Should I get an AMD CPU for gaming?

[SlowSpyder]

The unique FX problem is its power consumption. In US this is no problem for the users.

Actually I think the power consumption is a non-issue. How many games use six cores? Eight? How many games that use those cores max them or even close? I'm pulling 107 watts right now with water cooling while using what might be one of the highest TDP CPU's ever released for general computing. But yes, I am in the US, so maybe that's just my opinion due to electric costs. In other parts of the world things may be different and every watt counts.

But, the age of the FX platform is a problem in my opinion. It really could use a freshening up at this point, but I highly doubt we'll see anything better than the 990FX for AM3+.

 

[jhu]

Actually I think the power consumption is a non-issue. How many games use six cores? Eight? How many games that use those cores max them or even close? I'm pulling 107 watts right now with water cooling while using what might be one of the highest TDP CPU's ever released for general computing. But yes, I am in the US, so maybe that's just my opinion due to electric costs. In other parts of the world things may be different and every watt counts.

But, the age of the FX platform is a problem in my opinion. It really could use a freshening up at this point, but I highly doubt we'll see anything better than the 990FX for AM3+.

Electricity is much cheaper than much of the world.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Actually I think the power consumption is a non-issue. How many games use six cores? Eight? How many games that use those cores max them or even close? I'm pulling 107 watts right now with water cooling while using what might be one of the highest TDP CPU's ever released for general computing. But yes, I am in the US, so maybe that's just my opinion due to electric costs. In other parts of the world things may be different and every watt counts.

But, the age of the FX platform is a problem in my opinion. It really could use a freshening up at this point, but I highly doubt we'll see anything better than the 990FX for AM3+.

But if your game doesnt use six or eight cores, for sure you will get better performance with an i5, or possibly even an i3, and save power in the process.

I have no problem with using more power for better performance, as is usually the case with gpus. But the problem with the FX is that it uses more power for at best equal, and usually lesser, performance. Kind of like a car that is slower, but still uses more gas.

 

[el etro]

Actually I think the power consumption is a non-issue. How many games use six cores? Eight? How many games that use those cores max them or even close?

Yeah, but you have to disable many power savings to achieve big overclocks in 8350/8320....
More people need to Know k10stat and TuronPowerControl to make their own P-states the your processors, it would be a awesome thing.

I'm pulling 107 watts right now with water cooling while using what might be one of the highest TDP CPU's ever released for general computing.

Problem is that is WC powered, with temps low 50's. This helps so much in reduce power consumption.

 

[Durp]

The unique FX problem is its power consumption. In US this is no problem for the users.

I live in the US and power is .34 per kwh here. With power at that price the difference between an overclocked haswell and an overclocked vishera quickly adds up and if you keep the processor long enough it can actually make the haswell cheaper in the long run.

 

[el etro]

I live in the US and power is .34 per kwh here. With power at that price the difference between an overclocked haswell and an overclocked vishera quickly adds up and if you keep the processor long enough it can actually make the haswell cheaper in the long run.

Is 100 watt difference. If you compare 8350 vs i5 you will end with AMD processor being the better buy(even with 100W higher power consumption), and if you compare 8350 vs i7 you will end with the Intel processor being the best option.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Is 100 watt difference. If you compare 8350 vs i5 you will end with AMD processor being the better buy(even with 100W higher power consumption), and if you compare 8350 vs i7 you will end with the Intel processor being the best option.

AMD would not be the better buy. Its slower in almost everything. It uses more power that continually cost, and the heat also translate into noise, indoor climate effects and so on.

There is a reason nobody buys those FX CPUs and that they went EOL without furtehr updates. They are simply turds.

 

[HumblePie]

Too me it has always depended upon budget. I had a friend recently come to me looking for an update to his old HP system he bought. It was having hardware issues and just was too slow for gaming. He had Nvidia 550TI that I helped him get back in the day when he bought that horrible off the shelf system. Because it was the best bang for the buck for the money he had.

Well he's not made of money so he asked me what I could do for $250. He needed a power supply, motherboard, memory, cooling, CPU, HDD, and new vid card. He was going to pass what he has to his son so the kid could play some games somewhat too. $350 isn't that big of a budget for all that but I managed. I had an older Antec Neo 520W I had picked up on a deal for $30 back in the day. As well as a 1TB drive for $40. I tossed those at him for what I paid since I wasn't using them. They were going to be for a build I never got around to.

That left me with $280 for everything else. I picked up a AMD 740 with a decent full size atx size board. Is it the best? Hell no. Is it the best I could do for the money? Hell yes. Paired that up with 8 GB of some ok DDR3 and an AMD 7850 and I was able to stay at his budget with deals I found.

It won't be a beast of a gaming system, but it doesn't need to be for mostly playing WoW. If he had a $600+ budget I would have picked something else for sure. More than likely gone the intel route. The price was what left me looking at the overall best performance for the money I could find. In the budget range I was in, I was stuck with getting what I got.

 

[Remobz]

Electricity is much cheaper than much of the world.

I pay 30 cents an hour where I am at. Not cheap at all.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Wow, I thought my power bill was bad, especially in the summer, since I pay 200.00 plus due to inefficient central air. My cost is only around 12 cents per kwh, but there are taxes and surcharges on top of that.

