AM3 build, uses in 2025

[MR.noID]

So recently a friend of mine brought to me an interesting bit of modern history to see if I could fix it up and benchmark the performance. Immediately I was intrigued to see that it was being cooled by a corsair hydro series H100i AIO. He had told me that he was doing some extreme overclocking on the CPU which is the Amd Fx-9590. for the base it is rocking the ASRock 990fx extreme 9 motherboard, as for the rest of the components it has 16gb of corsair vengeance ddr3 ram, and two duel gtx 970's, powered by a 1000 watt corsair psu and encased in the corsair obsidian series 750d. I will keep you updated on this project as it goes.

 

[DaemonForce]

The 990FX boards are high performance unobtanium so first of all, good job getting access to one. You're probably all set.
FX-9000 is not AM3 but AM3+ which doesn't sound like a difference until you have access to the boards that support it.
The FX-9590 is the premiere space heater that needs the type of water cooling I built for the FX-8370, now on a R5 3600.
If the Vengeance kit is too slow, some Ballistix Tactical or G.Skill Sniper kits are an outstanding combo but good luck finding them.
The OC options of the CPU and board should be agreeable for F3-2400C11 and similar. I chose a F3-2133C10 kit which also works great.
The challenge will be almost entirely related to keeping the 990FX chipset in check. At 1080p144 desktop or 2K90 VR expect runaway temps.

I paired the 8370 to a few 970 boards and 4.5-4.6GHz seems to be the upper clockspeed limit and there's a difference between boards.
It's faster than a stock 9590 but that means almost nothing between 4-5GHz.
I don't have experience with any GTX900 setup but it's already behind my RX580 and that's bad.
If SLI is the goal, a pair of 1080Ti cards might be more suited but I haven't seen any of those in forever.
For any mainstream desktop or VR gaming it should be pretty close to ideal. It's pretty exciting. Good luck.

 

[MR.noID]

The 990FX boards are high performance unobtanium so first of all, good job getting access to one. You're probably all set.
FX-9000 is not AM3 but AM3+ which doesn't sound like a difference until you have access to the boards that support it.
The FX-9590 is the premiere space heater that needs the type of water cooling I built for the FX-8370, now on a R5 3600.
If the Vengeance kit is too slow, some Ballistix Tactical or G.Skill Sniper kits are an outstanding combo but good luck finding them.
The OC options of the CPU and board should be agreeable for F3-2400C11 and similar. I chose a F3-2133C10 kit which also works great.
The challenge will be almost entirely related to keeping the 990FX chipset in check. At 1080p144 desktop or 2K90 VR expect runaway temps.

I paired the 8370 to a few 970 boards and 4.5-4.6GHz seems to be the upper clockspeed limit and there's a difference between boards.
It's faster than a stock 9590 but that means almost nothing between 4-5GHz.
I don't have experience with any GTX900 setup but it's already behind my RX580 and that's bad.
If SLI is the goal, a pair of 1080Ti cards might be more suited but I haven't seen any of those in forever.
For any mainstream desktop or VR gaming it should be pretty close to ideal. It's pretty exciting. Good luck.

sli was the setup it used to be, and the owner told me the original card was the 1070, however he gave the 1070 to his son. most modern games don't support sli anymore as all the new gpu's are just too powerful as is. i really appreciate the feedback and i will definitely look into finding the ram upgrade you suggested and let you know how it works, and as for the gpu i actually have a1080 ti coming in the mail sometime next week. The duel 970 works fine other than some slight bottlenecking but the 1080 ti is more than double the speed and v-ram so i'm hoping to see some performance boosts. As of right now i am able to do high settings direct x 11 on gta v and get 60fps with a one percent low of 58, same with fallout 4 and hitman 2, although i can technically run cyberpunk 2077 it only runs at mid settings getting an average of 40fps with a one percent low of 36 (this is where i see the most bottlenecking).

