8XXX is out looking good at 45nm, 45nm quads looking good, I kind of see them as a transitional phase, the next generation with the on die memory controller is seems to have a grip on my techno lust. Now If I can hold out long enough

ibleet wrote:

Methious wrote: Nice review on the two boards, makes a person wonder if the PCIE 2.0 makes no difference opinions will change. I think it shows a noticeable difference having run a pcie card on 1.0 and 2.0 but with the difference in chip sets it makes for a hard call.

I took that into consideration before I bought my last board. All my research indicated that 2.0 did not make enough of a difference to sway me.

I think you already know the AMD / Intel choice is obvious...time to switch camps.

My first build was an AMD system...Crosshair w/5200+

I am deeply impressed with my new Intel build in comparison to the AMD I built just under a year ago. There are many reasons, but the main thing that swayed me was the overclocking ease and headroom of the Intel chips / chipsets. Amazing!

I built 2 more Intel systems for friends, and I'm in the process of converting a clients 939 board and single core AMD cpu into a duel core Intel system.

I realize you just built your AMD system with the 6400+ black, but I know you will be coming over to the other side soon enough!

Yea soon enough, the 6400+ wasn't aimed for longevity of platform, more toward tax time sales. I have one dual core left to sell, then if it's called for the 6400+ goes out and I have to figure out E8400 or Q6600, I don't think I'll make it to first quarter 2009 with out the upgrade bug getting me.

You all will be the first to know because I'll be accessing the cumulative experience of the members in the selection of parts. Probably some thing in the X38 X48 chip set from Asus.

When I was talking Phenom 9900 I was assuming the latest spin without the bug in it and was there not talk of it going to 45nm with 6M of L3 cache.

After all GPUs account for 90% of all graphically rendering in most new games and with both Nvidia and Ati/AMD heading to hardware assisted phyics such as AEGIA and/or APU ... more and more sound chips X-FI/TV cards buit in DSP/Accelerators encoding and decoding which and some network chips/cards are including NPUs leaves little for the CPU to do.. so therefore better spend 200$ or so more on a better GPU(s) rather on any CPU. After all what is the point of running HL2 at 200+fps .... buy and AEGIA card as Unreal3 engine based games and Havoc last version have hardware APU support in them and the games that don't are either not that power hungry or not worth play.
As far as Crysis is concerned played it finished it packed it away .... next ...

When you have a full blown system with vista64 or xp64 ram/gpu seem to give you more push than anything 8GB nice.

CPU gives you a few more frames but when your taking 3870X2 or 8800 Ultras and getting 5 more frames above 200+ or even on crysis with the lastest patches it is not even noticable in fact I would say the extra 4gb did more for windows than anything and you could almost do away with the swapfile.

So now 5% more out of 10% that the CPU does do is .5% of the overall system. I think I be spending more on the 90% area.