FM1, Interesting new platform?

[Dirk Broer]

You may have noticed the introduction of the new AMD FM1 platform and have thought "not my cup of tea", pointing at the relative low performance of the CPU-part involved, the fact that the boards do not support your AM3/AM3+ CPU and the entry-level to mid-range performance of the GPU, which happens to reside not on the board, but in the CPU itself, prompting AMD to name it APU.
You may also have pointed at the TPD of 100 Watt and complained about it being a 'hot' chip for all the wrong reasons.

I ask you to reconsider. Do you know of a Phenom II setup of about the performance level of a Phenom II X4 840 that uses a mere 100 Watt for both CPU and video card? A Phenom II X4 840 alone consumates 95 Watt, a discrete HD 6570 or HD 6670 60 to 66 Watt. The die-shrink of the Llano thus reduces the needed power considerably and combined with an extra HD 6570 or HD 6670 you can run in crossfire modus, giving a virtual "HD 6690" of about the level of performance of a HD 6790, but with a power consumption for both APU plus extra card of about 150 Watt, while a single 6790 is rated the same. The CPU part of Llano runs for free in comparison.
Good news, DC-wise, for DNETC and Collatz, that do not need double precision. 880 shaders sure will get you somewhere

Another advantage of the new platform is that it supports more RAM. At the local hardware store I can -at this moment- buy four different FM1 boards that all support up to 64 Gb of RAM. You need to be able to buy 16 Gb modules to get to 64 Gb though, so in practice this will mean that the boards now max out at 16 Gb. That memory needs to be lightning fast to keep up with the internal GPU though, preferably 1866 Mhz. At that same local hardware store this means either blackline or redline Mushkin memory of 2000 Mhz or 2133 Mhz, as that is the only memory above 1600 Mhz that is offered $$$$... Going a few miles south I can buy twice as much memory for roughly the same price though, at the needed 1866 Mhz.

There will be FM1 Semprons and Athlons (e.g. Athlon II X4 641X) too, but they will need an extra video card to be able to work on a FM1. They might be less costly/demanding memory-wise as well.

What I would like is a 6-core (seems FM1 will not support 6-core APUs) Llano at Phenom II X6 1100 level and with an internal GPU at Barts level (HD 6800) instead of Turks (HD 6600), but I guess that will have to wait for socket FM2.

[NeoGen]

You need to be able to buy 16 Gb modules to get to 64 Gb though
Oh my god... is there such thing already?? :icon_eek: The last I've seen out there was 8Gb DDR3 chips for servers only, with ECC, parity and/or fully buffered.
I can only imagine 1 of those chips costing more than the whole computer setup itself.

[Dirk Broer]

They come at around €235 each, so you will not want to buy them eight at a time....

[Dirk Broer]

Finally decided for an FM1 Llano system in favour of a AM3 PhenomII system, mostly because of long-term economics. How so?
Llano's run at a tpd of 65 or 100 Watt, and that includes the tpd of the low-midrange internal GPU. An added DDR3 HD 6670 for AMD Dual Graphics will raise that to 110 Watt for the most economical versions, the dual-cores A4 3300 and 3400, the triple-core A6 3500 and the quad cores A6 3600 and A8 3800. Compared to a PhenomII with a tpd of 125 Watt -without graphics- that is an advantage. An added DDR3 HD 6670 will raise that to more than 170 Watt. Note that a higher performance GDDR5 HD 6670 will consume even more Watts, as you might be hitting the 200 Watt there.
And that is just for a HD 6670, a midrange GPU that will not add something to a PhenomII.

So my choice, crunching-wise, was for a 65 Watt tpd Llano. The 65 Watt APUs come in a variety of versions, of which I discarded the dual-core A4 for reasons of the low number of shaders (160) compared to their more-cored brothers.


