Give me a reason to go AMD... I WANT TO BELIEVE.

[Madpacket]

The thing is, Intel is faster and a better value per $ over AMD if you care about performance per watt. The issue I have is Intel is f*cking so dominant right now I worry they will bury what's left of AMD and we will go back to paying $530 for a processor (I did this for my MMX 233 processsor).

So if a small performance and power increase does not scare you, please go with AMD and hope their management eventually figures out WTF they need to do in order to compete with Intel or else we will all be at an eventual detriment.

(Full disclosure, I own several AMD APU systems as well as a 3570K Intel gaming system).


All that said in all honesty the best value right now is the AMD 6300 CPU, pair this up with some crazy fast SSD and you will be extremely happy in the performance you get.

 

[Boze]

I'm already using a 256 GB OCZ Vertex 4 drive I got from that crazy Amazon.com Gold Box deal awhile back... when they were I think $180 each.

I've been using SSDs since 2009, I'll never build a system without one.

I just didn't want to spend more than $750 for "The Big 3" - Motherboard / processor / RAM. I also don't care about gaming... I probably should have mentioned that. The most demanding game I play is League of Legends, and I probably play 2 to 3 games of that a week.

I have considered that it might be wise to get an NZXT Kraken X60 and overclock the FX-8350. I'm sure I could push it to 4.6 to 4.8 GHz.

 

[shady28]

8350 does well against 3570k in highly multithreaded workloads, but loses in most cases against 3770k, and the wins are on by a small margin anand bench.

Edit: didnt watch the you tube video, but of the benchmarks you listed from tech sites, I only saw two or 3 wins for the fx and it wasnt close to 40% faster.

The 40% was just a general statement. I did point out that the 3770k was (mostly) a superior chip, but with the caveat that in some areas the 8350 beats it as well.

For example, C-Ray at Openbenchmarking.org.

http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1210227-RA-AMDFX835085

In C-Ray, the FX-8350 completes the test in 23.34s The i7-3770 takes 33.05s i.e., the 3770k is 30% slower.

It also beats it on the Linux compile by about 3-4%.

My point was not to say that the 8350 is faster than the 3770 though; the 3770 is superior in 95% of the cases.

On the i5 front though, that'st just not true. What bothers me is when I see people saying that an i5-2500 or i5-2400 is better\faster. That's just plain false in the majority of scenarios, but it's a belief fostered by the consumer oriented / marketing driven tech sites that focus on running game benchmarks at 1024x768 with a GTX 690 (and yes I understand their explanation of why they do that, and it's flawed - it winds up presenting a synthetic / unrealistic scenario as if it were meaningful).

Look at that same chart linked to above. Right off the bat, the 8350 smashes the i5-2400s - 100% faster in SMP NAS testing. 60% faster than the i5-2500k. 35% faster than the i5-3470 (noted : 15% slower than the 3770k).

Then we get to John the ripper (DVD ripping) - it beats the i7-3770k by almost 20%, more than twice as fast as the i5-2500k and nearly twice the speed of the i5-3470.

Look at the Linux compile time. 8350 = 82s. I5-2500k =116.14s. i5-3470 = 114.25. The 8350 is almost 40% faster than the i5-3470 here.

You can also go the other way, AMD loses in tests which involve FPU quite badly. But the performance is not 'less' overall - it's just different. People don't like different, so they tend to say it's imbalanced, when they should say - superior in some ways, inferior in others.

What it really comes down to is this : If you have a high load, heavily threaded application that does not do a lot of FPU operations (note: SSE is not FPU, which is why AMD does well on high load heavily threaded encoding / ray tracing), AMD wins vs the i5's. If you multitask a lot with applications that fit that description - AMD wins.

In my particular case, I run multiple VMs with Win 7 & Delphi / VS 2010, W2k8 + SQL Server 2008, and Linux/gcc, on top of my host OS. In that scenario, my iMac with an i5-2500S running VMWare Fusion doesn't hold a candle to my FX-8320 running VMware Workstation. And that's using the same exact VM files. Have Time Machine kick off on a USB drive in the background on the iMac and watch the cursor jump around (firewire and TB don't have that effect btw, no cpu interference there). On the AMD - not so, backups don't interfere.

