Why would/did you buy an AMD CPU?

[SlowSpyder]

Can't handle the TRUTH, huh?

There are four pages of replies of people using AMD systems, you pick out one to try and justify your odd over-generalization. ()🙂

*edit - Also, I'd like to point out the irony of your signature given your protesting-style posts in this thread over 'morality' issues that have nothing to do with you. Do you have a "God hates AMD!" sign? 🙂

 

[monkeydelmagico]

Last AMD rig I bought was a 955be back in 2010 for my son. Great CPU. At the time it was the budget performance king. We just replaced it this past winter with a used i5 2500k build.

He used most of the parts we had left over to build his friend a super low budget gaming rig. I'm confident it will game and compute well for at least a few more years.

 

[CHADBOGA]

*edit - Also, I'd like to point out the irony of your signature given your protesting-style posts in this thread over 'morality' issues that have nothing to do with you. Do you have a "God hates AMD!" sign? 🙂

You seem to be one very confused individual, which of course would also explain your sig. LOL :awe:

 

[Erenhardt]

You seem to be one very confused individual, which of course would also explain your sig. LOL :awe:

How you get away with things like that is beyond me...:hmm:

 

[SlowSpyder]

You seem to be one very confused individual, which of course would also explain your sig. LOL :awe:

I explained why I have the system I have in post four. No confusion at all.

 

[Blitzvogel]

Honestly, I like to root for AMD but I think the next major build I do will have an Intel CPU. AMD is just too far behind in single-core performance. The Phenom II x4 in my PC has done me well the past 5 years. Jeez, that time went by quick.

What bothers me about Bulldozer and it's successors is that AMD never jumped on wider FPUs for each module (dual 256 bit per module) where even with weaker general use performance than intel, AMD would've been crapping all over i7s in encode/decode and related applications. At least AMD would've had some of the market cornered truly in their favor. Llano cores with 256 bit FPUs would've been nice too. I understand that GPGPU is supposed to take these tasks over from CPUs, but it's been slow going.........

 

[Conroe]

My last AMD was an Opteron 165 in 2006. It overclocked to over 3ghz easily. Before that I had a K6-2, a few A64's and a X2 3800+. AMD really hasn't had anything interest me much since then.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Already had a bunch of AM3 mobos (4x Biostar TA870+, 6x Biostar TA880GB+) running X3 740BEs @ X4.

MC ran a sale on the 1045Ts w/free Gigabyte 78LMT-S2P mobo for $80 + tax. Flipped the X3s and Gigabyte boards for >>> $80, making it a no-brainer upgrade.

Now I won't have to upgrade those systems (fileservers, torrent/test boxes, folks' systems, etc.) for quite awhile 🙂

 

[AllWhacked]

I own an i7-4770K for my main gaming rig and love it, but went with an FX-8320 on my office computer. I went AMD mainly because of the cost savings on CPU and motherboard. While I didn't need a powerful CPU, I did want a feature rich board with six SATA3 ports, USB 3.0 and 7.1 audio. The cheapest Z87 board was $100-$120 at the time and while I could have gone with a LGA 1155 system, the price savings were pretty minimal and I would be spending almost the same amount of money on a dead-end CPU socket.

In contrast I was able to pickup a FX-8320 and Gigabyte GA-970A-D3P motherboard for $155AR versus spending $320-$450 going i5/i7. I could have saved money and gone with a G3220 or i3, but again I would be spending about the same or more than I did with the FX-8320.

Now, energy consumption was a factor in my decision, but I figure that since the system isn't going to be at load 24/7 and only run 1/2 the day at most, then the added cost in electricity would probably be about $10-$15 more a year (maybe even less). in five years I figure I would have spent $50-$75 more on electricity, but I would have gotten to enjoy a better CPU and still spend less than I would have on an i5 or i7. Plus the initial money saved allowed me to afford other things like a SSD, which will pay off better dividends in performance than having gone with a more expensive Intel CPU.

In any case I was impressed enough with my FX-8320, that I bought a second one when I scored a $15AR ECS 970 motherboard. I plan to use this one for a gaming machine dedicated to playing on my big screen. Since I will only run it sparingly whenever I have time or am in the mood to play video games on the home theater, it make no sense to spend a lot on it. I could have gone Intel with a cheapo G3220 or i3, but I'm gambling that with this next generation of console games, that the PC ports will be better optimized for 8-core CPUs. I might be wrong, but it's only a $155 gamble.

 

[pyjujiop]

I've used AMD in my desktop systems for the last 15 years, except for one 18-month period when I upgraded to Core 2 Duo from a Socket 754 AMD system because AMD had nothing even remotely competitive at the time, and I couldn't wait for their new products to come out. Moving from 754 to 939 for multi-core CPU support was a dead end, so I chose an E4300 instead.