Llano Model
Radeon inside
Clock speed
Cores
Shaders
GPU speed


A8 3800
HD 6550D
2.4 - 2.7 Mhz
4
400
600 Mhz


A6 3600
HD 6530D
2.1 - 2.4 Mhz
4
320
444 Mhz


A6 3500
HD 6530D
2.1 - 2.4 Mhz
3
320
444 Mhz



As you can see the A8 3800 was to be my APU of choice, but unfortunately it is as scarce as a hen's teeth, and considerably more expensive. The A6 3600 likewise. So I had to settle for a €70 A6 3500, as one core more would have cost me €30 more and one core more plus a faster GPU even €60 more -provided I could find a shop that could deliver them-.
Feeling a bit pissed-off performance-wise, I decided to buy that DDR3 -for sake of economics- HD 6670 immediately, instead of some months later.

For the mobo I decided for an A75 chipset as the price difference with the A55 boards is virtually nill, and the performance higher/more versatile.
This turned out a wise decision, but I fell into the trap of buying a ASUS F1A75, the plain vanilla variant.



Model
Form Factor
RAM slots
PCIe-16 slots
PCIe-4 slots
PCIe-1 slots
PCI slots
PS/2 ports
eSATA ports


F1A75-I de Luxe
iTX
2
1
0
0
0
1
1


F1A75-M
uATX
4
1
1
1
1
1
0


F1A75-M LE
uATX
2
1
1
1
1
1
0


F1A75-M Pro
uATX
4
1
1
1
1
1
0


F1A75
ATX
4
1
1
2
3
2
0


F1A75-V
ATX
4
1
1
2
3
1
0


F1A75-V Evo
ATX
4
2*
1
2
2
1
1


F1A75-V Pro
ATX
4
1
1
2
3
1
1


* = When fitted with two PCIe cards speed is 2x 8

So the F1A75 a trap, but why? Because it has no VGA, DVI or HDMI port, that's why. You HAVE to have an external video card in order to even see your PC boot. And then the adventure begins....

Forget about "The system automatically sees the combination of your Llano APU and the HD 6670 as a HD 6690D2", because it does not. You have to go into the BIOS to make that happen, and the setting to look for with ASUS is NB Configuration. The manual explains nothing, but here you can activate your internal graphics. Having done that, GPU-Z finally sees two cards of which one -the HD 6530- does not support OpenCL or Direct Compute, or at least GPU-Z says so is does not. CPU-Z sees a Sumo video card, but is lacking all information of that. Win8 Dev itself only sees the HD 6670, and claims that the HD 6530D is not supported in Win8. Boinc finally sees the two cards, but mentions that the HD 6530 is not used. Guess I have to be creative, App_Info.xml-wise and I'll update the BIOS, CPU-Z and GPU-Z.

[Dirk Broer]

Solved the 2 GPU problem using this cc_config.xml file:


<cc_config>
<options>
<use_all_gpus>1</use_all_gpus>
</options>
</cc_config>

Funny: Collatz makes use of this running two WUs at the same time -be it that the 320 shader 444 Mhz HD 6530D is much slower than the 480 shader 800 Mhz HD 6670-, while Moo! proudly announces that it is running using 2 ATI GPUs for one WU. Wonder what that will do to the processing time of my Moo! WUs on the Llano system. I'll keep you posted.

[Nflight]

Thanks for posting Dirk, an interesting read. At this time while I can't afford your selections I am interested in putting the equipment together and making it all work. your trials and tribulations are entertainment for my mind of computer processes. Good luck

[Dirk Broer]

The longer I have this FM1 board running, the more enthusiastic I get!
After some teething problems, as how to enable AMD Dual Graphics (not explained in the ASUS manual, but for this board a-must-know),
I installed the latest BIOS and now thing are running quite well.

