Best AMD FX cpu for the GTX 970?

[SteveGrabowski0]

Also, the difference between the 5960x and 4670k is roughly 20%, which is larger than the difference between the 8350 and 4670K at 17%.  But for some reason people will say that an 8350 is a significantly worse choice than the 4670K and then turn around and say the 5960x is "unnecessary".  The performance difference is the same, you're just drawing your line in the sand at a different point.

 

I don't get when people say the 5960x is no better than a 4790k. If I had a stupid amount of disposable income I would definitely take the 5960x over anything else.

[Faceman]

What sgloux fails to mention, is that for FX processors to even be stable at stock speeds, they require high end motherboards.  You cannot compare just the price of the processor.

 

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/jsYCzy
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/jsYCzy/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  ($125.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler  ($26.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard  ($72.00 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $224.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-05-25 19:07 EDT-0400

 

Vs.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/c7WWt6
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/c7WWt6/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($163.95 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B85M-DS3H Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($41.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $205.93
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-05-25 19:08 EDT-0400

[sgloux3470]

good luck cooling a OCed AMD CPU that already overheats without high-end cooling

All of 30 seconds in the BIOS.

 

 

Stock voltage is 1.3 V.  That's a pretty trivial increase and a far cry away from the 9590. (Which is way overvolted in the factory.  No one needs 1.5 V for 4.7 GHz.)

 

 

What sgloux fails to mention, is that for FX processors to even be stable at stock speeds, they require high end motherboards.  You cannot compare just the price of the processor.

 

 

 

For a locked i3 or i5 you're correct, you can get away with much cheaper motherboards there.  

 

But for a 4670K or 4770K you're going to be buying similarly high end motherboards/coolers anyway and a direct cost comparison makes sense.

 

 

[mckrackin5324]

Just to add a lil sump'm sump'm here....

 

I have an 8320 and it will not run on 1.3v. Will not..as in blue screen every single time it's powered on in 10 minutes or less. Stock speed of 3.5GHz.

It will not run stable on anything under 1.4v. Even then it can't make it through five minutes of Prime 95.

 

I have to run 1.45v to get a completely stable run. Stock speed of 3.5GHz.

 

The odd thing is that after getting it to run stable at stock speed,it will run at 4.7GHz easily at the same voltage. 

 

It's a great CPU. Not just for the money but overall.

Just because a Lamborghini will outperform a Corvette...that doesn't mean the Corvette is a bad car. One is just a little better and a LOT more expensive.  

[FLUFFYJELLO]

Here you go for all you know it alls, you're telling me that's a bottleneck lol

It's not the same on all games and I admit that, but those games probably don't take use of all the cores.

This is exactly our point. *Most games do not make use of more than 4 cores*. And because the IPC of FX processors is so low to begin with, it falls behind even more when games don't make use of those cores. And even in games that do use its cores, it still loses to Intel processors WITH LESS CORES. And for you too say I haven't tested it is ignorant. I made an entire thread comparing the performance of the 6350 to the i5 after having switched. Night and day difference. And if you had read @Faceman 's huge spoiler, you would have seen it displayed prominently. But obviously you DIDN'T READ. Hypocrisy must be your forte considering you don't seem to follow your own advice. I can call BS all I want because I've done the comparison. Guess what? The FX series falls flat on its face.

Deal with the facts, don't hide behind your fanboy responses, and stop suffering from subjective stupidity. People that spout nonsense like what you've been doing need to stop posting altogether; at least when it comes to this subject. You mislead the uninformed with your uneducated bias, and you can't be held accountable when they become unsatisfied with their build because they made the wrong choice based on your falsities. Just stop.

[Thor829]

ok if some one was to ask the same question about a i5-3570k or a i5-2500k what would you say? as we can see in most bench marks that these processors perform similar to a 8350. http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-3570K-vs-AMD-FX-8350now that is only a few examples but no one would say anything about these processors but one that is AMD but performs similar they will tear to shreds. And i will admit that single core performance is way stronger on intel but if thats all you need get a pentium g3258 and overclock the snot out of it. In most situations today that would be fine but for any thing that takes more than two threads you will suffer be it games or what ever. Now i have a 8350 and i would love to have a intel system as well and i do plan on doing so next year unless zen is actually good but who knows. Now on point i would get a 8350 and hope its binned well. i was running for a long time on stock voltage and 4.7 ghz i got lucky. 

[arronleeds]

i got called a fanboy for stating an fx-8350 doesnt bottleneck a 970? are you for real lmfao, i dont own an amd product anymore, i have an i7 4790 and a gtx 970..... good one on the name calling, child.

[FLUFFYJELLO]

ok if some one was to ask the same question about a i5-3570k or a i5-2500k what would you say? as we can see in most bench marks that these processors perform similar to a 8350. http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-3570K-vs-AMD-FX-8350now that is only a few examples but no one would say anything about these processors but one that is AMD but performs similar they will tear to shreds. And i will admit that single core performance is way stronger on intel but if thats all you need get a pentium g3258 and overclock the snot out of it. In most situations today that would be fine but for any thing that takes more than two threads you will suffer be it games or what ever. Now i have a 8350 and i would love to have a intel system as well and i do plan on doing so next year unless zen is actually good but who knows. Now on point i would get a 8350 and hope its binned well. i was running for a long time on stock voltage and 4.7 ghz i got lucky.

CPUBoss uses 2-3 games and a bunch of unreliable synthetic benchmarks. It is considered a non-credible source by the majority of this forum due to it's lack of testing real world performance.

[FLUFFYJELLO]

i got called a fanboy for stating an fx-8350 doesnt bottleneck a 970? are you for real lmfao, i dont own an amd product anymore, i have an i7 4790 and a gtx 970..... good one on the name calling, child.

You post nothing but false information and are fighting a losing battle trying to prove something that isn't remotely true. What are you if not a fanboy? Ignorant? No, we already proved you wrong and you refused to accept it. So that makes you stupid by definition. I didn't want to outright say it; earlier I heavily implied that if you refused to accept the facts you would be considered so. Since you obviously don't get it and will continue to post false information, I can also consider you a troll. You need to not troll on this forum, it's specifically stated in the LTT code of conduct.

(On a side note, if my comments are considered "abusive behavior" by any mods, I do not apologize for treating a troll with hostility. They should only ever be dealt with in this way.)

[Faceman]

ok if some one was to ask the same question about a i5-3570k or a i5-2500k what would you say? as we can see in most bench marks that these processors perform similar to a 8350. http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-3570K-vs-AMD-FX-8350now that is only a few examples but no one would say anything about these processors but one that is AMD but performs similar they will tear to shreds. And i will admit that single core performance is way stronger on intel but if thats all you need get a pentium g3258 and overclock the snot out of it. In most situations today that would be fine but for any thing that takes more than two threads you will suffer be it games or what ever. Now i have a 8350 and i would love to have a intel system as well and i do plan on doing so next year unless zen is actually good but who knows. Now on point i would get a 8350 and hope its binned well. i was running for a long time on stock voltage and 4.7 ghz i got lucky. 

CPUBoss is a terrible website to use, do not use it to compare anything.  Check actual benchmarks of games/programs that you plan to use.

 

An i5-2500k is still so much stronger than even an FX9.  Single core performance is incredibly important even today, but it is not the only thing to be concerned with.

 

It makes absolutely no sense to buy an FX processor in 2015 unless the purpose of the machine is for workstation related tasks that benefit from having 8 threads.

 

Going to post this again so you can read it:

 

If you enjoy games like MMOs(ArcheAge, WoW, Guild Wars2, World of Tanks, Planetside2 etc..) DayZ, ARMA, GTA V, Dead Rising 3, Indies, RTS, Emulators, etc.. the FX will fall WAY behind the equally and sometimes lower priced Intel processors, and in some instances, become unplayable* unless you are fine with massive, recurring, constant, and noticeable FPS drops when the action starts. 

 

*Everyone has a different definition of what unplayable is, so don't over analyze and exaggerate my wording.  What is unplayable to me, might not be unplayable to you, but what we can all agree on is that no one likes FPS drops that makes your game hitch, stutter, or freeze, and you shouldn't be ok with those side effects because an Intel processor won't give you those unwanted side effects nearly as often as you get them with FX processors.

 

Then there are other games that are playable, but no where near as fluid as they would be on Intel because minimum framerates(which are the most important), drop much more significantly with FX processors.  A few examples are: Starcraft, Skyrim, Civilization V, Far Cry 4, Assassin's Creed, Metal Gear Solid etc..

 

And of course there are a lot of games where the FX will perform similar to Intel because the games just run on anything.  Tomb Raider comes to mind, but there are others.

 

For the a lot of games, the FX will be sufficient.  But why would you want to spend more or the same amount of money on an old, and inferior product, when you can get a new and superior product for the same amount of money.  Why play 4 out of 5 games well, when you can play 5 out of 5 games well, with no bottlenecking, lower energy costs, and future upgrade paths.  Minimum FPS is the most important FPS measurement.  Bad minimums mean less fluidity in gameplay.  Sometimes I see FX owners saying, "I hit 60fps just fine".  While you might be capable of hitting 60fps on FX, the minimums are going to be lower, and that results in a noticeable detachment from immersion which is what constant 60+fps feels like.  An Intel processor is often the difference between a fluid experience and a stuttery one.  With Intel, your minimums are much higher, meaning a more fluid and immersive game play experience. 

 

You will see below that even the Intel i3(which is less expensive) is outperforming the FX6/8/9s in many games, and the locked i5(costs the same) is running away with it.  There have also been a lot of new, modern, multi-threaded games that are performing poorly on the FX platform because of the poor per-core performance.  More on that in some spoilers below.

 

I always advocate the right tool for the job, and for some jobs, the FX processor is the best tool for the job, but you need to be aware of what your priorities are when building your machine.  If your priority is gaming, then Intel is the clear winner regardless of price point. I don't hate AMD, and I have experience with both processors, and have owned both Intel and AMD.  I currently own Intel because it is objectively the better processor.

 

I hope that when Zen is released in 2016 that it will bring AMD back into relevancy.  It doesn't even have to be better than Intel, it just has to be competitive.  If its performance, namely single core, is close to Intel's while remaining at a lower price, then I will likely switch to AMD because I am all about price to performance.  The problem is, price to performance for AMD doesn't exist right now.

 

My goal here is to help others by avoiding costly mistakes that so many before them have made. After being on this forum for over a year, I am seeing so many users complaining about their gaming experience with FX processors that it is time to put a stop to it, and the best way to do that is nip it in the bud and recommend the correct tool for the job.  To do that, I and a bunch of other forum members created this post as a one-link reference to all of the information we have gathered and continue to gather on the subject.  This is an ever growing and constantly updated post.

 

The most common problems with the FX processors are unsatisfactory results in games, VRM throttling, and GPU bottlenecking.  In my links below I will show you many different, yet conclusive results compiled from respected hardware reviewers and other members of this forum.  I hope to paint a picture as to why the FX processor is objectively the inferior option and why it is a bad choice for a gaming machine especially when an equally, or lower priced option is available.  I want you to make an educated decision based on information available without taking emotion and bias into this.  I am about to present to you that information.  There are some positives to the FX processors that I will talk about, but gaming is not one of them.

 

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Even this supposedly very good multi-threaded game, Call of Duty:Advanced Warefare runs better on an i3 than an FX9

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Really pitiful when modern games are playing so much better on an i3 than an FX9.

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You have to OC an FX8 to 5Ghz just to match an i5-4440 at stock in BF4 multiplayer with an R9 290X.

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Even Mantle doesn't bridge the gap.  Too bad they don't show the minimums in this above graph.

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Very modern, multi-threaded game that does take advantage of all cores available, yet you have to OC an FX to 5Ghz to MATCH an i3.

