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Is there a good CPU only upgrade path for an FX-8120 setup

Krakn3Dfx

Krakn3Dfx

Platinum Member
My son's PC currently runs a Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 board w/ an FX-8120. I'd like to upgrade it a bit for him, but I don't want to spend a ton of money on doing it. Would an FX8320E be a worthwhile bump, or should I just plan on throwing down the extra cash for a cheap i5 setup? He uses it quite a bit for gaming as well as homework, general usage, and he's currently running a GTX770 GPU, so he's in pretty good shape there.

Thanks for any advice.
 
The FX is not going to get any better. It ages much worse than i5. And the 8350E without overclocking is a big meh.

Spend less now, spend more later. Or just spend more now.
 
The 8350 is a jump over the 8120. The first gen bulldozers were pretty slow, slower than the Phenom II's they replaced. But really you would want to overclock the 8350 to get the most out of it.

If you find one for a decent price, and you have a good cooler, you could get a decent upgrade.
 
There s no need to overclock a 8350, it has 30% higher base frequency and 5% higher turbo, accounting for IPC improvements wich are 13.5% in games and 7.7% in applications the 8350 is roughly 40% better than the 8120.
 
You could do a small upgrade and a big overclock that would make full use of the good VRM design on that motherboard.

I have recently written about my experience with FX-8310, but apparently that part will no longer be available online. You could/should look at FX-8300, which appears to be a very similar part with good overclocking potential.

You would need to add a good cooler (I would recommend 212 EVO for simplicity sake) and do a simple overclock in BIOS:
AMD Turbo Core: Disabled
CPU/Core Ratio: x21 (which would be 4.2 Ghz)
CPU/Core Voltage: 1.375V (about ~170W TDP)
Click to expand...

That would be a ~15% single-thread performance boost and a ~35% multithread performance boost over a stock FX-8120. From there, you can either push the clock to 4.5Ghz, or drop the voltage towards 1.275V to find yourself a comfortable power/performance ratio.

The total cost would be ~$150, plus 2-4 hours to get the OC right. Personally, I would go for it - FX83xx is a very reliable overclocker, with worst case scenarios laid out in the turbo configuration. But putting that $350 toward a i5 instead? Heavy use over 2-3 years would make up the difference when you add power cost.

Good luck!
 
No need to overclock a 8350, it operates at 4.0ghz and will be a decent improvement from the 8120. Check a few benches to see the delta.

Also, sell the 8120 and it wont cost you much.
 
Krakn3Dfx said:
My son's PC currently runs a Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 board w/ an FX-8120. I'd like to upgrade it a bit for him, but I don't want to spend a ton of money on doing it. Would an FX8320E be a worthwhile bump, or should I just plan on throwing down the extra cash for a cheap i5 setup? He uses it quite a bit for gaming as well as homework, general usage, and he's currently running a GTX770 GPU, so he's in pretty good shape there.

Thanks for any advice.
Click to expand...

Speaking as someone who has an FX-8320 / 560 Ti in a storm CM case sitting next to my desk ---

You really only have one upgrade path and that is to an FX-8350. There isn't a *huge* difference between an 8120 and an 8350.

So the FX-8350 is $150 mail order from Microcenter.

If you want the biggest bang for your buck and the PC does not have an SSD, get an SSD.

It will totally transform that PC if it's currently hard disk only. The difference is astonishing if you haven't seen it before, it can make application launch times go from 20 or 30s to just 2 or 3s. It can also affect games - loading times, 'zoning' or transitioning between levels / areas etc, and any 'stutter' due to disk access will be greatly minimized.



http://www.microcenter.com/product/...nternal_SSD_Single_Unit_Version_MZ-75E250B-AM

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/5
 
Krakn3Dfx said:
My son's PC currently runs a Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 board w/ an FX-8120. I'd like to upgrade it a bit for him, but I don't want to spend a ton of money on doing it. Would an FX8320E be a worthwhile bump, or should I just plan on throwing down the extra cash for a cheap i5 setup? He uses it quite a bit for gaming as well as homework, general usage, and he's currently running a GTX770 GPU, so he's in pretty good shape there.