 

[eidairaman1]

sli was the setup it used to be, and the owner told me the original card was the 1070, however he gave the 1070 to his son. most modern games don't support sli anymore as all the new gpu's are just too powerful as is. i really appreciate the feedback and i will definitely look into finding the ram upgrade you suggested and let you know how it works, and as for the gpu i actually have a1080 ti coming in the mail sometime next week. The duel 970 works fine other than some slight bottlenecking but the 1080 ti is more than double the speed and v-ram so i'm hoping to see some performance boosts. As of right now i am able to do high settings direct x 11 on gta v and get 60fps with a one percent low of 58, same with fallout 4 and hitman 2, although i can technically run cyberpunk 2077 it only runs at mid settings getting an average of 40fps with a one percent low of 36 (this is where i see the most bottlenecking).

Watch these please:

 

[Icon Charlie]

Hey man Good luck with this.

 

[MR.noID]

Hey man Good luck with this.

Thank you, i don't understand why everyone hates on the fx series chips, sure i wouldn't buy one today bc of better options but for these chips to still somewhat hold up a whole decade later is an achievement to say the least.

 

[R-T-B]

Thank you, i don't understand why everyone hates on the fx series chips, sure i wouldn't buy one today bc of better options but for these chips to still somewhat hold up a whole decade later is an achievement to say the least.

I think its because they kind of change the definition of what a core is in a weird way, and that led to loads of people feeling "cheated." Whether or not they really were is a subject for elsewhere.

No, they weren't awful in their respective era, and can still be used for many things today if you don't mind a spaceheater lol.

Nice find!

 

[sethmatrix7]

Nice. One of my first computers had an FX-6300 with a Radeon 7870 (god I though that GPU was blazing fast, and it was compared to the geforce 210 in my athlon x2 pc), and it's still kicking. It's running a citrix xenserver with some VMs for messing around in active directory.

 

[QuietBob]

An oc'd FX-8300 powers my main Win7/backup rig. With 16 GB of DDR3 @ 2400 MT/s, an SSD and an HD7970 it's still a pretty versatile machine. It's been my daily driver since 2012.

In fact, I use it far more often than my newer rigs (typing from it right now!). For typical home/office needs and less demanding games it is still enough.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

Oh man, I loved the FX-9590. 1st 5ghz processor ever released!

Had one used as a daily driver. Had 2 of them actually, killed one of them de-lidding it. De-lidded the second one successfully. Ran it daily all core 4.7ghz if I remember right. Never benched it cause I already probably done 6 other FX chips on the bench before hand and got tired of spending money on that platform. (I'm one of the few guys that stuck with AMD during their dark times) The only thing you need to know about any FX processor is that you are only limited by your cooling. Want it faster, get it cold(er) and throw the v-core at it. Daily, you just turn it on and default it really. Maybe jack up the HT and NB frequencies. Think I got around 2200mhz memory at CL11. Don't think I had good kits for AMD at the time. Mushkin Red Line 1866 maybe.... don't remember.

What a fun platform.
Say goodbye to the FSB days, cause that's where it ended. I so miss bus (reference) clocking. 103 max is lame sauce. There's no longer any good fine tuning...

An oc'd FX-8300 powers my main Win7/backup rig. With 16 GB of DDR3 @ 2400 MT/s, an SSD and an HD7970 it's still a pretty versatile machine. It's been my daily driver since 2012.

In fact, I use it far more often than my newer rigs (typing from it right now!). For typical home/office needs and less demanding games it is still enough.

My FX-8300 got the highest clocks on any 4+2 mainboard. Check it out.
They told me I couldnt get 2v from it. Lol.
Well I tricked the software into over'riding the bios max allowed XD.
Actually, I found the video how I actually OCed it.
(TURN THE AUDIO OFF- was recorded in the shop. I never edited the background noise to music *not a youtuber... , this is the original recording.)

