AMD FX = Bad?

[Geekazoid]

I did see what you did there

Swoit! LOL

[D3MON]

At this moment in time, the only reason i'd suggest an AMD chip, is if you're making a low-cost HTPC, in which case i would say get an APU. Or if you're building a streaming/rendering rig on a tight budget, then i'd say FX8350, or FX9370/9590 depending on if you are willing to overclock or not.

 

TL:DR (all of it) sorry :mellow: 

i had several phenoms and loved em so i know what your rigs like. (had a x2 555 that unlocked and overclocked to B55 4.1ghz, phenom 960 (no unlock but got a 4.44ghz cpu print screen, and briefly a 975...meh)

but if you're on a budget you shouldnt go higher than fx8320e theres no point (ive had 2, they both do 4.5ghz and the first got to 5ghz)

i sold my phenom for £60 and got my first 8320 for £106, best £46 i ever spent (for all i do) its not game changing at all much in the same way a 4440 to a 4770k wouldnt be, but editing or rendering, transcoding, huge improvement, but you need a £70 ideally ud3p or 970 gaming (or asus one if you love blue) £170 total

if your on a really tight budget get a 760g chipset board for £50 and an fx6300 £120 total

[ice856]

Hmmm so bassicaly its inferior to intel it some area.

[Mentalguy]

Hell, I'm running an old 6 core Phenom and it does me fine. Partnered with my GTX 970 it runs everything on ultra at 1080. Going to be updating to the FX-9590 at the end of this month. AMD are still good, just Intel offers a lot more performance at a cost though. I like AMD, they are good for first time builders like myself. When I can realistically afford to spend hundreds of pounds on a nice motherboard and i7 I will move to Intel.

you are one of the few people that I can give the go ahead for the 9590. you already have a board that can handle it. If you can get on at a reasonable price go ahead and get it if you want, just know, there might not be that much improvement  in gaming if you are already overclocking.

[Bhav]

FX 9590 is newer than my I7 980 so I should upgrade to it. Its also under 9000 more better.

[JustCallMeVlad]

Its not bad , its just intel is a much better option for gaming.

It's not bad.. It's garbage

[CalculuS]

It's not bad.. It's garbage

Depends on the game.

[Zulkkis]

The current FX CPU's are pretty out dated, but as far as them being "bad" I have to disagree with everybody. For single threaded games they perform poorly but my argument is that its the games fault for not being coded properly(seriously, its 2015, the P4 days are over, use more threads devs). They do use more power than Intel which is to be expected for an older chip, but its not like my lights dim from running Prime95. The heat output is exaggerated since everybody says "oh. 84w TDP vs 125w TDP hur durr less" but they also have no idea how TDP is calculated or have compared in "real world"(in fact, the only hot chip is the 9590 and other 220w chip). For tasks/programs/games that take advantage of multicore CPU's, they hold up well for being 2 years old, which considering the price is not bad at all(cant get an unlocked i5 for $140 new, just saying).

At the sale prices I've seen them going to at times I could perhaps consider an FX processor if there was a very limited use-case scenario that I'd want to use it for.

 

They suck. Not everything can be threaded properly and nor they should. AMD processors sucking compared to the Intel is like PS3 multiplats being inferior to 360 version, except that while PS3 had theoretically more power, AMD doesn't even have that on their side. For the consumer the reason why something's slow doesn't matter, either, just the speed. Intel's products reflect the needs of the current market - consumers won't care too much about reasons why.

 

Not to mention the dinosaur that is AM3+

[itachipirate]

I love my FX.

[JustCallMeVlad]

I love my FX.

Were not fanboys. We just value our money by not buying crap

[Brandon Cassie]

It isn't that bad....it's just overhyped because people don't seem to understand that the power per core differs from CPU to CPU, I've had people tell me that their FX 8350 is faster than my 3770K because it has 8 cores

[Brandon Cassie]

I love my FX. But on this forum all you see is intel fanboys, fanboys everywhere.