Anyway, I'm done. YMMV

 

[Rezist]

I'd say the 6300 is decent deal. But once your in 8320/8350 prices just get the 3570k.

 

[guskline]

I have a 3770k @4.4Ghz and a 8350 @4.6Ghz. I like them both.

 

[Boze]

<---- the only AMD's ive been look at is the hudson ones with fusion APU.

Great little boxes which hide behind HDTV's and can stream netflix / movies.
Some setups even come with a media center remote.

I think i built around 5 of them this year for friends and family.

however as a main machine... id want something which is a bit snappier.. and has more performance when needed....
Having a gazillion cores is overraited unless u need them.
The AMD core can not step up to the intel cores.... in honesty ur better off getting an Ivy now even over an AMD.

Also is 16GB enough of a swap file for you?
if you required that much IO speed, id honestly RAID 2 SSD's (60gigs x 2 in R0?) and use that as a temp drive / cache space.
It wont be as fast as a ramdrive but to your eyes, it should be close if u pick good SSD's..
And u wont need to worry about it every time the power goes off.

Even if I purchased another 256 GB OCZ Vertex 4, I'd be maxing out at around 1.0 to 1.1 GB/s in reads and a little less in writes.

That doesn't match the 6.0 GB/s of a RAM disk. 16 GB is a pretty large swap file, even working with 24 MP images and video.

This is another reason I've considered waiting for Ivy Bridge-E though. I could easily pick up a motherboard that supports 64 GB of RAM and split 20/44 for system/RAM disk. I can't imagine really needing more than 20 GB of RAM for Windows / Lightroom / VS2012. By any estimation, the hardware I'm using now is pretty sad. A Rana 425 X3, unlocked, thus making it a Phenom II X4 B25, with 4 GB of DDR2 800 MHz RAM, and a GTS 250. When I upgrade, I want to make sure it'll be another system that'll last for 4 years or so.

The longer I wait, the more money I'll have to spend. I haven't heard anything about Steamroller. I would like to believe AMD is going to pick up the ball and really have Intel quaking in their boots, but it just doesn't seem to be the case.

I've got an old APC SmartUPS that I've had for over a decade now, so the threat of power loss doesn't concern me. Nor am I overly concerned about power consumption. Myself and an electrical engineer pal installed a large solar array on my roof last year that provides the house with power, and occasionally feeds to the grid. I sincerely doubt going Intel will provide any kind of noticeable difference over the course of the year.

Thanks for all the replies though. I've seen a lot of good feedback from both the AMD and the Intel camp.

 

[tweakboy]

Gosh the FX 8350 will not bottleneck any current videocard. Also its great for Premiere and Photoshop and DAW... gl on your decision. gl

 

[Idontcare]

That doesn't match the 6.0 GB/s of a RAM disk. 16 GB is a pretty large swap file, even working with 24 MP images and video.

Superspeed is a good ramdisk, I've used it myself for years. And 16GB will be nice.

You will see better bandwidth on your ramdisk with the Intel platform than you will with the AMD platform, even when using the ram at the exact same timings. I don't know why that is true, but it is. Same with your SSD, same SSD on an AMD platform will turn in lower performance than if you plugged it into an Intel platform. (I learned all this firsthand as I own both an FX-8350 and i7-3770k)

You won't be disappointed in the performance of either platform, I can guarantee you that. All that there is to be worried about is buyer's remorse should you later on determine that you don't care for the power consumption or OC-headroom which is the only reason I asked in my earlier post.

As for getting a 3rd part heatsink for the 8350 or 8320 - IMO that would be a waste of money when it comes down to price/performance. Spend an extra $60 to maybe get another 200MHz or 300MHz out of the 8350? Doesn't add up.

If you are buying third-party cooling to get better noise levels then that is different, but it also isn't a price/performance decision anymore either

 

[Boze]

Superspeed is a good ramdisk, I've used it myself for years. And 16GB will be nice.

You will see better bandwidth on your ramdisk with the Intel platform than you will with the AMD platform, even when using the ram at the exact same timings. I don't know why that is true, but it is. Same with your SSD, same SSD on an AMD platform will turn in lower performance than if you plugged it into an Intel platform. (I learned all this firsthand as I own both an FX-8350 and i7-3770k)

You won't be disappointed in the performance of either platform, I can guarantee you that. All that there is to be worried about is buyer's remorse should you later on determine that you don't care for the power consumption or OC-headroom which is the only reason I asked in my earlier post.

