The FX-8320

[P39Airacobra]

Well I was disappointed. It did do ok and it really is a great CPU especially for it's price. But I was expecting to get more out of it at stock speed. It turned out it was about the same as my old i5 750 at stock speed, in gaming it was the same maybe a tad better, And in regular apps like browsing and other apps, It was actually slower. So the 8320 must be overclocked to get good performance. Well I do not like the idea of water cooling at all. I have seen too many upsetting posts and videos about a liquid cooler leaking and ruining expensive components. And the Hyper 212 is just too bulky and my current SilentX 80mm is not really any better than the stock AMD cooler. So to make a long story short (too late) I sold the 8320 and 990 board to a friend and I ordered a i5 3470 with a Z77 board. And I must say the 3470 is a major improvement over the old i5 750 and the FX-8320. And the best part is it runs cool and quiet, And I can just leave it at stock speed. It performs very well, I have noticed my FPS has improved and is more consistent giving me much better high, minimum and average FPS. Also the i5 3470 and the Z77 motherboard was actually a little cheaper than what I paid for the 8320 and 990 board. Also it can be overclocked a little. The multiplier is locked past 40, But you can still get it to 4ghz or 3.8 on all cores. But stock is good enough for me, The turbo will take it up from 3.2ghz to 3.6ghz if needed. I love it. I know some will say I should have went with a haswell, And I did find the i5 4430 and i5 4460 at the same price, But the 3470 is a tad faster than the 4430 and is about even with the 4460, And the selection of motherboards for the ivy cpu was better and cheaper. And besides ivy and haswell are so close in performance when ivy becomes obsolete haswell will be obsolete too. And yes I know a broadwell CPU will work in a Z87 board. But by the time I need to upgrade I am sure there will be something better than broadwell by then.

 

[ironmask]

Are you basing this on benchmarks or real life usage? I have an 8320 and it runs neck and neck with my i7 4700qm and my wife's i5. In benchmarks the i7 would beat it, but that's about all.

 

[P39Airacobra]

Real life usage. I never said that it was actually slower, I only said at stock it was slower. I am sure the real performance of the 8320 does not open up unless you overclock it. I just wanted something to perform well at stock.

 

[ShintaiDK]

The FX series is just slow, unless you OC and your application(s) supports 6-8 threads.

 

[mrmt]

Well I was disappointed. It did do ok and it really is a great CPU especially for it's price. But I was expecting to get more out of it at stock speed.

You get what you pay for, and you got just that, a cheaper alternative to an Intel processor. AMD FX processor are power hogs with anemic single threaded performance, in order to make up for the anemic performance of the smaller, inefficient cores, AMD puts lots of them in a CPU, so in the end MT tasks are "ok" but ST tasks (if you game, for example) are just bad on FX.

Are you basing this on benchmarks or real life usage? I have an 8320 and it runs neck and neck with my i7 4700qm and my wife's i5. In benchmarks the i7 would beat it, but that's about all.

That's because, as you described in the other posts, your workloads are mostly multithreaded, which are a best case scenario for AMD FX (but still sucks big time from a perf/watt perspective). But since Cobra is playing games, he should be feeling how slow the FX is because we should be talking about ST performance.

For his kind of workload, you basically have to overclock the hell out of FX processors just to get the stock performance of Intel processors.

 

[tential]

If you aren't OCing an FX processor, it's pointless to purchase it. The best part of the FX line is you get a cheap processor that can OC quite well.

If you aren't OCing, there are better intel options.

 

[ironmask]

You get what you pay for, and you got just that, a cheaper alternative to an Intel processor. AMD FX processor are power hogs with anemic single threaded performance, in order to make up for the anemic performance of the smaller, inefficient cores, AMD puts lots of them in a CPU, so in the end MT tasks are "ok" but ST tasks (if you game, for example) are just bad on FX.



That's because, as you described in the other posts, your workloads are mostly multithreaded, which are a best case scenario for AMD FX (but still sucks big time from a perf/watt perspective). But since Cobra is playing games, he should be feeling how slow the FX is because we should be talking about ST performance.

For his kind of workload, you basically have to overclock the hell out of FX processors just to get the stock performance of Intel processors.

As I mentioned in my other thread, I game very little, but the games that I have been playing-- BF4 and Titanfall, it's not slow at all. So maybe I am missing something or I am not gaming hard enough.

 

[BSim500]

Well I was disappointed. It did do ok and it really is a great CPU especially for it's price. But I was expecting to get more out of it at stock speed. It turned out it was about the same as my old i5 750 at stock speed, in gaming it was the same maybe a tad better, And in regular apps like browsing and other apps, It was actually slower.

Well the core problem with a lot of AMD chips is "more weak cores" = larger performance inconsistency due to variable threading in software/games. You could buy an FX-8350, and admire the way it beats an i5 in Cinebench one minute, then watch it get beaten by a cheap Pentium / i3 in some games the next minute.

And besides ivy and haswell are so close in performance when ivy becomes obsolete haswell will be obsolete too. And yes I know a broadwell CPU will work in a Z87 board. But by the time I need to upgrade I am sure there will be something better than broadwell by then.

:thumbsup: I'm pretty much doing the same thing with the same reasoning - i5-3570 (non K) running at its max 4.2GHz = Runs every game superbly, and I can honestly see myself hanging onto it for another 2-3 generations if 5-10% is the new "tick-tock upgrade" result each time. A lot of people are starting to skip 1-2 even 3 generations now between upgrades. Subjectively, many people don't even 'feel' an upgrade (outside of benchmarks without measuring it) until there's a consistent +20-30% difference (time taken, fps, etc). And if you're not OC-ing your chip, you can often undervolt it making it run really cool & quiet. I got my "77w stock" i5-3570 down to 50-55w (measured) load @ 4GHz with a -0.12v offset. Temps never exceed 45-50c in heavy gaming / 55c Prime on a simple 212 EVO. Cannot think of any reason to 'upgrade' that kind of chip until there's at least a clear +25% per-clock/watt improvement.

 

[SPBHM]

even at 5GHz the FX will not be able to beat 3.3GHz sandy bridge (from 3.5 years ago) in some programs (while Vishera is competitive at the same clock when running 8t programs), so... yes... it's no surprise you noticed a difference from 3.5GHz FX to 3.3GHz ivy bridge, still, I think the 8320 should always be overclocekd to 4-4.2GHz

this inconsistent performance + power requirements are a very strong argument against AM3+

 

[frozentundra123456]

As I mentioned in my other thread, I game very little, but the games that I have been playing-- BF4 and Titanfall, it's not slow at all. So maybe I am missing something or I am not gaming hard enough.

BF4 is well optimized for multiple cores, so it would perform relatively well on an FX. Titanfall I dont think is particularly demanding. The 8320 is not really "slow" it just doesnt perform as well as an i5 or i7 over a wide variety of games, especially at stock.

 

[Gikaseixas]

If you aren't OCing an FX processor, it's pointless to purchase it. The best part of the FX line is you get a cheap processor that can OC quite well.

If you aren't OCing, there are better intel options.

Fully agree with this
My FX 8350 @4.6GHZ delivers in every area, at the cost of higher heat and consumption than Haswell i7's. I've said it before and I'll say it again; AMD's bigger problem at this point is the lack of a quality and updated platform, the 990 boards feel very sluggish (SATA performance mainly) when compared to Intel's Z87. The FX is a great processor but released too late IMO, it's up against a much attractive Intel lineup.

 

[Deders]

Did you ever overclock the i5-750? how would you say the overclocked performance compared to an overclocked 8230 in gaming?