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This one above is Witcher 2

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These are just a few games, and obviously skewed towards Intel, but my point is to try and illustrate that some games run very poorly on the weak cores on FX processors.  Even these new games that are well multithreaded are running better on i3s than FX8s.  If you can find benchmarks from multiple sources that show something else, please share because in all of my research, I have not found any. 

 

What benchmarks fail to show is in-game performance.  There is no substitute for actually playing these games on both processors.  Now, I will admit I haven't played all of the games listed above, but in the games I did play, there was a noticeable stutter that would happen.  It didn't happen in all games, but it happened often enough for me to be displeased with it.  My friend who owns the FX8 simply said "You get used to it."  This is the wrong attitude to have.

 

Now...why buy a processor that can only play 4 out of 5 games, when you can pay the same and play 5 out of 5 games without issue?  In the 18 gaming graphs above that show both the FX8 processor and the 4th Gen Intel i3, the i3 is performing better than the FX8 in 16 of the games!  In not a single game does the i5 perform worse than the FX8.  A locked i5 + H81/B85 motherboard can be purchased for less than the cost of an FX8 + 8+2 VRM Phase Motherboard.  I will show that below in another spoiler.

 

 

Look through all of these sources... the i3 is handing it to the FX8s and FX9s in so many games!

Benchmarks:

http://www.hardcorew...-4340-review/2/

http://www.hardwarep...8-games-tested/

http://www.tomshardw...cpu,3929-7.html

http://www.anandtech...w-vishera-95w/3

http://techreport.com/review/23750/amd-fx-8350-processor-reviewed/14

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fgamegpu.ru%2Ftest-video-cards%2Figry-2014-goda-protiv-protsessorov-test-gpu.html

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fpclab.pl%2Fart57842.html

http://benchmarkreviews.com/24051/amd-fx-8320e-am3-processor-performance-review/14/

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i3-4340-vs-AMD-FX-8320E/2877vs2985

 

 

 

"To put it nicely, the FX-8370E is a true middle-of-the-road CPU. Using it only makes sense as long as the graphics card you choose comes from a similar performance segment.

Depending on the game in question, AMD’s new processor has the potential to keep you happy around the AMD Radeon R9 270X/285 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 or 660 Ti level.

A higher- or even high-end graphics card doesn’t make sense, as pairing it with AMD's FX-8370E simply limits the card's potential."

 

"In terms of raw single-core performance the flagship AMD FX-8350 is lagging behind intel's processor line-up by over two generations. The PassMark Single Thread scores for the i5-2500K vs the FX-8350 are 1863 to 1520 which shows that in terms of raw per-core processing the FX-8350 is lagging the two year old i5 by 23%. Where the AMD FX makes up is on multi-core performance, with a score of 9156 vs 6745, the AMD leads the Intel 2500K by 36% making it the far more capable multi-threaded server orientated performer. The AMD is also cheaper but significantly more power hungry which counts strongly against it as a sever proposition. The FX-8350 could be a good fit for specific server use cases but for general consumer use, which is single and dual core intensive, Intel's two year old i5-2500K will deliver better performance."

 

"When AMD first released CPUs for their AM3+ platform we at OC3D were not overly impressed, behind the hype of AMD's "Bulldozer" architecture was some very power hungry, hot running and under-performing CPUs. When AMD's second generation of FX CPUs, Piledriver, was released AMD had lessened a lot of these issues, but many of those flaws still remained."

 

"This is a huge result – it wasn’t until we used a Haswell core CPU that the R9 280X  was able to deliver consistent frame times and a 60 FPS frame rate in Assassin’s Creed IV. All three AMD CPUs we used – even the FX 8350 – and the Ivy Bridge Core i3 would deliver a sub 60 FPS frame rate, with frame spikes throughout the benchmark run.

In this case, the Core i3 4340 allows the R9 280X GPU to run at maximum potential, just like the Core i5 (and Core i7 would)."

 

"My benchmarks show that the Core i3-4360 is faster than the FX-8320E in virtually every test on a per-core basis, you’re probably never going to see this differential unless you spend quite a lot of time in benchmark-land. Benchmark-land is fun, kind of like taking your car to the drag strip to see what it will do. But, like your quarter-mile time, it often doesn’t have that much correlation with real-world performance."

 

 

"Pop over to the gaming scatter, though, and the picture changes dramatically. There, the FX-8350 is the highest-performance AMD desktop processor to date for gaming, finally toppling the venerable Phenom II X4 980. Yet the FX-8350's gaming performance almost exactly matches that of the Core i3-3225, a $134 Ivy Bridge-based processor. Meanwhile, the Core i5-3470 delivers markedly superior gaming performance for less money than the FX-8350. The FX-8350 isn't exactly bad for video games—its performance was generally acceptable in our tests. But it is relatively weak compared to the competition.

This strange divergence between the two performance pictures isn't just confined to gaming, of course. The FX-8350 is also relatively pokey in image processing applications, in SunSpider, and in the less widely multithreaded portions of our video encoding tests. Many of these scenarios rely on one or several threads, and the FX-8350 suffers compared to recent Intel chips in such cases. Still, the contrast between the FX-8350 and the Sandy/Ivy Bridge chips isn't nearly as acute as it was with the older FX processors. Piledriver's IPC gains and that 4GHz base clock have taken the edge off of our objections.

The other major consideration here is power consumption, and really, the FX-8350 isn't even the same class of product as the Ivy Bridge Core i5 processors on this front. There's a 48W gap between the TDP ratings of the Core i5 parts and the FX-8350, but in our tests, the actual difference at the wall socket between two similarly configured systems under load was over 100W. That gap is large enough to force the potential buyer to think deeply about the class of power supply, case, and CPU cooler he needs for his build. One could definitely get away with less expensive components for a Core i5 system."

 

"The FX-8370E stretches its legs a little in terms of minimum frame rates, particularly in SLI, however it is handily beaten by the i3-4330."

 

"Average frametimes did not do AMD’s processors any justice either. As we already said the game was fluid with i7 and i5’s, and somewhat playable with the i3 processor line. When we switched to FX CPUs not only did we have worse framerate but the gameplay was simply put, laggy."

 

 

The Bulldozer architecture was released in 2011, but it had been in development for many years.  It basically reused an old architecture that had already been phased out years ago.  They reused it, and marketed it well to trick users into thinking it was something spectacular.  "How could an 8 core, 4Ghz CPU possibly be bad?"  One word:  Architecture.  This CPU is not good now, and it wasn't even good when it was released.  Please give this article a read because it does a much better job of explaining this than I will ever be able to.  Analyzing Bulldozer

 

The architecture behind the FX CPUs cannot keep up with high end graphics cards that require strong cores to consistently feed the card.  Monitor your GPU load in your games and you will quickly see that your GPU is not running at 90%+ if you own a high end graphics card paired with an FX processor.  Use an FX with a mid range GPU all you want, that is fine and you won't limit the card's potential and makes for a much more balanced rig. If you get into the upper echelon of GPUs, that is when you are holding your card back by the FX.  This also doesn't bode well for the future because as GPUs get more powerful, the FX will simply not be able to keep up with even mid-range GPUs.  As of now, the highest end GPU I would pair with an FX that won't limit its potential is an R9 280/GTX770.

 

There are very few games that are very well multithreaded, and even in those games, such as CoD:AW, an i3 is still beating out an FX9.  The reason behind this is because games typically have one main thread, Core #0.  When this main thread is being choked by poor single core performance, the rest of the threads struggle.  So even in these really well multithreaded PC port games, we are still seeing Intel processors beating out FXs because their poor IPC simply can't give as good as results on that main thread.

 

Single core performance is the most important thing when evaluating a processor for desktop use. "The majority of consumer applications (MS World, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and most games) although multi threaded rarely utilize more than one thread at a time.  The single core benchmarks can be seen as a reasonable real world test for typical consumer workloads."

 

When AMD sends out R9 290Xs for review, or release new drivers they send out Intel i7s along with them because they know their FX processors can't power their high end GPUs to their max potential.  That's a big red flag.

-Source

 

 

Check out LTT's own Cinebench Scores:

 

 

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-LTT's Cinebench Database

These FXs are overclocked to 4.8Ghz and 5.3Ghz! and still fall well behind Intel's offerings.

 

Even when you pair the FX with a mid range GPU, it doesn't change the fact that some games are largely CPU bound and require strong IPC.  Parallelism doesn't exist in games.  There are not many, if any highly repetitive calculations going on in games that the CPU can guess what is coming next like in video editing or rendering.  They have tricked you into thinking that more cores and higher Ghz is what matters for your CPU, when it all comes down to the architecture and instructions per cycle. 

 

Websites like cpubenchmark.net have a suite of synthetic benchmarks that they run each processor through to spit out a score.  Going by this, the FX8 outperforms the i5 because those synthetic tests are highly repetitive calculations that benefit from more cores.  People see that result and automatically think "Oh, the FX8 is a much stronger processor than the i5."  And in some tasks it is, gaming is just not one of them.

 

A man(Faa) who knows a lot more about this than me did some research and found, to the surprise of no one, that games just aren't using more than 4 threads, and the ones that do, aren't benefiting as much as you would think from those extra cores/threads.  I'm going to link you over to his research that shows how cores/threads have an impact on gaming performance.  It is a great read with a lot of interesting information, as well as a few links to other more reputable review websites doing testing on many popular mainstream games.  For the most part, games are using 2-4 threads.  And the few that can take advantage of more threads, aren't really benefiting from them. Of course in some games, the FX8 is going to do much better than the FX4, but looking over benchmarks from the gaming graphs above, and all of the links in the i3 > FX8 spoiler, the FX4,6,8 processors are mostly lumped together with very little difference between them.  An example:  For every game that the FX8 actually does a lot better than the FX4, there are 5 games that only show a ~10% improvement.

 

When you look at the Bulldozer Block Diagram, what do you see?

I see 4 modules, and 8 integer cores. 

 

Lets define what a core is:  A CPU core is a collection of components in a processor used to process code. Its not just the logical processor (the integer core), not just the FPU, not just the decoder, not just the l1 cache not just the l2 cache but all of these components combined is what forms a core.

 

Modules and cores are very different. This module design is a very old microarchitecture design(1996) and it doesn't work the same way a true core does. The issue with this design is that resources are shared, namely the floating point unit.  The floating point unit is very important for gaming.  So while it does have 8 integer cores/threads, those cores have to share resources for certain tasks, and this causes one core to wait until the other is finished.  Because of this, it is not a true 8 core processor.

 

A true core 8 core processor is when there is no situation you can present it short of disabling cores that will cause even one thread out of eight to have to wait to be processed. Not a single situation. you can't say the same thing about the FX processors. If both threads on a module need the FPU one of the threads will have to wait.

 

Gaming performance aside, the vast majority of daily tasks are single threaded.  Everything you do on your desktop, booting up your computer, loading a simple program such as iTunes is going to be faster on Intel because these are single threaded tasks and the performance per core is so much more powerful which results in a more snappy overall experience.  There are very few tasks that benefit from 8 cores.  A program that really benefits from all the cores you throw at it is a real niche area, often reserved for content creation and calculations-not games.  This niche area is where the FX processors really shine because those programs benefit from many cores able to execute highly repetitive tasks.  Please note that not all content creation programs benefit from 8 cores, some programs do still prefer the strong cores of Intel, so please check and see if the program you specifically plan to use benefits from more cores, or stronger ones.

 

This is PCMark 7, it is a FutureMark benchmark that "is a complete PC benchmark that measures overall system performance during typical desktop usage across a range of activities such as handling images and video, web browsing and gaming. This is the most important test since it returns the official PCMark score for the system."  This is most closely related to a multitasking scenario.

