FM1, Interesting new platform?

[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 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

old-skool, but highly tweakable, GigaByte BIOS -as compared to the state-of-the-art ASUS UEFI-, but in the end it is only just a way to set the parameters.
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.