Is AMD still undefeated in budget builds?

[frozentundra123456]

The 14nm i3 isn't available yet, and won't for quite a long time, so it doesn't really factor into today's purchasing decisions. And yes, AMD consumes more power, no denying that. I'm just trying to be optimistic about DirectX12/Mantle letting us squeeze a few more years out of those "Jurassic" parts. But when you see Mantle take minimum frame rates on a 4170 from ~25fps to ~40fps, it's hard not to be excited:

DirectX 12 hopefully means that we will see that kind of improvement across all games, not just a handful of AMD sponsored ones. Between a more multi-threading friendly graphics API and a push for multithreaded engines due to the consoles, the future looks pretty bright for these dinosaurs.

Possibly, but it will be at least 2 years before there are a significant number of DX12 games, and who knows how many mantle games there will be as well. So we should be in Skylake time frame before there are enough games out for DX12 to make a significant impact. Even then there will be a lot of legacy games not utilizing DX12 that will still require good single core performance. So I see the best hope is for those that already have AMD systems, they might become more competitive, but it is far too soon to say what will happen for a new build in that time frame.

Edit: those Tom's results are also very strange compared to the game.gpu results using a more powerful gpu. Even under mantle, game.gpu shows an i3 4330 faster than the FX 8350 and equal to a FX 9370, while the i5 is even further ahead. I suspect those Toms results are somehow limited by the relatively weak gpu.

 

[NTMBK]

Possibly, but it will be at least 2 years before there are a significant number of DX12 games, and who knows how many mantle games there will be as well. So we should be in Skylake time frame before there are enough games out for DX12 to make a significant impact. Even then there will be a lot of legacy games not utilizing DX12 that will still require good single core performance. So I see the best hope is for those that already have AMD systems, they might become more competitive, but it is far too soon to say what will happen for a new build in that time frame.

Edit: those Tom's results are also very strange compared to the game.gpu results using a more powerful gpu. Even under mantle, game.gpu shows an i3 4330 faster than the FX 8350 and equal to a FX 9370, while the i5 is even further ahead. I suspect those Toms results are somehow limited by the relatively weak gpu.

I personally try to keep my CPUs for more than 2 years, so if I was deciding between a Haswell i3 and a Piledriver FX then it would certainly affect my purchasing decisions. If you're someone who turns over CPUs more frequently, yes, it's not really relevant. But it's still an interesting data point to bear in mind.

 

[TeknoBug]

Possibly, but it will be at least 2 years before there are a significant number of DX12 games, and who knows how many mantle games there will be as well. So we should be in Skylake time frame before there are enough games out for DX12 to make a significant impact. Even then there will be a lot of legacy games not utilizing DX12 that will still require good single core performance. So I see the best hope is for those that already have AMD systems, they might become more competitive, but it is far too soon to say what will happen for a new build in that time frame.

Edit: those Tom's results are also very strange compared to the game.gpu results using a more powerful gpu. Even under mantle, game.gpu shows an i3 4330 faster than the FX 8350 and equal to a FX 9370, while the i5 is even further ahead. I suspect those Toms results are somehow limited by the relatively weak gpu.

I don't buy any of whatever coming from gamegpu.ru, same goes for Tek Syndicate- I've seen strange benchmarks from them that real world users hasn't been able to duplicate.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I don't buy any of whatever coming from gamegpu.ru, same goes for Tek Syndicate- I've seen strange benchmarks from them that real world users hasn't been able to duplicate.

I wasn't vouching for the validity of either, just pointing out that the results were very different between the two sites. I used to put a lot of faith in Tom's, but not so much anymore.

Too bad anand didn't do an in depth test of performance with different cpus and gpus under DX and mantle. Seems to be a real dearth of in-depth gaming performance tests from anand recently. I also thought there was going to be an in-depth mantle review, which I don't think has ever come out.

 

[mrmt]

The 14nm i3 isn't available yet, and won't for quite a long time, so it doesn't really factor into today's purchasing decisions. And yes, AMD consumes more power, no denying that. I'm just trying to be optimistic about DirectX12/Mantle letting us squeeze a few more years out of those "Jurassic" parts. But when you see Mantle take minimum frame rates on a 4170 from ~25fps to ~40fps, it's hard not to be excited:

Since you are talking about DX12, that means holidays 2015, and there we'll have the 2nd generation 14nm chips arriving, so the comparison is fair IMO. But if you are talking about future proofing, why settle with such low performance processors? i5 Haswell seems a far better choice for future proofing than any FX or i3, and it comes with a reasonable price tag.

