should I abandon the AMD ship? (Updated)

[Ramses]

For the money these days you could darn near just buy a pretty strong laptop, a nice monitor, keyboard etc and some fast external storage if you needed it and put off the upgrade for awhile. I always get longer use out of a given spec laptop than I do a desktop.

Beyond that, I think people get carried away with stuff being "old". Vast majority of the world runs right along on some really crappy computers, almost all of us here are on hardware faster than 90%+ of the population. I think we are over a hump of sorts speed-wise for right now other than extreme graphics performance. If it's pleasant to use today by our standards, it'll be fine in a year or two. I'm sure there will be something better but it's not like it was ten years ago. The progress isn't that fast anymore till some breakthrough in hardware or software comes along. Don't feel like you're getting stuck if you have to build now. Knowing your habits and what you actually do rather than what you want to be able to say you can do is important to being relatively frugal and happy with a build imo.

$500 would get you a good 990fx board, 16gig of cas7 ram and an 8350 amd chip. You can probly do the same for an i5 or lower end i7 maybe, or shave off some for less ram or cpu, someone else can suggest Intel stuff better than I. The long term stuff like case and power supply and drives and such that you can reuse next year or the year after I'd put comparatively more effort and money into. I'm a fan of the FX stuff just because it's fairly cheap and it's strengths suit my work habits, and I dig the muscle car vibe. Multi-threading has always been good to me since my first dual slot 1 board years ago. If you aren't doing any real specific high load tasks that need a strong single core, again strong being relative, they perform very well to me.

 

[Cheesesticksandbeer]

Basically, because I live near a microcenter a upgrade to i5/7 Z97 would be my best option. I have decided to put my faith in my wife's hands. I will point out a i5 combo and an i7 combo. I would be cheap as normal and get the i5. However, the wife is unpredictable, I think I will point out a X99 combo and see if I get lucky. Thanks for all the feedback guys!

 

[Cheesesticksandbeer]

For thise like me on the fence, i will post updated benchmarks when I finish the build. Would be a good bench from a hot swap with all the same hardware.

 

[crashtech]

From your starting point, the only LGA 1150 upgrade that makes sense is to go straight for the 4790K. That's a pretty stout overclock on the 6300, lots of bang for the buck there. I mean, you would probably see an improvement on benchmarks with a 4690K, but it just really wouldn't be enough of a delta to justify all the effort.

 

[AtenRa]

I would sell the FX6300, buy the new FX8370E and OC to 4.6-4.7GHz. Keep the system for a year and then upgrade to socket 2011-3 and Broadwell-E. DDR-4 will be much lower by then and perhaps 6-core CPUs as well.

 

[Ramses]

Basically, because I live near a microcenter a upgrade to i5/7 Z97 would be my best option. I have decided to put my faith in my wife's hands. I will point out a i5 combo and an i7 combo. I would be cheap as normal and get the i5. However, the wife is unpredictable, I think I will point out a X99 combo and see if I get lucky. Thanks for all the feedback guys!

The pickup-only deals I see now and again from Microcenter would no doubt be a factor.

 

[JJChicken]

Yes :'(

 

[ShintaiDK]

I would sell the FX6300, buy the new FX8370E and OC to 4.6-4.7GHz. Keep the system for a year and then upgrade to socket 2011-3 and Broadwell-E. DDR-4 will be much lower by then and perhaps 6-core CPUs as well.

So you recommend him to waste money on a side grade for nothing. :thumbsdown:

 

[cbn]

The new Kaveri based X4 860K is also available, too -- and it offers about a 10% boost in IPC over the Richland.... I don't know anyone who has tested an 860K yet, so I'd be curious about its overclocking potential.

Overclocking on the stock cooler would be the most interesting for budget builders IMO, so I guess that is a distinction between max overclock potential and max OC potential within a certain power envelope.

With that mentioned, its too bad AMD prices these chips so high and has reduced the cache compared to the Athlon x4 760K.

 

[AtenRa]

So you recommend him to waste money on a side grade for nothing. :thumbsdown:

There are currently a lot of games that will gain from FX 8-cores over 6-cores and more games in near future. Also, frametimes are lower with 8-Core FX CPUs than FX 6-Core.
And he will only spend a small amount since FX8320E can be currently purchased at $142.00 at Amazon and FX8370E at $194.00.