Fanboys? I think we just prefer what works best

[itachipirate]

Were not fanboys. We just value our money by not buying crap

I didn't buy crap obviously. I paid less than $100 for my FX-6300 and it plays all the big games I want to play at great frame rates. I had to overclock it to 4ghz but it was easy to do and I learned some things along the way. I'm very satisfied and I didn't pay much. If that's 'buying crap' to you, we have very different opinions about what can be considered crap.

[Sauron]

Most of the FX cpus make sense for their price range.  They are not very good for gaming, but for productivity they are really not bad.

[LukaP]

AMD's CPUs are not bad at all. They're just a little dated so they don't keep up with Intel's newer CPUs that well. Intel is better right now but there's really nothing wrong with AMD's performance (from my experience).

Their FX IPC is worse than intel had with Penryn, which is a really long time ago. its even worse than the core 2 duo days. so no, they are not a little dated. they are properly old. and AMD doenst have the money to increase performance, apart from "add more cores, pump more volts"

[SteveGrabowski]

Hell, I'm running an old 6 core Phenom and it does me fine. Partnered with my GTX 970 it runs everything on ultra at 1080. Going to be updating to the FX-9590 at the end of this month. AMD are still good, just Intel offers a lot more performance at a cost though. I like AMD, they are good for first time builders like myself. When I can realistically afford to spend hundreds of pounds on a nice motherboard and i7 I will move to Intel.

 

You better have a really nice motherboard too if you're putting the FX-9590 in it.

[SteveGrabowski]

On a side note, despite the performance difference - AMD is a much smaller company than Intel, and offers you 8 cores for the price of 4, from Intel.

 

And with the performance of 2, from Intel!

 

[ThE_MarD]

Heyyo,

For now? Four threads seems to still be the sweet spot for CPUs in gaming... even though those rolled out in 2006, almost a decade ago with the Intel Core2Quad Q6600 (which I owned btw, w00t! That CPU was awesome).

Most of the thread is accurate (minus the lulz trollz posts) but I like how LukaP just worded it the best.

 

Their FX IPC is worse than intel had with Penryn, which is a really long time ago. its even worse than the core 2 duo days. so no, they are not a little dated. they are properly old. and AMD doenst have the money to increase performance, apart from "add more cores, pump more volts"

For acronyms to save you a Google search for those who don't know? IPC = Instructions Per Cycle.

Essentially? Intel realized how shit their Pentium IV's and D's were so they went back to the drawing board and rebuilt their CPUs to be a crapton more efficient (the Core2-series which evolved into the i-series). Back in the day? AMD FX CPUs were just obliterating Pentiums. It was the complete opposite of the CPU scene these days.

Nowadays? Intel has the edge of CPU efficiency and it's AMD that needs a serious CPU redesign.

DirectX 12 is "slated" (I say this since all we've heard is press releases and only one preview-benchmark from Andantech) to improve performance on CPUs by making it easier for game developers to use multi-threading and unloading more 3D rendering information to the GPUs. If that's the case? AMD FX and their APU lineups will get a free efficiency boost... but at the same time? That also means Intel's i3 and i5 lineup will also get a decent boost (probably the i7's won't notice it as much).

So? If you know which games you're playing that don't properly support multi-threading? Then yes, Intel CPUs will beat it everytime for pretty much even the entry level i3 CPUs. If you're playing a game with DirectX 11 and decent multi-threading? Certain FX CPUs will do pretty darn good at the entry-level price. The FX-6300's are excellent for their price in those situations... but with the current prices on the higher end i3's and entry i5's? Intel is the better way to go in those cases.

 

Hell, I'm running an old 6 core Phenom and it does me fine. Partnered with my GTX 970 it runs everything on ultra at 1080. Going to be updating to the FX-9590 at the end of this month. AMD are still good, just Intel offers a lot more performance at a cost though. I like AMD, they are good for first time builders like myself. When I can realistically afford to spend hundreds of pounds on a nice motherboard and i7 I will move to Intel.