The HD 6690D2, formed by the A6-3500 combined with a HD 6670 (a DDR3 model for power consumption sake), really outperfoms my HD 4770 on those projects both cards can work on (Moo! and Collatz) at roughly half the power needed (44 Watt against 80 Watt, the power needed for the APU not counted, as I also do not count the power needed for the CPU that fuels the HD 4770)

The bottlenecks for the system for real big credits, BOINC-wise, are
1. The number of cores (could be 1 higher with the sheer unobtainable A6-3600, A8-3800 or the mythical A8-3820) and
2. The speed of the Graphics Core of the A6-3500, only 444 Mhz where the top models offer 600 Mhz. The overclockable Black Edition/K models might reach even higher, but are 100 Watt as opposed to the 65 Watt of the A6-3500, A6-3600, A8-3800 or the mythical A8-3820. Mind you, when running the A6-3500 at 2400 Mhz (Turbo mode) as I do you will reach 88 Watt anyway.

As some people say a second HD 6670 would cause the grapics of the APU to be disabled, I am now tempted to install a low power nVidia card in the second PCIe slot to see how that goes. Keep you posted.

[Nflight]

I keep reading this report so keep us informed. I am very curious Dirk! :blob3:

[Dirk Broer]

I am now tempted to install a low power nVidia card in the second PCIe slot to see how that goes. Keep you posted.

This works! I now have the "HD 6690D2" running alongside my old GT 9500, crunching 3 GPU WUs together and it goes nicely, good for my Seti and Einstein scores.

28-1-2012 2:25:45 | | NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce 9500 GT (driver version 28516, CUDA version 4010, compute capability 1.1, 1024MB, 86 GFLOPS peak)
28-1-2012 2:25:45 | | ATI GPU 0: AMD Radeon HD 6x00 series (Turks) (CAL version 1.4.1646, 1024MB, 816 GFLOPS peak)
28-1-2012 2:25:45 | | ATI GPU 1: AMD SUPERSUMO (CAL version 1.4.1646, 512MB, 544 GFLOPS peak)

Edit
A critical side note: Though the AMD system monitor and the Catalyst Control Center will let you believe that the "Crossfire"/AMD Dual Vision is broken, BOINC goes on using all alloted GPUs. In other applications you might not benefit from this setup however. Though the nVidia card seems very weak with its 86 GFLOP, it can do Seti and Einstein, Moo! to a reasonable level and Collatz at an unacceptable level (80+ hour WUs)

[Dirk Broer]

The longer I have this FM1 board running, the more enthusiastic I get!
Wait, didn't I say that before? Yes, and I mean it.

I've also said that the bottlenecks for my present Llano system for real big credits, BOINC-wise, are :
1. The number of cores (could be 1 higher with the sheer unobtainable A6-3600, A8-3800 or the mythical A8-3820) and
2. The speed of the Graphics Core of the A6-3500, only 444 Mhz where the top models offer 600 Mhz. The overclockable Black Edition/K models might reach even higher, but are 100 Watt as opposed to the 65 Watt of the A6-3500, A6-3600, A8-3800 or the mythical A8-3820. Mind you, when running the A6-3500 at 2400 Mhz (Turbo mode) as I do you will reach 88 Watt anyway.

With the A8-3870K dropping in price to an affordable level (below 100 Euro's in some shops) I have decided to go for 33% more cores at an 25% higher clock speed and a 35% higher rated GPU core for the internal graphics. And that is before overclocking....I won't go buying a Black Edition CPU and leave it at stock speed!
Unfortunately I could today only order the APU, it will be delivered next week.

BTW: Still haven't seen a A8-3820 in the wild, and the A8-3800 is still the most expensive Llano around here.
BTW2: It seems that -according to the latest GPU-Z- my board is capable of triple CrossfireX, so my next purchase will be a 2nd HD 6670 (Silent version, getting deaf as it is right now). We'll get FM1 to deliver big credits yet...

[Dirk Broer]

Had to postpone the second HD 6670 for several reasons, one of which was that an Asrock Mobo under my Intel Quad died.
Replaced the DDR2 board with it's DDR3 nephew from Asrock, and upgraded it to 8Gb. Still cheaper (at some 83 Euros) than
upgrading the original DDR2 board to 8 Gb (some 128 Euros), which shows you how DDR3 RAM prices have gone south, while DDR2 went north.
The other reason is that I could acquire a second FM1 Mobo for my temporary laid-off A6-3500, a Gigabyte A75M-UD2H.
As 2133 Mhz memory with decent latency (http://www.gskill.com/products.php?index=367) has become affordable, I will try that in the new set-up and try to push the A6-3500 to its limits.

