Does the AMD FX line make sense

[Chiropteran]

In 5 or 6 years from now will you still be using the CPU you buy today? Is it worth it to take the trade off in performance for the next X number of years for something that MAY happen in the future?

Nope.

I think your assumption is false. The Q6600 Core 2 Quad CPU is still reasonable for running light gaming. It's 6 years old. CPU were still advancing rather fast back then, and yet it's still viable today. CPU advancement today is getting even slower. A high-end CPU today will probably still be usable for gaming in 10 years, if I had to guess. You probably won't be able to tune up all the settings to the max, but it'll be usable.

And no, you don't buy a CPU today based on it's future performance alone. But if the CPU is cheaper today and may also be a good performer down the road, that is the perfect reason to buy.

Also note that there really is *no* trade off in performance today, can you name any games that really don't perform on an AMD system? Even a cheap FX-4100 can run the most demanding games, the GPU is really a far more important bottleneck than the CPU in today's world.

 

[Jovec]

All I was looking for was an estimate of whether or not pc gaming will be increasingly multicore or if 4 cores/8 threads would continue to be the way to go. I wasn't looking for an AMD vs. Intel argument....

It is entertaining though.

All games are multi-threaded. Performance is not necessarily tied to the number of cores. AAA titles (and others with AAA licensed engines) will trend more and more towards multi-core rendering. I equate multi-core rendering to true 3D game engines. In the beginning, they were hard to do and only a few were doing 3D while everyone else was doing 2/2.5D, but now any decent game programmer should be able to produce some sort of workable 3D engine. Same thing with multi-core rendering. The original Quake3 attempt at multi-core rendering result in a performance loss.

The impact of next-gen consoles and their various ports won't be much different than the current-gen. There will be good ports and lazy ones. All cores are not created equal (IPC/clock) and console CPU performance is still going to be considerably out-classed by PCs. A 2500k or better will likely still provide better raw performance than these 8-core console Jaguars. If not at stock then almost certainly with a decent overclock.

 

[Phynaz]

Talking about misinformation :whiste:

You just can't stop yourself, can you?

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/675?vs=551

 

[Rvenger]

They can blame cherry picked games all they want. Truth is only a handful of titles are bottlenecked by the FX processor due to the single threaded performance and programming. That handful was all of the games Shintai showed. This argument has been beat to death and really doesn't stick with people who used and understand the Piledriver architecture.

 

[inf64]

I noticed that trolling against AMD on this board has become more intensive in the last few months. Maybe it's because new products are to launch? And someone is jelly because they got all the console deals+GPU evolved is getting great traction in big developer circles? Whatever the reason is ,quality of discussion has dropped on AT forum, that is the sad truth.

Oh and FX is bottleneck in most games at 1080p with 6870/570Ti,even 14 year olds know that

 

[crashtech]

I'm new here, so I didn't realize how bitter this topic is nor how entrenched some people's positions. At heart I am an empiricist, and though I certainly have my affinities for certain products, in the end it is evidence which sways my opinion, not emotional attachments. I hope AMD is able to again release a truly winning desktop CPU, everyone would benefit by this, even and perhaps especially Intel.

I'm typing this on an Athlon II X4.

 

[Yuriman]

Also note that there really is *no* trade off in performance today, can you name any games that really don't perform on an AMD system? Even a cheap FX-4100 can run the most demanding games, the GPU is really a far more important bottleneck than the CPU in today's world.

The only one I can think of its Guild Wars 2. There are places where it really runs like crap on a 4100. It was a large contributor to my upgrading from a Q6600 - there were a lot of areas that improved from 30 up to 70fps with the same ancient HD4870 from that CPU upgrade.

This is just one game though.

 

[AtenRa]

You just can't stop yourself, can you?

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/675?vs=551

We are talking about FX and you quote APU A10-5800K vs 3770K ??

are you that desperate ???

 

[Ancalagon44]

We are talking about FX and you quote APU A10-5800K vs 3770K ??

are you that desperate ???

Okay, here we go.

What I find amazing is what the AMD Defense Crew will do in order to avoid admitting that Bulldozer, and to a lesser extent Piledriver, are bad processors. Bad. Yes, bad.