AMD FX @ 7685.43 MHz - CPU-Z VALIDATOR

[cih7iw] Validated Dump by ShrimpBrime (2015-03-26 00:03:02) - MB: Asus M5A78L-M LX PLUS - RAM: 4096 MB

valid.x86.fr

 

[Dr. Dro]

Thank you, i don't understand why everyone hates on the fx series chips, sure i wouldn't buy one today bc of better options but for these chips to still somewhat hold up a whole decade later is an achievement to say the least.

It's really simple. There are no redeeming qualities about any of these processors, the whole Bulldozer architecture and its derivatives were an unmitigated disaster which almost bankrupted AMD. If Zen hadn't hit its mark, it's pretty safe to say the company would no longer be around today. 10 years later... the equivalent Intel chips are still twice as fast with half as many cores, and consuming less than half the amount of energy to do the same job. It does make you stop to think, though - today the tables are almost completely turned. Ryzen is faster and far more efficient than the Intel chips today, on almost equal measure.

It honestly takes this forum to be nostalgic about these FX processors. Still, I wish you can have fun with your project. Just don't expect this to be a wow on the performance front, and there's no amount of tweaks or videos that will get you the performance that you may think you'll be getting. It just won't perform, this whole platform was a lost gamble.

AMD’s 5 GHz Turbo CPU in Retail: The FX-9590 and ASRock 990FX Extreme9 Review

www.anandtech.com

It'll routinely lose on some single threaded benchmarks to Phenom II as well.

Oh man, I loved the FX-9590. 1st 5ghz processor ever released!

Had one used as a daily driver. Had 2 of them actually, killed one of them de-lidding it. De-lidded the second one successfully. Ran it daily all core 4.7ghz if I remember right. Never benched it cause I already probably done 6 other FX chips on the bench before hand and got tired of spending money on that platform. (I'm one of the few guys that stuck with AMD during their dark times) The only thing you need to know about any FX processor is that you are only limited by your cooling. Want it faster, get it cold(er) and throw the v-core at it. Daily, you just turn it on and default it really. Maybe jack up the HT and NB frequencies. Think I got around 2200mhz memory at CL11. Don't think I had good kits for AMD at the time. Mushkin Red Line 1866 maybe.... don't remember.

What a fun platform.
Say goodbye to the FSB days, cause that's where it ended. I so miss bus (reference) clocking. 103 max is lame sauce. There's no longer any good fine tuning...


My FX-8300 got the highest clocks on any 4+2 mainboard. Check it out.
They told me I couldnt get 2v from it. Lol.
Well I tricked the software into over'riding the bios max allowed XD.
Actually, I found the video how I actually OCed it.
(TURN THE AUDIO OFF- was recorded in the shop. I never edited the background noise to music *not a youtuber... , this is the original recording.)

AMD FX @ 7685.43 MHz - CPU-Z VALIDATOR

[cih7iw] Validated Dump by ShrimpBrime (2015-03-26 00:03:02) - MB: Asus M5A78L-M LX PLUS - RAM: 4096 MB

valid.x86.fr

View attachment 386873

It overclocked well.. but that was about it. That's where the fun ends. Very limited practical uses when you could have an i5-4670K wiping the floor with it at practically any workload, especially games of the time. In 2025, I don't see them being useful for much but the most basic of workloads, and even then you'll err on the side of patience. It's not worth keeping an AM3+ rig even as a home server, given you can buy an E5-2680 v4 for like $15 and even with the limited clock speeds, the gap in IPC between Piledriver and Broadwell-E is so insane that even at half the clock rate it's still faster per core... without the extreme power supply and cooling requirements.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

It overclocked well.. but that was about it. That's where the fun ends. Very limited practical uses when you could have an i5-4670K wiping the floor with it at practically any workload, especially games of the time. In 2025, I don't see them being useful for much but the most basic of workloads, and even then you'll err on the side of patience. It's not worth keeping an AM3+ rig even as a home server, given you can buy an E5-2680 v4 for like $15 and even with the limited clock speeds, the gap in IPC between Piledriver and Broadwell-E is so insane that even at half the clock rate it's still faster per core... without the extreme power supply and cooling requirements.

