[Build Help] AMD CPU for Sapphire R9 280 or 280x

[ScH4ll3R]

Hi!

 

I'm planning to build a new machine with an R9 280 from Sapphire, but I don't know which AMD CPU should I get to not to bottleneck it...

 

Full part list is here:

https://www.pccomponentes.com/core/client/showList/id/573169/hash/Dv1Xyoej

 

Any advice is appreciated!

 

Thanks!

[zappian]

I3 4160  Or  i5 4440 if you can afford one.

[psychot]

The fx 6300 you have listed there should be fine.

[ScH4ll3R]

I3 4160  Or  i5 4440 if you can afford one.

 

Thanks for the reply! But my question is, why won't a dual-core @ 3.6 not bottleneck it, but a quad-core at 3.8 like an FX-4300 will?

[Laputacake]

Thanks for the reply! But my question is, why won't a dual-core @ 3.6 not bottleneck it, but a quad-core at 3.8 like an FX-4300 will?

Because the acrhieture of those CPUs is old and obsolete and they are all pretty bad CPUs now and even a CPU from 2007 can beat them at single core performance

[ScH4ll3R]

Because the acrhieture of those CPUs is old and obsolete and they are all pretty bad CPUs now and even a CPU from 2007 can beat them at single core performance

So will it be disastrous to pair it with an FX-6300?

[Memories4K]

Thanks for the reply! But my question is, why won't a dual-core @ 3.6 not bottleneck it, but a quad-core at 3.8 like an FX-4300 will?

Don't want to start a flame war here, but Intel's ahead of the game when it comes to CPUs.

 

Like Laputacake said AMD CPUs are not great for single-threaded performance and it'd be a better investment to go with an Intel CPU.

I'd say get a Pentium k and a z97 mobo, upgrade to something better within that socket when you have the coin.

I regret my FX-6300 not gonna lie.

[psychot]

So will it be disastrous to pair it with an FX-6300?

In short, no.

[Fate]

So will it be disastrous to pair it with an FX-6300?

 

In short, no.

In most CPU intensive games actually, yes. The i3 outperforms the FX6 in pretty much every game and consistently beats the FX8. 

FX CPU's are not good for gaming in 2015, I would highly suggest you go i3 (VERY VERY strong cores compared to FX (almost 2x as strong) and has hyperthreading) or i5 (beats 8350 in every single game to my knowledge (excluding margin of error)).

 

Read more here: 

http://www.hardcoreware.net/intel-core-i3-4340-review/2/

http://www.hardwarepal.com/best-cpu-gaming-9-processors-8-games-tested/

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-fx-8370e-cpu,3929-7.html

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8427/amd-fx-8370e-cpu-review-vishera-95w/3

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/285199-harrynowls-ultimate-cpu-showdown-wip/

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/286142-fx-8350-r9-290-psu-requirements/page-3#entry3892901

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/266481-an-issue-with-people-bashing-the-fx-cpus/page-4#entry3620861

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/285927-gaming-performance-between-4300-8350-and-4-threaded-performance-between-amd-intel/

[Apple_II]

The good thing about an Intel CPU's is the fact that if you get a motherboard with a relevant socket you can upgrade in the future very easily. The aging AM3+ platform does not offer much headroom to upgrade sadly due to its age. I highly recommend to get something on the intel side BUT do not forget you can get a used or refurbished CPU and more often than not it will work just fine! I plan to upgrade soon but I know more than likely I will be going the used route for the CPU. Usted habla espanol tambien?

[tnlich]

LOL same old shallow minded people saying FX isn't this or isn't that . Let me remind you the Phenom series is still gaming in 2015 people. Also some Older Intel platforms. So park your deep pockets minds and talk smart. BONG FOR THE BUCK!!!!!!!!!!... How much are you willing to spend? Then Direct the person. It makes more sense.

[Memories4K]

LOL same old shallow minded people saying FX isn't this or isn't that . Let me remind you the Phenom series is still gaming in 2015 people. Also some Older Intel platforms. So park your deep pockets minds and talk smart. BONG FOR THE BUCK!!!!!!!!!!... How much are you willing to spend? Then Direct the person. It makes more sense.

I don't consider you getting a lot of bang for your buck if your graphics card can't be fully utilized.