Why is it so hard to admit, that compared to Phenom II, they both have lower IPC and consume far more power, and this is on a lower process node! Piledriver is not too bad, but it has trouble matching the IPC of an Intel processor from 2 years ago.

Yes, IPC matters, single threaded performance matters. Very, very few applications are multithreaded enough to really benefit, and thats why AMD's Vishera review basically says, if your specific application would benefit, go for it, if not, Intel.

I noticed that trolling against AMD on this board has become more intensive in the last few months. Maybe it's because new products are to launch? And someone is jelly because they got all the console deals+GPU evolved is getting great traction in big developer circles? Whatever the reason is ,quality of discussion has dropped on AT forum, that is the sad truth.

Oh and FX is bottleneck in most games at 1080p with 6870/570Ti,even 14 year olds know that

Has it ever occurred to you that maybe it isnt trolling, that AMD just p**ed us off something terrible? Find my old thread about how Bulldozer changed your perception of AMD.

You know why I dont like AMD anymore? Back in the Athlon XP and Athlon 64 days, they were the underdogs. They sold you a better processor than the equivalent Intel, for less money. They were my heroes. It was like David vs Goliath, yet somehow AMD processors hit much harder. And did so using less power.

Fast forward a few years, and the situation is completely reversed. Intel is run extremely well. Their products are very competitive, power efficient, and mostly well priced. AMD is an embarrassment, every product is years delayed, massively power hungry, and cant beat its competition from 3 years ago. And what makes me angry is that I know it isnt AMD's engineers, its AMD's management and executive. Thats why I am angry - because politics and middle management have ruined AMD.

Yes, their graphics cards, Bobcat, and Jaguar are very good products. Thank goodness for that.

I am typing this on an Phenom II X6 with a 5770. Before that, I had an Athlon II X4, and before that, an Athlon X2 5600+, and before that, an Athlon XP 2400+ with a Radeon 9200, and before that, an Athlon K7-700. The last Intel CPU I owned as a P200MMX. So please understand where I am coming from.

 

[Centauri]

You know why I dont like AMD anymore? Back in the Athlon XP and Athlon 64 days, they were the underdogs. They sold you a better processor than the equivalent Intel, for less money. They were my heroes. It was like David vs Goliath, yet somehow AMD processors hit much harder. And did so using less power.

Fast forward a few years, and the situation is completely reversed. Intel is run extremely well. Their products are very competitive, power efficient, and mostly well priced. AMD is an embarrassment, every product is years delayed, massively power hungry, and cant beat its competition from 3 years ago. And what makes me angry is that I know it isnt AMD's engineers, its AMD's management and executive. Thats why I am angry - because politics and middle management have ruined AMD.

If you think David is supposed to always have the upper hand over the Goliath, and his having the upper hand is a perquisite for your being in his corner, then I think your understanding of the David and Goliath parable is sorely lacking.

If David were always the leaner and meaner of the two, then everybody would always pick David. David would cease being David. David, by his nature, would become the Goliath.

Picking a David is about cheering when he hands a good punch against a Goliath, and looking forward to his next one in the long interim.

In reality, you were a bandwagon AMD supporter. You supported the company and bought the product at a time when it was incredibly easy to do both. But when times got tough again, you jumped off of the wagon. So don't make the mistake of believing that you have or currently do support anybody; you ride bandwagons. Nothing wrong with it. But you need to admit it and try and not twist it into something it's not.

 

[Ancalagon44]

If you think David is supposed to always have the upper hand over the Goliath, and his having the upper hand is a perquisite for your being in his corner, then I think your understanding of the David and Goliath parable is sorely lacking.

If David were always the leaner and meaner of the two, then everybody would always pick David. David would cease being David. David, by his nature, would become the Goliath.

Picking a David is about cheering when he hands a good punch against a Goliath, and looking forward to his next one in the interim.

In reality, you were a bandwagon AMD supporter. You supported the company and bought the product at a time when it was incredibly easy to do both. But when times got tough again, you jumped off of the wagon. So don't make the mistake in believing that you have or currently do support anybody; you ride bandwagons. Nothing wrong with it. But you need to admit it and try and not twist it into something it's not.