-PCMark 7

This shows that while the performance in daily workloads is similar, Intel is still ahead.  Also consider that these are older generation Intel processors that have since been improved upon, only further increasing the result in Intel's favor for daily tasks.  Think multi-tasking is better on the FX8 because of all those cores?  Nope.

 

Some more productivity benchmarks for your enjoyment:

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The FX processors do have some strengths, just make sure that you are using a program that maximizes those strengths because as shown above, even in some multithreaded programs, the i5-4690k still comes out ahead.  In my opinion the gaming benefits of a locked i5, far outweigh the productivity(certain programs) benefits of the FX8.  You will have to personally weigh the pros and cons of what your priorities of your computer will be, and make your decision based on that, but if I'm building a gaming computer with a side of content creation, I will take the better gaming results over a 20 second(arbitrary number) shorter render time.

 

Sources:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8427/amd-fx-8370e-cpu-review-vishera-95w/2

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i3-4340-4330-4130_6.html#sect0

http://pclab.pl/art57691-12.html

 

I also want to throw in these power consumption graphs.

 

Top graph is power draw during Far Cry 3.  This is a good example because Far Cry 3 hits both the CPU and GPU adequately.   Some games will draw more power, some less, so this is a good middle of the road example.

 

The Below graph is during a x264 Encoding Benchmark with all processors at stock speeds.  This is hitting the CPU to the max 100%, and you can see when both an i5 and FX8 are hit to the max, there is a 100W+ difference.

 

Power consumption is another aspect of the FX CPU that needs to be talked about.  It draws so much more power than the Intel equivalent, that in just 2-3 years of use, the FX will end up costing you even more money.  Of course some places it is less expensive for energy than others, but you cannot deny that there is a 100W+ difference between an FX8 and an i5.  This power disparity only grows the further you overclock the FX.

 

I will use the average price of residential electricity in the U.S., which is $0.1294c per KWh according to EIA in September 2014.  For this example, we will assume the average price is a flat $0.12 per KWh to give a conservative estimate.  We will also assume that the overclocked FX power draw is 100W higher than the stock i5, again a conservative estimate.  Lastly, lets assume that the average gamer plays for two hours per day, with an additional 2 hours of regular use(non-gaming), so lets just call it 3 hours a day to make it easy.

 

Power Consumption = 100W

Hours of Use Per Day = 3

Energy Consumed Per Day = .3 KWh

Price Per Killowatt Hour = $0.12

 

Energy Cost Per Day = $0.036

Energy Cost Per Month = $1.08

Energy Cost Per Year = $13.14

 

With our quick and dirty calculation, we see that the difference between the FX and i5 is going to add up to over $10 per year, and that is a conservative estimate.  With most of us wanting to keep our components as long as possible before having to upgrade, owning components for 2-3 years, and sometimes even longer, is not out of the question and that energy cost per year really starts to add up.  You also have to consider that you will likely need a more expensive PSU to keep up with this power draw, especially if you want to overclock.

 

 

If you would like to calculate this for yourself, you will need to find out what the cost of energy is where you are located, and these two formulas:

Energy consumption calculation

The energy E in kilowatt-hours (kWh) per day is equal to the power P in watts (W) times number of usage hours per day t divided by 1000 watts per kilowatt:

E_(kWh/day) = P_(W) × t_(h/day) / 1000_(W/kW)

Energy cost calculation

The energy cost per day in dollars is equal to the energy consumption E in kWh per day times the energy cost of 1 kWh in cents/kWh divided by 100 cents per dollar:

Cost_($/day) = E_(kWh/day) × Cost_(cent/kWh) / 100_(cent/$)

 

Temperatures:

I hear the argument that AMD runs cooler than Intel, and this is a really silly misconception.  I can understand why someone would think that it does, but the temperatures from AMD processors are inaccurate.  They don't measure the cores, they measure the socket, cores tend to be hotter than the socket by a fair amount, and its an algorithm, not a direct measurement like with Intel.  It also has to heat up before it becomes more accurate, this is why you see so many people seeing their FX processors are running below ambient temperatures when at idle.  Thats impossible, its the sensor and the algorithm acting up. It is against the laws of physics for an FX processor to be less hot than an Intel one.  The FX draws much more power.  At stock, the FX8 draws 125W compared to 84/88W of an i5. The FX processor heats up the room much more as well.  I know in my friends' house who owns the FX, his room is sweltering after just an hour of gaming.

 

"Concerning your question regarding the temperatures with your processor. The maximum temperature threshold is 62 Celsius which set for the internal die (core) temperature of the chip. The core temperatures have an equational offset to determine temperature which equalizes at about 45 Celsius thus giving you more accurate readings at peak temperatures. The hindrance in this is the sub ambient idle temperature readings you speak of.

 

 The silicon and adhesives used in manufacturing these processors has a peak temperature rating of 97+ Celsius before any form of degradation will take place. The processor also has a thermal shut off safe guard in place that shuts the processor down at 90 Celsius.

The Cpu temperature is read form a sensor embedded within the socket of your motherboard causing about a 7-10 Celsius variance form the actual Cpu temperature, which may be what you are reading about on the net.

 I hope I was able to answer your questions, If you have any more inquiries don't hesitate to contact us.

 You can use an application called AMD overdrive, that will allow you to monitor your temperatures accurately.

 As long as your core temperature has not exceeded the high side of the 60 degree mark for extended periods of time you should be ok. 62 degrees holds a generous safety net to begin with.

 Thank You

 Alex Cromwell

 Senior Technology Director

 Advanced Micro Devices

 Fort Collins, Colorado

 2950 East Harmony Road

 Suite 300

 Fort Collins, CO"

 

The other thing to consider with FX based systems is that their voltage regulation modules on the motherboard get extremely hot as well, and for the most part, they only have a heatsink on them, not direct airflow.  These VRMs are often in the 70C range, and have nothing to dissipate that heat.  This is another reason why FX based systems make the room much hotter.

 

-Source

 

 

This is an excellent comparison done by Paulsterio of the forums.  You should really read through the entire above link, it is a great and detailed read. Here is the conclusion in Paulsterio's words.

 

"Conclusion

 

If you've made it this far, congrats and thank you very, very much for reading. I appreciate it genuinely.

 

Okay, so let's conclude. Yes, Intel won 5-2, but that's meaningless. Looking at benchmarks for the sake of looking at benchmarks doesn't

help us. What helps us is seeing where the 4670K wins massively and where the 8350 wins massively. 

 

Gaming

In gaming, the 4670K wins. This is said by Linus, said by AnandTech, said by Bit-Tech, said by Tom's Hardware, said all around the internet

except for at Tek Syndicate. If you are going for a gaming PC, go with the 4670K.

 

Video Editing and 3D Rendering

Yes, there are benchmarks where the 8350 beats the 4670K, however, what is important is that these two are almost neck and neck.

Some sites have the 8350 ever so slightly faster, some have the 3570K/4670K as ever so slightly faster. At the end of the day, it's too close to call.

However, the extra IPC that Haswell offers should help in a wider variety of situations, so I would award this to the 4670K. 

 

Calculations

This one goes to the 8350 which demonstrates a higher performance with calculations throughout due to its higher core count. It beats Intel convincingly

in most calculation benchmarks. 

 

So, what does this mean?

 

This has been said in the introduction, but I will say it again. I am not an Intel fanboy, which is why I went out to research instead of screaming that Intel

is better. I have suggested AMD in the past, their Athlon 64 was better than the Pentium 4, their Athlon 64 x2 was better than the Pentium D. However,

I genuinely dislike the promulgation of false information, especially to people who are asking for help selecting new parts. 

 

If you're an AMD fanboy, you're not going to like it, but Intel's 4670K is better than AMD's 8350. Regardless of however you look at it, in most situations,

the 4670K wins, but it isn't just that, its far superior IPC gives it such an advantage in most every day tasks, which are mostly still single-threaded. 

 

The AMD 8350 is good for certain workloads, but apart from those workloads, it is simply terrible. Its IPC, which is weaker than the i7 920's, which is

5 years old, is simply too weak to put it as any sort of real competition to the 4670K. 

 

I hope that this clears up some of the misconceptions here. Yes, AMD had their time, their Athlon 64 was better than the Intel Pentium 4, however,

those days are well and truly over. If, in this day and age, you recommend an AMD processor for any usage apart from calculations, you are either

being a fanboy or just plainly ignorant of the facts which say that the 4670K is superior. 

 

Of course, this is not to say that nobody should use AMD, but, if you suggest an AMD build for someone else, especially if you suggest an 8350

against a 4670K, know that you are suggesting a worse option, especially for a gaming PC. To argue that the 8350 is competitive with the 4670K

across the board is delusional and just plainly wrong. Yes, you are wrong. 

 

So that's it guys, for most people, the 4670K is the better option compared to the 8350 and the information shows it. 

 

Once again, thank you for taking the time to read my little article. I hope I have helped you see what the statistics say about these two processors.

I appreciate you taking the time to read what I have written. Cheers :)"

 

This video is the most meticulous head to head comparison of the FX8 and i5.  Its lengthy, but it is the most comprehensive and in-depth review of the FX8 and i5-4670k in a myriad of scenarios pitted against each other.  Single player, multiplayer, 1080p, 1440p, power consumption, min/max/avg framerates, daily tasks, rendering, editing, streaming, mid level GPUs, high level GPUs, multi-threaded games, single core games, this video covers it all.

 

Also, when people say that the FX8 is a less expensive option, they are wrong.  In order for the FX8 to be viable, it needs to be overclocked, which means you need a motherboard with at least 8+2 VRM phase design, and more expensive cooling solution.  You can squeeze by on a 6+2, but you aren't going to get as consistent results as an 8+2, also overclocking results drop with the 6+2.  This makes it cost the same, if not more than a locked i5 processor which will beat the FX8 in every single game, no matter how high the FX is overclocked.  I'm not arguing that the processor is less expensive on AMD's side, but the ancillary components needed end up making it cost the same as a locked i5.

 

 

You can forget about small form factors because there are no AM3+ motherboards available with sufficient VRM phase design that are smaller than ATX.  Even some ATX mobos have small phase counts, and are not reliable.  If you need to educate yourself on what VRMs are and why they are so important, please refer to this link about VRMs and Mosfets.  That link is slightly dated, being last updated in 2012, but the basic educational information in it remains the same.

 

"Failures on motherboards with higher phase counts have been relatively infrequent if at all. Most of the culprits for VRM failures are the lower end 4+1 phase and 3+1 phase motherboards that aren't equipped to handle processors that consume lots of power and may be overclocked.  Smaller 4+1 phase systems or less on CPUs can be particularly risky due to the fact that each transistor must be capable of outputting more current and heat. This is why you normally see motherboards with low phase count failing (i.e. catching fire, frying, overloading), often on motherboards from only certain manufacturers or certain particular motherboards."

 

This next video is a bit of an exaggeration because it is the behemoth FX9590, but the point remains, if you don't have a sufficient motherboard for these power hungry processors, problems can arise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu2stchAmRo

 

This is why you HAVE to buy a quality motherboard for the FX series, which makes the overall cost of an FX based system more expensive, and we haven't even begun to talk about cooling.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/6JNdt6

Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/6JNdt6/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  ($145.95 @ Amazon)

Motherboard: ASRock 970 Performance ATX AM3+ Motherboard  ($83.99 @ Newegg)

Total: $229.94

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-04 15:50 EST-0500

 

Vs.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/c7WWt6

Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/c7WWt6/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($169.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B85M-DS3H Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($45.98 @ OutletPC) <-- You could even save an additional $10 by going with a motherboard with only 2 DIMM slots, which is all you really need.