[Fate]

LOL same old shallow minded people saying FX isn't this or isn't that . Let me remind you the Phenom series is still gaming in 2015 people. Also some Older Intel platforms. So park your deep pockets minds and talk smart. BONG FOR THE BUCK!!!!!!!!!!... How much are you willing to spend? Then Direct the person. It makes more sense.

You're the shallow minded person if you went through the links I posted and still think FX are good "bang for the buck" gaming CPU's. 

[i_build_nanosuits]

gaming...best intel cpu you can afford, simple as that.

[xsadrulesx]

if you factor in the price of a good motherboard (which you will need to get a good stable overclock on the fx cpus) and an aftermarket heatsink (you will also need one of these to overclock) it will cost you about the same as a locked i5 with a budget board on the stock cooler. In a lot of cases you will get much better gaming performance with the i5.

[mapegl]

Unfortunately I cannot recommend amd for CPUs either. The problem is the architecture. However you could get a 8350 instead of a lower tier i5. That could be good in highly multi threaded loads. BUT don't be fooled by the 8 or 6 cores. In both scenarios amd has has created modules with two cores each. Therfore each core basically only has half the bandwidth. Of course it is much more complicated than this, but basically that is what it boils down to.

I would really tend towards intel since their whole architecture is so much newer And especially in loads with less needed cores, intel is usually much better.

[Faceman]

LOL same old shallow minded people saying FX isn't this or isn't that . Let me remind you the Phenom series is still gaming in 2015 people. Also some Older Intel platforms. So park your deep pockets minds and talk smart. BONG FOR THE BUCK!!!!!!!!!!... How much are you willing to spend? Then Direct the person. It makes more sense.

You're hitting the bong too hard if you think that.  I like to partake from time to time, but that is no excuse for negligence and not being aware of what is good and what isn't.  Lets back it up to the Phenoms to start.  The single core performance of the Phenom is a little bit better than the FX series, so in certain games, it will perform better than the FX.  Those are good CPUs.  Moving forward to the FX series, these are not good CPUs.  They were considered a failure at their inception and launch, and that remains true today.  They are only good for heavily multithreaded work, which doesn't exist in games.  An i3 outperforms an FX8 in 80% of games, while being less expensive and offering an upgrade path.  FX are not bang for buck either because you cannot compare just price of the processor.  For FX CPUs to be stable at even stock speeds without risk of frying your mobo, and potentially your CPU along with it, you need a higher end motherboard with extensive VRM phase designs.

 

Those older Intel platforms are absolutely still kicking ass, Phenom and FX because their architecture is vastly superior.  Its all about architecture, and IPC when it comes to gaming.

[ScH4ll3R]

The good thing about an Intel CPU's is the fact that if you get a motherboard with a relevant socket you can upgrade in the future very easily. The aging AM3+ platform does not offer much headroom to upgrade sadly due to its age. I highly recommend to get something on the intel side BUT do not forget you can get a used or refurbished CPU and more often than not it will work just fine! I plan to upgrade soon but I know more than likely I will be going the used route for the CPU. Usted habla espanol tambien?

 

Si, soy de España

 

For the others, I'm very grateful for your comments here. The other path would be to get a Z97 mobo with an i5, and save up for the GPU for a couple months. I must admit that seeing the graphs Fate posted I almost shat myself. It is true that the comparison is with a 4770K, but I don't know if saving 100€ is worth loosing 10-20FPS.

 

I also work a lot with VMs, so I guessed 6 cores would be a nice thing to have. I'm also not planning to buy a 120Hz monitor, so running games over 60FPS will be the best, as long it doesn't stutter or anything.

[Hieb]

Thanks for the reply! But my question is, why won't a dual-core @ 3.6 not bottleneck it, but a quad-core at 3.8 like an FX-4300 will?

 

The clock speed just measures the number of clock cycles completed per second. 3.6GHz means the core cycles 3.6 billion times each second. However GHz does not measure how much gets done in each of those clock cycles. The number of transistors, layout of the chip, cache latency etc. all affect efficiency.

 

Each of Intel's cores are around 50% faster than each of AMD's cores. Additionally hyper-threading allows an i3 to be treated like a quad-core by the software so that in each clock cycle it can complete instructions from multiple threads, allowing it to schedule more efficiently. So that already gains a lot of ground. Furthermore, AMD's FX chips are separated into modules - two cores share one pool of cache, a decoder and a floating point unit. These shared resources mean the two cores are not totally independent and at times one must wait for the other one to finish what it's doing. 