If David turned out to be an alcoholic who abused his wife, would you support him? No, you wouldnt.

That's what happened here. AMD revealed that they are not a good company, they cannot run projects. They make bad decisions all the time. I wont support a company "just because".

I supported AMD back in those days because they were a really GOOD company, that had the market against them. Back when it was not their own fault that they were not doing better. Now, with that whole Intel marketing thing settled, the only reason AMD is not doing better is because of AMD. It is AMD's fault, and AMD's fault alone, that they are where they are. That's why I dont support them anymore. Would you support David if he got drunk before the fight? No, you wouldnt. Neither can I.

 

[Centauri]

Yeah, you're I right suppose. Only being able to afford 1/8 of the R&D budget which Intel affords itself has no bearing on AMD's competitive stance. And tough market conditions, which limit the success of their most well engineered products when they are on the market, have no bearing whatsoever on the company's ability to remain solvent and competitive through the ebbs and flows.

Drunk, drunk, drunk.

 

[beginner99]

I'm new here, so I didn't realize how bitter this topic is nor how entrenched some people's positions. At heart I am an empiricist, and though I certainly have my affinities for certain products, in the end it is evidence which sways my opinion, not emotional attachments. I hope AMD is able to again release a truly winning desktop CPU, everyone would benefit by this, even and perhaps especially Intel.

I'm typing this on an Athlon II X4.

Exactly. Some people here would kill them selves if AMD told them so...

Besides that I see Atenras point to a certain extent. Gaming at 1024x800 is an irrelevant benchmark and if a $100 CPU gets about the same score as a $200 one at 1080p due to GPU limit, why but the $200 one if you are on a tight budget?

The problem is however that the price advantage will become marginal once you factor in the power costs for AMD chips. Also you will most likely have to upgrade sooner, eg like the $100 will last you 2 years and $200 3 years. And so forth. AT then end the price difference is marginal and hence you should go for the better performing one (= Intel)

 

[Ancalagon44]

Yeah, you're I right suppose. Only being able to afford 1/8 of the R&D budget which Intel affords itself has no bearing on AMD's competitive stance. And tough market conditions, which limit the success of their most well engineered products when they are on the market, have no bearing whatsoever on the company's ability to remain solvent and competitive through the ebbs and flows.

Drunk, drunk, drunk.

Back in the Athlon 64 days, that didnt matter. They could execute brilliant.

These days, we have the Bulldozer fiasco. Herp a derp, lets read the book Intel wrote about the Pentium 4, and lets make all of the mistakes they made! But hey, lets not stop there, lets make them share frontends so that running two threads on one core penalizes both of them!

And just for fun, lets make it come out at least a year late, and lets make it get beaten in performance by its older sibling! Yay!

Lets feed our marketing guy (John Fruehe) complete lies, and then throw his career under the bus, because it suits us. Lets let John put his name on the line, and his reputation behind Bulldozer, knowing fullwell that it is a disaster. Thats a great idea.

And then they realize that wasnt so smart, so Steamroller REVERSES some of Bulldozers design decisions.

AMD could have all the money in the world, they still couldnt do it! It must be some freak accident that they still make decent graphics cards - although have you noticed, no new graphics cards for 2013? Hmmm.

 

[AtenRa]

lets make them share frontends so that running two threads on one core penalizes both of them!

That shows the luck of understanding of the Bulldozer(CMT) architecture. By your understanding Intel's HT penalizes the two threads even more.

 

[Ancalagon44]

That shows the luck of understanding of the Bulldozer(CMT) architecture. By your understanding Intel's HT penalizes the two threads even more.

Should have been running two threads on one module, but my point is still true.

Look at the benchmarks where people have disabled every second core on Bulldozer.

Look at Anandtech's article regarding Steamroller and the problems with the Bulldozer frontend with regard to instruction decoding rate.

 

[Durvelle27]

I noticed that trolling against AMD on this board has become more intensive in the last few months. Maybe it's because new products are to launch? And someone is jelly because they got all the console deals+GPU evolved is getting great traction in big developer circles? Whatever the reason is ,quality of discussion has dropped on AT forum, that is the sad truth.