I've always done stuff where more cores helps, so my next stop was the Athlon II X4, followed by a Thuban, and then the FX-8350. If I was just running a gaming rig, I'd probably choose Intel, but since I'm not and AMD's CPU's do the job I need them to, I've stuck with AMD. I do own a laptop with Intel inside, but I prefer to buy AMD when they have what I need.

 

[mrmt]

I own an i7-4770K for my main gaming rig and love it, but went with an FX-8320 on my office computer. I went AMD mainly because of the cost savings on CPU and motherboard. While I didn't need a powerful CPU, I did want a feature rich board with six SATA3 ports, USB 3.0 and 7.1 audio. The cheapest Z87 board was $100-$120 at the time and while I could have gone with a LGA 1155 system, the price savings were pretty minimal and I would be spending almost the same amount of money on a dead-end CPU socket.

Just for the curiosity: You decided that you didn't want a dead end socket and gave up LGA1155, and because of that you went for AM3+?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Just for the curiosity: You decided that you didn't want a dead end socket and gave up LGA1155, and because of that you went for AM3+?

LOL. I guess hope springs eternal that Steamroller or Excavator will hit AM3+.

I guess watch AMD's single/dual-socket server parts, to see if they release any CPUs with the newer cores.

One limitation of AM3/AM3+ is that the PCI-E lanes come from the chipset. So if AMD was to spin up a rumored 1090 chipset, with 32 lines of PCI-E 3.0, it would be severely bottlenecked by current HT speed limits.

 

[cytg111]

given performance stagnation in the x86 segment and that it will likely go on for another decade, it makes no sense to save 100$ or even 200$ on a CPU that will likely last you ten years. Get the best and fastest right now (saving 100$ over ten years .. 10$ a year, under 1$ a month? common.).. and atm that is not AMD CPU's

 

[AllWhacked]

Just for the curiosity: You decided that you didn't want a dead end socket and gave up LGA1155, and because of that you went for AM3+

I guess I didn't make my intentions as clear as I thought out in my head. What I meant was that at the time, LGA 1155 wasn't that much cheaper than LGA 1150. So if I was going to spend roughly the same amount of money, it wouldn't make any sense buying into a dead-end socket (LGA 1155) when I could spend a little more and go LGA 1150. Whereas saving $150-$300 (100%-200% savings) going AMD (even if it's also a dead end) made more sense to me economically.

I suppose I could have gotten a high-end motherboard and a low end Intel CPU, as that would have left room to upgrade down the road to a faster CPU, but as I said in the beginning, my intention wasn't to have a powerful computer--just a cheap computer with a full feature motherboard for office work. If the FX-8320 wasn't on sale and I had to pay full price on the AMD motherboard, I would have definitely gone Intel. But for the price I paid, I couldn't pass it up.

given performance stagnation in the x86 segment and that it will likely go on for another decade, it makes no sense to save 100$ or even 200$ on a CPU that will likely last you ten years. Get the best and fastest right now (saving 100$ over ten years .. 10$ a year, under 1$ a month? common.).. and atm that is not AMD CPU's

I would agree on you there if it's just one or 2 computers. But in my case, I have 15 PCs I have to maintain between office, home and extended family. Usually I'm upgrading about 5 PCs at a time before another 3 years later I upgrade again. A $100-$200 savings per machine is $500-$1000 savings. Maybe chump change to some, but every buck counts.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I guess I didn't make my intentions as clear as I thought out in my head. What I meant was that at the time, LGA 1155 wasn't that much cheaper than LGA 1150. So if I was going to spend roughly the same amount of money, it wouldn't make any sense buying into a dead-end socket (LGA 1155) when I could spend a little more and go LGA 1150. Whereas saving $150-$300 (100%-200% savings) going AMD (even if it's also a dead end) made more sense to me economically.

I suppose I could have gotten a high-end motherboard and a low end Intel CPU, as that would have left room to upgrade down the road to a faster CPU, but as I said in the beginning, my intention wasn't to have a powerful computer--just a cheap computer with a full feature motherboard for office work. If the FX-8320 wasn't on sale and I had to pay full price on the AMD motherboard, I would have definitely gone Intel. But for the price I paid, I couldn't pass it up.



I would agree on you there if it's just one or 2 computers. But in my case, I have 15 PCs I have to maintain between office, home and extended family. Usually I'm upgrading about 5 PCs at a time before another 3 years later I upgrade again. A $100-$200 savings per machine is $500-$1000 savings. Maybe chump change to some, but every buck counts.

