I can get an adapter later on, i might not run eyefinity for games, but more for Audio/Video Editing.

So Far The Performance is great, boots into windows 7 Quick, and immediately responsive, and its very responsive even when running alot of tasks.

The one thing i need to do is run Prime95, to max out the CPU to see what the temps do,

As this being my first water cooled CPU, i dont know if i should be trusting the CPUID Hardware Monitor/AMD overdrive Core values (which are actually the same and not different like i had said before).

During some of the PC Mark tests last night, my cores went down to 5^C (Yes, FIVE), and Spiked at 30^C max,
But the temps didnt move up/down with the work loads, The Spike to 30 for less than a second was when all cores were idle (but still at the 17.0 Multiplier.)
the 5^C low was when 3 of 8 cores were hovering at around 60% usage.

The core usage is also sporadic, watching the cores when programs are "benchmarking", the loads jump around randomly from one to another, instead of just resting on 1 or 2 cores. Maybe the hotfix will address this if I can find it again.

So it seams that the CPU is sitting at the 3.4GHz Turbo Mode on all cores, even when system is idling. The Only time I've seen it drop to the Default 3.1Ghz was when I was running the AMD Stability Test, and they all dropped to 15x mp and 3.1Ghz, but cycled to 17 2 cores at a time randomly,

I have yet to see it hit the 4.0Ghz 4 core Turbo Turbo, even when I told AMD's Overdrive to Peg 1 Core. which makes me think that AMD's Overdrive test doesn't really stress the cores the way Prime95 does.

they were mainly in the 15^C range, and fluctuated up and down from there. The PUMP is set on HIGH for the H100 Block.

I did run the pump outside of the my old system and listened to the block, and could her the water flowing, so the pump is operating.

I guess Allen would be able to tell me if that kind of fluctuation is normal w/ water,

After about 20 minutes of run time, average temp started to go down
(i guess as the water makes it way through the radiator and back to the CPU Block.).

I'll run Prime95 to see what the temps actually Max out at.

as running AMD's tests, even with all 8 cores pegged, temps were jumping from 7^C to 15, back down to 7 up to 23 back down to 7... etc etc...

I also need to look into why the CPU stays in Turbo 3.4 Ghz mode. when it should be stepping down to 3.1 mode when idling.

OK, even when running Prime95, all 8 cores, temps stay in the teens...

now, if I tell it to run 4 cores, the workload jumps around, and doesnt max out any core at all, Wierd,

also when 8 cores are maxed it drops the multiplier to 15, from the 17 that it's idling at... and Some cores drop to 14x (2.7Ghz.)

I dunno about you, but isnt that backwards?

gonna double check BIOS Options again.

Funny, Prime95 is running 8 workers, and im chillin watching HD Flash Movies on the Internet with no lag at all... and still at 17^C

Seems that the temps are not jumping around anymore, 10 or below idling and 17-20 load (all 8 cores).

the fact that the cores arent utilized correctly is annoying. i installed both updates. and still the same.

Cinebench sees my chip as 4c 8T, with a score of 5.04 (ish).

Accidently changed MP to 18.0x and it didnt bode well, lol.

I just got my wife's HTPC FX4100 up and running yesterday -- still many things to do/try -- these are very preliminary remarks.

So far, I've tried OC in BIOS and also OC using AMD Overdrive. So far, AMD Overdrive is not a bad way to OC this CPU. I have a lot more to do before I report a final opinion.

AMD Overdrive under-reports the CPU core temperatures for some reason -- typically 15C at idle with all my CPUs. I notice on my Phenom II systems and on the FX4100 that the "Board Status" page gives the right CPU temperature -- listed as TMPIN1. I get 30C idle on my water cooled Phenom II X6. I got 33C idle on my aftermarket-air-cooled FX4100 and about 43C at 4.2GHz with the FX4100. I get in the low-mid 50s with good air cooling on the Phenom II X6 at 4.0GHz Prime95 and low-mid 40s with water. The water cooler should circulate the water fairly quickly -- a minute (?). However, the water-cooler system does heat up and the final temperature takes a few minutes to reach. Don't know why yours heats up then cools down over 20 minutes -- except if the CPU workload is changing from higher to lower.

Worth noting that sometimes the thermal grease does not spread correctly and one has to reinstall a cooler to get a consistent good result. Has to be hyper thin and uniform. I have read that some sites that test coolers actually reinstall the cooler two or three times -- testing each time -- to get the best performance -- and they, presumably, know what they are doing. The Arctic Silver site explains the process for achieving a hyper thin uniform coating.