 

[davie jambo]

AMD would not be the better buy. Its slower in almost everything. It uses more power that continually cost, and the heat also translate into noise, indoor climate effects and so on.

There is a reason nobody buys those FX CPUs and that they went EOL without furtehr updates. They are simply turds.

We've been through this

AMD FX cpus are fine for gaming

 

[ShintaiDK]

We've been through this

AMD FX cpus are fine for gaming

So would a 42$ Celeron if we are to use that logic. Even AMD gave up on the FX because its such a flop.

 

[davie jambo]

So would a 42$ Celeron if we are to use that logic. Even AMD gave up on the FX because its such a flop.

Well no , I'd doubt it would be able to push a high end GPU very well

Skyrim 60fps , ultra settings 1080p on my fx8350 says it's fine for gaming
/thread

 

[crashtech]

I think AMD FX CPUs for gaming make sense for people in cold climates who already use electric heat anyway.

 

[el etro]

So would a 42$ Celeron if we are to use that logic.

With the 2 cores that Celeron haves and without HT, no way.

 

[ShintaiDK]

With the 2 cores that Celeron haves and without HT, no way.

Yet you claim the much slower FX that uses much more power is a better buy on its outdated platform.

 

[SlowSpyder]

My opinion is that the CPU is not the important part of a gaming build. I'm not saying it doesn't matter, but I think some of you put too much emphasis on the CPU. Benchmarks are fine and dandy, but they don't always translate into real world use. As a number of people have said on these forums that have Intel i5/i7's and FX CPU's, the difference really isn't that great in general. I game at GPU-limited settings, I would wager most of us do.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Performance/$ its still a horrible to get a FX8350. So if you want more into the GPU, then you dont buy that CPU.

 

[HumblePie]

Performance/$ its still a horrible to get a FX8350. So if you want more into the GPU, then you dont buy that CPU.

What basis do you make that claim. Heck, even the passmark value chart has it at one the best values.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html

Not that passmark is the end all be all benchmark. But it is something to use as a comparison that is some what objective. Take the performance scores and divide by the price. You'll get a performance number per dollar value. When looking at current commercially and readily available cpus, it has one of the best values.

Then one has to look at best values based off price point. That's the best way to determine if something is worth getting or not.

 

[2is]

NO

And the only people who use passmark as a resource for anything is only doing so because whatever he/she is trying to prove can't be mimicked in real applications. Enter a completely useless passmark score.

 

[el etro]

Yet you claim the much slower FX that uses much more power is a better buy on its outdated platform.

And this don't make the 2 core celeron a better buy than a FX 8350 for ones who will make hardcore tasks.

 

[Edgemeal]

I pay 30 cents an hour where I am at. Not cheap at all.

30c just for the elec?, or does that include the service too?

Here in the mid-west(US) my kWh rate is just over 8 cents ($0.08274) plus...
+ $15.25 monthly service charge.
+ city & state taxes.
+ $1 or so for some environmental BS.

I pay more in fees then I do for the elec itself, In Jan my elec usage was only $16.25, but after you add in the service charge, taxes, etc the total was $47.08.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Performance/$ its still a horrible to get a FX8350. So if you want more into the GPU, then you dont buy that CPU.

Horrible? Why?
I paid less than $200 for mine. It does very well in everything, the horsepower is there and the only negative IMO is the ancient chipset that comes in the mobo.
My FX most likely beats your i5 at MT tasks and looses in ST ones. This is a trade off some users are comfortable with. If an horrible cpu can beat your i5 in anything what label would you use for your cpu?

 

[escrow4]

Horrible? Why?
I paid less than $200 for mine. It does very well in everything, the horsepower is there and the only negative IMO is the ancient chipset that comes in the mobo.
My FX most likely beats your i5 at MT tasks and looses in ST ones. This is a trade off some users are comfortable with. If an horrible cpu can beat your i5 in anything what label would you use for your cpu?

Beats? Just:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/697?vs=837

You could buy a locked i5 for $220 - $20 - that wouldn't have an ancient chipset, would suck way less power, and on balance be a whole lot better. I had a 6300 and the dips in games were horrific. It was matched with a 7870 and even with settings adjusted for mid-range (i.e. not maxed out) there were constant random FPS drops; the minimums eh. I remember this clearly in Saint's Row 4. Broadwell and Skylake will just put the nails in the coffin and in 2yrs you'll be wondering why that FX is so poor.

 

[HumblePie]

NO

And the only people who use passmark as a resource for anything is only doing so because whatever he/she is trying to prove can't be mimicked in real applications. Enter a completely useless passmark score.

You can use passmark, sandra, and any of the other business applications benchmark suites. They all show roughly the same for the CPU score for relative performance gaps. Some will rate cpus in slightly different orders, but not by much. Gaming is different because it depends on GPU to a point, then a potential cpu bottleneck, then more gpu on top of that, and all that depends on the game being played along with resolution as well as eye candy used.

The price for performance for the 8320 or 8350 isn't bad at all. The 8320 is a better price for performance spent. Especially factoring in motherboard prices.