TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Ruru]

Continuing from this post;
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/tpus-nostalgic-hardware-club.108251/post-4706123

The Q9550 and Radeon R7-250 2GB GPU arrived.
View attachment 238649View attachment 238650
They are installed and running perfectly. They both raise the performance of this system well about what I need from it for the task needed.
View attachment 238651
I'm glad I chose the Q9550 instead of the Q9500/Q9505. The extra 6MB of L2 cache made a difference in the games I wanted to run.

View attachment 238652
GDDR3 version! Heck yeah!

At full load they both run surprisingly cool. All totaled, I'm into this PC just $200. That was even after over-paying for the base system. Not bad these days!

Hm, even that it has GDDR3, it's not clocked that much higher than my R7 240 which has only DDR3. Luckily my card even has 384 shaders instead of the usual 320. Did some testing with it some time ago.

I scored 1 878 in Fire Strike

AMD Ryzen 5 3600, AMD Radeon HD 8570 x 1, 32768 MB, 64-bit Windows 11}

www.3dmark.com

Though it was recognized as HD 8570.

 

[Bones]

Also didn't know that the newer Sabertooths lacked the option to unlock cores. Probably they were more FX optimized so they didn't think that it's an neccessary option?

No, that's no why it was not supported by the later versions.

AMD made a "Request" during the AM3 days for it to no longer be supported and the board vendors complied.
There was a chip on these boards that enabled LCC to access these hidden core(s) but the later revisions didn't have this chip so it didn't work and there is no option in the BIOS for it.

BTW are any of you aware there are actually 2 versions of the Sabertooth 3.0?
There certainly are.
The "Other" version was the original out of the two but was so bad/buggy Asus literally stopped production of it right after it was released and if you find one it's a bit of a rarity - More of a collector's item TBH.
They held back until the newer version of the 3.0 most are familiar with now was done, that was the last official release of an AM3/AM3+ board by Asus.

There is also a sidenote, that is this board model also has an m.2 slot and makes it the only one Asus ever made with this slot for AM3/AM3+.
I believe there is another make/model with the m.2 slot based on socket AM3/AM3+ but I honestly can't put a name to it.

And here's my 3.0 while frozen.
Enjoy.

 

[Ruru]

No, that's no why it was not supported by the later versions.

AMD made a "Request" during the AM3 days for it to no longer be supported and the board vendors complied.
There was a chip on these boards that enabled LCC to access these hidden core(s) but the later revisions didn't have this chip so it didn't work and there is no option in the BIOS for it.

BTW are you aware there are actually 2 versions of the Sabertooth 3.0?
There certainly are.
The "Other" version was the original out of the two but was so bad/buggy Asus literally stopped production of it right after it was released. They held back until the newer version of the 3.0 most are familiar with now was done, that was the last official release of an AM3/AM3+ board by Asus.
There is also a sidenote, that is this board model also has an m.2 slot and makes it the only one Asus ever made with this slot for AM3/AM3+.
I believe there is another make/model with the m.2 slot based on socket AM3/AM3+ but I honestly can't put a name to it.

And here's my 3.0 while frozen.
Enjoy.
View attachment 238700

Okay, that's interesting. That's interesting that even the R3.0 had different versions and I definitely didn't know that one had even a M.2 slot. To be honest, after I saw what a flop FX was, I didn't pay much attention to AM3+ boards anymore.

Personally I went with AM3 and Phenom II X6 1055T then, and downgraded to X4 965 BE as I didn't have use for six cores in the early 2012.

 

[Bones]

Yes, in the pic just look right below the SB heatsink and you'll see the m.2 slot and drive mounting studs - Obvious really but yep - It's all there .

 

[Ruru]

Yes, in the pic just look right below the SB heatsink and you'll see the m.2 slot.

Ah, so it's there. What I did know was that some boards supported PCIe 3.0 via an external switch though.

 

[RyzenMaster.sys]

Ah, so it's there. What I did know was that some boards supported PCIe 3.0 via an external switch though.

Iirc the HT link between the NB and CPU was not fast enough for PCIe 3.0 to make much of a difference.

 

[Ruru]

Iirc the HT link between the NB and CPU was not fast enough for PCIe 3.0 to make much of a difference.

Would be interesting to see comparison with a bandwith limited card like 5500 XT 4GB or 6500 XT.