[Dirk Broer]

I had to learn my way around the http://www.pcstats.com/articleimages/201206/gbtA75Mud2H_b3.jpghttp://www.pcstats.com/articleimages/201206/gbtA75Mud2H_b.jpg

old-skool, but highly tweakable, GigaByte BIOS (http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2678&page=4) -as compared to the state-of-the-art ASUS UEFI-, but in the end it is only just a way to set the parameters. http://images.anandtech.com/doci/5052/3%20ASUS%20-%20Ai%20Tweaker_575px.jpg
At first my for-the-time-being 1600 Mhz memory would not run faster than 1333 Mhz, but I licked that and the performance got quite a boost. It must have been the other reason besides the app_info.xml that quadruppled the productivty of my A6-3500, as the app_info.xml itself would only do twice as much at the same time, and not necessarily in the same time. Now I got 4 Einstein WUs in 12 hours instead of just one, which shows again how memory-speed sensitive the FM1 (and FM2) boards are. After my birthday in August I will definitely buy memory of 2133 Mhz to see whether another perfrmance leap can be made by just adding faster memory. I also hope to be able to upgrade this system to an A8-3870K as well, and then I'll try to see what 'unlocked' really means.

[AMDave]

You are having way too much fun.
"... but I licked that ..." - you know there's an app for that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zfl6wJsjDy4&feature=fvwrel
:icon_mrgreen:

ha ha. Just joking. I know its a tpyo, but I couldn't resist. :)

But seriously you are getting rewards from you exploration into the guts of the configuration.

Great work and Thank You for continuing to share with the rest of us.

[Dirk Broer]

It's not a tpyo, it's slang (and no Aussie slang at that). Look at 5 with the verbs:

lick
v. licked, lick·ing, licks
v.tr.
1. To pass the tongue over or along: lick a stamp.
2. To lap up.
3. To lap or flicker at like a tongue: The waves licked the sides of the boat.
4. Slang To punish with a beating; thrash.
5. Slang To get the better of; defeat: licked her weight problem.
v.intr.
To pass or lap quickly and rapidly: The flames licked at our feet.
n.
1. The act or process of licking.
2. An amount obtained by licking: a lick of ice cream.
3. A small quantity; a bit: hasn't got a lick of common sense.
4. A deposit of exposed natural salt that is licked by passing animals.
5. A sudden hard stroke; a blow.
6. An attempt; a try.
7. Informal Speed; pace: moving along at a good lick.
8. Music A phrase improvised by a soloist, especially on the guitar or banjo.

[AMDave]

for sure I thought you meant something else but now here I sit re-edjumucated. I'd never heard of n. 8. either. but v. 5. has given me some material for a good jape with someone. :)

[Dirk Broer]

There are complete websites devoted to guitar licks (http://www.madguitarlicks.com/), and the lick in music even has its own Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lick_(music))
But then again so has jape (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jape) or even FM1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM1)

[AMDave]

Thanks for the links. I learned stuff today :)

[Dirk Broer]

I learned something these lasts days as well, and it came a bit as a surprise:

In order to overclock a FM1 system you need a HDMI or a DVI cable/monitor combo because d-sub/VGA will not get you a higher FSB than 104 Mhz.

My brandnew G.Skill 2133 Mhz memory will only work at that speed when I connect my daughter's Samsung Syncmaster to the system,
ye olde iiyama vision master pro 410 just won't cut it better than 1866 Mhz (but with awfully tight latencies).

[NeoGen]

That is a very interesting bug to report back to the motherboard manufacturer!

