should i get an i5 2500k or amd fx 8120 8 core??

[skipsneeky2]

My arguments are in bold.

Op if you see this whopper of response,don't purchase the 8120 or the 8150 even if you got the am3+ motherboard already in a case,just toss the motherboard on fleabay or toss it off the side of a cliff whichever is less time consuming.

Just buy a 1155 motherboard and the 2500k as most forums members would rather have herpes on their penis then a hot potato meaning there's no justifying a amd build right now.

 

[blckgrffn]

Op if you see this whopper of response,don't purchase the 8120 or the 8150 even if you got the am3+ motherboard already in a case,just toss the motherboard on fleabay or toss it off the side of a cliff whichever is less time consuming.

Just buy a 1155 motherboard and the 2500k as most forums members would rather have herpes on their penis then a hot potato meaning there's no justifying a amd build right now.

I lol'd. IRL

I can only imagine the depths we'd explore on forum that allowed for "greater expression."

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Nope, that's not my "argument" at all.

At a certain price point, BD can be legitimately considered. Anyone who bought an AMD processor in the last year or so can continue to get the same basic performance for the same price. This is true of SB as well. You even get a few nifty instructions thrown in.

If you don't care about having to put those upfront savings towards your electricity bill, sure.

And it's not demonstrably the same performance. The Phenom II X4 955, even the 925, costed similar to the FX-4100 or lower and were noticeably faster OR cheaper.

Likewise with the FX-6100. Its performance is on most scenarios lower than the Phenom II X6 1055/1075T, CPUs you could find *everywhere* for a mere $150-160.

Then there's the FX-8120/8150, which do give you a bit more (10-15%) multi-threaded performance than the Phenom II X6s, but consume more power and can still only match stride with the i5 in MT. In ST, completely outclassed.

Also, anyone who bought AM3+ boards before Bulldozer was released with the intention of buying Bulldozer when it was, were complete fools. They were buying into something they didn't know what performance was gonna give them. Luckily, they still had a few months to buy the superior Phenom II processors.

Evidently everyone, EVER, that built a Thuban rig was a POOR CONSUMER and needs a frontal lobotomy so that they won't influence the market with their stupid decision making. Ditto for just about any AMD purchase in the last year to two years.

No, because the difference is that Thuban for the most part was actually a very good buy for a long time if you cared about multi-threaded performance only.

To your point, the 8120 and the 2500k do not "cost the same." Hence all those links I posted and you efficiently ignored. If $50 is irrelevant, I don't know why sites like slickdeals exist. Clearly money is important to someone.

It was you or some other guy arguing whether the higher performance justified the higher cost, and I proved how it did. The 8120 costs less and is on deals more often, and that's because it sells very little because it's inferior. If you want something cheaper, like I mentioned earlier, the i5-2400 is a good buy. It can still overclock to 3.8GHz easily and on stock voltage.

Before you throw that "save it in power" comment out there, that's only true for people who are using their computer @ 100% for an extremely extended amount of time. For most it will be insignificant - or, and get this - an improvement over buying a Phenom 2 now because idle power is so much better. To those who say it would need a bigger PSU, if we are only talking about basic CPU needs here then you are likely buying a ~400W power supply minimum, right? So you don't need a bigger one for BD. If you are going to be rocking some big GPUs, they'll need their own power budget in a hurry anyway.

Except if you happen to remember, a lot of people don't live in the US. And even if they do, it's still significant savings. The FX-8120 will consume twice the power.


Believe it or not, I am not drooling on my keyboard OR bleeding from my ears when I type that.

Am I supposed to care?

And, FWIW, I think LLano on the desktop is joke at this point (at its current price point, again, let's talk again when the A8 is well below $100 or if Trinity rocks). So no, I won't endorse that as a "successful" product. In laptops? Sure.

It's selling well, and even if it does target a niche it does it well. The A6-3670K is on par with the i3-2100 in multi-threaded and it includes a decent IGP. If you want a mainstream rig for MT stuff plus light/medium gaming and have a limited budget it's a decent choice. For HTPC or gaming HTPCs it's good, too.

Llano on laptops is a better proposition than desktops, but since I don't care for gaming on my laptop I didn't buy a laptop with it. For lots of people, CPU performance on laptops doesn't matter as much as GPU. That's where Llano comes in. It's also comparable to mobile Sandy Bridge when it comes to power consumption and therefore battery run time, too.