 

[Bones]

Most likely it's more effective with things involving drive read/write speeds, I don't believe there is much difference at all regarding GPU performance.
I do know one thing, it's boot speed was really fast when I had an m.2 drive in it.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Yep sold my 13 year old acer 775 socket board/ Q9550/ 4x2gb crucial memory last week 80.00
Not bad the whole system case/... was only 250.us new guess a little more seeing I added the crucial memory.
Almost shed a tear but at least the old girl saw it's day being water cooled

 

[Ruru]

Hi,
Yep sold my 13 year old acer 775 socket board/ Q9550/ 4x2gb crucial memory last week 80.00
Not bad the whole system case/... was only 250.us new guess a little more seeing I added the crucial memory.
Almost shed a tear but at least the old girl saw it's day to being water cooled

Not bad at all considering you had an OEM board with that. That would've be an okay price even with a good board with good overclockability.

edit: I had almost that same 980 Ti (mine was FTW) before I upgraded to my current 1080 Ti

 

[ThrashZone]

Not bad at all considering you had an OEM board with that. That would've be an okay price even with a good board with good overclockability.

edit: I had almost that same 980 Ti (mine was FTW) before I upgraded to my current 1080 Ti

Hi,
Yeah it's a 980ti gaming
I still have it on my x99 rig in spec's it's getting to be at 6 years old now I think

 

[Trekkie4]

? Why? Those are the best the system could take.. I mean I could have gone with a Q9650, but it wasn't worth the extra $30. However, the R7-250 was the best low-profile card that could both physically fit into system and has XP drivers support.

Here you go. Disclaimer, I didn't make it and don't know who did. I make no claims of ownership as I found it on a Wallpaper website. I did resize and rework the colors, saturation and gamma a bit.
View attachment 238655
Enjoy!

You misunderstood me Lex What I meant to say was "I wouldn't know about Q9650 & Radeon card" because I never had anything more powerful than Q6600, not on S775 platform that is. Same thing with Radeon cards. Those ATI cards which I owned and/or used were primarily older, AGP models. In fact, the fastest Radeon I've had was X1550 PowerColor edition which I bought brand new, in 2007. Other than that, they're all nVidia models, ranging from 8600GTS, 8800GT, 8800GTS, GTX 550Ti and GTX 760. And older ... most of my AGP cards used in retro gaming systems are either GF2 or TNT2.
Therefore I really don't have any background, experience to comment on R7 and/or Q9650, hence "I wouldn't know" about them, nothing more or less

When you think about it, that's not really any different than the radio.

Well, yes - and no. Indeed, radio was a "product" of its own era, from back in a day. Yes, I can see the similarities with digital streaming, but you have to understand that the radio was limited by its technological limits, as there was obviously no "streaming services" back then. Besides, you could still record the radio on a blank tape & play back your favorite song whenever you wanted to, some radio stations even encouraged you to do so.

Where on the other hand, digital streaming was made like this on purpose, primarily to make money & limit, prevent folks from owning an album or a song. Why would you want to charge ONE time for an album & have people owning that same album forever, when you can simply provide an easy access to digital content & then revoke that same license after couple of months. That way customer has to pay AGAIN (and again), in order to play their favorite song or album.

Furthermore, digital streaming license dictates that you never really "own" anything and your license can be revoked, taken down for whatever the reason - or no reason at all. I have to be honest, I wasn't aware of this up until couple of years ago, when I entered a heated debate on Grand Theft Auto 5, and was explained by company representative that even though I bought the game, I don't actually own it. Therefore they have the right to revoke my access to GTA V if they choose to do so, because it corresponds to streaming services & digital content. Which isn't the same with physical media ... when you buy something on a CD, DVD, cassette tape or LP, it's yours for as long as the media itself exists.

I have this one Sony TC FX 510R

Sony TC-FX510R Stereo Cassette Deck

Sony,TC-FX510R Stereo Cassette Deck,Auto Reverse,Dolby-C NR,Full Logic Control,Metal Tape,Stereo,Digital Meters

www.cassettedeck.org

Nice! If you're referring to my post about "cheap Sony", I was actually talking about modern decks such as WR465. Although it may look high end from the outside, this thing is a piece of crap. It has two separate decks, but they both share ONE single motor, which drives BOTH decks at the same time. To make it even more absurd, each deck has 2 capstans because they're both auto-reverse, so one motor drives 4 (plastic) flywheels and take-up spool.

And if you record from one deck to another, things will get even worse as the motor will now drive 4 flywheels & 2 take-up spools ... all at the same time! I had one of these opened (and tested) and I can tell you that wow & flutter was all over the scale, there just wasn't enough torque to keep everything rolling consistently. Heck, even my KX-W4080 holds up much, MUCH better due to having separate motors & independent mechanisms.

 

[lexluthermiester]

E4300 sample which had a super low FSB wall. I ran it ambient cooled at 2.0V.

Holy crap that is high voltage!! How is that chip not dead?

You misunderstood me Lex What I meant to say was "I wouldn't know about Q9650 & Radeon card" because I never had anything more powerful than Q6600, not on S775 platform that is. Same thing with Radeon cards. Those ATI cards which I owned and/or used were primarily older, AGP models. In fact, the fastest Radeon I've had was X1550 PowerColor edition which I bought brand new, in 2007. Other than that, they're all nVidia models, ranging from 8600GTS, 8800GT, 8800GTS, GTX 550Ti and GTX 760. And older ... most of my AGP cards used in retro gaming systems are either GF2 or TNT2.
Therefore I really don't have any background, experience to comment on R7 and/or Q9650, hence "I wouldn't know" about them, nothing more or less

Ah, gotcha. I thought you meant you thought they were "iffy" somehow.. No worries.