 

[mrmt]

So I see the best hope is for those that already have AMD systems, they might become more competitive, but it is far too soon to say what will happen for a new build in that time frame.

AMD systems won't become more competitive. Intel is enlarging the OoO windows and adding more units to each core, those are things that will improve threaded workloads. Given that Intel has far more room to add units and make the core beefier than AMD, the performance gap should grow, not shrink, and that will make AMD chips even less competitive.

 

[NTMBK]

Since you are talking about DX12, that means holidays 2015, and there we'll have the 2nd generation 14nm chips arriving, so the comparison is fair IMO. But if you are talking about future proofing, why settle with such low performance processors? i5 Haswell seems a far better choice for future proofing than any FX or i3, and it comes with a reasonable price tag.

People on a tight budget are the ones who need to pay most attention to future proofing, because they're going to be stuck with a processor for the longest. Unless you plan to replace your CPU before DirectX 12 games arrive it's something you should consider when making a CPU purchasing decision. It's obviously not the only thing, because there are plenty of games that don't scale well with threads, but it's a factor.

 

[NTMBK]

AMD systems won't become more competitive. Intel is enlarging the OoO windows and adding more units to each core, those are things that will improve threaded workloads. Given that Intel has far more room to add units and make the core beefier than AMD, the performance gap should grow, not shrink, and that will make AMD chips even less competitive.

This thread is about someone deciding whether to buy a budget AMD processor or a budget Intel processor today, I'm not sure why you keep bringing up Skylake.

 

[mrmt]

This thread is about someone deciding whether to buy a budget AMD processor or a budget Intel processor today, I'm not sure why you keep bringing up Skylake.

If someone is buying >>today<<, there might be some games that will run better in current budget Intel processors than on FX, so I don't think it's a straigh decision to go FX, it depends on the game someone is going to play.

 

[erunion]

Has this thread just time traveled back 3 years?

The 2500k is faster than the 8150, but many claim the 8150 is more "future proof". Directx11.1 is bringing more multithreading.
Surely then the more cores strategy will pay off.

By 2014, 8150 will beat i5s, and dual cores like the i3s will be obsolete for gaming. Amiright?

 

[NTMBK]

If someone is buying >>today<<, there might be some games that will run better in current budget Intel processors than on FX, so I don't think it's a straigh decision to go FX, it depends on the game someone is going to play.

Yup, agreed. If someone is a fan of e.g. Starcraft 2 or Diablo 3, Intel is the pretty obvious choice.

 

[NTMBK]

Has this thread just time traveled back 3 years?

The 2500k is faster than the 8150, but many claim the 8150 is more "future proof". Directx11.1 is bringing more multithreading.
Surely then the more cores strategy will pay off.

By 2014, 8150 will beat i5s, and dual cores like the i3s be obsolete for gaming. Amiright?

The non-hyperthreaded dual cores (Pentium and Celeron) are obsolete, unless you play a handful of single threaded games. And with Mantle an 8350 has comparable performance to a 4770k (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/thief-mantle-benchmarks,3773.html), so I'm pretty confident an 8150 would match up against a 2500k. They weren't wrong in their predictions, but their timelines were just overly optimistic.

 

[erunion]

They weren't wrong in their predictions, but their timelines were just overly optimistic.

HSW i3s are more competitive than SNB i3s. Intels strategy has proven to be the more future looking.

Pentiums are no more obsolete than equivalently priced AMD quads.

 

[NTMBK]

HSW i3s are more competitive than SNB i3s. Intels strategy has proven to be the more future looking.

Pentiums are no more obsolete than equivalently priced AMD quads.

Yes, but at that time they were deciding between Bulldozer and SNB, and Haswell was >2 years away. Oddly enough a CPU from the future tends to be more future proof.

 

[escrow4]

By the end of 2015 Skylake will put the final nail in FX's coffin, never mind Haswell E. Its funny that Mantle turned into a crutch for FX's laughable single threaded performance. Penitums and Celerons have been obsolete for gaming for a long while now. Its not 2004 anymore.