 

The dual-core i3 is only around 25% slower than the 6-core FX-6300 in parallel workloads, like video encoding. However games don't process things in the same way and rather than being a totally scalable workload, the CPU basically works with many very small tasks. The way CPU affects video game performance is frame latency. For every frame the video card pumps out, it needs a certain amount of info from the CPU... if the CPU cannot provide this info fast enough, this results in the infamous "bottleneck". The GPU has to slow down and wait for the CPU because it takes too long to give needed data.

 

So single-threaded performance is usually more beneficial even if a game can use many threads, since per-core performance usually results in lower frame latency. Varies depending on just how well load is spread out, for instance in BF4 multiplayer AMD's FX CPUs can do a decent job, but an i3 also does very well even though the game can use 6-8 threads.

 

 

So will it be disastrous to pair it with an FX-6300?

 

Not a disaster, as the GPU is pretty mid-range... but you would get better results in the majority of games with an Intel chip, and god forbid if you felt like upgrading to a crossfire setup or getting a GTX 980 or R9 380X (when it releases), you can't really make an upgrade on the AM3+ platform. FX-8320/8350 is only marginally better than the FX-6300/6350 in games.

[zappian]

I cannot recommend AMD cpus for gaming with a clear conscience.

[D3MON]

So will it be disastrous to pair it with an FX-6300?

no, my 8320 isnt holding my 290 back and thats like 2x r9-270x's.

a 6300 will be fine and is quite a good match but rather than run an i3 which cant overclock and will be held back in cpu demanding tasks (recording with fraps for instance) id say wait for zen if you can, if that still sucks then get an i5 4430 its not much more than an i3 and wont hold you back as much.

an i3-4330 is 25% more expensive than an fx6300 which can easily be overclocked beyond an fx6350.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1192?vs=1281

[ScH4ll3R]

no, my 8320 isnt holding my 290 back and thats like 2x r9-270x's.

a 6300 will be fine and is quite a good match but rather than run an i3 which cant overclock and will be held back in cpu demanding tasks (recording with fraps for instance) id say wait for zen if you can, if that still sucks then get an i5 4430 its not much more than an i3 and wont hold you back as much.

an i3-4330 is 25% more expensive than an fx6300 which can easily be overclocked beyond an fx6350.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1192?vs=1281

 

If I had to choose an Intel, I'd choose an i5 for sure.

My problem is that I've never owned an AMD CPU, I had an Athlon X2 on a laptop, but i wouldn't consider that a good experience. I currently own an i7 3610QM, on a laptop too, and I'm pretty happy with it.

 

People I know that they own an Intel, say AMD is pure rubbish, and people that i know that they own an AMD, say Intel owners are rich and hyped

[Fate]

People I know that they own an Intel, say AMD is pure rubbish, and people that i know that they own an AMD, say Intel owners are rich and hyped

Both sides who say that are idiots, look at the benchmarks and decide for yourself. 

AMD isn't garbage, it's just that their CPU's bottleneck high end graphics cards and just in general give lower FPS, so there's no point in choosing one right now. 

No matter how much people like D3MON (who thinks an FX4 doesn't bottleneck a 290 when it bottlenecks my R9 270...) try to convince me that I'm wrong about FX, at the end of the day, there's plenty of sources providing benchmarks for what I say. 

[ScH4ll3R]

Both sides who say that are idiots, look at the benchmarks and decide for yourself. 

AMD isn't garbage, it's just that their CPU's bottleneck high end graphics cards and just in general give lower FPS, so there's no point in choosing one right now. 

No matter how much people like D3MON (who thinks an FX4 doesn't bottleneck a 290 when it bottlenecks my R9 270...) try to convince me that I'm wrong about FX, at the end of the day, there's plenty of sources providing benchmarks for what I say. 

Yeah, the benchmarks don't lie. What would be your choice for an Intel CPU? I've seen the HD 4600 does pretty well on gaming.

[Fate]

Yeah, the benchmarks don't lie. What would be your choice for an Intel CPU? I've seen the HD 4600 does pretty well on gaming.

HD 4600 is OK for 720p and things like CS:GO/LoL at 1080p, but integrated GPU's are pretty horrible right now all around for gaming. 

If you're going with a 280(x) I'd suggest a i5-4440 and H81 motherboard or i5-4460 and H97 motherboard. They're, in my opinion, the best value gaming CPU's.