Hm, even that it has GDDR3, it's not clocked that much higher than my R7 240 which has only DDR3. Luckily my card even has 384 shaders instead of the usual 320. Did some testing with it some time ago.

I scored 1 878 in Fire Strike

AMD Ryzen 5 3600, AMD Radeon HD 8570 x 1, 32768 MB, 64-bit Windows 11}

www.3dmark.com

Though it was recognized as HD 8570.

That is one of the reasons I chose the 250 over the 240. Runs DX9 Crysis perfectly too!

 

[Ruru]

Holy crap that is high voltage!! How is that chip not dead?


Ah, gotcha. I thought you meant you thought they were "iffy" somehow.. No worries.


That is one of the reasons I chose the 250 over the 240. Runs DX9 Crysis perfectly too!

I got my R7 240 for free so the price/performance is perfect though its bearing needs oiling as its hella noisy.

Hmm, now just thinking that which is actually better DDR2 platform, LGA 775 or AM2+? I have Xeon X3230 (Q6700 equivalent), Q9500 & 955 BE to choose from. I'd like to have an AMD retro machine for a change.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Hmm, now just thinking that which is actually better DDR2 platform, LGA 775 or AM2+? I have Xeon X3230 (Q6700 equivalent), Q9500 & 955 BE to choose from. I'd like to have an AMD retro machine for a change.

Better in what respect? Depends on your goals.

 

[Ruru]

Better in what respect? Depends on your goals.

In older games

 

[MachineLearning]

@MachineLearning
Maybe you set the VTT to high? The codes hint more towards FSB/RAM problems. The E4600 is a 65nm chip, believe me you will not have instantly killed that with just 1.5V core. I tried once... for eh science? I had some grudge against this particular E4300 sample which had a super low FSB wall. I ran it ambient cooled at 2.0V.

Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 @ 3068.56 MHz - CPU-Z VALIDATOR

[2nkcvi] Validated Dump by Osmium-OC (2020-01-03 19:53:54) - MB: Asus P5Q-E - RAM: 2048 MB

valid.x86.fr

This thing refused to die. I mean it probably would have died within a few hours but I did not want to wait. Its still alive after all and boots/runs stock settings.
View attachment 238698

To sum it up, 65nm C2Ds are short term very voltage tolerant on Vcore. But I think there are stories where high VTT has been a quick killer.

2.0v, that's insane!! For VTT, I kept it static at 1.42v - so not too high for this CPU. A month or two ago I found that Anandtech article about high VTT killing CPUs, so I'm usually pretty cautious about it. This board in BIOS prohibits the CPU VTT from being > (vNB - 100mv), so I don't think it could have been high enough to kill the CPU.

2v.... can't get over that

 

[Ruru]

2.0v, that's insane!! For VTT, I kept it static at 1.42v - so not too high for this CPU. A month or two ago I found that Anandtech article about high VTT killing CPUs, so I kept VTT at 1.42v for this testing. This board in BIOS prohibits the CPU VTT from being > (vNB - 100mv), so I don't think it could have been high enough to kill the CPU.

2v.... can't get over that

I could try that as well the next time I'll bench an E4300.

 

[Mr.Scott]

In older games

Intel games better than AMD in most cases.
Unless you're talking AM2NF3-VSTA, then it will be close. You'll have to test.

 

[Ruru]

Intel games better than AMD in most cases.

Well I guess I'll leave the P43 board with Q9500 in the case.

 

[MachineLearning]

In older games

Intel games better than AMD in most cases.

Ditto that Scotty. Doesn't matter if it's Phenom I, II, or FX, I seriously would rather use a 4GHz+ Wolfdale C2D for older games. Core 2 single threaded performance is underrated IMO, older games love that

 

[Ruru]

Ditto that Scotty. Doesn't matter if it's Phenom I, II, or FX, I seriously would rather use a 4GHz+ Wolfdale C2D for older games. Core 2 single threaded performance is underrated IMO, older games love that

I do have 2x E8400 & E8500 too but I don't have any good cooler lying around. So it just has a Q9500 @ 3.1GHz with the beefy stock cooler.

 

[MachineLearning]

I do have 2x E8400 & E8500 too but I don't have any good cooler lying around. So it just has a Q9500 @ 3.1GHz with the beefy stock cooler.

Copper slug? You're just fine then, those were pretty decent for what they were. Plus C2D/C2Q don't draw too much power overall.

Q9550 is pretty much the best you can get (cheaply) for 775 because of the extra cache, but Q9500 is quite good as well.

 

[Ruru]

Copper slug? You're just fine then, those were pretty decent for what they were. Plus C2D/C2Q don't draw too much power overall.

Q9550 is pretty much the best you can get (cheaply) for 775 because of the extra cache, but Q9500 is quite good as well.

Yeah, copper core. I'm probably not getting any more 775 CPUs anymore.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Q9550 is pretty much the best you can get (cheaply) for 775 because of the extra cache, but Q9500 is quite good as well.

That is actually the reason I chose the Q9550 for my Lenovo build.