Fafhrd on 5/12/2011 at 03:24
So on and off for a while I've been having random reboot issues in Vista and now Windows 7, usually they would happen a couple times and then go away. On Thursday I installed Dead Island and my PC would shut itself off completely after about twenty minutes. I figured it was the same damn problem. Happens a couple more times and I finally check the PC Health Status in the BIOS when powering up the next time and find that my CPU temp is ~90 C. Not Good. I do some more poking around and discover that somehow my CPU got overclocked to about 9.6 GHz, so I'm rather alarmed because it's an Athlon X2 6000+, which is a 3GHz chip. Fix that problem, chip still running rather hot, clean the heat sink and CPU and re-apply thermal grease, temperatures seem to be under control (peaks at 71 C under 100% load, which is warm, but not deadly). Problem solved. I've been able to play Dead Island several hours straight with no reboots.
So today I boot up Saints Row 3 again, and the computer reboots right after a cutscene. 'Fuck' says I. Check BIOS, CPU Temp 56 degrees, nothing wrong there. Boot up Saints, skip that cutscene, next cutscene comes up, ends, PC reboots. Roll back video card driver, try again, everything seems okay, go through several missions, another cutscene comes up: Reboot.
So now I'm just fucking exasperated with the whole thing. The CPU is fairly old, the mobo is old, the RAM is old. I'm guessing it's time for me to replace all of them. Being a bit of an AMD fanboy, I'd prefer to stick with them. Does anybody have any chipset recommendations? I've not been keeping up AMD's stuff. I'm probably going to go with a Phenom X6 for the CPU and a bucketload of RAM.
Has IDE been abandoned? That'll be a problem for me, since my WinXP drive is IDE.
Volitions Advocate on 5/12/2011 at 04:39
IDE: you'd be lucky to find a mobo that has it. The last mobo I bought (before the one i currently use) had only 1 channel rather than 2. and that was an LGA775 socket, already being phased out.
My new mobo an 1155 has no IDE port.
I don't know much about AMD's offerings (aside from the GPU's). But I do know that the price / performace ratio isn't as great as it used to be in comparison to intel. The new stuff coming out is starting to get closer to the intel line, but not quite.
I'm an amd fanboy myself and I went with Intel on my last 2 builds. I'd suggest going with a mobo that uses socket 1155 and either a P67 or Z68 chipset (i use p67, cheaper and the only benefits I miss out on involve SSD's). Get a sandybridge i5 and 8 gigs of ram. Depending on the video card you get you might just be able to recycle your PSU and case. but depending on your hard drives and disc drives, if you dont get a mobo with an ide channel, you'd have to buy new ones. Which isn't a bad thing because 7200 rpm HDD's are running faster than the 10,000 rpm drives of 5 years ago. And a dvd burner is 30 bucks.
Vernon on 5/12/2011 at 04:43
It will be a problem anyway, since you can't very easily swap CPUs and keep your installation (usually it is impossible). Also, IDE is rarely found as a feature on modern motherboards - you'll have to get a dock or something. A better option would be to migrate your XP installation to a VM image.
As for chipsets, I'm not familiar with AMD's. I have an i7 2600K (widely believed to be the best bang-for-buck chipset on the market) and can't see myself needing anything else for a very long time
Fafhrd on 5/12/2011 at 04:51
Quote Posted by Volitions Advocate
Depending on the video card you get you might just be able to recycle your PSU and case. but depending on your hard drives and disc drives, if you dont get a mobo with an ide channel, you'd have to buy new ones. Which isn't a bad thing because 7200 rpm HDD's are running faster than the 10,000 rpm drives of 5 years ago. And a dvd burner is 30 bucks.
I'm keeping my Radeon 6970, because it's WAY too soon to be replacing that (and that's a big part of why I want to stick with an AMD chipset and CPU), and the only IDE drive I have is a 120GB that has XP installed on it. I have two 1TB drives that are SATA (I'll have to re-partition one of those and migrate the XP drive over to that partition), and my blu-ray drive and DVD burner are both also SATA. And an 800 Watt PSU that's only about 6 months old, so it's literally just the mobo, CPU, and RAM that I'll be replacing.
Quote:
It will be a problem anyway, since you can't very easily swap CPUs and keep your installation (usually it is impossible).
Like hell it is. I've done it at least twice.
Volitions Advocate on 5/12/2011 at 06:22
Interesting. I've never been able to migrate an installtion like that. I always get BSOD or something.
If you've got a 6970 and an 800W psu then I'd say there's no problems.
Even with a new AMD based mobo though, You'd have to reinstall the chipset drivers. Probably...
Which would mean uninstalling your current drivers and doing a new install with the new ones (once you migrated your XP install). This might not be the case... My last build used an Asus mobo. The driver cd didn't work, it was corrupted. But everything on my board worked fine even with a brand new windows install. My current computer, with a Gigabyte mobo, didn't work at all without the driver CD.
I wish I could help more on the chipset details themselves, but at the moment I'm only familiar with Intel. And like I said, I'm a fan of P67, even with a ATI cards. ( i have 2x 5870 in CrossfireX )
Muzman on 5/12/2011 at 06:50
The migration thing is getting harder though, it seems. I've done it a few times on various systems but a couple have failed recently (I think the last one to fail was a family member's XP install a while ago).
I guess the thing is there's no guarantee.
My 1155 mobo I just got does have an IDE port on it though (buried in about 8 SATA ports) fwiw.
Anyway, if you've got the parts for it, I'm a huge convert to building a whole separate system now (since for a while now you have really needed a working and networked PC sitting there for reference while you build the new one)
If the old box is limping along ok for basic stuff and has onboard graphics it might be the way to go.
Vernon on 6/12/2011 at 03:24
Quote Posted by Fafhrd
Like hell it is.
Gee well I've never been able to do it without a lot of hassle, you must be some kind of genius hax0r. Excuse me for offering advice when you asked for it :laff:
Ostriig on 6/12/2011 at 09:28
Quote Posted by Volitions Advocate
But I do know that the price / performace ratio isn't as great as it used to be in comparison to intel. The new stuff coming out is starting to get closer to the intel line, but not quite.
From what I've been hearing, the new stuff is supposed to be quite the disaster, with numerous complaints about power draw, (
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1645506) unreliable behaviour and even performance increase being hit or miss against some of the Phenom II units ((
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/11/29/hardocp_readers_ask_amd_bulldozer_questions/2) see 7 for the gist). And it looks like the prices for the previous generation (
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1656451) might even be going up instead of down, either as a matter of supply and demand, or AMD trying to artificially push Bulldozer. I'd previously been recommending people buy AM3+ boards in anticipation of BD, but it does seem like the current iteration is a flop.
lost_soul on 6/12/2011 at 21:10
rofl... looks like they're pulling a "Vista": making the older product harder to acquire because tech folks like me aren't jumping out of our chairs to buy the new one.
It is like the Vista of processors! Fortunately they don't have a monopoly and we do have alternatives.
Muzman on 6/12/2011 at 22:34
Though we may mock their shaky drivers and sub par performance lately, AMD faltering is a very sad thing for the entire industry and particularly for customers.