There has to be a price point where 8xxx FX gets interesting for you, doesn't there? Ignoring that isn't good consumer practice either or we'll all be paying Apple markups for everything? So if the 8120 was $100? (which effectively is with this MC deal...) $50? Free? We should be able to find some common ground here...

If I was making a rig exclusively for X264/Handbrake encoding/transcoding, yes. I would also undervolt it. Apart from that, no. Also, keep in mind there's deals sometimes for the i5s and accompanying motherboards.

Again, responses in bold.

 

[Dravic]

lol... you can't recommend BD here.. you cant even discuss its merits,short comings, or the interesting architecture pieces...

 

[blckgrffn]

I don't understand how the Thuban was good for "threaded workloads" and that made it purchasable, but now that BD is the same price and basically better at threaded workloads with about the same power consumption, it is a horrible buy? Basically everyone with a Thuban in their sig is a fool? That is what I am reading.

I mean, unless I am missing something, the i5-750/760 were out then. And the i7-870/everything 1366?

To the power question - it only consumes considerably full power under full load. So how will it cost more to run if it isn't being pushed hard (threaded workloads)? If it is pushed hard, its performance is better than Thuban in nearly the same power envelope, so still a win? Again, it is way better than the "recommended" Thuban at this? Which is kind of the joke, right? That it idles better and otherwise only fill its shoes?

My point remains that if Thuban was ever recommended against SB, how can BD not be?

Finally, Thuban is gone/done. If AMD fills it in with cheaper/same price BD models that offer similar performance, is that really so horrible? The problem with BD is the price, mainly. If Intel ever offers (in the next year or so...) a "Pentium Quad Core" at <$100, then it will get really dicey for AMD, if it isn't already.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

I don't understand how the Thuban was good for "threaded workloads" and that made it purchasable, but now that BD is the same price and basically better at threaded workloads with about the same power consumption, it is a horrible buy? Basically everyone with a Thuban in their sig is a fool? That is what I am reading.

To the power question - it only consumes considerably full power under full load. So how will it cost more to run if it isn't being pushed hard (threaded workloads)? If it is pushed hard, its performance is better than Thuban in nearly the same power envelope, so still a win? Again, it is way better than the "recommended" Thuban at this? Which is kind of the joke, right? That it idles better and otherwise only fill its shoes?

My point remains that if Thuban was ever recommended against SB, how can BD not be?

Finally, Thuban is gone/done. If AMD fills it in with cheaper/same price BD models that offer similar performance, is that really so horrible? The problem with BD is the price, mainly. If Intel ever offers (in the next year or so...) a "Pentium Quad Core" at <$100, then it will get really dicey for AMD, if it isn't already.

Because Thuban almost matched stride with Nehalem/Lynnfield with HT and costed significantly less. The 1055T, when it was launched, OCed very similar to the i7-920, 930 and i7-860 and offered just slightly lower MT performance. It was also competitive in power consumption. It also costed $80-100 ($200 vs. $300) less than aforementioned CPUs, and it gave you higher multi-threaded performance than the similarly-priced i5-750/760. The gap in single-threaded then wasn't nearly as bad as it is now, either. The FX-8120, for example, is slower than the 2500K in MT and significantly slower in ST and costs comparably or somewhat less (deals aren't there every day, so comparing normal price). The normal price of the 8120 is $200; the normal price of the 2500K is $220-230. That's a much smaller difference in price, and there's a much bigger difference in power consumption, and also a bigger difference in performance in ST workloads.

Also, I recommended the Phenom II X6 over the Core i5 Sandy Bridge in the past, but that's because I was ignorant then. When Sandy Bridge was released there was very little point in the Phenom II X6, but compared to Nehalem/Lynnfield it did a lot better.

And, I don't know if you're blind, but I just mentioned to you that the FX-6100 does not offer similar performance to the Phenom II X6 1055/1075T. It's a step backwards, and that's the main reason why it's being recommended against. So no, there's nothing to be happy about that. You're getting lower performance than yesterday for a similar price.

EDIT: it actually gave the same MT performance as Lynnfield i5, but still.

 

[Abwx]

Most funny is that the same that are diabolizing BD did praise
the even more power hungry i7 9xx.....

Talk of double standard , biaising and all the seemingly bad faith....

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

lol... you can't recommend BD here.. you cant even discuss its merits,short comings, or the interesting architecture pieces...