As for getting a 3rd part heatsink for the 8350 or 8320 - IMO that would be a waste of money when it comes down to price/performance. Spend an extra $60 to maybe get another 200MHz or 300MHz out of the 8350? Doesn't add up.

If you are buying third-party cooling to get better noise levels then that is different, but it also isn't a price/performance decision anymore either

More good feedback. Thanks Idontcare.

I've recently upgraded cameras to a Canon 5D Mark III for still photography and filming video podcasts. Let's just say that moving from 10.1 MP stills and 720p video to 22.3 / 1080p/30fps... its really stressing this machine now.

I've got to build a new system, but I can hold out for awhile if Steamroller / Ivy Bridge-E are going to be worth it... and I hope they are.

I've also considered the feasibility of just dropping $550 or so for the aforementioned components, then taking an old hard drive, wiping it clean, installing a spare copy of Windows 7, giving it to my baby sister, and then building a new badass machine to really tear through image processing, video editing, and program compilation.

 

[Idontcare]

I've got to build a new system, but I can hold out for awhile if Steamroller / Ivy Bridge-E are going to be worth it... and I hope they are.

I don't know if anyone has reliable info on when Steamroller is going to show up, but for sure it will be a good thing. Piledriver will get cheaper and be replaced by more 28nm power-sipping processors on the AMD side.

On the Intel side I would not say that waiting for IB-E is worth it for your price bracket. You are shopping in the $200 CPU range, not the $500 CPU range.

If anything you should be thinking of Haswell as your "next Intel CPU that is relevant to me".

You either shop "Piledriver vs. IB" now, or "steamroller vs. Haswell" later IMO.

If it were me I would not wait. Just get an 8350 on sale for $180 or cheaper, comes with an awesome stock HSF that will let you push your 8350 to 4.5GHz.

Only reservation I have for you is the ram, it is a crying shame that you have to spend so much now considering how good prices were back in Dec (and they'll probably be good like that again in another 5 months time too).

 

[Boze]

I don't know if anyone has reliable info on when Steamroller is going to show up, but for sure it will be a good thing. Piledriver will get cheaper and be replaced by more 28nm power-sipping processors on the AMD side.

On the Intel side I would not say that waiting for IB-E is worth it for your price bracket. You are shopping in the $200 CPU range, not the $500 CPU range.

If anything you should be thinking of Haswell as your "next Intel CPU that is relevant to me".

You either shop "Piledriver vs. IB" now, or "steamroller vs. Haswell" later IMO.

If it were me I would not wait. Just get an 8350 on sale for $180 or cheaper, comes with an awesome stock HSF that will let you push your 8350 to 4.5GHz.

Only reservation I have for you is the ram, it is a crying shame that you have to spend so much now considering how good prices were back in Dec (and they'll probably be good like that again in another 5 months time too).

Well there's Sandy Bridge-E parts at the $300, $550, and $1000 price points, so to me it would stand to reason that the entry level Ivy Bridge-E will be around $300 to $350.

If its far and away better for multitasking, and I suspect it might be, since I believe even the lowest level IVB-E's are supposed to be hexa-core, then I don't mind spending another $100 to $150.

 

[Idontcare]

Well there's Sandy Bridge-E parts at the $300, $550, and $1000 price points, so to me it would stand to reason that the entry level Ivy Bridge-E will be around $300 to $350.

If its far and away better for multitasking, and I suspect it might be, since I believe even the lowest level IVB-E's are supposed to be hexa-core, then I don't mind spending another $100 to $150.

True but I don't consider the $300 SKU a viable candidate because it is just a quad-core w/HT (you can already get that with a 2700k or 3770k) but it isn't an K-model, no OC'ing beyond the usual turbo-bin OC'ing.

 

[grimpr]

The 40% was just a general statement. I did point out that the 3770k was (mostly) a superior chip, but with the caveat that in some areas the 8350 beats it as well.