The FX chip unzip files way faster than Intel 4670K. That's a basic work load. Not sure why this matters decade later. Other than that, I do not want to entertain the off topic AMD vs Intel here and risk infractions for it.

Wanna talk OC FX, I'll tell you about the time I OCed 4ghz HT clock and killed a memory channel on the cpu.

 

[Dr. Dro]

The FX chip unzip files way faster than Intel 4670K. That's a basic work load. Not sure why this matters decade later. Other than that, I do not want to entertain the off topic AMD vs Intel here and risk infractions for it.

Wanna talk OC FX, I'll tell you about the time I OCed 4ghz HT clock and killed a memory channel on the cpu.

Yeah, it's going to manage tasks that can spread evenly across all of its threads and don't rely on floating point too much. 7-zip MIPS is probably one of the most Bulldozer-friendly benches out there. RAR at the time still favored Intel, wonder how it is nowadays

It also did well on Cinebench, despite needing around 3x the power to... well, still lose.

But you crazy dude, 4000 HT is like what, a 100% OC? At the time I skipped FX because I just didn't see the point, I had a X6 1090T that was still beating these left and right for games, and neither got even close to performing like my i7-990X at the time.

 

[MR.noID]

It's really simple. There are no redeeming qualities about any of these processors, the whole Bulldozer architecture and its derivatives were an unmitigated disaster which almost bankrupted AMD. If Zen hadn't hit its mark, it's pretty safe to say the company would no longer be around today. 10 years later... the equivalent Intel chips are still twice as fast with half as many cores, and consuming less than half the amount of energy to do the same job. It does make you stop to think, though - today the tables are almost completely turned. Ryzen is faster and far more efficient than the Intel chips today, on almost equal measure.

It honestly takes this forum to be nostalgic about these FX processors. Still, I wish you can have fun with your project. Just don't expect this to be a wow on the performance front, and there's no amount of tweaks or videos that will get you the performance that you may think you'll be getting. It just won't perform, this whole platform was a lost gamble.

AMD’s 5 GHz Turbo CPU in Retail: The FX-9590 and ASRock 990FX Extreme9 Review

www.anandtech.com

It'll routinely lose on some single threaded benchmarks to Phenom II as well.



It overclocked well.. but that was about it. That's where the fun ends. Very limited practical uses when you could have an i5-4670K wiping the floor with it at practically any workload, especially games of the time. In 2025, I don't see them being useful for much but the most basic of workloads, and even then you'll err on the side of patience. It's not worth keeping an AM3+ rig even as a home server, given you can buy an E5-2680 v4 for like $15 and even with the limited clock speeds, the gap in IPC between Piledriver and Broadwell-E is so insane that even at half the clock rate it's still faster per core... without the extreme power supply and cooling requirements.

i definitely agree in this sense, i am not looking to get all i can out of it i got everything for free and just thought i would have some nostalgic fun.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

Yeah, it's going to manage tasks that can spread evenly across all of its threads and don't rely on floating point too much. 7-zip MIPS is probably one of the most Bulldozer-friendly benches out there. RAR at the time still favored Intel, wonder how it is nowadays

It also did well on Cinebench, despite needing around 3x the power to... well, still lose.

But you crazy dude, 4000 HT is like what, a 100% OC? At the time I skipped FX because I just didn't see the point, I had a X6 1090T that was still beating these left and right for games, and neither got even close to performing like my i7-990X at the time.

Yeah, the FX chips had exceptionally long pipelines. Good for frequency, not so good IPC. It was like a copy paste of NetBurst.

Which btw was the first 8Ghz Cpu according to Overclock Historical records. Was done on a P4 631. Jan. 22nd 2007.

I have used all these processors you are talking about. Every single one of them so far, I'll toss in a couple more. (I have screen shots to prove all this shit)
3770K, 4690K, FX-8300/20/50 9590, 1090T, 565BE, FX 8370E. 990X and the 990. Both. Some 5.5ghz Cpu clocks on those.