Total: $215.97

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-11 17:20 EST-0500

 

Germany:

PCPartPicker part list: http://de.pcpartpicker.com/p/rzHNP6

Price breakdown by merchant: http://de.pcpartpicker.com/p/rzHNP6/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4430 3.0GHz Quad-Core Processor  (€160.82 @ Hardwareversand)

Motherboard: ASRock H81M-DGS Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (€42.49 @ Home of Hardware DE)

Total: €203.31

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 01:51 CET+0100

 

Vs.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://de.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3

Price breakdown by merchant: http://de.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  (€124.90 @ Caseking)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard  (€79.78 @ Hardwareversand)

Total: €204.68

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 01:49 CET+0100

 

 

Australia:

 

Limited selection on PcP

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/WYvZcf

Price breakdown by merchant: http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/WYvZcf/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4570 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($228.00 @ CPL Online)

Motherboard: ASRock H81 Pro BTC ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($39.00 @ PLE Computers)

Total: $267.00

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-12 22:47 EST+1100

 

Vs.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/MDtBGX

Price breakdown by merchant: http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/MDtBGX/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  ($182.00 @ CPL Online)

Motherboard: MSI 970 GAMING ATX AM3+ Motherboard  ($129.00 @ CPL Online) <-- Any less expensive motherboards only have 4+1 VRM phase design, which is not adequate.

Total: $311.00

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 11:52 EST+1100

 

New Zealand:

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://nz.pcpartpicker.com/p/fZTrrH

Price breakdown by merchant: http://nz.pcpartpicker.com/p/fZTrrH/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($272.00 @ Paradigm PCs)

Motherboard: ASRock H81M-HDS Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($72.44 @ PB Technologies)

Total: $344.44

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 13:53 NZDT+1300

 

Vs.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://nz.pcpartpicker.com/p/MytJxr

Price breakdown by merchant: http://nz.pcpartpicker.com/p/MytJxr/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  ($207.00 @ 1stWave Technologies)

Motherboard: Asus M5A97 R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard  ($149.95 @ Computer Lounge)

Total: $356.95

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 13:52 NZDT+1300

 

Canada:

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/VCGVFT

Price breakdown by merchant: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/VCGVFT/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($186.96 @ Newegg Canada)

Motherboard: ASRock H81 Pro BTC ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($39.99 @ Memory Express)

Total: $226.95

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-12 06:52 EST-0500

 

Vs.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3

Price breakdown by merchant: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  ($157.90 @ DirectCanada)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard  ($106.00 @ Vuugo)

Total: $263.90

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-26 19:53 EST-0500

 

United Kingdom:

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/f39ZZL

Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/f39ZZL/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£131.20 @ Aria PC)

Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (£32.17 @ Scan.co.uk)

Total: £163.37

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 00:54 GMT+0000

 

Vs.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3

Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  (£103.00 @ Amazon UK)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard  (£63.54 @ Aria PC)

Total: £166.54

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 00:54 GMT+0000

 

Italy:

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://it.pcpartpicker.com/p/f39ZZL

Price breakdown by merchant: http://it.pcpartpicker.com/p/f39ZZL/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor  (€173.38 @ Amazon Italia)

Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (€41.17 @ Amazon Italia)

Total: €214.55

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-12 13:03 CET+0100

 

Vs.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://it.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3

Price breakdown by merchant: http://it.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  (€131.67 @ Amazon Italia)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard  (€87.62 @ Amazon Italia)

Total: €219.29

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 01:55 CET+0100

 

Spain:

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://es.pcpartpicker.com/p/f39ZZL

Price breakdown by merchant: http://es.pcpartpicker.com/p/f39ZZL/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor  (€163.00 @ Amazon Espana)

Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (€42.20 @ Amazon Espana)

Total: €205.20

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 01:56 CET+0100

 

Vs.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://es.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3

Price breakdown by merchant: http://es.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  (€130.83 @ Amazon Espana)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard  (€87.83 @ Amazon Espana)

Total: €218.66

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 01:55 CET+0100

 

Want to try and find a cheaper option for AMD?  Be my guest.  Here is the AM3+ Motherboard Phasing Guide.  You need at least 6+2, but recommended 8+2.

 

 

iUpgraded to an i7: A 30 Day Journal:

If you don't like numbers and want pure user experience without benchmarks and stats, check out Suika's 30 Day Journal of his experience going from an FX8350 + GTX 780 to an i7-4790k + GTX780. Like many others on this forum, he noticed that he was being held back in many games with his FX8, and his expensive GPU wasn't being fully utilized.  Here is a pure experience based review from a forum member on his experience going from FX to Intel. 

 

Suika is one of many users here on LTT who were previously using FX processors with high end GPUs thinking it was a good match, only to realize in the end that it was not a good balance.

 

Here is another member, UnbendingNose who was told on this very forum to buy an FX8 because it won't hold back an R9 290, and an ASRock Extreme 3 wont throttle his CPU.  Both of which are false.  Here are his two posts, the one where he is asking for advice on what to buy, and the 2nd where he is unhappy with his FX8320s performance because of bottlenecking and throttling.  He finally ended up buying an i5, which is what he should have done in the first place, and miraculously, to the surprise of no one, his performance in every single game improved, most notably minimum fps.

 

Another one is itachipirate who used to be an FX crusader but finally saw enough compelling evidence to persuade him otherwise.  Here is his write up on the FX6.

AMD FX6, 6 Month Conclusion

 

FLUFFYJELLO, another FX owner had this to say:  "All you have to do is look at my current rig and it could be a testimonial. These guys put me in my place on a number of threads where I was *attempting* to defend my 6350.  Currently on an i5 setup I can run FC4 without frames dipping into the low 20's as with my old FX."

 

itzhalo, was having issues with his FX8350 OC'd to 4.8Ghz in a number of games.  He later upgraded to an i5, and here is what he had to say about it:

 

"My apologies guys if I am bringing this thread back up but I just wanted to update this. Turns out that I upgraded to the intel i5 4460 and the MSI Z97 PC Mate (Only reason why I got the Z97 was because down the road I most likely will be upgrading to 4790K and overclocking). When it comes to performance it has improved. Battlefield 4 I get a constant 90+ Usage on my GPU and in most games that I have played like shadow of mordor my FPS was extremely stable and had no stuttering or drops. All in all just a word of advice to whoever is going to use the 8350 and GTX 970 combination I highly recommend that you save up a bit and go with at least an i5 4460 or better"

If you want to read the entire thread, it is available here.

 

JamGorby says: "The last Intel I owned up until now was a P3 667. It has been nothing but AMD since then. I had reasons for that were justified and backed by objective reasons. Those reasons no longer exist. 

My last AMD build (the last AMD build was actually a 1100t but I bought the chip and mb used for $50 so it doesn't count) was a Phenom II X4 955. 

Funny thing is, when doing research and pricing on my current build, I went in with the whole "AMD is the best bang for the buck" mentality that I'm sure a lot of AMD fans still have. Boy, was that ever so not the case. 

Unless I wanted to throw an FX chip on a shitty 760G based board (a chipset, BTW, that is over 7 years old by now) Intel was just a better choice. Bare in mind, my original plan was to shop in the core i3/Fx8xxx range. I wound up with the 4790k because I ended up with a bigger budget than I anticipated having when I made my purchase. But, the point I'm making is that AMD has even lost their position in the bang for the buck department. Now, they are only compelling in the entry level cheapo market. 

Before having a better budget, I kept playing around with different builds and Intel kept coming out the victor. AMD 9xx series boards are just not good value. While the chips look like a good price to performance option, decent boards will eat up any savings you might make. When an Intel cost more, it was usually a difference of only $20. With a few configs, Intel even cost less. 

People throw that word, fanboy, around a lot. As you can see, AMD took a good bit of my computing money for over a decade. But reality doesn't care about how you feel. Facts will continue to be true. AMD is losing and for many good reasons. The free market doesn't lie. Their failings aren't part of some conspiracy."

 

rtpb5642 has created his own thread talking about his switch from an FX8350 @ 4.8Ghz to an Intel i5-4670k.  Simply titled:  Made the AMD to Intel Switch.

 

FLUFFYJELLO created his own thread talking about the games that are specific to him.  While not AAA titles, these are still very popular games that people play.  Here is his thread:  I switched from AMD: A Testimonial

 

Fluffy also has one of the best quotes trying to help someone deciding between an FX and Intel processor:

If you cannot see the correct choice then you are suffering from "Subjective stupidity (this is stupidity, not ignorance. Ignorance would mean you don't have the information and it's not your fault. You've been given the information, and refuse to accept facts; that is stupidity)"

 

I am aware that an i7 is much more expensive than an FX8, but the performance in games between an i5 and i7 is nearly identical, especially when at the same clock speed.  Not to mention, all you need is an i5 @ 3.0Ghz to beat anything FX has to offer.

 

With the AM3+ platform, there is nothing to upgrade to.  Going from an FX6 to FX8 to FX9 doesn't yield much performance gains because they all use the same architecture, which has horrible single core performance.  If you tried to go from FX8 to FX9, you're going to have to spend even more on super high end 990FX motherboard, and at least a $60 CPU Cooler.  Just throwing money at a bottomless pit of poor gaming performance.  Basically, you're stuck with what you have if you decide to go FX.

 

With Intel, upgrading is easy.  You can go from an i3 to i5, an i7, or Xeon, even if you're on one of the less expensive, minimalistic, and older motherboards like an H81, you can still drop in a higher end Intel processor without issue.  All that is necessary is a BIOS update, which is easy to do as long as you already have a Haswell processor, which you would have if you went this route.  Even the soon to be released Broadwell processors should be compatible with H81 motherboards.  They are going to be compatible with Devil's Canyon motherboards, which are also LGA1150, so they will fit in the same socket as these motherboards, so in theory all that is necessary is a BIOS update.  Going this route, you won't be able to overclock using the multiplier, but you can always squeeze an extra 1-300Mhz by BCLK overclocking.  Good thing Intel processors at stock already blow the doors off the highest overclocked FX chip out there. At least the option for truly increased performance is there with Intel, unlike with AMD.

 

Referring to the FX as the budget option, or good for its price needs to stop.  $225 equals $225 but the performance of one does not equal the other in games.

 

The truth can be denied, not avoided.

 

[Faceman]

i got called a fanboy for stating an fx-8350 doesnt bottleneck a 970? are you for real lmfao, i dont own an amd product anymore, i have an i7 4790 and a gtx 970..... good one on the name calling, child.

What you are claiming is false, and if someone were to believe you, they would end up being very unhappy.  The amount of information available that shows how poorly FX processors are in 2015 is staggering.  How can you, with a clean conscious, post these lies?  This is other people's money and they are asking for help.

[Dabombinable]

What you are claiming is false, and if someone were to believe you, they would end up being very unhappy.  The amount of information available that shows how poorly FX processors are in 2015 is staggering.  How can you, with a clean conscious, post these lies?  This is other people's money and they are asking for help.

Case and point, I had a friend buy a 'high end' '8 core' to replace his aging AMD quad core. And he's actually regretting his decision as his quad core felt faster in everything. Way to screw up a CPU AMD if someone who's not tech savy can see that they got screwed with the newer CPU.

[Lollausen]

What you are claiming is false, and if someone were to believe you, they would end up being very unhappy.  The amount of information available that shows how poorly FX processors are in 2015 is staggering.  How can you, with a clean conscious, post these lies?  This is other people's money and they are asking for help.