Because there are no merits. Unless by merits you mean someone who encodes/transcodes video 24/7, which almost no one does. Interesting architecture? SPARC was already doing CMT with the UltraSPARC T1, released at the end of 2005.

 

[blckgrffn]

Hah.

So, right now, as to what's available, we have the 1045t @ $130 and the 6100 @ $135. 95W parts, both of them. I'd say that right now, that's pretty equal.

If the only reason in the last year you bought a Thuban was for good MT throughput, and obviously damn the power (because it didn't really compete either), the 8120 is every so close to the best prices we had for the 1090t and 1100t ($~160-180?). ~Throughput, ~Cost, ~Power (except @ idle).

Just so we're clear, under no circumstance can BD be recommended. Gotcha. Essentially, we are forbidden from buying AMD products, whatever their price. Unless it's a cheap laptop, then it might be OK, maybe.

OK

 

[Maximilian]

Most funny is that the same that are diabolizing BD did praise
the even more power hungry i7 9xx.....

Talk of double standard , biaising and all the seemingly bad faith....

Old gen chip and nehalem is still better than bulldozer.

Fair comparison:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/99?vs=434

Top quad nehalem vs top quad bulldozer. Bulldozer gets wrecked in most things.

 

[Puppies04]

Most funny is that the same that are diabolizing BD did praise
the even more power hungry i7 9xx.....

Talk of double standard , biaising and all the seemingly bad faith....

You mean the CPU that came out 2 years ago. Yes it was a power hungry monster but it had the performance (When all 6 cores could be utilised) to match it. Even so, try and find me a thread where someone was asking for a mid range CPU and one of these "intel fanboys" that keep getting alluded to actually told the OP to go buy a 980X or even a post where the OP didn't express a need for more than 4 cores where a 2011 chip was recommended.

If BD came out 2 years ago at todays price point it would be a much more appealing proposition as it stands i'm going to just have to keep repeating myself unfortunatly.

Unless you are going to be doing very specific workloads SB beats BD at just about every price point. I find it hard to imagine a scenario where I would recommend it unless the OP gave an very strong indication that the main use of the machine was heavily multithreaded workloads and power consumption wasn't an issue.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Most funny is that the same that are diabolizing BD did praise
the even more power hungry i7 9xx.....

Talk of double standard , biaising and all the seemingly bad faith....

Bulldozer consumes more power than the i7-9xx, and 9xx is still overall faster. In MT they're very similar, but in ST there's no contest. That, and it was released THREE YEARS AGO. In the technology world that's a long-ass time.

The big difference, what you're mainly forgetting, is that the Core i7 was an absolute performance beast when it came out in 2008. So much that to this day an i7-920 is still a great processor. It consumed a high amount of power, but it completely blew everything out of the water when it came out no matter the scenario. BD is no such thing: it uses more power, but in comparison to products out now its performance is overall mediocre at best.

 

[Abwx]

Old gen chip and nehalem is still better than bulldozer.

Fair comparison:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/99?vs=434

Top quad nehalem vs top quad bulldozer. Bulldozer gets wrecked in most things.

Yeah , tell us what was and still is the price of a 975X.....

 

[frostedflakes]

Most funny is that the same that are diabolizing BD did praise
the even more power hungry i7 9xx.....

Talk of double standard , biaising and all the seemingly bad faith....

Well, the difference between the 980X and FX-8150 is that it had the performance to justify the power consumption. The complaints against BD is that it consumes a lot more power while performing about the same in heavily threaded tasks as similarly priced CPUs (2500K) and falling behind quite a bit in single threaded tasks. It's a legit gripe, no double standard found IMO.

I think that speaks more to how efficient Sandy Bridge and Intel's 32nm process is than how poor BD is. I think what tends to get lost sometimes in the BD hate fests is the fact that Phenom II chips sucked down a lot more power than SB as well (although admittedly BD took it to a new level and manged to top the old Phenom II X6 in power consumption) and performance per watt wasn't great compared to SB either. Frankly AMD hasn't been competitive with Intel in power consumption and performance per watt for a while, Sandy Bridge is just a ridiculously efficient chip. The disappointing part about BD was that didn't do much to close that gap, and in some areas such as single threaded performance it even ended up taking a step backward compared to 45nm Phenom II. I think a lot of the power issues are related to GloFo's 32nm process, though, so hopefully that's something that will be improved a bit with time. When the Phenom II first came out, for example, the top SKUs had a pretty crazy 140W TDP, but with new steppings AMD was able to get it down to 125W.