Oh and FX is bottleneck in most games at 1080p with 6870/570Ti,even 14 year olds know that

You have to be kidding me right. I had my FX 4100 paired with a HD 6950 2GB 900/1400 and was able to max most games and nearly max others. never experienced below 40 FPS other than in Crysis 3.

 

[inf64]

You have to be kidding me right. I had my FX 4100 paired with a HD 6950 2GB 900/1400 and was able to max most games and nearly max others. never experienced below 40 FPS other than in Crysis 3.

I was joking obviously in the last sentence ,hence the smiley . These CPU bottleneck claims are getting out of the hand unfortunately.
TEK syndicate did the latest round of benchmarks on 8350 and 3770K,in Crysis 3 and FC3,on 7970 OC(single card and in CF).
3770K is slightly ahead,by a few fps across almost all resolutions (apart from one resolution(1080p) and one setting). Pretty much waste of money for brand loyalists . The guy in the video is very funny too .

 

[sm625]

I actually think AMD did the CMT part pretty well. The problem is they screwed up just about everything else. The piepline. The cache latency. Cache latency really is the absolute most important stat imo.

There is only one thing I think they screwed up with their CMT implementation: The two INT cores of a single module should have been able to dynamically combine themselves into a double-wide single front end when only processing a single thread. (Reverse hyperthreading) That would have been good for a 50-100% boost in single thread IPC. Had they done this for even just one single module it would have only costed an extra couple million transistors, but it would have made the chip feel so much faster (when the windows scheduler was updated to take advantage of this, of course.) Even if they did it for all 4 modules it still wouldnt add much more weight to the design.

Instead they just bolted on 16MB of slow @#$ cache and called it a day.

 

[Durvelle27]

I was joking obviously in the last sentence ,hence the smiley . These CPU bottleneck claims are getting out of the hand unfortunately.
TEK syndicate did the latest round of benchmarks on 8350 and 3770K,in Crysis 3 and FC3,on 7970 OC(single card and in CF).
3770K is slightly ahead,by a few fps across almost all resolutions (apart from one resolution(1080p) and one setting). Pretty much waste of money for brand loyalists . The guy in the video is very funny too .

:biggrin:

 

[KingFatty]

I'm really late to this party because I only just realized one of my AM3 motherboards (ASUS m4a89gtd pro usb3) can apparently use the AMD FX line of chips if I install a beta BIOS. All this time I was getting ready to go Intel and just get a new mobo+chip, but now I'm thinking just getting a new CPU if I can use the FX line and there is a good value.

Anyway, can someone help me understand a summary of the FX line? Apparently the biggest baddest chip is the FX-8350 which I could put in that motherboard.

However, I wonder if there is another chip that would be a better value, that I could overclock to get similar performance as the FX-8350? Using the phenom II line as a comparison, is the FX line Sort of like how you'd get the phenom II 1090T and overclock it, for better value compared to getting the biggest baddest 1100T back in the day?

Also, is there a similar value/overclocking scenario for the other FX chips, like the 6-core, and 4-cores? I already pre-ordered the Starcraft 2 expansion, so I would like to get somewhat acceptable performance in that game while still using AMD (I know, it's pretty dumb to expect AMD to perform in that game), but that game doesn't use all 8 cores, so maybe it would be better to get a 4- or 6- core chip and overclock it, but I have no idea about that?

Apologies if this is already discussed somewhere, but I read through this thread and didn't see it, though I'd also appreciate any links where I could learn more.

 

[Arkaign]

I personally think the PD revision fixed most of the problems fairly well. At MC pricing, I don't know why anyone would buy AMD over Intel, but 3770K vs. 8350 at typical web pricing, there are legit reasons for considering the FX. Same with FX 6300 vs. i3/i5.

I only wish the SATA/USB performance was better on the AMD chipsets, I find it somewhat lacking even on 990 Sabertooth.

But honestly, with basically any sub-$200 GPU, and almost any common home user tasks, you'd be hard pressed to find a typical user who would instantly tell you the difference in a blind test. It's just the super geek community and those with extremely fast GPUs that can tell the differences the easiest.