For example, C-Ray at Openbenchmarking.org.

http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1210227-RA-AMDFX835085

In C-Ray, the FX-8350 completes the test in 23.34s The i7-3770 takes 33.05s i.e., the 3770k is 30% slower.

It also beats it on the Linux compile by about 3-4%.

My point was not to say that the 8350 is faster than the 3770 though; the 3770 is superior in 95% of the cases.

On the i5 front though, that'st just not true. What bothers me is when I see people saying that an i5-2500 or i5-2400 is better\faster. That's just plain false in the majority of scenarios, but it's a belief fostered by the consumer oriented / marketing driven tech sites that focus on running game benchmarks at 1024x768 with a GTX 690 (and yes I understand their explanation of why they do that, and it's flawed - it winds up presenting a synthetic / unrealistic scenario as if it were meaningful).

Look at that same chart linked to above. Right off the bat, the 8350 smashes the i5-2400s - 100% faster in SMP NAS testing. 60% faster than the i5-2500k. 35% faster than the i5-3470 (noted : 15% slower than the 3770k).

Then we get to John the ripper (DVD ripping) - it beats the i7-3770k by almost 20%, more than twice as fast as the i5-2500k and nearly twice the speed of the i5-3470.

Look at the Linux compile time. 8350 = 82s. I5-2500k =116.14s. i5-3470 = 114.25. The 8350 is almost 40% faster than the i5-3470 here.

You can also go the other way, AMD loses in tests which involve FPU quite badly. But the performance is not 'less' overall - it's just different. People don't like different, so they tend to say it's imbalanced, when they should say - superior in some ways, inferior in others.

What it really comes down to is this : If you have a high load, heavily threaded application that does not do a lot of FPU operations (note: SSE is not FPU, which is why AMD does well on high load heavily threaded encoding / ray tracing), AMD wins vs the i5's. If you multitask a lot with applications that fit that description - AMD wins.

In my particular case, I run multiple VMs with Win 7 & Delphi / VS 2010, W2k8 + SQL Server 2008, and Linux/gcc, on top of my host OS. In that scenario, my iMac with an i5-2500S running VMWare Fusion doesn't hold a candle to my FX-8320 running VMware Workstation. And that's using the same exact VM files. Have Time Machine kick off on a USB drive in the background on the iMac and watch the cursor jump around (firewire and TB don't have that effect btw, no cpu interference there). On the AMD - not so, backups don't interfere.

Anyway, I'm done. YMMV

Good and valid points, http://openbenchmarking.org/ is a great & reliable source for Linux benchmarking, you should take into account although that latest 64bit linux distros make good use of AMDs FX architecture due to the latest GCC compilers and overall the linux kernel, scheduler and memory management is superior to Windows. In windows software landscape things are more gimped and backwards compared to speedy & optimized linux, with the FX 8350 appearing on par with Core i5s wich is plain wrong, its a better chip for heavier workloads and multitasking.

 

[Sleepingforest]

Well, it also happens that Windows is the environment most will be working in. Yes, AMD is occasionally better in Linux, but I don't think you can claim a chip's superiority based on less than 5% of users.

I mean, if the guy wants to edit photos or video, that means Windows or Mac right now. I don't like it any more than the next guy, but it's the truth.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Well, it also happens that Windows is the environment most will be working in. Yes, AMD is occasionally better in Linux, but I don't think you can claim a chip's superiority based on less than 5% of users.

I mean, if the guy wants to edit photos or video, that means Windows or Mac right now. I don't like it any more than the next guy, but it's the truth.

Agreed. I don't run Linux and don't plan to. Neither will the vast majority of users.

 

[grimpr]

Agreed. I don't run Linux and don't plan to. Neither will the vast majority of users.

Never say never. Just look at Windows 8, its future, steam on Ubuntu and think about it.It already is a kick ass OS.

 

[R0H1T]

Well, it also happens that Windows is the environment most will be working in. Yes, AMD is occasionally better in Linux, but I don't think you can claim a chip's superiority based on less than 5% of users.

I mean, if the guy wants to edit photos or video, that means Windows or Mac right now. I don't like it any more than the next guy, but it's the truth.