If I retained "turbo" and "cool n quiet", I too got the jumping around (some jumping around is also normal on my Phenom II X6 systems). To me, its the CPU constantly adjusting to do the job with minimum power; so, I'm not concerned, yet. If I used AMD Overdrive to shut off "turbo" and set the CPU to 4.2GHz, I got a constant 4.2 while running Prime95 -- no jumping around -- cool n quiet would drop the GHz when not running Prime95. More to do to decide how I want to set it up. Though for an HTPC, I might just let it "do its thing" -- it will be cooler and quieter

Being that the FX4100 is really a defective FX81xx with 4 bad cores disabled, it is not likely to OC real well -- though some folks have claimed 4.9 stable and 5.0GHz post with their particular FX4100. Of 4 working cores, one seems to be "bad" on my unit -- only goes to 4.2 with some stability, so far. Usefully, the FX cores can be OC separately to separate values -- don't know if that's singly or in pairs. I'll see how that works out -- just for fun as I doubt it matters in an HTPC.

FWIW, got 3.05 in CINEBENCH at 4.0GHz. Oddly, got virtually the same number 2.9x at 3.6GHz -- something for me to ponder. 3 is basically half the value that FX8150 8 core 3.6GHz got in some test reports, so it seems about right.

I think things are "sorting out" with our FX4100. I won't be finalized in my thoughts until late next week -- as I do not have the HTPC HD7750 GPU yet (I'm using the "dinky" on-the-motherboard GPU -- get 2FPS in Heaven 2.5).

I installed Skyrim (actually its still updating via Steam). It will be interesting to see if Skyrim (which only uses 2 cores and is CPU limited) runs about as fast on this very-low-cost HTPC as it does on my main gaming system (once I have the HD7750).

temps stabilized as I ran prime, instead of jumping up and down they idle low and go up about 7-10^C under prime 95.

I turned off cool n quiet right off the bat, I think the idle temps are prolly more than than what the AMD Overdrive is reporting for my cores (10-15^C), as one of the "CPU" values in HWMonitor says I idle at 30 (CPUTIN) .
I googled around and alot of people have issues with throttling at 45^C ceiling.

i accidently moved the multiplier up without the voltage so the multiplier changed but as soon as i hit test in AMD Overdrive the system rebooted.

in the bios I was testing around, I was able to disable 4 cores and "1 core per module" and Overclock to 4.6Ghz no problem using the recommended MP/Voltage/HT Settings.


Seeing as im still waiting for my GFX Card and screen, i havent played games...

But i just find it weird that Prime 95 runs 8 worker threads maxes all 8 of my cores and I can still monkey doodle and open programs and videos on the system with no lag..

one thing i do like:

On my old Old System, 4 minute 720p Xbox 360 compressed to WMV9-VC1 @ 12MBps HP@HL = 1.5-2.0 Hours.
New system, 15 Minutes

In Expression 4 SP1 Ult.

this is what im trying to fix now, while my GFX card is on the way, i should just disable all this crap and OC the CPU to 24/7 stable level..

System specs:
Case: COOLER MASTER HAF 922
Power Supply: OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W Modular High Performance Power Supply
Mainboard: ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Professional AM3+ AMD 990FX
CPU: AMD FX-8120 Zambezi 3.1GHz Socket AM3+ 125W Eight-Core Desktop Processor
CPU Cooling: CORSAIR H100 (CWCH100) Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Memory: G.SKILL Sniper Gaming Series 16GB DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Graphics: Sapphire AMD 7950 w/ 3GB GDDR5 Ram (OC Edition)
Audio: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty Champion Series
HD Recording : Black Magic Intensity Pro 10-Bit HDMI 1080p Capture Card
Harddisk: Western Digital Caviar Black WD1502FAEX 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s
Optical Drive: ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner - Bulk - OEM
External HDDrive: Seagate External USB 3.0 1 TB HDD
Displays: 3x Asus 24" 2ms 1080p

Ok, Im not sure, but I think something is a bit wonky here:

the Board's Bios is set to Defaults, but I disabled Cool and Quiet.

so, According to AMD, FX8120 boosts to 3.4GHz on all 8 cores, and 4.0 Ghz on 2/4.

So, Heres the issue I have,
When Im Idling its Idling at 3.4Ghz/17.0x Multiplier. (Which is the all 8 core turbo)
When i run Prime95 with 8 workers, I peg all CPUs at 100, it drops all Cores to 15.0x Multiplier and 3.1Ghz, and at some points to 14.0x.

I am under the impression that its supposed to go the other way?.

also when I set workers to say 4 in Prime 95, the workload is thrown all over the place instead of being On only 4 cores and those cores "Turbo'd".

Same when i set it to 1 or 2 cores, the workload is sporadically bounced around.

Even with 1 worker set, it should be pegging 1 core, and I should be seeing the 4.0Ghz Boost on that core right? But its bouncing all over randomly.

also tried toggling the "Boost" in AMD overdrive's program, this had no effect.

Is there a bios setting somewhere causing this issue?
(yes i have both of the FX "hot Fixes" KB2645594 & KB2646060) No improvement.)