 

[NTMBK]

By the end of 2015 Skylake will put the final nail in FX's coffin, never mind Haswell E. Its funny that Mantle turned into a crutch for FX's laughable single threaded performance. Penitums and Celerons have been obsolete for gaming for a long while now. Its not 2004 anymore.

Probably correct. AMD has shown no sign that it is replacing its Piledriver FX chips with new parts, so I sincerely doubt that they will remain competitive in another two years' time. The fact that they've lasted this long is a testament to how much Intel has stalled desktop performance improvements. But again, this is a discussion about what parts to buy today, not what parts to buy in 2 years' time.

 

[erunion]

Yes, but at that time they were deciding between Bulldozer and SNB, and Haswell was >2 years away. Oddly enough a CPU from the future tends to be more future proof.

I should have been more specific. I meant hsw is more competitive against vishera than snb was against bulldozer.

Meaning the trend has actually been in favor of the i3, not more cores.

 

[Bman123]

By the end of 2015 Skylake will put the final nail in FX's coffin, never mind Haswell E. Its funny that Mantle turned into a crutch for FX's laughable single threaded performance. Penitums and Celerons have been obsolete for gaming for a long while now. Its not 2004 anymore.

Doesn't mantle work with either CPU brand?

 

[NTMBK]

I should have been more specific. I meant hsw is more competitive against vishera than snb was against bulldozer.

Meaning the trend has actually been in favor of the i3, not more cores.

True, but that has more to do with AMD abandoning their (relatively speaking) high end offerings. Intel have certainly done a nice job improving multithreaded performance on the i3 though.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

I just built a budget amd pc based on the comments from this thread about what a value the fx6300 is. I picked up one at microcenter with an asrock extreme 3 board for $150 with a $10 rebate which puts me at $140 out of pocket. The i3 4130 was $130 just for the cpu and all the intel boards were significantly more money so I would have been out another 50-$60 compared to a similar performance fx6300. To me it was a no brainer and I built my first AMD rig ever. I actually think amd has a much easier and more clever mounting system for the cpu heatsink. System runs pretty good. I would say there is a difference compared to the 2600k rig I own as well just in overall speed doing general tasks. Maybe that is due to being on a new install and the os updating and what not. I'm a happy camper though and I think I'll continue to build amd as long as I'm getting the most bang for my buck. I'll let the guys with more money to blow build the $2000 rigs and then fight it out on the forums about how fast they are. I pretty much built a complete system for under $450. I had the power supply and a spare mechanical drive but thats it.

 

[MongGrel]

Still wondering about what IBM might wipe out of it's sleeve in awhile, but speculation.

 

[2is]

Doesn't mantle work with either CPU brand?

Yes, but Mantle is designed to reduce CPU overhead, so it benefits weaker CPU's more.

 

[NTMBK]

Still wondering about what IBM might wipe out of it's sleeve in awhile, but speculation.

IBM are looking to sell off their fabs, so... probably not a lot.

 

[Creig]

I wanted to build a performance budget system for my daughter. So I put together a list of what components would work and kept an eye out for good price/performance deals. A friend's sister pick me up an 8320 from Microcenter back when they were on sale for $100. I sourced a nice Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5 motherboard on sale for $110 AR. For cooling and overclocking I found a Corsair H50 AIO water cooler for $30 AR.

The trick to getting a really good AMD budget build is to not be in a hurry. Intel CPUs and motherboards just don't see the good sale prices that AMD components seem to offer. I'm fairly certain that there aren't any Intel CPU/mobo/cooler combos out there that will touch the potential performance of my daughter's system for $240.

If you try to put together an AMD build in a single day, you most likely won't be able to get a really good price/performance ratio unless you're lucky or live near a Microcenter. Keeping your eyes open and picking up deeply discounted parts is the best way to get the most out of an AMD budget build.

 

[2is]

I'm still trying to understand why people buy an H50? It cools worse than a Hyper 212 Evo and makes more noise doing it.

Microcenter (same place you got your cpu from) regularly has Intel CPU/mobo deals actually. When all is said and done, microcenter deal vs microcenter deal you're probably looking at about $30 more for an i5.

The only time AMD can't be "touched" is when the end user introduces self imposed limitations such as "I can't have anything less power full than an 8320" (ruling out i3's) and "I absolutely positively cannot spend an additional $30" (ruling out a superior i5)