This is just wrong on so many levels, as you said that linux represents what 5% of the user base & then you go on to say that he'll not get much of a performance bump on windows, assuming its pitted against an i5, is simply not true ! Windows 8 will definitely feel that much more snappier & indeed faster overall than win7 so depending on the version of windows you choose one will definitely see a jump in performance quite similar to what a shift to linux will give you !

 

[Jovec]

Same with your SSD, same SSD on an AMD platform will turn in lower performance than if you plugged it into an Intel platform. (I learned all this firsthand as I own both an FX-8350 and i7-3770k)

Some basic CrystalDiskMark tests I ran:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Au2uPLdCH8dTdDhobFdZTUZCNWJoUk52bGtBM3NmX2c&singl

It's not every possible combination of what I had available, but you can see the same SSDs and HDDs on AMD and Intel, same SSD with MS and AMD/Intel AHCI drivers, SRT cache, USB2 vs USB3, USB3 Flash driver versus 2.5 HDD on USB2/3.

I can't say if the difference will be noticeable in real-world usage but it is there.

 

[grimpr]

This is just wrong on so many levels, as you said that linux represents what 5% of the user base & then you go on to say that he'll not get much of a performance bump on windows, assuming its pitted against an i5, is simple not true ! Windows 8 will definitely feel that much more snappier & indeed faster overall than win7 so depending on the version of windows you choose one will definitely see a jump in performance quite similar to what a shift to linux will give you !

Windows 8 has the best cpu scheduler for FX, it packs threads to close modules/cores not like HT which parks half the modules, it uses Turbo Core more effectively, the cpu runs smoother and colder due to more aggresive and efficient scheduling and power optimizations from the OS.

 

[grimpr]

Some basic CrystalDiskMark tests I ran:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Au2uPLdCH8dTdDhobFdZTUZCNWJoUk52bGtBM3NmX2c&singl

It's not every possible combination of what I had available, but you can see the same SSDs and HDDs on AMD and Intel, same SSD with MS and AMD/Intel AHCI drivers, SRT cache, USB2 vs USB3, USB3 Flash driver versus 2.5 HDD on USB2/3.

I can't say if the difference will be noticeable in real-world usage but it is there.

No noticeable difference at all, the AMD platform is rock stable and fast.

 

[R0H1T]

Windows 8 has the best cpu scheduler for FX, it packs threads to close modules/cores not like HT which parks half the modules, it uses Turbo Core more effectively, the cpu runs smoother and colder due to more aggresive and efficient scheduling and power optimizations from the OS.

Yup that's what I was saying, if you're using the linux vs Windows argument here then why not take the latest & greatest from MS as the platform of choice for benchmark ? Depending on the version of Windows one chooses, you'll get enormous differences(same hardware) in various optimizations at OS level from XP to win8 just like going from Windows to linux !

 

[Gikaseixas]

Windows 8 has the best cpu scheduler for FX, it packs threads to close modules/cores not like HT which parks half the modules, it uses Turbo Core more effectively, the cpu runs smoother and colder due to more aggresive and efficient scheduling and power optimizations from the OS.

Therefore the amazing performance i'm getting out of this FX, i could see a difference vs W7 but i thought it was due to the new install.

 

[grimpr]

Therefore the amazing performance i'm getting out of this FX, i could see a difference vs W7 but i thought it was due to the new install.

It runs best on Win 8 no doubt about it, in Windows 7 & Linux it behaves like a hyperthreaded cpu, half cores of 4 modules parked about 90% of time, typical workloads spread on 4 cores, in Windows 8 the typical workloads tends to regulate to 1-2 modules which makes Turbo Core kick in more often, the CPU is more cooler too since the CPU power gates the remaining modules and gets used as dark silicon too,venting heat, this is the best operation mode for FX.

 

[frozentundra123456]

It runs best on Win 8 no doubt about it, in Windows 7 & Linux it behaves like a hyperthreaded cpu, half cores of 4 modules parked about 90% of time, typical workloads spread on 4 cores, in Windows 8 the typical workloads tends to regulate to 1-2 modules which makes Turbo Core kick in more often, the CPU is more cooler too since the CPU power gates the remaining modules and gets used as dark silicon too,venting heat, this is the best operation mode for FX.

Have any benchmarks from a reliable review site that show improved performance under win 8?

 

[HeXen]