How could you save 150-300$ on AMD and get anywhere near the same performance? Please show me the calculation. Because you would have to have gotten the entire AMD for close to free.

 

[nemesismk2]

I have always owned an AMD CPU but have always tried out Intel CPU from time to time to see if i would be better off with Intel rather than AMD but so far have always decided to stick with AMD.

 

[AllWhacked]

How could you save 150-300$ on AMD and get anywhere near the same performance? Please show me the calculation. Because you would have to have gotten the entire AMD for close to free.

My main purpose in my office build was to get a full featured board with 6 SATA3, USB 3.0 front and rear and 7.1 audio with digital optical out and spend as little as possible. As mentioned, I could have gotten a Z87 board and a Pentium G3220. Prices then were around $100-$120 for a board and $70 for the CPU. Whereas I got the FX-8320 for $100 and the board for $55.

In terms of performance, yes the FX-8320 doesn't do too well in games. But in content creation and encoding it scores between an i5 and i7. Since it's purpose wasn't for gaming, I figure if I wanted similar performance in that segment, I would need to spend around $220 for an i5-4670K or ~$340 for i7-4770K and ~$100-$120 for a Z87 motherboard. That put my cost differential between getting AMD vs Intel at around ~$150-$300.

 

[ShintaiDK]

My main purpose in my office build was to get a full featured board with 6 SATA3, USB 3.0 front and rear and 7.1 audio with digital optical out and spend as little as possible. As mentioned, I could have gotten a Z87 board and a Pentium G3220. Prices then were around $100-$120 for a board and $70 for the CPU. Whereas I got the FX-8320 for $100 and the board for $55.

In terms of performance, yes the FX-8320 doesn't do too well in games. But in content creation and encoding it scores between an i5 and i7. Since it's purpose wasn't for gaming, I figure it I wanted similar performance in that segment, I would need to spend around $220 for an i5-4670K or ~$340 for i7-4770K and ~$100-$120 for a Z87 motherboard. That put my cost differential between getting AMD vs Intel at around ~$150-$300.

You dont need a Z87 board for that. You dont need a K model either without overclocking. Boards start at 45$ on Newegg.

A 8320 is 160$ on Newegg. A 4570 for example is 200$.

 

[AllWhacked]

You dont need a Z87 board for that. You dont need a K model either without overclocking. Boards start at 45$ on Newegg.

A 8320 is 160$ on Newegg. A 4570 for example is 200$.

The prices quoted were prices available around Black Friday (11/26). Here's a link to the ad on the CPU I was able to pricematch - http://dimages.bfi0.com/images/4800012/12327866/1125_AMD3rdGEN.gif

The motherboard was $55 at NewEgg. At the time, the cheapest board that supported six SATA 3 ports, front and rear USB 3.0 ports, and digital optical output were $100 or more. I think there was a single H87 board made by ASRock and the rest were Z87 motherboards that met those specs.

As for buying K processors, true I didn't have to buy K, but I find it's easier to resell K processors. Also when comparing apples and oranges, if I was getting an AMD chip that is overclockable, it's best to compare them to CPUs that are equally overclockable.

 

[rvborgh]

If you love AMD, and are disappointed with their latest desktop offerings (which are kind of doggy if you ask me), then sometimes going with their 2-4 year server parts can be a nice solution for a home PC. Especially true as the data centers retire server chips - you will find them on Ebay for very reasonable prices.

As an example, I retired my dual processor Tyan S2927E based rig at work in lieu of a new i7 4770/Asus mobo. After some research, upgraded it with the dual 6 core Opteron 8439SE Istanbuls, and i was amazed at the performance (almost 5x faster than the dual 2212s after the upgrade). Faster than my new i7 in my day to day productivity stuff (ie compiler builds), and about 10% less cpu utilization when running my own multithreaded software. With more available real cores the system just seems to have more umph.

These processors can sometimes be had for $110 or so each. Decent dual socket F mobo with a Istanbul support can be had for around $100. i went with socket F since that is what i already had... but if i had to do it again i'd likely go with a dual socket G34 board, with some Magny Cours 6100 series Opterons. This gives a decent upgrade path for going with dual Piledriver based Opterons when their prices come down.

Unlike Socket F, Socket G34 isn't a dead socket, and so there should be some more upgrades in the future.

The sad part of this is that even the 2009 vintage Socket F Opteron performance beats out AMDs best desktop FX offerings today in just about all the productivity benchmarks, and completely makes the APUs look like toys.

Isn't it ridiculous that an FX-9590 only scores 7.87 in Cinebench R11.5, whereas an unoverclocked 2009 vintage dual 8439SE almost hits 10? (and will hit around 10.5 with a tiny overclock to 3 ghz?). Something is seriously wrong with this picture.