 

[Puppies04]

So far the only coherent arguements I have seen for bulldozer in this thread are

* But it can't be as bad as the graphs make it out to be
* The 2500K gets recommended too much so it must be BDs turn to get recommended
* Everyone here is an intel fanboy
* If you compare it to 2/3 year old hardware it doesn't look quite as bad
* Intel fanboy
* Aliens
* Intel fanboy

 

[Abwx]

Those praising the i7 9xx in the posts above just forget that its
perfs , albeit better than the mainstream Intel CPUs were not
that overkill in respect of prices that did go through the roof...

What , 30% ? 40% better perfs ? For prices higher by 100s of %.....

 

[janas19]

So far the only coherent arguements I have seen for bulldozer in this thread are

* But it can't be as bad as the graphs make it out to be
* The 2500K gets recommended too much so it must be BDs turn to get recommended
* Everyone here is an intel fanboy
* If you compare it to 2/3 year old hardware it doesn't look quite as bad
* Intel fanboy
* Aliens
* Intel fanboy

Bulldozer may have respectable performance in multithreaded applications. Someone mentioned they would post some benchmarks. How about let's look at those and see.

 

[Puppies04]

Those praising the i7 9xx in the posts above just forget that its
perfs , albeit better than the mainstream Intel CPUs were not
that overkill in respect of prices that did go through the roof...

What , 30% ? 40% better perfs ? For prices higher by 100s of %.....

And a ferarri is 100% of % more expensive than a golf GTI but only 30% 40%? faster. Welcome to the real world.

The only reason the 9XX series was even brought up in this thread was the old "oh wow intel are so expensive but only a bit faster" arguement from several years ago.

Now back on topic

Just to remind you we are talking about BD vs SB here (and quite likely getting trolled by the OP with his massive 1 post count). The original point wasn't even AMD vs Intel although the last 4 pages are testament to some peoples bitterness over BDs lacklustre performance and need to recommend it without any factual reason other than AMD is cool.

 

[Rvenger]

My motherboard isn't here yet so hopefully tomorrow or monday. If anyone wants anything seen in particular shoot me a PM, and I will prepare a list.

I will be using an Asrock 970 Extreme 4 motherboard with 8gb of Corsair XMS 3 DDR3 1600. I am debating whether to get a decent videocard for this but my powersupply might hold me back on that.

 

[BD231]

Bulldozer may have respectable performance in multithreaded applications. Someone mentioned they would post some benchmarks. How about let's look at those and see.

No need, clock for clock BullDozer 8150 is 20% slower than the Phenom II x6 this is common knowledge.

Take my OC for example: 20% of 3.8ghz = 760mhz. FX8150 is slightly slower than the PII x6 1100T. Base clock for the 8150 is 3.6ghz ..... 3.6ghz + 760mhz = 4,560mhz just to match an OC'd x6 with the new top end 8-Core FX line of processors.

 

[Abwx]

And a ferarri is 100% of % more expensive than a golf GTI but only 30% 40%? faster. Welcome to the real world.

What is this "real world" where a Ferrari cost only 100% more
than a VW golf ?...

The comparison , though is not adequate....

Manufacturing price is way higher than the general
purpose car , wich is not the case with differents
CPUs wich have only a marginal difference in cost...

Edit : Seems that i should ask some IT guy to provide
me with a better glasses s brand for reading %.....

 

[Puppies04]

What is this "real world" where a Ferrari cost only 100% more
than a VW golf ?...

The comparison , though is not adequate....

Manufacturing price is way higher than the general
purpose car , wich is not the case with differents
CPUs wich have only a marginal difference in cost...

Oh I am sorry I missed an "s" out I meant 100s of %

To answer your 3 points...

1. Manufacturing price of 9XX are way higher than 2500k for example due to much lower numbers of chips sold hence a much smaller run of production aswell as a reduced number of untis to spread R+D cost recuperation over even when zeons are taken into consideration.

2. Purpose of chip is vastly different, no matter what any E-peen owner tells you these are not gaming chips but glorified server chips made avaliable because people cried "moar cores" loud enough.

3. I have no idea what you mean by "CPUs wich have only a marginal difference in cost..." or quite what point you are trying to make.