CoolNQuiet Off, C6/C1 Power Off, APM Off.


AMD Overdrive at system desktop Idle:


AMD Overdrive w/ all 8 Running Prime95 for 20 minutes:



Edit:
ok, just to check and see if it wasnt something that was changed.

when i first booted the system, i cleared CMOS,

then after i installed / updated windows, i updated the BIOS,

I made sure all the settings stuck,

but just to be on the safe side, I told it to load defaults.

Now, in Prime95, i get more convincing values from CPU-Z
3.9Ghz 20.0x MP, 2 Threads (CPUZ reads 20x, AMDOD reads 17)
3.4Ghz 17.0x MP, 4 Threads (But drops to 15 occasionally).

2.9 to 3.1Ghz on 14-15.5x MP on 8 threads.

so the problem seems to be when using 8 threads.

CPU VCore Voltage also seems to drop really low on 8 threads (.95-1.05 ish)
I dont know if thats normal for a FX-8120 CPU.


It also seems, starting with 8 threads, and stopping them 1 at a time, results in each thread getting their own core to use, where as starting 1 thread, the workload goes back and forth through all the 8 cores randomly.


So Im thinking its a VCore issue.

Funny how AMD's down program dont read the CPU data right.

I still have my launch Xbox 360, so No HDMI,

I do however have it hooked to my Intensity Pro Card (Component Video), which will do up to 1080i, but on my current screen, 1080i looks like crap. (1680x1050).

So if 1080i looks great on my new screen without the interlacing being overly evident, i'll play and record 1080i, if not, 720p, even then it will still look better, as my current screen is 16:10, so 720p is stretched.

I'll prolly mount my current screen in portrait mode on the side to run webpages / pdfs while i play certain sims (F4-BMS, DCS:A10, etc), or to have control panels while I edit video.

I actually finally got the Intensity Pro card and my XFi Platinum Stable, I spend all day Sunday trying to install creatives driver, i dont know how many times i had to boot to the restore option and have it restore an acess point because teh driver would fail during install, reboot, and get stuck on windows logo, reboot, and go into boot restore or whatever, let it scan for a problem, then let it restore everything, then reboot again. The one thing i HATE about creative.

finally i just installed all the drivers manually using my old HDD and copying the files, registering them, and installing the programs/control panel programs. and that took 6 hours sunday.

then i had to play musical slots with the intensity card, as for some reason, it refuses to update the firmware now (it wont even check it.), found out that booting certain programs messes up the Intensity Audio Bridge, so basically i have to reboot if i want to use the intensity pro card, but now i can record 1080i/720p uncompressed (i couldnt do that on my old system).

all in all i got done making everything stable around 1AM this morning...

now the only thing i have to do when the Sapphire card gets here is wipe the nVidia drivers before i install AMDs.

Also came to the conclusion that AMD's Overdrive Application doesnt read the chip's speed correctly.

I've started playing with a serious effort to OC my FX4100 (more of an effort than I normally make). Prime95 does cause it to "act crazy" with clocks jumping around unlike with other applications -- which may lead to premature Prime95 errors. Others have noticed the same thing. Set it aside for today.

Outside Prime95, things are going well with the FX4100 and HD7750 that arrived this afternoon -- game performance is really quite good, so far.

As mentioned previously, I'll post what I find out when the HTPC is completed.

Start Prime with 4 Workers, then Drop 2, and it will keep the load on 2 cores like its supposed too and the other 2 will be free. then you can test turbo turbo.

my cpu drops multipliers in 8 worker prime95, to 15.0 and eventually down to 14.0 (default is 15.5, Turbo 1 is 17.0, Turbo 2 is 20.0)

at the same time when i start prime, it's at the 7.0x Power Saving mode, goes up to 15.5 default, then to 17.0 for a few seconds, back down to 15.5 default then down to 15/14, VCore also drops to 1.05-0.95 (yes less than 1 volt), while in prime, every time i'm looking at it waiting for it to fail/error/crash. Im guessing that's why the CPU is Throttling back though, it detects the voltage dropping.

As Soon as I End 2 or 3 Worker threads, Multiplier goes back up to 15.5 and alternates between 15.5 and 17, once i drop down to 2 threads, and max only those 2 cores, it goes to the 20.0 multi and stays there until i end the last 2 workers.

So 4 or 5 cores wil stable turbo, 6+ will cause VCore to Drop below 1.1v down to .95v if i leave it go, and the CPU will just continue to throttle back.

I'm still trying to figure out of this is a issue i can fix by changing the voltage in the bios. But if other people aren't aware and all the CPU's do this, they may account for a large chunk of the "Performance" missing. I emailed AMD and they said they'll investigate the Vcore Drop and the Throttling at full load. as its clearly not a thermal throttle.

I'll find out in a few days if its a PSU issue, as the 7950 will suck more power than my 8800 GTS currently does, which will make the issue worse.