AMD FX 4100 BE thread

[Vezina]

Let s talk a little about the AMD FX 4100 CPU , i have some questions myself and i am very sure i am not the only one.I have found little information about it s specifications.

The AMD website doesn t seem to state to much ,like they used to do for Phenoms and Athlons ,regarding voltages and maximum allowed temperature ( http://www.amd.com/uk/products/desktop/processors/amdfx/Pages/amdfx.aspx )

1. First of all what is the recommended voltage for this CPU by default ,as in my CPU-Z v1.59 the voltage with CnQ off is 1,424 V at 3,724 Ghz ? Is there  something wrong with  970A-UD3 regarding this aspect ? I am not alarmed as the temperatures are ok ,hovering around 40 Celsius in stress.

If we take a look at this review from legitreviews ( http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1766/3/ ) we see that the CPU is fed at 1,272 Volts at similar clock

2.What is the maximum recommended temperature for the cores ?

3.The boost to 3,7 Ghz (from the rated 3,6Ghz) rises the clocks for all cores ?

4.Why is there a second boost state for 3,8 Ghz and how many cores does it affect ?

5.What is the real CPU WEI score in Windows 7 for FX 4100 ,as on the same legitreviews  we  can see a beefy 7,6 ?
I see a 7,2 on my Windows 7 32 bit installation and on some  online stores  many reviewers report 7,3 ?

6.What is the recommended memory speed for maximum performance at default clocks ?


LE :

Just went in the BIOS and " added"  - 0,125V on the CPU Voltage settings.Even though the 1.59 CPU-Z version shows identical voltage to the one in the BIOS HW monitor i ve  updated to latest version.
Here is a screen with the CPU running at 1,232 V (the real voltage my motherboard supplies as per BIOS info )

Look and behold the CPU consumes around 19-20 Wats at 3,7 Ghz



No stress test yet ,but the default 1,4V+ looks stranger and stranger in the motherboard BIOS.
BIOS F5 latest ,C1E ,C6 and CnQ are off in BIOS.

[Vezina]

Went into XP this time and run Intel burn test to see the stability , the consumption in Easy saver with the saving feature off and the voltage drop.

~20W in idle and 39,99W(maximum that i ve saw) in load .A future over-clocking session for this CPU looks good.Long way to hit the 95 watts TDP that AMD is marketing for the CPU.I am using the stock CPU cooler ,i can barely hear it.  

[Vezina]

It seems that a WEI CPU score  of 7.2 for the FX 4100 is an indicator of CPU speed throttling.
Using CPU-Z simultaneous showed drops to 3,3 Ghz while running WEI when the CPU test runs.

Disabling the Advanced Power Management for the CPU in BIOS  i was able to set the CPU at fixed speeds from 3,6 Ghz (the base frequency) to 4Ghz for all cores.
In all this speed scenarios the WEI score was 7.3 and not 7.2.

It would be interesting to know if somebody else ,using the same combo , has observed this and if with faster than DDR 3 1333Mhz RAM the score got  higher.

[Vezina]

Forgot to add that in idle ,under Windows 7 32 bit , with C6 enabled (as AMD recommends in the data sheet) , APM Enabled and CnQ Enabled the Easy Saver software reports a nice 11 Watts power consumption ,voltage being set manually to  -0,075 of the base CPU Voltage ,reported by the BIOS HW Monitor to mean 1,280 Volts.
When the saving features kick in the core 2 and 4 (the incomplete ones) are parked and the other 2 lowered to 1,4 Ghz.C nQ voltage reduction works even with the CPU voltage manually made in BIOS.

Annoying fact is that what AMD Overdrive 1.0.0.9 reports is totally different to what CPU-Z do.