 

Case and point, I had a friend buy a 'high end' '8 core' to replace his aging AMD quad core. And he's actually regretting his decision as his quad core felt faster in everything. Way to screw up a CPU AMD if someone who's not tech savy can see that they got screwed with the newer CPU.

ok intel fanboys, we can all agree intel definitely offers more performance than amd pretty much all round. but an 8350 bottlenecking a 970 (I have an UNDERCLOCKED 8350, and an OVERCLOCKED 970)? you have to be shitting me. you clearly base the satement on hear-say or pure fanboyism. the gpu hits 100% usage most of the freaking time, while the most used core only goes up to about 80%-87%. and its underclocked at 3.8GHz with turbo boost switched off.

so sure, the i5 is probably a better cpu for poorly threaded games, yes the i5 and i7 are better on most or all aspects, but an 8350 WILL NOT bottleneck a 970. Please stop spreading misinformation about things which you clearly know jacksh.. as i assume none of you have EVER had an amd cpu, at least not since athlon quad cores, correct?

thought so

[Faceman]

ok intel fanboys, we can all agree intel definitely offers more performance than amd pretty much all round. but an 8350 bottlenecking a 970 (I have an UNDERCLOCKED 8350, and an OVERCLOCKED 970)? you have to be shitting me. you clearly base the satement on hear-say or pure fanboyism. the gpu hits 100% usage most of the freaking time, while the most used core only goes up to about 80%-87%. and its underclocked at 3.8GHz with turbo boost switched off.

so sure, the i5 is probably a better cpu for poorly threaded games, yes the i5 and i7 are better on most or all aspects, but an 8350 WILL NOT bottleneck a 970. Please stop spreading misinformation about things which you clearly know jacksh.. as i assume none of you have EVER had an amd cpu, at least not since athlon quad cores, correct?

thought so

Lets see your graphs then, and which games?  Are you playing above 1080p?

 

The i5 is the better CPU even for well threaded games.  Heck, an i3 has been shown to be outperforming FX9s in certain well-threaded games.

 

There are many, many users on this forum, and in my spoiler who I link to who had made the switch from FX8 to i5 and noticed increased performance, increased minimum FPS, increased GPU usage, everything.  An FX8 does absolutely bottleneck high end GPUs.  It can only keep you happy around the R9 280X/GTX770 level.

 

I invite you to read all of evidence I have compiled showing how poor the FX processors actually are.  If you can find sources proving otherwise, please bring them to my attention because I haven't found any.

 

 

If you enjoy games like MMOs(ArcheAge, WoW, Guild Wars2, World of Tanks, Planetside2 etc..) DayZ, ARMA, GTA V, Dead Rising 3, Indies, RTS, Emulators, etc.. the FX will fall WAY behind the equally and sometimes lower priced Intel processors, and in some instances, become unplayable* unless you are fine with massive, recurring, constant, and noticeable FPS drops when the action starts. 

 

*Everyone has a different definition of what unplayable is, so don't over analyze and exaggerate my wording.  What is unplayable to me, might not be unplayable to you, but what we can all agree on is that no one likes FPS drops that makes your game hitch, stutter, or freeze, and you shouldn't be ok with those side effects because an Intel processor won't give you those unwanted side effects nearly as often as you get them with FX processors.

 

Then there are other games that are playable, but no where near as fluid as they would be on Intel because minimum framerates(which are the most important), drop much more significantly with FX processors.  A few examples are: Starcraft, Skyrim, Civilization V, Far Cry 4, Assassin's Creed, Metal Gear Solid etc..

 

And of course there are a lot of games where the FX will perform similar to Intel because the games just run on anything.  Tomb Raider comes to mind, but there are others.

 

For the a lot of games, the FX will be sufficient.  But why would you want to spend more or the same amount of money on an old, and inferior product, when you can get a new and superior product for the same amount of money.  Why play 4 out of 5 games well, when you can play 5 out of 5 games well, with no bottlenecking, lower energy costs, and future upgrade paths.  Minimum FPS is the most important FPS measurement.  Bad minimums mean less fluidity in gameplay.  Sometimes I see FX owners saying, "I hit 60fps just fine".  While you might be capable of hitting 60fps on FX, the minimums are going to be lower, and that results in a noticeable detachment from immersion which is what constant 60+fps feels like.  An Intel processor is often the difference between a fluid experience and a stuttery one.  With Intel, your minimums are much higher, meaning a more fluid and immersive game play experience. 

 

You will see below that even the Intel i3(which is less expensive) is outperforming the FX6/8/9s in many games, and the locked i5(costs the same) is running away with it.  There have also been a lot of new, modern, multi-threaded games that are performing poorly on the FX platform because of the poor per-core performance.  More on that in some spoilers below.

 

I always advocate the right tool for the job, and for some jobs, the FX processor is the best tool for the job, but you need to be aware of what your priorities are when building your machine.  If your priority is gaming, then Intel is the clear winner regardless of price point. I don't hate AMD, and I have experience with both processors, and have owned both Intel and AMD.  I currently own Intel because it is objectively the better processor.

 

I hope that when Zen is released in 2016 that it will bring AMD back into relevancy.  It doesn't even have to be better than Intel, it just has to be competitive.  If its performance, namely single core, is close to Intel's while remaining at a lower price, then I will likely switch to AMD because I am all about price to performance.  The problem is, price to performance for AMD doesn't exist right now.

 

My goal here is to help others by avoiding costly mistakes that so many before them have made. After being on this forum for over a year, I am seeing so many users complaining about their gaming experience with FX processors that it is time to put a stop to it, and the best way to do that is nip it in the bud and recommend the correct tool for the job.  To do that, I and a bunch of other forum members created this post as a one-link reference to all of the information we have gathered and continue to gather on the subject.  This is an ever growing and constantly updated post.

 

The most common problems with the FX processors are unsatisfactory results in games, VRM throttling, and GPU bottlenecking.  In my links below I will show you many different, yet conclusive results compiled from respected hardware reviewers and other members of this forum.  I hope to paint a picture as to why the FX processor is objectively the inferior option and why it is a bad choice for a gaming machine especially when an equally, or lower priced option is available.  I want you to make an educated decision based on information available without taking emotion and bias into this.  I am about to present to you that information.  There are some positives to the FX processors that I will talk about, but gaming is not one of them.

 

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Even this supposedly very good multi-threaded game, Call of Duty:Advanced Warefare runs better on an i3 than an FX9

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Really pitiful when modern games are playing so much better on an i3 than an FX9.

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You have to OC an FX8 to 5Ghz just to match an i5-4440 at stock in BF4 multiplayer with an R9 290X.

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Even Mantle doesn't bridge the gap.  Too bad they don't show the minimums in this above graph.

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Very modern, multi-threaded game that does take advantage of all cores available, yet you have to OC an FX to 5Ghz to MATCH an i3.

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This one above is Witcher 2

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These are just a few games, and obviously skewed towards Intel, but my point is to try and illustrate that some games run very poorly on the weak cores on FX processors.  Even these new games that are well multithreaded are running better on i3s than FX8s.  If you can find benchmarks from multiple sources that show something else, please share because in all of my research, I have not found any. 

 

What benchmarks fail to show is in-game performance.  There is no substitute for actually playing these games on both processors.  Now, I will admit I haven't played all of the games listed above, but in the games I did play, there was a noticeable stutter that would happen.  It didn't happen in all games, but it happened often enough for me to be displeased with it.  My friend who owns the FX8 simply said "You get used to it."  This is the wrong attitude to have.

 

Now...why buy a processor that can only play 4 out of 5 games, when you can pay the same and play 5 out of 5 games without issue?  In the 18 gaming graphs above that show both the FX8 processor and the 4th Gen Intel i3, the i3 is performing better than the FX8 in 16 of the games!  In not a single game does the i5 perform worse than the FX8.  A locked i5 + H81/B85 motherboard can be purchased for less than the cost of an FX8 + 8+2 VRM Phase Motherboard.  I will show that below in another spoiler.

 

 

Look through all of these sources... the i3 is handing it to the FX8s and FX9s in so many games!

Benchmarks:

http://www.hardcorew...-4340-review/2/

http://www.hardwarep...8-games-tested/

http://www.tomshardw...cpu,3929-7.html

http://www.anandtech...w-vishera-95w/3

http://techreport.com/review/23750/amd-fx-8350-processor-reviewed/14

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fgamegpu.ru%2Ftest-video-cards%2Figry-2014-goda-protiv-protsessorov-test-gpu.html

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fpclab.pl%2Fart57842.html

http://benchmarkreviews.com/24051/amd-fx-8320e-am3-processor-performance-review/14/

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i3-4340-vs-AMD-FX-8320E/2877vs2985

 

 

 

"To put it nicely, the FX-8370E is a true middle-of-the-road CPU. Using it only makes sense as long as the graphics card you choose comes from a similar performance segment.

Depending on the game in question, AMD’s new processor has the potential to keep you happy around the AMD Radeon R9 270X/285 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 or 660 Ti level.

A higher- or even high-end graphics card doesn’t make sense, as pairing it with AMD's FX-8370E simply limits the card's potential."

 

"In terms of raw single-core performance the flagship AMD FX-8350 is lagging behind intel's processor line-up by over two generations. The PassMark Single Thread scores for the i5-2500K vs the FX-8350 are 1863 to 1520 which shows that in terms of raw per-core processing the FX-8350 is lagging the two year old i5 by 23%. Where the AMD FX makes up is on multi-core performance, with a score of 9156 vs 6745, the AMD leads the Intel 2500K by 36% making it the far more capable multi-threaded server orientated performer. The AMD is also cheaper but significantly more power hungry which counts strongly against it as a sever proposition. The FX-8350 could be a good fit for specific server use cases but for general consumer use, which is single and dual core intensive, Intel's two year old i5-2500K will deliver better performance."

 

"When AMD first released CPUs for their AM3+ platform we at OC3D were not overly impressed, behind the hype of AMD's "Bulldozer" architecture was some very power hungry, hot running and under-performing CPUs. When AMD's second generation of FX CPUs, Piledriver, was released AMD had lessened a lot of these issues, but many of those flaws still remained."

 

"This is a huge result – it wasn’t until we used a Haswell core CPU that the R9 280X  was able to deliver consistent frame times and a 60 FPS frame rate in Assassin’s Creed IV. All three AMD CPUs we used – even the FX 8350 – and the Ivy Bridge Core i3 would deliver a sub 60 FPS frame rate, with frame spikes throughout the benchmark run.

In this case, the Core i3 4340 allows the R9 280X GPU to run at maximum potential, just like the Core i5 (and Core i7 would)."

 

"My benchmarks show that the Core i3-4360 is faster than the FX-8320E in virtually every test on a per-core basis, you’re probably never going to see this differential unless you spend quite a lot of time in benchmark-land. Benchmark-land is fun, kind of like taking your car to the drag strip to see what it will do. But, like your quarter-mile time, it often doesn’t have that much correlation with real-world performance."

 

 

"Pop over to the gaming scatter, though, and the picture changes dramatically. There, the FX-8350 is the highest-performance AMD desktop processor to date for gaming, finally toppling the venerable Phenom II X4 980. Yet the FX-8350's gaming performance almost exactly matches that of the Core i3-3225, a $134 Ivy Bridge-based processor. Meanwhile, the Core i5-3470 delivers markedly superior gaming performance for less money than the FX-8350. The FX-8350 isn't exactly bad for video games—its performance was generally acceptable in our tests. But it is relatively weak compared to the competition.

This strange divergence between the two performance pictures isn't just confined to gaming, of course. The FX-8350 is also relatively pokey in image processing applications, in SunSpider, and in the less widely multithreaded portions of our video encoding tests. Many of these scenarios rely on one or several threads, and the FX-8350 suffers compared to recent Intel chips in such cases. Still, the contrast between the FX-8350 and the Sandy/Ivy Bridge chips isn't nearly as acute as it was with the older FX processors. Piledriver's IPC gains and that 4GHz base clock have taken the edge off of our objections.

