- Apr 21, 2010
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I originally had an AMD Phenom II X4 970, great processor had it clocked to 4.2 ghz no problem and could have taken it farther but I usually ran it at 3.9 for everyday use. I recently moved to a hotter climate and decided to look into what the latest is in lower TDP but with comparable speeds...
Enter the FX-6300. With a factory clock of 3.5ghz (same as my 970) but with a 95w TDP (vs 125w) and it has 6 cores to boot! This FX processor is from the Piledriver series running the Vishera core and should not to be confused with the older Bulldozer/Zambezi cores which did not perform as well as expected.
Getting right into it, the first thing I did was raise the clock to 3.9ghz to match all my previous settings but with quite a bit lower V-core. (1.3 instead of 1.45) then I booted into Win7 and re-ran the system assessment. My CPU stayed at 7.5 but oddly my memory went up from 7.5 to 7.8. I opened my tuning utilities and monitoring tools and then threw some tests at it.
I started off with Prime95 stress test, with prime still running and CPU utilization showing 100% Temps remained in the low 60's so I opened up AMD overdrive and ran its stability test alongside prime. Still showing 100% utilization on all 6 cores but no signs of hanging up I decided to throw a bunch more at it; I started playing assassins creed at max GFX settings while streaming music from my HD to my other computer and vise versa trying to fill the apparently large plate the of the FX-6300 with lots of things to accomplish while 2 separate stress tests apparently tied up "100% of its capabilities and a bunch of memory" Finally under all this going on and many other small things open in the background (browsers/ tabs, net streaming, unsaved photo editing) the game started to hang a little during fight sequences but still playable and HOLY WOW! I'm impressed, I had to throw allot at this thing while it was already under full load to get it to even flinch. All the while, temps never went above 68c and they settled into 62c as the testing went on. (I think its Fresh thermal paste getting better after its first good cycle)
Bottom line, what started out as a heat saver turned out to be an extremely impressive new toy at the same time.
Enter the FX-6300. With a factory clock of 3.5ghz (same as my 970) but with a 95w TDP (vs 125w) and it has 6 cores to boot! This FX processor is from the Piledriver series running the Vishera core and should not to be confused with the older Bulldozer/Zambezi cores which did not perform as well as expected.
Getting right into it, the first thing I did was raise the clock to 3.9ghz to match all my previous settings but with quite a bit lower V-core. (1.3 instead of 1.45) then I booted into Win7 and re-ran the system assessment. My CPU stayed at 7.5 but oddly my memory went up from 7.5 to 7.8. I opened my tuning utilities and monitoring tools and then threw some tests at it.
I started off with Prime95 stress test, with prime still running and CPU utilization showing 100% Temps remained in the low 60's so I opened up AMD overdrive and ran its stability test alongside prime. Still showing 100% utilization on all 6 cores but no signs of hanging up I decided to throw a bunch more at it; I started playing assassins creed at max GFX settings while streaming music from my HD to my other computer and vise versa trying to fill the apparently large plate the of the FX-6300 with lots of things to accomplish while 2 separate stress tests apparently tied up "100% of its capabilities and a bunch of memory" Finally under all this going on and many other small things open in the background (browsers/ tabs, net streaming, unsaved photo editing) the game started to hang a little during fight sequences but still playable and HOLY WOW! I'm impressed, I had to throw allot at this thing while it was already under full load to get it to even flinch. All the while, temps never went above 68c and they settled into 62c as the testing went on. (I think its Fresh thermal paste getting better after its first good cycle)
Bottom line, what started out as a heat saver turned out to be an extremely impressive new toy at the same time.
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