Some basic pointers on the AMD Rookie Rumble #32

[mickulty]

I've posted some hints and tips for the current AMD Rookie Rumble on /r/overclocking, so I figure it's only fair I should share them here as well. Keep in mind I'm still pretty new at this so this definitely won't be a comprehensive list of tweaks, rather some general pointers for anyone considering entering, and maybe even some Intel users considering buying AMD kit to diversify their benching

 

PiFast

 

Pifast is a singlethreaded benchmark so core count doesn't really matter beyond 2 cores. The FX series seem to do the best but Phenoms are pretty strongly competitive. Works on 7 but runs best on Windows XP and benefits from well-tuned ram with nice tight latency timings.

 

Cinebench R11.5

 

Scores are divided per core, so although CB11.5 scales extremely well with cores the per-core performance on a Phenom II chip is as good if not better as an FX - for example a Phenom 965 BE at 4GHz beats an FX-8350 at 5GHz in per core score. Your best bet is a Phenom II X4 or even X2. Good memory bandwidth also helps.

 

HWBOT Prime

 

Scores are divided per core. Prime is multithreaded but not very well, so the best option by a country mile is a (single-core) Sempron 140 or 145. These can score 1200+ easily which is a better per core score than the just over 8200 an FX-8350 at 7.6GHz on liquid nitrogen gets. The gap between XP and 7 is pretty close so I'd actually say try it on both because I'm not sure what gives the best score on 64-bit hardware. Set javaw.exe to the highest possible priority in task manager for a better score, it may also benefit from being run twice but with the most recent java versions the first score will be the best you get so don't neglect to save it.

 

The cheapest/simplest setup that can put in a strong showing is a cheapish AM3 or AM3+ board with a Phenom X2. In fact given the current level of participation you'd have a decent chance of winning with such a setup, although a sempron is definitely an advantage for hwbot prime.

[Taloken]

For Hwbot Prime, one of the key tweak is to try differents JRE (Java engine).

 

Beta Java 9 JRE are much more powerful.

[mickulty]

For Hwbot Prime, one of the key tweak is to try differents JRE (Java engine).

 

Beta Java 9 JRE are much more powerful.

 

Not sure if that applies to old hardware like semprons and phenoms though?

[sdougal]

Thanks for sharing mickulty. Great work...