The other major consideration here is power consumption, and really, the FX-8350 isn't even the same class of product as the Ivy Bridge Core i5 processors on this front. There's a 48W gap between the TDP ratings of the Core i5 parts and the FX-8350, but in our tests, the actual difference at the wall socket between two similarly configured systems under load was over 100W. That gap is large enough to force the potential buyer to think deeply about the class of power supply, case, and CPU cooler he needs for his build. One could definitely get away with less expensive components for a Core i5 system."

 

"The FX-8370E stretches its legs a little in terms of minimum frame rates, particularly in SLI, however it is handily beaten by the i3-4330."

 

"Average frametimes did not do AMD’s processors any justice either. As we already said the game was fluid with i7 and i5’s, and somewhat playable with the i3 processor line. When we switched to FX CPUs not only did we have worse framerate but the gameplay was simply put, laggy."

 

 

The Bulldozer architecture was released in 2011, but it had been in development for many years.  It basically reused an old architecture that had already been phased out years ago.  They reused it, and marketed it well to trick users into thinking it was something spectacular.  "How could an 8 core, 4Ghz CPU possibly be bad?"  One word:  Architecture.  This CPU is not good now, and it wasn't even good when it was released.  Please give this article a read because it does a much better job of explaining this than I will ever be able to.  Analyzing Bulldozer

 

The architecture behind the FX CPUs cannot keep up with high end graphics cards that require strong cores to consistently feed the card.  Monitor your GPU load in your games and you will quickly see that your GPU is not running at 90%+ if you own a high end graphics card paired with an FX processor.  Use an FX with a mid range GPU all you want, that is fine and you won't limit the card's potential and makes for a much more balanced rig. If you get into the upper echelon of GPUs, that is when you are holding your card back by the FX.  This also doesn't bode well for the future because as GPUs get more powerful, the FX will simply not be able to keep up with even mid-range GPUs.  As of now, the highest end GPU I would pair with an FX that won't limit its potential is an R9 280/GTX770.

 

There are very few games that are very well multithreaded, and even in those games, such as CoD:AW, an i3 is still beating out an FX9.  The reason behind this is because games typically have one main thread, Core #0.  When this main thread is being choked by poor single core performance, the rest of the threads struggle.  So even in these really well multithreaded PC port games, we are still seeing Intel processors beating out FXs because their poor IPC simply can't give as good as results on that main thread.

 

Single core performance is the most important thing when evaluating a processor for desktop use. "The majority of consumer applications (MS World, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and most games) although multi threaded rarely utilize more than one thread at a time.  The single core benchmarks can be seen as a reasonable real world test for typical consumer workloads."

 

When AMD sends out R9 290Xs for review, or release new drivers they send out Intel i7s along with them because they know their FX processors can't power their high end GPUs to their max potential.  That's a big red flag.

-Source

 

 

Check out LTT's own Cinebench Scores:

 

 

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-LTT's Cinebench Database

These FXs are overclocked to 4.8Ghz and 5.3Ghz! and still fall well behind Intel's offerings.

 

Even when you pair the FX with a mid range GPU, it doesn't change the fact that some games are largely CPU bound and require strong IPC.  Parallelism doesn't exist in games.  There are not many, if any highly repetitive calculations going on in games that the CPU can guess what is coming next like in video editing or rendering.  They have tricked you into thinking that more cores and higher Ghz is what matters for your CPU, when it all comes down to the architecture and instructions per cycle. 

 

Websites like cpubenchmark.net have a suite of synthetic benchmarks that they run each processor through to spit out a score.  Going by this, the FX8 outperforms the i5 because those synthetic tests are highly repetitive calculations that benefit from more cores.  People see that result and automatically think "Oh, the FX8 is a much stronger processor than the i5."  And in some tasks it is, gaming is just not one of them.

 

A man(Faa) who knows a lot more about this than me did some research and found, to the surprise of no one, that games just aren't using more than 4 threads, and the ones that do, aren't benefiting as much as you would think from those extra cores/threads.  I'm going to link you over to his research that shows how cores/threads have an impact on gaming performance.  It is a great read with a lot of interesting information, as well as a few links to other more reputable review websites doing testing on many popular mainstream games.  For the most part, games are using 2-4 threads.  And the few that can take advantage of more threads, aren't really benefiting from them. Of course in some games, the FX8 is going to do much better than the FX4, but looking over benchmarks from the gaming graphs above, and all of the links in the i3 > FX8 spoiler, the FX4,6,8 processors are mostly lumped together with very little difference between them.  An example:  For every game that the FX8 actually does a lot better than the FX4, there are 5 games that only show a ~10% improvement.

 

When you look at the Bulldozer Block Diagram, what do you see?

I see 4 modules, and 8 integer cores. 

 

Lets define what a core is:  A CPU core is a collection of components in a processor used to process code. Its not just the logical processor (the integer core), not just the FPU, not just the decoder, not just the l1 cache not just the l2 cache but all of these components combined is what forms a core.

 

Modules and cores are very different. This module design is a very old microarchitecture design(1996) and it doesn't work the same way a true core does. The issue with this design is that resources are shared, namely the floating point unit.  The floating point unit is very important for gaming.  So while it does have 8 integer cores/threads, those cores have to share resources for certain tasks, and this causes one core to wait until the other is finished.  Because of this, it is not a true 8 core processor.

 

A true core 8 core processor is when there is no situation you can present it short of disabling cores that will cause even one thread out of eight to have to wait to be processed. Not a single situation. you can't say the same thing about the FX processors. If both threads on a module need the FPU one of the threads will have to wait.

 

Gaming performance aside, the vast majority of daily tasks are single threaded.  Everything you do on your desktop, booting up your computer, loading a simple program such as iTunes is going to be faster on Intel because these are single threaded tasks and the performance per core is so much more powerful which results in a more snappy overall experience.  There are very few tasks that benefit from 8 cores.  A program that really benefits from all the cores you throw at it is a real niche area, often reserved for content creation and calculations-not games.  This niche area is where the FX processors really shine because those programs benefit from many cores able to execute highly repetitive tasks.  Please note that not all content creation programs benefit from 8 cores, some programs do still prefer the strong cores of Intel, so please check and see if the program you specifically plan to use benefits from more cores, or stronger ones.

 

This is PCMark 7, it is a FutureMark benchmark that "is a complete PC benchmark that measures overall system performance during typical desktop usage across a range of activities such as handling images and video, web browsing and gaming. This is the most important test since it returns the official PCMark score for the system."  This is most closely related to a multitasking scenario.

-PCMark 7

This shows that while the performance in daily workloads is similar, Intel is still ahead.  Also consider that these are older generation Intel processors that have since been improved upon, only further increasing the result in Intel's favor for daily tasks.  Think multi-tasking is better on the FX8 because of all those cores?  Nope.

 

Some more productivity benchmarks for your enjoyment:

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The FX processors do have some strengths, just make sure that you are using a program that maximizes those strengths because as shown above, even in some multithreaded programs, the i5-4690k still comes out ahead.  In my opinion the gaming benefits of a locked i5, far outweigh the productivity(certain programs) benefits of the FX8.  You will have to personally weigh the pros and cons of what your priorities of your computer will be, and make your decision based on that, but if I'm building a gaming computer with a side of content creation, I will take the better gaming results over a 20 second(arbitrary number) shorter render time.

 

Sources:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8427/amd-fx-8370e-cpu-review-vishera-95w/2

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i3-4340-4330-4130_6.html#sect0

http://pclab.pl/art57691-12.html

 

I also want to throw in these power consumption graphs.

 

Top graph is power draw during Far Cry 3.  This is a good example because Far Cry 3 hits both the CPU and GPU adequately.   Some games will draw more power, some less, so this is a good middle of the road example.

 

The Below graph is during a x264 Encoding Benchmark with all processors at stock speeds.  This is hitting the CPU to the max 100%, and you can see when both an i5 and FX8 are hit to the max, there is a 100W+ difference.

 

Power consumption is another aspect of the FX CPU that needs to be talked about.  It draws so much more power than the Intel equivalent, that in just 2-3 years of use, the FX will end up costing you even more money.  Of course some places it is less expensive for energy than others, but you cannot deny that there is a 100W+ difference between an FX8 and an i5.  This power disparity only grows the further you overclock the FX.

 

I will use the average price of residential electricity in the U.S., which is $0.1294c per KWh according to EIA in September 2014.  For this example, we will assume the average price is a flat $0.12 per KWh to give a conservative estimate.  We will also assume that the overclocked FX power draw is 100W higher than the stock i5, again a conservative estimate.  Lastly, lets assume that the average gamer plays for two hours per day, with an additional 2 hours of regular use(non-gaming), so lets just call it 3 hours a day to make it easy.

 

Power Consumption = 100W

Hours of Use Per Day = 3

Energy Consumed Per Day = .3 KWh

Price Per Killowatt Hour = $0.12

 

Energy Cost Per Day = $0.036

Energy Cost Per Month = $1.08

Energy Cost Per Year = $13.14

 

With our quick and dirty calculation, we see that the difference between the FX and i5 is going to add up to over $10 per year, and that is a conservative estimate.  With most of us wanting to keep our components as long as possible before having to upgrade, owning components for 2-3 years, and sometimes even longer, is not out of the question and that energy cost per year really starts to add up.  You also have to consider that you will likely need a more expensive PSU to keep up with this power draw, especially if you want to overclock.

 

 

If you would like to calculate this for yourself, you will need to find out what the cost of energy is where you are located, and these two formulas:

Energy consumption calculation

The energy E in kilowatt-hours (kWh) per day is equal to the power P in watts (W) times number of usage hours per day t divided by 1000 watts per kilowatt:

E_(kWh/day) = P_(W) × t_(h/day) / 1000_(W/kW)

Energy cost calculation

The energy cost per day in dollars is equal to the energy consumption E in kWh per day times the energy cost of 1 kWh in cents/kWh divided by 100 cents per dollar:

Cost_($/day) = E_(kWh/day) × Cost_(cent/kWh) / 100_(cent/$)

 

Temperatures:

I hear the argument that AMD runs cooler than Intel, and this is a really silly misconception.  I can understand why someone would think that it does, but the temperatures from AMD processors are inaccurate.  They don't measure the cores, they measure the socket, cores tend to be hotter than the socket by a fair amount, and its an algorithm, not a direct measurement like with Intel.  It also has to heat up before it becomes more accurate, this is why you see so many people seeing their FX processors are running below ambient temperatures when at idle.  Thats impossible, its the sensor and the algorithm acting up. It is against the laws of physics for an FX processor to be less hot than an Intel one.  The FX draws much more power.  At stock, the FX8 draws 125W compared to 84/88W of an i5. The FX processor heats up the room much more as well.  I know in my friends' house who owns the FX, his room is sweltering after just an hour of gaming.

 

"Concerning your question regarding the temperatures with your processor. The maximum temperature threshold is 62 Celsius which set for the internal die (core) temperature of the chip. The core temperatures have an equational offset to determine temperature which equalizes at about 45 Celsius thus giving you more accurate readings at peak temperatures. The hindrance in this is the sub ambient idle temperature readings you speak of.

 

 The silicon and adhesives used in manufacturing these processors has a peak temperature rating of 97+ Celsius before any form of degradation will take place. The processor also has a thermal shut off safe guard in place that shuts the processor down at 90 Celsius.

The Cpu temperature is read form a sensor embedded within the socket of your motherboard causing about a 7-10 Celsius variance form the actual Cpu temperature, which may be what you are reading about on the net.

 I hope I was able to answer your questions, If you have any more inquiries don't hesitate to contact us.

 You can use an application called AMD overdrive, that will allow you to monitor your temperatures accurately.