But yeah, I get it. Like pretty much everything is faster than FX. But that shouldn't stop a person from slapping together a nifty cheap retro rig. So there's no argument, I fully understand your point.
FX was faster unzip. Still is BTW. 9950X 7zip faster than 14900K. It's one of the few traits that AMD has people often over look.
__
No not 100% OC on the HT when it's 2.6ghz at defaults actually.

Even Played CSS at 7ghz. Only for a brief couple of deaths just to say I did that once Frame rates still worse than 4690K rig haha

 

[Dr. Dro]

Nah I believe you

I too once had far more hardware than what I knew what to do with, those were the days! Must have mistaken the stock 2000 HT probably because of Phenom II, though I recall the advice was just to set 2600 back then, 1090T would happily do it

i definitely agree in this sense, i am not looking to get all i can out of it i got everything for free and just thought i would have some nostalgic fun.

Best use for it is building a "ultimate XP rig" of sorts, those will run XP 64 like a banshee

 

[MR.noID]

Nah I believe you

I too once had far more hardware than what I knew what to do with, those were the days! Must have mistaken the stock 2000 HT probably because of Phenom II, though I recall the advice was just to set 2600 back then, 1090T would happily do it



Best use for it is building a "ultimate XP rig" of sorts, those will run XP 64 like a banshee

no it runs win 10 just fine and originally had win 7, so i don't think ill go back to xp... if anything id do a light weight linux if that was the concern

 

[R0H1T]

I think its because they kind of change the definition of what a core is in a weird way, and that led to loads of people feeling "cheated." Whether or not they really were is a subject for elsewhere.

Technically AMD was right with what they were offering as "cores" just that they probably wouldn't want to risk bad PR & a protracted litigation at a point where they certainly didn't need it. A jury of computer experts would've likely found them alright with 8c/8t *dozers.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

Technically AMD was right with what they were offering as "cores" just that they probably wouldn't want to risk bad PR & a protracted litigation at a point where they certainly didn't need it. A jury of computer experts would've likely found them alright with 8c/8t *dozers.

8 integer cores that shared only 4 FP units.
Since 1 FP unit for each core makes up a modern single core, it was just 4 cores because floating units are just as important as integer cores.

So 4 modules, 4 floating point units and 8 integer cores.

That was the debacle. Convinced a judged and everyone that has no idea what makes a cpu a cpu, it was just a quad core. Well no, it was 8 integer cores. At one time processors didn't even have floating point units and they still called it a processor core.....

FTW, I never took a dime on payout after the ruling. I believe the cpu had 8 integer cores and still do.

 

[68Olds]

I still have my FX rig. It has an FX8320 (stock these days), Asus 990FX Sabertooth, 16GB DDR3-1866, and a pair of GTX 970 GPUs not in SLI. I use it to run folding@home 24/7 down in the basement. Science! When I bought the hardware I knew it wasn't the fastest hardware available for a gaming rig, but I wanted it for the tweaking opportunity. It certainly wasn't a silicone lottery winner either, but it did run 4.75GHz 24/7 when it was water cooled. It had a fan mounted to the VRM and a fan on the back of the CPU socket too.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

I still have my FX rig. It has an FX8320 (stock these days), Asus 990FX Sabertooth, 16GB DDR3-1833, and a pair of GTX 970 GPUs not in SLI. I use it to run folding@home 24/7 down in the basement. Science! When I bought the hardware I knew it wasn't the fastest hardware available for a gaming rig, but I wanted it for the tweaking opportunity. It certainly wasn't a silicone lottery winner either, but it did run 4.75GHz 24/7 when it was water cooled. It had a fan mounted to the VRM and a fan on the back of the CPU socket too.

Fan on the back of the socket! That was a big thing for a while to keep those temps down. And it worked too. 5ghz was just too hot for most FX chips even though capable, the heat was real.

AMD recommended 65c temps or lower on sustained loads, but I seen plenty running 80c+. Therm-trip was 110c.