I imagine that electronically all components have to be in a very tight sync with each others to work, but some BIOS coder(s) must have not used VGA output in a while to miss that one. :icon_lol:

[Dirk Broer]

That is a very interesting bug to report back to the motherboard manufacturer!
Seems no bug, but a fact (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/a8-3870k-apu-overclocking-guide,3260.html). VGA does not seem to like too high busspeeds on the FM1 platform. Have to buy a new monitor in order to overclock my APU. Strange, but true.

But now for the good news: AMD has lowered the prices on a number of FM1 APUs/CPUs and AM3 CPUs (I even spotted a FM2 APU, but I think A4-5300 is a typo for A6-3500!):

ProcessorOld priceNew priceDifference
A8-3870K101 dollar 91 dollar 9.9%
A8-3850 97 dollar 87 dollar10.3%
A6-3670K 80 dollar 77 dollar 3.7%

A4-5300 53 dollar 47 dollar 11.3% ? Trinity!
A4-3400 48 dollar 40 dollar 16.7%
A4-3300 46 dollar 36 dollar 21.7%

Athlon II X4 651 92 dollar 76 dollar 17.4%
Athlon II X4 645 102 dollar 87 dollar 14.7%
Athlon II X4 641 81 dollar 65 dollar 19.8%
Athlon II X4 640 98 dollar 67 dollar 31.6%
Athlon II X4 631 79 dollar 65 dollar 17.7%
Athlon II X3 460 87 dollar 69 dollar 20.7%
Athlon II X3 455 76 dollar 65 dollar 14.5%
Athlon II X3 450 76 dollar 60 dollar 21.1%
Athlon II X2 265 69 dollar 48 dollar 30.4%
Athlon II X2 260 64 dollar 48 dollar 25.0%
Athlon II X2 255 60 dollar 47 dollar 21.7%
Athlon II X2 250 58 dollar 47 dollar 19.0%

[Dirk Broer]

I just can't believe my luck: I scored an AMD A8-3820! And for a decent price as well.... (http://www.sicomputers.nl/componenten/processoren/amd/socket-fm1/a8-3820.html)
It seems that the FM1 stocks are being cleared, as I also managed to obtain the king of ASUS FM1 mobo's, the F1A75-V EVO, for a price below 90 Euros! (http://www.sicomputers.nl/componenten/moederborden/amd-fm1/asus/asus-f1a75-v-evo-sfm1.html)
If I can't install Ubuntu on this combination, I will throw the windows open and go back to the camp of Gates and Balmer.

If Ubuntu settles well and I win the lottery this month I will also buy the Gigabyte and Asrock top FM1 mobo's and stick them with A8-3820s.
If the price is big enough I will repeat it with the FM2 mobos of the same companies together with a trio of A10-5700s.
Then I will make ASUS happy by buying a pile of HD 6670s and start experimenting with Triple and Quad CrossfireX.

But first things first: installing Ubuntu (or any other flavor of 64-bit Linux) on the F1A75-V EVO/A8-3820 combo...

[Dirk Broer]

Well, no price in the lottery this month but the F1A75-V EVO compares to the F1A75 like a tiger to a pussy.
The A8-3820 should, like its A6-3500 brother, be hard to overclock and on the F1A75 it was indeed so.
The F1A75-V EVO overclocks like a dream, and 3 Ghz is no problem for the A8-3820 (nominally 2500 Mhz and 2800 Mhz in turbo)
The only thing holding me back seems the Corsair Vengeance 1866 memory, that has trouble reaching that speed (at least when a VGA cable is attached -needed for the KVM switch-)
Might want to swap that for my G.Skill 2133 memory and my A8-3870K currently in the Gigabyte GA-A75M-UD2H mobo and connect to standalone DVI monitor to see where it ends.

[Dirk Broer]

AMD Dual Graphics at work
254
(click to enlarge)

The A8-3870K/HD 6670 combo doing a WCG WU each (taking two not fully taxed CPU cores with them)
with two MindModelling WUs taking it easy on the other two cores (also running WUProp and FreeHAL for the fun of it)