Thanks for any advice.
Click to expand...

Buy a good cooler like Noctua NH-U14S and OC the FX8120 to 4.4GHz. At that clock it will have the same performance of FX8350.
 
AtenRa said:
Buy a good cooler like Noctua NH-U14S and OC the FX8120 to 4.4GHz. At that clock it will have the same performance of FX8350.
Click to expand...

I wouldnt avise doing so, it would need to get to 4.75 to barely match a stock FX 8350 in games, and 4.55 in applications, besides thoses FX 81xx do not overclock as well as Vishera.
 
The best you could hope for from AMD is an upgrade that takes your passmark single thread score up from around 1200 (stock fx-8120) to 1600 (4.3GHz fx-8350). That would be a notable upgrade, since the single thread performance is clearly the bottleneck and bane of AMD processors. But keep in mind that a stock 4690K has a passmark single thread score of nearly 2300. And my el cheapo G3258 has a passmark single thread score of 2500.
 
Skylake and Broadwell are both coming but even then I'd chuck it and get an i5 or i7 if you don't want to wait.
 
For CPU only, 8350, cheap and easy. Given an SSD and enough RAM it's plenty fast for office stuff and multitasks very well, lot of games will use enough cores for it to do OK these days, depends on what he's playing. Midrange i5 is faster all around but it's a lot of reinstalling and rebuilding grief and money for not a lot of daily practical gain vs just slapping a $150 CPU in IMO.
 
sm625 said:
The best you could hope for from AMD is an upgrade that takes your passmark single thread score up from around 1200 (stock fx-8120) to 1600 (4.3GHz fx-8350). That would be a notable upgrade, since the single thread performance is clearly the bottleneck and bane of AMD processors. But keep in mind that a stock 4690K has a passmark single thread score of nearly 2300. And my el cheapo G3258 has a passmark single thread score of 2500.
Click to expand...

Well to be fair, that pentium must be overclocked, right?

Never thought I would say this, but I agree with Aten Ra on this one. First thing to do would be to try to overclock the 8120. If the OP can get it to 4ghz or higher, an upgrade is probably not worth it. I think Vishera is only about 15% or less faster per clock than BD, a fair part of the increased performance of the stock 8350 is from increased clockspeed.

If the 8120 will get to 4ghz, it will be within about 10% of a reasonable overclock of the 8350, so with the increased ipc, you would be looking at 20 to 25 percent improvement.

Both at stock, depending on turbo behavior and number of cores used, you could see a larger improvement. No matter what though the FX is going to trail badly in highly single threaded games.
 
NTMBK said:
I wouldn't bother with the "E" class chips- if you're going for extra performance, go for either the 8350 or 8370.
Click to expand...

Waaaaaat

I would rather get an 8320E or 8310 and overclock it to 4.0 ghz - 4.2 ghz than mess with an 8350. Unless you're completely averse to modifying BIOS settings, there's almost no reason to avoid the newer Piledrivers. They hit X clockspeed with (on average) better vcore than the "new" 8370 or older chips like the 8350 or 8320.

Only at clockspeeds in excess of around 5.7 ghz does the new 8370 show up the "E" chips/the 8310.

Anyway with that board I'd totally go for the 8310 and overclock the foofoodilly out of it, or at least dial it in to ~4.5 ghz. Should do that @ ~1.36v vcore or so.
 
If you overclock, an FX 8whatever at 4.4GHz provides 42% more base clock speed and an IPC bump in the neighborhood of ~10%. That is a sizable upgrade for not much out of pocket if you dump the FX 8120 and get a few bucks for it.
 
True, but the 8120 turbos to 3.4 on all cores, so that becomes a 30% increase. And actually you can probably overclock the 8120 to at least 3.7 or 3.8, so you are really looking at about 20% clockspeed increase and 10% ipc. Not saying it is not worth upgrading, but I think it makes sense to first see how much the 8120 will overclock. A newer chip will probably use less power though.
 
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