Motherboard Upgrade
- Thread starter Deadpool
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That was fast! It's a Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P. Probably would have to upgrade my cooler too. Damn. Well at least there is no bottleneck I guess.
I haven't overclocked yet. The reason is that I just bought the cooler in Miami (also bought a couple of case fans and a GTX 1060) and I haven't returned to my country yet. I was using the stock cooler (not even the awesome one that comes now with the 8350, which name I can't remember now, Wrath or something) so I actually had it under clocked to 3.4Ghz, since my country gets a bit hot. Now that I see john's comment along with yours probably the best idea is not to get a new motherboard. Is there any other benefit to a new motherboard? I have 2 free RAM slots and the 1060 is not SLI capable. Also have an SSD and HDD and I don't plan to add more.
At this point, its not really worth upgrading to a better motherboard. You could go with the 990 series motherboards but the 8350 is now many years old and to get really better performance you would be looking at either going new Intel or waiting for Zen to come out for AMD. I have the 970A-UD3 with the coolermaster 212+ cooler. I haven't tried overclocking again since the upgrade to 10, maybe one of these days. However, I'm actually considering building a new Intel setup soon.
True. I wanted to build an Intel setup too, but all I could afford would be an I3 setup, I'd be better off with the outdated 8350, and Zen seems more CAD/content creation oriented. And for the little CAD work I do it's not worth it. I'll probably just install the 1060 and make it last a year or two more. Thanks for the help boys!
I didn't but most people did. Haven't watched the videos but every video I see says 4.72Ghz so I guess it's possible. I know the motherboard is crap, it was the cheapest one at the moment, even though I paid $100 for it a year ago, but I'll try as soon as I can.
mistersprinkles
Active Member
People running 4.7Ghz on a 4 phase board are idjits in my opinion. That's just asking to blow a mosfet. It does happen. It has happened. You really want an eight phase board for the 83XX cpus to overclock them properly.
I wouldn't push your CPU that far on that board.
Upgrading the board at this point would be pretty silly, just to squeeze a couple hundred more megahertz out of your cpu, which you won't likely notice in actual usage.
You should put money towards upgrading the entire platform. DDR4, Kaby Lake or Zen, etc. These platforms are much higher performance than what you have now. Actually, the IPC on the 43XX 63XX and 83XX CPUs is about the same as the thuban phenom IIs that came out when stegosaurus were still walking by my house. They're extinct now, but people are still running CPUs with terrible IPC. As Susan Powter would have said, as she munched a potato, "Stop the insanity".
Don't spend any more money on your AM3+ setup. Look to the future. That doesn't mean you need to upgrade NOW!! you can wait as long as you need to until you can put enough $$ together for a genuine upgrade.
I wouldn't push your CPU that far on that board.
Upgrading the board at this point would be pretty silly, just to squeeze a couple hundred more megahertz out of your cpu, which you won't likely notice in actual usage.
You should put money towards upgrading the entire platform. DDR4, Kaby Lake or Zen, etc. These platforms are much higher performance than what you have now. Actually, the IPC on the 43XX 63XX and 83XX CPUs is about the same as the thuban phenom IIs that came out when stegosaurus were still walking by my house. They're extinct now, but people are still running CPUs with terrible IPC. As Susan Powter would have said, as she munched a potato, "Stop the insanity".
Don't spend any more money on your AM3+ setup. Look to the future. That doesn't mean you need to upgrade NOW!! you can wait as long as you need to until you can put enough $$ together for a genuine upgrade.
You're likely not going to get past 4.3-4.4GHz. My 8320 couldn't break 4.2GHz on my MSI 970A G45 which is a 4+1 power phase like your DS3P. There's a couple boards that are 8+2 power phase and still the 970 chipset. Mine is one of those, Gigabyte 970A UD3, I was able to hit 4.6GHz cooled by my H100, even benched it at 4.7GHz.
I had a 212 before and could only get about 4.3 or so before it got too hot so I'd expect similar for you. Don't spend money on a new board or even cooler really. Not worth it, and the gains from OC'ing aren't going to be hugely noticeable outside of synthetic benchmarks.
This gives an excellent breakdown of AMD's boards.
http://www.overclock.net/t/946407/amd-motherboards-vrm-info-database
I had a 212 before and could only get about 4.3 or so before it got too hot so I'd expect similar for you. Don't spend money on a new board or even cooler really. Not worth it, and the gains from OC'ing aren't going to be hugely noticeable outside of synthetic benchmarks.
This gives an excellent breakdown of AMD's boards.
http://www.overclock.net/t/946407/amd-motherboards-vrm-info-database
Great info guys. Thanks! I won't be upgrading my mobo, it's actually a pretty bad idea when you know that the actual difference is not that big.