 

[ShintaiDK]

There are currently a lot of games that will gain from FX 8-cores over 6-cores and more games in near future. Also, frametimes are lower with 8-Core FX CPUs than FX 6-Core.
And he will only spend a small amount since FX8320E can be currently purchased at $142.00 at Amazon and FX8370E at $194.00.

None of your benchmarks shows any benefit going 8 cores. They simply show different clockspeeds. And he already runs his FX6300 at 4.6Ghz.

So again, why should he waste money on a useless sidegrade?

 

[frozentundra123456]

None of your benchmarks shows any benefit going 8 cores. They simply show different clockspeeds. And he already runs his FX6300 at 4.6Ghz.

So again, why should he waste money on a useless sidegrade?

Correct.

 

[SlowSpyder]

All those benches show hugely playable frame rates on a factory clocked FX6300. I think he'd be upgrading for benchmarks, but not for anything practical.

I wouldn't mind seeing some modern benches of equal clocked but different core count CPU's. Both high and low resolution, AMD has partnered with some game makers to ensure that there is some support for octocore CPU's. But I wonder how much it matters in practical terms these days.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I think you could get a pretty good idea by adding about 12 percent to the results of the FX 6300 to account for the lower clockspeed and then comparing that to the 8350. Or just compare the 8350 to a 6350 if that is tested. I don't recall exactly, but I think the clockspeeds are pretty close. I was surprised by the results in the games shown, because as Shintai said, even these newer games show little if any benefit going from 6 to 8 cores, unless you are doing productivity work as well. And they don't seem to be gpu limited either, since faster frame rates are possible with Intel.

 

[Abwx]

Games are increasingly Mthreaded, 4C/4T have not much potential left,
surely adequate today but not future proof.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I will take better proven performance in the present than some possible future scenario which may or may not happen. The results above show clearly that even BF4, AMDs baby, does not utilize 8 cores and is still slower on a 5ghz 8 core than a stock i5. I guess you could call that "present proof".

 

[Abwx]

Just updating a few softs Hardware.fr got the 8C 8350 get 10-12% uplift against the 4C/4T, so that s not hypothetical but is the real trend backed by numbers, games saw the same evolution and they have quite an untapped potential, put things in a 2-4 years perspective.

 

[Yuriman]

Just updating a few softs Hardware.fr got the 8C 8350 get 10-12% uplift against the 4C/4T, so that s not hypothetical but is the real trend backed by numbers, games saw the same evolution and they have quite an untapped potential, put things in a 2-4 years perspective.

in 2-4 years the FX-8320 will be 6-8 years old. Regardless of whether or not things are better threaded by then, you'll probably have replaced it. We don't really think about the debate between a Phenom I and a fast Core2Duo these days.

 

[AtenRa]

None of your benchmarks shows any benefit going 8 cores. They simply show different clockspeeds. And he already runs his FX6300 at 4.6Ghz.

So again, why should he waste money on a useless sidegrade?

Correct.

You can see that FX6300 (3,5GHz base) is faster than the 4 Core FX4300 (3,8GHz base), 8-core gain a little bit more AND it has lower frametimes.

Since he has a micro center close to him, he can get the FX8320E at $139,99 or the FX8370E at $189,99. After selling its FX6300, he can get the FX8320E for less than $70-$80.

For that low cost, it is nice to play with new hardware.

edit: Also dont forget that he will have 2x HD7970.

 

[ShintaiDK]

You can see that FX6300 (3,5GHz base) is faster than the 4 Core FX4300 (3,8GHz base), 8-core gain a little bit more AND it has lower frametimes.

Since he has a micro center close to him, he can get the FX8320E at $139,99 or the FX8370E at $189,99. After selling its FX6300, he can get the FX8320E for less than $70-$80.

For that low cost, it is nice to play with new hardware.

edit: Also dont forget that he will have 2x HD7970.

The FX4300 got 4MB cache while the FX6300 got 8MB.

So no, you are telling him to waste money on nothing. And the fact he even uses AMD cards with their poor driver in terms of multithreading isnt helping.

 

[Abwx]

in 2-4 years the FX-8320 will be 6-8 years old. Regardless of whether or not things are better threaded by then, you'll probably have replaced it. We don't really think about the debate between a Phenom I and a fast Core2Duo these days.

In 2-4 years a 4670K will be 3-5 year old and will be more behind the 8350 that it is currently in applications while likely being also outmatched in games...