 As long as your core temperature has not exceeded the high side of the 60 degree mark for extended periods of time you should be ok. 62 degrees holds a generous safety net to begin with.

 Thank You

 Alex Cromwell

 Senior Technology Director

 Advanced Micro Devices

 Fort Collins, Colorado

 2950 East Harmony Road

 Suite 300

 Fort Collins, CO"

 

The other thing to consider with FX based systems is that their voltage regulation modules on the motherboard get extremely hot as well, and for the most part, they only have a heatsink on them, not direct airflow.  These VRMs are often in the 70C range, and have nothing to dissipate that heat.  This is another reason why FX based systems make the room much hotter.

 

-Source

 

 

This is an excellent comparison done by Paulsterio of the forums.  You should really read through the entire above link, it is a great and detailed read. Here is the conclusion in Paulsterio's words.

 

"Conclusion

 

If you've made it this far, congrats and thank you very, very much for reading. I appreciate it genuinely.

 

Okay, so let's conclude. Yes, Intel won 5-2, but that's meaningless. Looking at benchmarks for the sake of looking at benchmarks doesn't

help us. What helps us is seeing where the 4670K wins massively and where the 8350 wins massively. 

 

Gaming

In gaming, the 4670K wins. This is said by Linus, said by AnandTech, said by Bit-Tech, said by Tom's Hardware, said all around the internet

except for at Tek Syndicate. If you are going for a gaming PC, go with the 4670K.

 

Video Editing and 3D Rendering

Yes, there are benchmarks where the 8350 beats the 4670K, however, what is important is that these two are almost neck and neck.

Some sites have the 8350 ever so slightly faster, some have the 3570K/4670K as ever so slightly faster. At the end of the day, it's too close to call.

However, the extra IPC that Haswell offers should help in a wider variety of situations, so I would award this to the 4670K. 

 

Calculations

This one goes to the 8350 which demonstrates a higher performance with calculations throughout due to its higher core count. It beats Intel convincingly

in most calculation benchmarks. 

 

So, what does this mean?

 

This has been said in the introduction, but I will say it again. I am not an Intel fanboy, which is why I went out to research instead of screaming that Intel

is better. I have suggested AMD in the past, their Athlon 64 was better than the Pentium 4, their Athlon 64 x2 was better than the Pentium D. However,

I genuinely dislike the promulgation of false information, especially to people who are asking for help selecting new parts. 

 

If you're an AMD fanboy, you're not going to like it, but Intel's 4670K is better than AMD's 8350. Regardless of however you look at it, in most situations,

the 4670K wins, but it isn't just that, its far superior IPC gives it such an advantage in most every day tasks, which are mostly still single-threaded. 

 

The AMD 8350 is good for certain workloads, but apart from those workloads, it is simply terrible. Its IPC, which is weaker than the i7 920's, which is

5 years old, is simply too weak to put it as any sort of real competition to the 4670K. 

 

I hope that this clears up some of the misconceptions here. Yes, AMD had their time, their Athlon 64 was better than the Intel Pentium 4, however,

those days are well and truly over. If, in this day and age, you recommend an AMD processor for any usage apart from calculations, you are either

being a fanboy or just plainly ignorant of the facts which say that the 4670K is superior. 

 

Of course, this is not to say that nobody should use AMD, but, if you suggest an AMD build for someone else, especially if you suggest an 8350

against a 4670K, know that you are suggesting a worse option, especially for a gaming PC. To argue that the 8350 is competitive with the 4670K

across the board is delusional and just plainly wrong. Yes, you are wrong. 

 

So that's it guys, for most people, the 4670K is the better option compared to the 8350 and the information shows it. 

 

Once again, thank you for taking the time to read my little article. I hope I have helped you see what the statistics say about these two processors.

I appreciate you taking the time to read what I have written. Cheers :)"

 

This video is the most meticulous head to head comparison of the FX8 and i5.  Its lengthy, but it is the most comprehensive and in-depth review of the FX8 and i5-4670k in a myriad of scenarios pitted against each other.  Single player, multiplayer, 1080p, 1440p, power consumption, min/max/avg framerates, daily tasks, rendering, editing, streaming, mid level GPUs, high level GPUs, multi-threaded games, single core games, this video covers it all.

 

Also, when people say that the FX8 is a less expensive option, they are wrong.  In order for the FX8 to be viable, it needs to be overclocked, which means you need a motherboard with at least 8+2 VRM phase design, and more expensive cooling solution.  You can squeeze by on a 6+2, but you aren't going to get as consistent results as an 8+2, also overclocking results drop with the 6+2.  This makes it cost the same, if not more than a locked i5 processor which will beat the FX8 in every single game, no matter how high the FX is overclocked.  I'm not arguing that the processor is less expensive on AMD's side, but the ancillary components needed end up making it cost the same as a locked i5.

 

 

You can forget about small form factors because there are no AM3+ motherboards available with sufficient VRM phase design that are smaller than ATX.  Even some ATX mobos have small phase counts, and are not reliable.  If you need to educate yourself on what VRMs are and why they are so important, please refer to this link about VRMs and Mosfets.  That link is slightly dated, being last updated in 2012, but the basic educational information in it remains the same.

 

"Failures on motherboards with higher phase counts have been relatively infrequent if at all. Most of the culprits for VRM failures are the lower end 4+1 phase and 3+1 phase motherboards that aren't equipped to handle processors that consume lots of power and may be overclocked.  Smaller 4+1 phase systems or less on CPUs can be particularly risky due to the fact that each transistor must be capable of outputting more current and heat. This is why you normally see motherboards with low phase count failing (i.e. catching fire, frying, overloading), often on motherboards from only certain manufacturers or certain particular motherboards."

 

This next video is a bit of an exaggeration because it is the behemoth FX9590, but the point remains, if you don't have a sufficient motherboard for these power hungry processors, problems can arise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu2stchAmRo

 

This is why you HAVE to buy a quality motherboard for the FX series, which makes the overall cost of an FX based system more expensive, and we haven't even begun to talk about cooling.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/6JNdt6

Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/6JNdt6/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  ($145.95 @ Amazon)

Motherboard: ASRock 970 Performance ATX AM3+ Motherboard  ($83.99 @ Newegg)

Total: $229.94

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-04 15:50 EST-0500

 

Vs.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/c7WWt6

Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/c7WWt6/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($169.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B85M-DS3H Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($45.98 @ OutletPC) <-- You could even save an additional $10 by going with a motherboard with only 2 DIMM slots, which is all you really need.

Total: $215.97

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-11 17:20 EST-0500

 

Germany:

PCPartPicker part list: http://de.pcpartpicker.com/p/rzHNP6

Price breakdown by merchant: http://de.pcpartpicker.com/p/rzHNP6/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4430 3.0GHz Quad-Core Processor  (€160.82 @ Hardwareversand)

Motherboard: ASRock H81M-DGS Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (€42.49 @ Home of Hardware DE)

Total: €203.31

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 01:51 CET+0100

 

Vs.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://de.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3

Price breakdown by merchant: http://de.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  (€124.90 @ Caseking)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard  (€79.78 @ Hardwareversand)

Total: €204.68

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 01:49 CET+0100

 

 

Australia:

 

Limited selection on PcP

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/WYvZcf

Price breakdown by merchant: http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/WYvZcf/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4570 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($228.00 @ CPL Online)

Motherboard: ASRock H81 Pro BTC ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($39.00 @ PLE Computers)

Total: $267.00

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-12 22:47 EST+1100

 

Vs.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/MDtBGX

Price breakdown by merchant: http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/MDtBGX/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  ($182.00 @ CPL Online)

Motherboard: MSI 970 GAMING ATX AM3+ Motherboard  ($129.00 @ CPL Online) <-- Any less expensive motherboards only have 4+1 VRM phase design, which is not adequate.

Total: $311.00

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 11:52 EST+1100

 

New Zealand:

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://nz.pcpartpicker.com/p/fZTrrH

Price breakdown by merchant: http://nz.pcpartpicker.com/p/fZTrrH/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($272.00 @ Paradigm PCs)

Motherboard: ASRock H81M-HDS Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($72.44 @ PB Technologies)

Total: $344.44

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 13:53 NZDT+1300

 

Vs.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://nz.pcpartpicker.com/p/MytJxr

Price breakdown by merchant: http://nz.pcpartpicker.com/p/MytJxr/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  ($207.00 @ 1stWave Technologies)

Motherboard: Asus M5A97 R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard  ($149.95 @ Computer Lounge)

Total: $356.95

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 13:52 NZDT+1300

 

Canada:

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/VCGVFT

Price breakdown by merchant: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/VCGVFT/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($186.96 @ Newegg Canada)

Motherboard: ASRock H81 Pro BTC ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($39.99 @ Memory Express)

Total: $226.95

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-12 06:52 EST-0500

 

Vs.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3

Price breakdown by merchant: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  ($157.90 @ DirectCanada)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard  ($106.00 @ Vuugo)

Total: $263.90

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-26 19:53 EST-0500

 

United Kingdom:

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/f39ZZL

Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/f39ZZL/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£131.20 @ Aria PC)

Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (£32.17 @ Scan.co.uk)

Total: £163.37

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 00:54 GMT+0000

 

Vs.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3

Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  (£103.00 @ Amazon UK)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard  (£63.54 @ Aria PC)

Total: £166.54

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 00:54 GMT+0000

 

Italy:

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://it.pcpartpicker.com/p/f39ZZL

Price breakdown by merchant: http://it.pcpartpicker.com/p/f39ZZL/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor  (€173.38 @ Amazon Italia)

Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (€41.17 @ Amazon Italia)

Total: €214.55

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-12 13:03 CET+0100

 

Vs.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://it.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3

Price breakdown by merchant: http://it.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  (€131.67 @ Amazon Italia)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard  (€87.62 @ Amazon Italia)

Total: €219.29

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 01:55 CET+0100

 

Spain:

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://es.pcpartpicker.com/p/f39ZZL

Price breakdown by merchant: http://es.pcpartpicker.com/p/f39ZZL/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor  (€163.00 @ Amazon Espana)

Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (€42.20 @ Amazon Espana)

Total: €205.20

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 01:56 CET+0100

 

Vs.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://es.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3

Price breakdown by merchant: http://es.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZhVQD3/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  (€130.83 @ Amazon Espana)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard  (€87.83 @ Amazon Espana)

Total: €218.66

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-27 01:55 CET+0100

 

Want to try and find a cheaper option for AMD?  Be my guest.  Here is the AM3+ Motherboard Phasing Guide.  You need at least 6+2, but recommended 8+2.

 

 

iUpgraded to an i7: A 30 Day Journal:

If you don't like numbers and want pure user experience without benchmarks and stats, check out Suika's 30 Day Journal of his experience going from an FX8350 + GTX 780 to an i7-4790k + GTX780. Like many others on this forum, he noticed that he was being held back in many games with his FX8, and his expensive GPU wasn't being fully utilized.  Here is a pure experience based review from a forum member on his experience going from FX to Intel. 

 

Suika is one of many users here on LTT who were previously using FX processors with high end GPUs thinking it was a good match, only to realize in the end that it was not a good balance.

 

Here is another member, UnbendingNose who was told on this very forum to buy an FX8 because it won't hold back an R9 290, and an ASRock Extreme 3 wont throttle his CPU.  Both of which are false.  Here are his two posts, the one where he is asking for advice on what to buy, and the 2nd where he is unhappy with his FX8320s performance because of bottlenecking and throttling.  He finally ended up buying an i5, which is what he should have done in the first place, and miraculously, to the surprise of no one, his performance in every single game improved, most notably minimum fps.