I'm not saying it is a perfect analogy but it stands casual scrutiny and makes a whole lot more sense than someone trying to make a point for purchasing a BD chip based on the performance and price of 2/3 year old extreme edition chips when the 1156 chips avaliable at the time will still go toe to toe and even beat BD (yes we are still talking about 2/3 years ago) in the majority of tasks.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Hah.

So, right now, as to what's available, we have the 1045t @ $130 and the 6100 @ $135. 95W parts, both of them. I'd say that right now, that's pretty equal.

If the only reason in the last year you bought a Thuban was for good MT throughput, and obviously damn the power (because it didn't really compete either), the 8120 is every so close to the best prices we had for the 1090t and 1100t ($~160-180?). ~Throughput, ~Cost, ~Power (except @ idle).

Just so we're clear, under no circumstance can BD be recommended. Gotcha. Essentially, we are forbidden from buying AMD products, whatever their price. Unless it's a cheap laptop, then it might be OK, maybe.

OK

You're stubborn and clearly don't respond to well thought out arguments, so this may be my last reply to you.

One: the 1045T and 6100 are not similar. The 1045T is faster no matter the workload (only exception is WinRAR), and it consumes a similar amount of power. If you're a good consumer, you'll go for the 1045T.

Two: as said previously, Thuban did favorably against Nehalem/Lynnfield. You gave up single-threaded performance, but not nearly as much as you do now. You also gave up very little MT performance, but the price difference was very big (normal price was $200 for 1055T; $280-300 for 920/860). Power consumption was also comparable between the i7 and X6, but both higher than i5. With Zambezi you're giving up a lot more ST performance since it's a step backwards from Stars while Sandy Bridge gains ST performance in comparison to Nehalem, and prices aren't nearly as competitive.

This is what you had in the past; again, comparing Nehalem Core i7, i5 and Thuban:
Price:
i7: $280-300
i5=$200
X6:$200

Power consumption (system, MT load):
i7=150-160W
i5=100-110W
X6=150-160W

Overclocking:
i7=3.8-4.2GHz
i5=3.8-4.2GHz
X6=3.8-4.2GHz

Performance (single-threaded, both at same clock speed, i7 as baseline with 1.0x):
i7=1.0x
i5=1.0x
X6=0.71x

Performance (multi-threaded, both at same clock speed, i7 as baseline with 1.0x):
i7=1.0x
i5=0.87x
X6=0.87x

Now that I look into it, I retract my thoughts about MT and the i5 and X6. They were pretty much the same there, and they were both close to the i7. The X6 was still a very good value proposition if you only cared for MT, though.

Now, look at it today with Sandy Bridge (K-series) and Bulldozer:

Price:
i5=$220
FX 8=$200

Power consumption (system, MT load):
i5=80-85W
FX 8=160-170W

Overclocking:
i5=4.2-4.8GHz
FX 8=4.2-4.6GHz

Performance (single-threaded, both at same clock speed, i5 as baseline with 1.0x):
i5=1.0x
FX 8=0.58x

Performance (multi-threaded, both at same clock speed, i5 as baseline):
i5=1.0x
FX 8=0.92x

Now, if you read, at the same clock speed Thuban was comparable in MT to Lynnfield i5, consumed 50% more power, and was priced similarly. You lost by almost 30% in single-threaded, though. Hence, it made sense for MT workloads for some people.

Contrast that to now, and you find that Zambezi (8-core) is 8% slower in MT than SB i5 at the same clock speeds, consumes 100% more power, and is priced similarly. You lose by more than 40% in single-threaded, too. In other words: it makes almost no sense because they're priced similarly, the i5 is faster, and consumes half the power. With Thuban you got competitive MT performance at competitive prices but higher power consumption. With Zambezi you're getting lower MT performance at competitive prices at much higher power consumption.

Also, when I say Thuban, I made it clear some posts ago that I was referring to the 1055T and 1075T specifically. The 1090T/1100T were crap for the money.

After I wasted these 30 minutes writing this, if you still don't understand, you have some problems.

 

[jimpatrick]

and yeah another sb vs bd thread reached 4pages in less than 24hours

@topic OP's name is pcgeek and yet undecided,2500k and close the topic.

 

[Abwx]

About 3 ,I forgot to add "manufacturing" to "cost" , sorry.....

As for the majority of tasks , well , what tasks do my PC has to do ?...
Very few , i.e , browsing the net , some video and sound by here and there...

No task is perfs demanding except my eletronic circuits simulator wich require
the most powerfull possible FPUs...