In addition server hardware is just rock solid compared to the desktop stuff.

i'm looking forward to getting a GTX 760 in this setup... so i can post up some gaming benchmarks. But for a home PC a 12 core dual Opteron setup rocks, and the performance is fantastic for the $$$ spent.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Well, to be fair you're using 12x 2009 cores vs. 4 current FX modules (not to mention platform cost). There will be some workloads where the FX is faster, some where it is slower. It just depends on what you do with it.

I really liked my hexcore PhII, it was a great cpu!

 

[rvborgh]

i definitely agree with you... however, in the Opteron's favor, software is more and more being coded to run across multiple cores, so this single core disadvantage will be leveraged away - advantage Opteron 🙂

Just for giggles, i just ran the 7-zip benchmark... performance was equal to i7 4770 on the compression side (around 20k MIPs) and faster by around 50% on decompression (32.5k MIPs). FX-8350 is faster on compression, slower on decompression (by around 8k MIPs) i'll rerun it again tonight (had some stuff running in the background)...

Yes i agree about Phenom II, what got me on this dual Opteron kick was seeing the results for an overclocked Phenom X6 1100T. i figured why not double up on K10 cores? i was originally going to go with a 4930k, but i really wanted to stay AMD.

Well, to be fair you're using 12x 2009 cores vs. 4 current FX modules (not to mention platform cost). There will be some workloads where the FX is faster, some where it is slower. It just depends on what you do with it.

I really liked my hexcore PhII, it was a great cpu!

 

[TeknoBug]

I long for AMD to do another line like the Thuban, 6 true cores instead of 3 cores/modules- I still have my X6 1090T sitting around. On the other hand, if AMD does a Steamroller version of the Athlon X4 like the 760K, I'm eager to see how it performs. I already tested out an A10 7850K and it's pretty good.

 

[blackened23]

My main purpose in my office build was to get a full featured board with 6 SATA3, USB 3.0 front and rear and 7.1 audio with digital optical out and spend as little as possible. As mentioned, I could have gotten a Z87 board and a Pentium G3220. Prices then were around $100-$120 for a board and $70 for the CPU. Whereas I got the FX-8320 for $100 and the board for $55.

In terms of performance, yes the FX-8320 doesn't do too well in games. But in content creation and encoding it scores between an i5 and i7. Since it's purpose wasn't for gaming, I figure if I wanted similar performance in that segment, I would need to spend around $220 for an i5-4670K or ~$340 for i7-4770K and ~$100-$120 for a Z87 motherboard. That put my cost differential between getting AMD vs Intel at around ~$150-$300.

Or you can do what a normal person does and get an H81 board with a G3220 instead of trying to boost your argument with a Z87 board with a Haswell Pentium......seriously who does that. Z87 isn't anywhere close to needed with a pentium, give me a break. You can get H81 + G3220 for 100$ on sale, which I actually just did a few weeks back. I think that promo has ended, but nonetheless it is still cheap for a great platform: Onboard audio, Gigabit lan, USB 3.0, SATA6g, everything I need for my HTPC. But Z87.? Please.

It's always the fringe arguments to make the case for the AMD CPU. Z87 for a Haswell Pentium. Please. Like anyone with a shred of common sense would ever do that. Or is it just to boost a forum argument to put the AMD CPU in a good light. Similar to the arguments about PC gaming on an 8350 with AV scans and a HDD defrag going in the background. Or you can do something really interesting. H81 + G3220 (newegg had a 112$ combo last week) with a 150$ dGPU for around 260$ shipped with free 2 day shoprunner. Which is what a normal person would buy in that situation. Instead of Z87 when they're not overclocking and are using a 40-60$ celeron/pentium. Who the HECK would do that. Sometimes you really do hear it all on this forum, I can't eyeroll enough.

Anyway, AMD does have some good budget CPUs, despite some deficiencies due to poor IPC. Like it or not that does show in a lot of applications and it is what it is. Inconsistent CPUs that perform good in one app and then perform horribly in another app due to poor IPC. That's just the situation,period, for the typical user AMD make sense at 100$ or lower pricepoints sometimes but at 200$+? Not really. At 200$+ you want consistency, and the FX8xxx just don't have that consistency that i3/i5/i7 have. However, some of their offerings are decent despite this. However, making fringe arguments to put the AMD CPU in a good light. Such as Z87 with a celeron or pentium. Christ. Give me a break.

 

[coercitiv]

Or you can do what a normal person does and get an H81 board with a G3220 instead of trying to boost your argument with a Z87 board with a Haswell Pentium......seriously who does that.

H81 doesn't have 6 SATA3 ports, but there's still H87 to consider before jumping to Z87.