Budget Gaming Build - No AMD Love?

[AtenRa]

If one assumes 4 hours per day of heavy gaming,

How many actually do game 4 hours per day per year ??

http://www.vg247.com/2013/07/04/sur...er-is-35-male-plays-for-almost-3-hours-a-day/

The results suggest that the average UK gamer is a 35-year-old married man, with yearly income of £23,000 and who plays games for 2.5 hours five days a week, each week.

100 watt power delta between an i5 and an FX8350, and a power cost of 15c per kwh, that comes out to 4*100/1000*.15*365 = 21.90 per year. If one keeps the rig 3 years, that would be almost 66.00 total saved. So the cost of using more power is far from a myth.

Now do the same calculation for 2 hours per day per year = $10.95 per year.

FX8320 = $159,99 (Newegg), simple raise the multiplier and you have the same performance of FX8350.

Haswell 4670K = $239,99 (Newegg)

Price difference = $80,00

GTX650 Ti Boost lowest price on Neweggg = $139,99 (AR)

HD7950 lower price on Newegg = $219,99 (AR)

On top of that, the i5 is faster in the vast majority of games, and pretty much equal in the few games that are very heavily multithreaded. So for gaming, the 8350 is pretty much like a car that uses more gas, but goes slower as well.

When you are on a budget, the FX8320 (OC to 4GHz) + HD7950 is the faster gaming combo for the majority of current and future games than Core i5 + GTX650 Ti Boost.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

It's pretty much impossible to beat Intel @ Microcenter, AMD is only good if you have a strict budget cap that you can't exceed for whatever reason that is very low to begin with... In which case making concessions is already part of your build so what's one more?

 

[frozentundra123456]

Obviously the cost of the added power for an FX will depend on usage. If one accepts 12.5 hrs/week as average, some will use more, some less. The point is, it must be considered in any valid evaluation of cost. One cannot simply ignore it because it is higher for the CPU from their favorite company. One may decide it is not a significant difference, just as one may decide the extra cost of an i5 is worth it for the better overall performance. Point is you can't just blithely ignore it in any valid comparison of total cost of ownership.

 

[Devlyn]

Given that my primary purpose is gaming for this PC, are there reviews specifically comparing FPS on games with identical video cards between AMD and Intel? Like Planetside 2 is limited by CPU power. Which is going to net more FPS in games, and is more than 3.

At Microcenter, the price difference is $60 for i5 vs 8350.

 

[AtenRa]

Given that my primary purpose is gaming for this PC, are there reviews specifically comparing FPS on games with identical video cards between AMD and Intel? Like Planetside 2 is limited by CPU power. Which is going to net more FPS in games, and is more than 3.

At Microcenter, the price difference is $60 for i5 vs 8350.

For Planetside 2 your better off with an Intel Core i5. For BF3 MultiPlayer you are better with the FX8350 or Core i7.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Given that my primary purpose is gaming for this PC, are there reviews specifically comparing FPS on games with identical video cards between AMD and Intel? Like Planetside 2 is limited by CPU power. Which is going to net more FPS in games, and is more than 3.

This often depends on your resolution. At very high-res (1440 and up) basically every game is GPU bound so the choice is almost irrelevant.

Here are some BF3 benches from Tom's pitting the FX against the ivy-bridge line-up as well as Zambezi, Thuban, and Deneb for reference.

Same deal in Skyrim

Same thing in WoW

Here's Crysis 3

Here's starcraft2

Far Cry 3

Metro 2033

DiRT Showdown

Planetside 2 (GPU on top, CPU further down)

Some general thoughts on gaming cpu's under $200

 

[BallaTheFeared]

For Planetside 2 your better off with an Intel Core i5. For BF3 MultiPlayer you are better with the FX8350 or Core i7.

lol are you saying the 8350 is faster in BF3 than the i5?

 

[AtenRa]

lol are you saying the 8350 is faster in BF3 than the i5?

For BF3 MP the FX8350 is way way better than any Quad core no matter what IPC they have.

Ask someone with Core i7 2600K/3770K to disable HT and tell you how BF3 MP sucks on 4 cores. Unless you have played the game with 8-Threads you cant understand the difference.

Also, BF4 will be heavy AMD Optimized.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Must be nice to have such a fantastic crystal ball.