A 4770K will do better than the 4670K but not much more than it do currently, its untapped ressource is mainly HT wich is potentialy 20-30% while the 8350 has at least 40-50% left under/unused.

 

[CHADBOGA]

In 2-4 years a 4670K will be 3-5 year old and will be more behind the 8350 that it is currently in applications while likely being also outmatched in games...

A 4770K will do better than the 4670K but not much more than it do currently, its untapped ressource is mainly HT wich is potentialy 20-30% while the 8350 has at least 40-50% left under/unused.

I think it far more likely that in 2-4 years, games will need stronger cores than today, so whilst the 8350 doesn't particularly penalise owners for using it right now to play games, there will be a very heavy penalty to pay then.

 

[AtenRa]

The FX4300 got 4MB cache while the FX6300 got 8MB.

So no, you are telling him to waste money on nothing. And the fact he even uses AMD cards with their poor driver in terms of multithreading isnt helping.

The driver is working just fine with 8 threads in those games he wants to play (BF4 and Thief). And it will also work just fine with every Frostbite 3, CryEngine 3 and UnrealEngine 4 games coming in the near future.

Also for the billionth time, you get lower frametimes with the 8-core FX CPU and it helps in CF. For 70-80 bucks i would make the upgrade.

 

[Ramses]

It's sorta makes me smile, in like 99-00, about when I joined this forum I guess, I was switching to SMP, dual slot1 back then with supermicro and tyan mostly, and a few dual pentium pro boxes. I remember hearing a variation of the same arguments against two slower processors(cores) vs a single faster cpu. I guess it was an overclocked 600eb or something bang for buck wise then, or a celly of some sort. But despite what any benchmarks said, the dual system ran better, felt better, and was better, for longer. And nothing supported multithreading that wasn't high end software back then. I remember the first time I could play Quake 2 or 3 with winamp running in the background and no performance penalty and it was a revelation. Few years later we were told HyperThreading was coming, and we all laughed since we'd known two was better than one for a long time and Intel was going to try and help get everyone else, and software developers, onboard now and that was cool. As it happens HT kinda sucked and was a sorry imitation of proper SMP, but it was a start in the right direction. I had and still have a 3.2ghz HT chip, just to remind me what a slow high mhz CPU is mostly(it still plays netflix as my shop computer, and UT and some legacy games). I kinda got out of computers when the first real dual cores on single chip were happening and the rest is history I guess.

The moral of the fifteen year long tale is that I've learned if I have a choice between a cpu that can process four or six threads at once at say 100% of some arbitrary scale, and an eight+ thread chip that will do it at 80% of that arbitrary scale, I will pick the eight+ every time. And not unlike my first P6DBS with a surprisingly expensive pair of p2/300's in there stoic little black coffins, they just run better, longer. Two is almost always better than one.

That eight core vs six core will be more pleasant to use, longer, and handle concurrent daily workloads, longer, than the six or a four, even a faster one. You can believe it or not but personal decade+ experience has shown me nothing but.

This isn't to say it will game any faster now or later, but it's certainly not going to be worse, and there is a chance it'll be better. As it is now, half the cpu is laying around bored playing games, and the games are still very pleasant and playable. People speak ill of not utilizing all the cores but what more do you want from these games? The very lowest bottom of those four benchmark charts posted above are all perfectly playable. Whats more is, it isn't that the cores don't work, it's that software does not utilize them well. Go bitch at the developers if a game isn't using eightyseven cores effectively.
Most of the time the answer is the overhead is too high, the game doesn't really need them all, or it's just too difficult to make it work vs the payoff and it does not effect our bottom$ line much. I personally reward developers that make games that run well on my hardware with my money. If a game runs crappy on my hardware or is some buggy shit console port with annoying controls, I don't play it.

It's not a huge upgrade six to eight in this case, but it is an upgrade. I would and did make it. It might be different if it was a $300-$400 investment, it's at absolute worst $250 and likely quite a lot less though. Small price for little grief and some breathing room imo. Nothing wrong with going Intel either if you game a bunch or like the color of the box or just have the money, it's all fast these days. That's why these threads go on for so long, it's hard to pick winners when they are all excellent.

 

[VirtualLarry]

That's why these threads go on for so long, it's hard to pick winners when they are all excellent.

QFT. But the Intel fanboys keep trying to point out that the FX chips are bad, bad, bad.

It's not like they're slow, like Kabini and Brazos before it.