What do you guys use to learn all this stuff? About power phases and things normal people don't usually pay attention when buying? I didn't even hear of that before. Would have been very helpful to know before buying.
What do you guys use to learn all this stuff? About power phases and things normal people don't usually pay attention when buying? I didn't even hear of that before. Would have been very helpful to know before buying.
Self fuelled research, asking the exact kind of questions you are and absorbing what people tell me and striking out on my own to learn even more. 
I'm a big overclocking nut and AMD fan so naturally I've learned quite a bit about it over the past few years. I've had an 8320 for 3 years now and learned a lot about how they respond to overclocking and the like. There's a lot of really good resources out there, just gotta look for them. If you have any other questions we're happy to help. In regards to performance gains check out this thread where I've benched an 8320 at totally stock settings and then again with the best overclock I could get. Quite a difference, and the performance jump is definitely noticeable. Just the difference between say 4.3 and 4.6 isn't enough to warrant spending money on at this point.
https://www.computerforum.com/threads/cpu-z-benchmark-thread.240218/
I'm a big overclocking nut and AMD fan so naturally I've learned quite a bit about it over the past few years. I've had an 8320 for 3 years now and learned a lot about how they respond to overclocking and the like. There's a lot of really good resources out there, just gotta look for them. If you have any other questions we're happy to help. In regards to performance gains check out this thread where I've benched an 8320 at totally stock settings and then again with the best overclock I could get. Quite a difference, and the performance jump is definitely noticeable. Just the difference between say 4.3 and 4.6 isn't enough to warrant spending money on at this point.
https://www.computerforum.com/threads/cpu-z-benchmark-thread.240218/
Self fuelled research, asking the exact kind of questions you are and absorbing what people tell me and striking out on my own to learn even more.
I'm a big overclocking nut and AMD fan so naturally I've learned quite a bit about it over the past few years. I've had an 8320 for 3 years now and learned a lot about how they respond to overclocking and the like. There's a lot of really good resources out there, just gotta look for them. If you have any other questions we're happy to help. In regards to performance gains check out this thread where I've benched an 8320 at totally stock settings and then again with the best overclock I could get. Quite a difference, and the performance jump is definitely noticeable. Just the difference between say 4.3 and 4.6 isn't enough to warrant spending money on at this point.
https://www.computerforum.com/threads/cpu-z-benchmark-thread.240218/
Oww that's a pretty big leap. You overclocked it like a madman though. Don't know how much difference .5 Ghz would do.
So you just learned asking around and reading blogs and posts and such? I've been reading electricity and electronic books fo a while now but all I could learn there without going too far are timers and amplifiers. And that's useless when building computers, so is my damn engineering degree. So when it comes to this stuff I'm a moron.
I'll guess I'll have to gangbang them Google Search Results as opposed to what OG 2-tone thinks.
Keep in mind the 8320 is 3.5GHz stock with a 4.0GHz boost, so your 8350 would sit somewhere between those scores. I've noticed power settings on my motherboard also have a noticeable impact on performance. I just loaded complete defaults and then optimized and overclocked as best I could just to show how much you can really squeeze out of a chip if you know what to look for.
Also it was hardly stable at that clock speed, basically could run a bench then instantly crash. 4.6GHz was stable but a little warm so I run it at 4.5GHz for everyday usage. Don't need to be melting stuff for an extra 100MHz and it runs plenty warm as is.
mistersprinkles
Active Member
My advice is to save up that money and be patient. If you can't afford Kaby Lake you'll be able to afford Coffee Lake or 2nd gen Zen or something. Just save up and buy what's current when you have the cash.
When you say stock clock is without boost right? I just assumed that because from 3.5 to 4.7 is pretty big. 30% performance boost is a lot but at a great price. No way I can get mine to 5.2Ghz. I'd make a hole in my case... Or wall
And honestly I don't get those numbers, I'm more used to using Passmark. I love that crap.
I'm definitely not buying a new mobo, it would be stupid as hell.
That includes boost since boost is on by default. Usually does 4.0GHz on single core test and around 3.7-3.8GHz with boost on all cores. Difference would be even bigger if I locked it at 3.5GHz.When you say stock clock is without boost right? I just assumed that because from 3.5 to 4.7 is pretty big. 30% performance boost is a lot but at a great price. No way I can get mine to 5.2Ghz. I'd make a hole in my case... Or wall
And honestly I don't get those numbers, I'm more used to using Passmark. I love that crap.
I'm definitely not buying a new mobo, it would be stupid as hell.