And for the geek/tuner community, most of us OC, and there's a gigantic difference between 3770K stock and 3770K typical air OC. The fairly close benches of a 3.4 i7 vs. a 4.0 PD suddenly look different when you have a 4.5+ i7 vs. a ~4.5 PD. Yes, both *can* go faster, but that generally takes de-lidding or a golden chip for Ivy, or Water + prayers for a PD.

 

[Arkaign]

I'm really late to this party because I only just realized one of my AM3 motherboards (ASUS m4a89gtd pro usb3) can apparently use the AMD FX line of chips if I install a beta BIOS. All this time I was getting ready to go Intel and just get a new mobo+chip, but now I'm thinking just getting a new CPU if I can use the FX line and there is a good value.

Anyway, can someone help me understand a summary of the FX line? Apparently the biggest baddest chip is the FX-8350 which I could put in that motherboard.

However, I wonder if there is another chip that would be a better value, that I could overclock to get similar performance as the FX-8350? Using the phenom II line as a comparison, is the FX line Sort of like how you'd get the phenom II 1090T and overclock it, for better value compared to getting the biggest baddest 1100T back in the day?

Also, is there a similar value/overclocking scenario for the other FX chips, like the 6-core, and 4-cores? I already pre-ordered the Starcraft 2 expansion, so I would like to get somewhat acceptable performance in that game while still using AMD (I know, it's pretty dumb to expect AMD to perform in that game), but that game doesn't use all 8 cores, so maybe it would be better to get a 4- or 6- core chip and overclock it, but I have no idea about that?

Apologies if this is already discussed somewhere, but I read through this thread and didn't see it, though I'd also appreciate any links where I could learn more.

What board is it? If it has at least 16X PCI-E 2.0 for GPU, and is 8xx or 9xx based, I'd say it's worth considering the FX 6300/8300 series if they are compatible. If it only runs BD, I would have to hesitate to recommend it. What level of GPU would you match with it?

Are you mainly going to play SC2? SC2 is ridiculously terribly coded, if that's your only game, then even an i3 is gold. Serious multiplayer competitive SC2 = Intel only. But for casual play and you want to play lots of other games .. PD should be decent, and saving the money by using an existing board is very attractive.

 

[inf64]

I personally think the PD revision fixed most of the problems fairly well. At MC pricing, I don't know why anyone would buy AMD over Intel, but 3770K vs. 8350 at typical web pricing, there are legit reasons for considering the FX. Same with FX 6300 vs. i3/i5.

I only wish the SATA/USB performance was better on the AMD chipsets, I find it somewhat lacking even on 990 Sabertooth.

But honestly, with basically any sub-$200 GPU, and almost any common home user tasks, you'd be hard pressed to find a typical user who would instantly tell you the difference in a blind test. It's just the super geek community and those with extremely fast GPUs that can tell the differences the easiest.

And for the geek/tuner community, most of us OC, and there's a gigantic difference between 3770K stock and 3770K typical air OC. The fairly close benches of a 3.4 i7 vs. a 4.0 PD suddenly look different when you have a 4.5+ i7 vs. a ~4.5 PD. Yes, both *can* go faster, but that generally takes de-lidding or a golden chip for Ivy, or Water + prayers for a PD.

3770K @ stock is 3.5Ghz and not 3.4Ghz,plus most of the time it sits around 3.6-3.7Ghz in many workloads even the MTed ones(ST or poorly threaded workloads- 3.8-3.9Ghz) . 8350 usually runs at 4.1Ghz in most desktop apps/games.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

That shows the luck of understanding of the Bulldozer(CMT) architecture. By your understanding Intel's HT penalizes the two threads even more.

If you want to compare AMD's 2INT/1FPU modules to Intel's, HT, there's one big distinction that has to be made -- how the chips are sold.

AMD sells a chip with four modules as an "eight core", even though you are really getting less capability than the traditional definition of a "core" would suggest.

Intel sells a chip with four cores plus HT as a "quad core", even though you are really getting more capability than a standard "quad core".

ETA: I don't like the term "CMT". It's really vague and can mean many different things.