 

Another one is itachipirate who used to be an FX crusader but finally saw enough compelling evidence to persuade him otherwise.  Here is his write up on the FX6.

AMD FX6, 6 Month Conclusion

 

FLUFFYJELLO, another FX owner had this to say:  "All you have to do is look at my current rig and it could be a testimonial. These guys put me in my place on a number of threads where I was *attempting* to defend my 6350.  Currently on an i5 setup I can run FC4 without frames dipping into the low 20's as with my old FX."

 

itzhalo, was having issues with his FX8350 OC'd to 4.8Ghz in a number of games.  He later upgraded to an i5, and here is what he had to say about it:

 

"My apologies guys if I am bringing this thread back up but I just wanted to update this. Turns out that I upgraded to the intel i5 4460 and the MSI Z97 PC Mate (Only reason why I got the Z97 was because down the road I most likely will be upgrading to 4790K and overclocking). When it comes to performance it has improved. Battlefield 4 I get a constant 90+ Usage on my GPU and in most games that I have played like shadow of mordor my FPS was extremely stable and had no stuttering or drops. All in all just a word of advice to whoever is going to use the 8350 and GTX 970 combination I highly recommend that you save up a bit and go with at least an i5 4460 or better"

If you want to read the entire thread, it is available here.

 

JamGorby says: "The last Intel I owned up until now was a P3 667. It has been nothing but AMD since then. I had reasons for that were justified and backed by objective reasons. Those reasons no longer exist. 

My last AMD build (the last AMD build was actually a 1100t but I bought the chip and mb used for $50 so it doesn't count) was a Phenom II X4 955. 

Funny thing is, when doing research and pricing on my current build, I went in with the whole "AMD is the best bang for the buck" mentality that I'm sure a lot of AMD fans still have. Boy, was that ever so not the case. 

Unless I wanted to throw an FX chip on a shitty 760G based board (a chipset, BTW, that is over 7 years old by now) Intel was just a better choice. Bare in mind, my original plan was to shop in the core i3/Fx8xxx range. I wound up with the 4790k because I ended up with a bigger budget than I anticipated having when I made my purchase. But, the point I'm making is that AMD has even lost their position in the bang for the buck department. Now, they are only compelling in the entry level cheapo market. 

Before having a better budget, I kept playing around with different builds and Intel kept coming out the victor. AMD 9xx series boards are just not good value. While the chips look like a good price to performance option, decent boards will eat up any savings you might make. When an Intel cost more, it was usually a difference of only $20. With a few configs, Intel even cost less. 

People throw that word, fanboy, around a lot. As you can see, AMD took a good bit of my computing money for over a decade. But reality doesn't care about how you feel. Facts will continue to be true. AMD is losing and for many good reasons. The free market doesn't lie. Their failings aren't part of some conspiracy."

 

rtpb5642 has created his own thread talking about his switch from an FX8350 @ 4.8Ghz to an Intel i5-4670k.  Simply titled:  Made the AMD to Intel Switch.

 

FLUFFYJELLO created his own thread talking about the games that are specific to him.  While not AAA titles, these are still very popular games that people play.  Here is his thread:  I switched from AMD: A Testimonial

 

Fluffy also has one of the best quotes trying to help someone deciding between an FX and Intel processor:

If you cannot see the correct choice then you are suffering from "Subjective stupidity (this is stupidity, not ignorance. Ignorance would mean you don't have the information and it's not your fault. You've been given the information, and refuse to accept facts; that is stupidity)"

 

I am aware that an i7 is much more expensive than an FX8, but the performance in games between an i5 and i7 is nearly identical, especially when at the same clock speed.  Not to mention, all you need is an i5 @ 3.0Ghz to beat anything FX has to offer.

 

With the AM3+ platform, there is nothing to upgrade to.  Going from an FX6 to FX8 to FX9 doesn't yield much performance gains because they all use the same architecture, which has horrible single core performance.  If you tried to go from FX8 to FX9, you're going to have to spend even more on super high end 990FX motherboard, and at least a $60 CPU Cooler.  Just throwing money at a bottomless pit of poor gaming performance.  Basically, you're stuck with what you have if you decide to go FX.

 

With Intel, upgrading is easy.  You can go from an i3 to i5, an i7, or Xeon, even if you're on one of the less expensive, minimalistic, and older motherboards like an H81, you can still drop in a higher end Intel processor without issue.  All that is necessary is a BIOS update, which is easy to do as long as you already have a Haswell processor, which you would have if you went this route.  Even the soon to be released Broadwell processors should be compatible with H81 motherboards.  They are going to be compatible with Devil's Canyon motherboards, which are also LGA1150, so they will fit in the same socket as these motherboards, so in theory all that is necessary is a BIOS update.  Going this route, you won't be able to overclock using the multiplier, but you can always squeeze an extra 1-300Mhz by BCLK overclocking.  Good thing Intel processors at stock already blow the doors off the highest overclocked FX chip out there. At least the option for truly increased performance is there with Intel, unlike with AMD.

 

Referring to the FX as the budget option, or good for its price needs to stop.  $225 equals $225 but the performance of one does not equal the other in games.

 

The truth can be denied, not avoided.

 

[SkilledRebuilds]

ok intel fanboys, we can all agree intel definitely offers more performance than amd pretty much all round. but an 8350 bottlenecking a 970 (I have an UNDERCLOCKED 8350, and an OVERCLOCKED 970)? you have to be shitting me. you clearly base the satement on hear-say or pure fanboyism. the gpu hits 100% usage most of the freaking time, while the most used core only goes up to about 80%-87%. and its underclocked at 3.8GHz with turbo boost switched off.

so sure, the i5 is probably a better cpu for poorly threaded games, yes the i5 and i7 are better on most or all aspects, but an 8350 WILL NOT bottleneck a 970. Please stop spreading misinformation about things which you clearly know jacksh.. as i assume none of you have EVER had an amd cpu, at least not since athlon quad cores, correct?

thought so

And yet it does... to a great degree.

 

Your post clearly shows you DO NOT COVER ALL GAMES, and thats fair enough, who has the time......... but you can't know things for sure you have not experienced...

 

And I experienced a shit-ton of issues trying to run my lightly threaded nature games on it.. I went to a whole new platform, using the existing parts I had from the FX machine.. It really is a night and day difference... BUT IT DEPENDS ON THE GAMES YOU PLAY...

 

You cannot say yourself it DOES NOT HAPPEN when you do not play/research performance of every game out there to know for sure...

 

Testing must be done, and it has been done... if you ignore the facts thats ON YOU.

[Lollausen]

And yet it does... to a great degree.

 

There are many, many users on this forum, and in my spoiler who I link to who had made the switch from FX8 to i5 and noticed increased performance, increased minimum FPS, increased GPU usage, everything.

As far as what Faceman said, I clearly stated that an i5 is indeed a better cpu, im just saying the 8350 will not bottleneck a 970. Could you please explain to me how you get increased gpu usage when the gpu is already at 100% usage? i remember from math class 100% is the maximum, there is no increasing after that, but i guess we're getting creative with math here too.

As for SkilledRebuilds, yes you would be right, poorly threaded games will technically get an 8350 to bottleneck a 970, but only b/c the full potential of the cpu is basically inutilized, not because it is materially incapable of doing those calculations. The end result is inarguably the same, true, but the problem lies in the exploitation of its resources, certainly not in its lack thereof.

As for graphs, it is currently 20:30 in Rome and I'm going out, but I will try to oblige with MSI Afterburner graphs tomorrow.

[Lollausen]

also I believe the user's question was "Best AMD FX cpu for the GTX 970?"

I'm seeing people posting everything BUT the answer to that question.

[SkilledRebuilds]

As far as what Faceman said, I clearly stated that an i5 is indeed a better cpu, im just saying the 8350 will not bottleneck a 970. Could you please explain to me how you get increased gpu usage when the gpu is already at 100% usage? i remember from math class 100% is the maximum, there is no increasing after that, but i guess we're getting creative with math here too.

As for SkilledRebuilds, yes you would be right, poorly threaded games will technically get an 8350 to bottleneck a 970, but only b/c the full potential of the cpu is basically inutilized, not because it is materially incapable of doing those calculations. The end result is inarguably the same, true, but the problem lies in the exploitation of its resources, certainly not in its lack thereof.

As for graphs, it is currently 20:30 in Rome and I'm going out, but I will try to oblige with MSI Afterburner graphs tomorrow.

Its not a factor of 100% GPU usage going up..

 

But down, due to those lightly threaded titles using ONLY 1core to handle CPU tasks as well as feeding your GPU all it needs. Then the game being more demanding than the single core can allow and it drops GPU usage trying to complete the other tasks..

^A generalized viewpoint, trying to explain it off my head, I'm sure you know most of this anyway.

[RainColt]

 

I just received an  ASUS GTX 970 Strix as a gift and need to buy a cpu to pair it with , I was thinking about the FX-6350 and FX-8350, but the latter is a bit expensive for me right now, what should i do?

 

Stuff i have:

GTX 970 Strix

MSI 970 gaming mobo

Dark rock pro 3 cooler

corsair RM 650 PSU

12 GB of corsair vengeance ddr3 memory 

 60 hz monitor

 

Stuff i need:

An AMD FX cpu

A case

 

 

Your games are rarely going to take advantage of more than 4 cores right, but if you have an fx 4xxx games will 100% it and you won't be able to multitask while gaming, with the 6300 you will be able to play games and everything else and a 8320 will allow you to do things like game streaming.

I have a 6300 and a 290x and very rarely do I get bottlenecked by my CPU, admittedly I just recently had to turn on turboclock because running it at 3.2ghz was bottlenecking GTA V on Ultra, also it doesn't perform well with MMO's and a few large scale multiplayer games like Battlefield. If your getting an fx 6xxx get the 6300 and overclock it, its like 10$ cheaper than a 6350 and is the same chip with a lower core clock.

 

Clock for Clock every Fx processor will perform the similar for gaming.

[Morgan Everett]

If you want an FX, get the 8350. With DX12 on the horizon, it's an excellent bargain. 

[Dabombinable]

also I believe the user's question was "Best AMD FX cpu for the GTX 970?"

I'm seeing people posting everything BUT the answer to that question.

There isn't an honest answer top that, a freaking Phenom 2 x6 is better for gaming than an any of the FX range due to its greater IPC. And they both use PCIe Generation 2-which also shows the age of the FX line. TBH @dporiua AMD doesn't have a CPU that's really worth a damn when it comes to smooth game play outside their Phenom II's and Athlons, your better off waiting for Zen instead of buying a CPU that is only useful for videoediting/rendering/playing BF4/Hardline.

Oh and BTW @Lollausen, ignoring the facts is what a fanboy does, and that is exactly what you've been doing.

[Nena Trinity]

 

I just received an  ASUS GTX 970 Strix as a gift and need to buy a cpu to pair it with , I was thinking about the FX-6350 and FX-8350, but the latter is a bit expensive for me right now, what should i do?

 

Stuff i have:

GTX 970 Strix

MSI 970 gaming mobo

Dark rock pro 3 cooler

corsair RM 650 PSU

12 GB of corsair vengeance ddr3 memory 

 60 hz monitor

 

Stuff i need:

An AMD FX cpu

A case

 

 

I would say FX-8370 or the 9590 if your board handles the heat.

[DimasRMDO]

I would say FX-8370 or the 9590 if your board handles the heat.

Why not FX-8350 and overclock it?

It's cheaper.

[miagisan]

Why not FX-8350 and overclock it?

It's cheaper.

This. Get the 8350

[DimasRMDO]

This. Get the 8350

Or FX-8320, depends actually.... If you're willing to overclock....

Because using FX-8350 you'll start with 4.0GHz (5MHz more compared with FX-8320 which has 3.5GHz).