 

[QuietBob]

no it runs win 10 just fine

As a matter of fact, you could even install Win11 on it. Bulldozer is the oldest AMD architecture with the mandatory SSE4.2 instruction set.

I've got a spare 8300 and a 990FX Sabertooth, and I'm planning to do exactly that some day

It had a fan mounted to the VRM and a fan on the back of the CPU socket too.

My rig also has an 80mm slim fan under the socket. It's not strictly necessary, but I like my temps low. Single run with 22 C room ambient:

 

[R0H1T]

8 integer cores that shared only 4 FP units.
Since 1 FP unit for each core makes up a modern single core, it was just 4 cores because floating units are just as important as integer cores.

So 4 modules, 4 floating point units and 8 integer cores.

That was the debacle. Convinced a judged and everyone that has no idea what makes a cpu a cpu, it was just a quad core. Well no, it was 8 integer cores. At one time processors didn't even have floating point units and they still called it a processor core.....

FTW, I never took a dime on payout after the ruling. I believe the cpu had 8 integer cores and still do.

And why's that an issue? There's never been any consensus on defining what a "core" is, & that's because different implementations from multiple vendors can differ vastly.

By the same token Zen cores are 1.1-1.2x (normal) non HT ones, remember HT also takes up die space albeit negligible as compared to CMT.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Yeah, I'm of the thought that these CPUs are true 8-core chips. A processor does not need to have a floating point unit to be considered a processor IMHO - otherwise chips like the 386 or 486 SX wouldn't be CPUs. That they're detected as 4 core 8 thread by older versions of Windows is likely because it was determined that treating these similarly to SMT processors despite their CMT design would be beneficial for scheduling and help with performance, but eight-core they are nonetheless.

Personally I believe AMD chose to settle because litigating this would be very difficult and far more costly, mostly because the courts are pretty much inept to make technical decisions, and they were rolling in cash from Ryzen and Epyc by that point already. It was the smartest decision to make, in my opinion.

no it runs win 10 just fine and originally had win 7, so i don't think ill go back to xp... if anything id do a light weight linux if that was the concern

Never claimed otherwise, it should boot and run any modern OS. If there was one thing nobody could fault FX for, was its instruction set capabilities, which was a huge problem with the Phenom II. The issue with these has always been their unsatisfactory performance.

Anyway, would be cool if you brought us some benchies once you have the system up and running. I always thought that AMD took a VERY forward looking gamble and lost, maybe now, 10+ years later, there might be some redeeming thing about if provided you ignore its egregious power consumption, the need for a high-end motherboard with a very powerful VRM and the ridiculous cooling requirements.

Wouldn't daily an FX system if you paid me, but I'm on board with the benching fun.

 

[MR.noID]

Yeah, I'm of the thought that these CPUs are true 8-core chips. A processor does not need to have a floating point unit to be considered a processor IMHO - otherwise chips like the 386 or 486 SX wouldn't be CPUs. That they're detected as 4 core 8 thread by older versions of Windows is likely because it was determined that treating these similarly to SMT processors despite their CMT design would be beneficial for scheduling and help with performance, but eight-core they are nonetheless.

Personally I believe AMD chose to settle because litigating this would be very difficult and far more costly, mostly because the courts are pretty much inept to make technical decisions, and they were rolling in cash from Ryzen and Epyc by that point already. It was the smartest decision to make, in my opinion.



Never claimed otherwise, it should boot and run any modern OS. If there was one thing nobody could fault FX for, was its instruction set capabilities, which was a huge problem with the Phenom II. The issue with these has always been their unsatisfactory performance.

Anyway, would be cool if you brought us some benchies once you have the system up and running. I always thought that AMD took a VERY forward looking gamble and lost, maybe now, 10+ years later, there might be some redeeming thing about if provided you ignore its egregious power consumption, the need for a high-end motherboard with a very powerful VRM and the ridiculous cooling requirements.

Wouldn't daily an FX system if you paid me, but I'm on board with the benching fun.

sure thing i just got it fully up Tuesday but been sick, so i can post some benchmarks tomorrow.