I'm sorry dude but as much as I like my i7-3770k CPU? There's absolutely no point to buying it for gaming over an Intel i5-4000 series CPU. Games still barely see any benefit with those extra CPU threads. Same goes for the AMD FX-9590. They're a waste of money. Four to Six CPU cores is where the best price-to-performance is for CPUs. Anything higher won't make a lick of difference in most cases other than 3DMark benchmarks.

I only got an Intel i7-3770k cause a friend was selling off some Dogecoin mining rigs.. so I got it for the same price I was about to pay for a new Intel i5 CPU.

Besides! this is Linus Tech Tips! Why hasn't anyone quoted Linus videos!?

[Fulgrim]

And with the performance of 2, from Intel!

 

-snip-

Go sit on a cactus mate. 

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Go sit on a cactus mate. 

 

 

Did you just post the fucking TekSyndicate benchmarks?  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:

[ThE_MarD]

Heyyo,

Did you just post the fucking TekSyndicate benchmarks?  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:

I agree. I hate TekSyndicate too... they're so terribly biased. If there's any group on the net that totally embodies that whole "PC Master Race vs Console Peasants"? It's definitely them. Close-minded guys.

[harrynowl]

Generally for day to day stuff they perform "ok" but an Intel at the same price will be better.

 

And in games the majority of the time they'll perform "ok" assuming you're at 60Hz and don't see the bottlenecking. But again you can get an Intel build for the same price that fares better.

 

The culprit is the per core performance (or lack of therefore). Here's how it stacks up against some Intel CPUs:

 

However if you do something that makes use of all 8 cores nicely (highly multithreaded integer workloads for example) the FX can do quite nicely:

 

And in things like rendering that uses both integer and floating point maths usually, they can also do well for their price:

 

The real killer is the platform cost though, to get one that allows for overclocking (where a lot of FXs lack of performance can be made up) you'll be coming dangerously close to Intel i5 based platform pricing.

[Fulgrim]

Did you just post the fucking TekSyndicate benchmarks?  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:

Btw, synthetic benchmarks don't mean a damn thing. It's real world performance where things matter.

 

And if a game/program can utilize all 8 FX cores, it keeps up with the Intel price point equivalent, and in some cases beat it.

 

As i said before - the FX8350 is a good choice for a budget build for someone who wants to stream, or render. For just raw fps, an i5 will be better for most current games (as 99% of games only use 1 or 2 cores properly). And the enthusiast end of the market is Intel's territory, for now. Just like in the past, that crown will be thrown between both AMD & Intel, it's just Intel has held onto it longer this time around.

[Giganizer300PRO]

AMD is not bad, but Intel.

You go with AMD if you don't have enough money for the computer you need.

That is the CPU, of course.

The make solid GPUs, much better quality than their processors, but I think NVIDIA still performs a little better than AMD, just the gap is smaller than AMD and Intel.

[SteveGrabowski]

Btw, synthetic benchmarks don't mean a damn thing. It's real world performance where things matter.

 

And if a game/program can utilize all 8 FX cores, it keeps up with the Intel price point equivalent, and in some cases beat it.

 

As i said before - the FX8350 is a good choice for a budget build for someone who wants to stream, or render. For just raw fps, an i5 will be better for most current games (as 99% of games only use 1 or 2 cores properly). And the enthusiast end of the market is Intel's territory, for now. Just like in the past, that crown will be thrown between both AMD & Intel, it's just Intel has held onto it longer this time around.

 

That wasn't a synthetic benchmark I posted. It was framerates in the major AAA games released in 2014, most of which can make good use of 8+ threads.

 

http://gamegpu.ru/test-video-cards/igry-2014-goda-protiv-protsessorov-test-gpu.html

 

What are these 99% of games that are dual core and why is the Pentium G3258 such a lousy gaming CPU if that's the case? Or are you counting old Call of Duty games and stuff from that era?

 

But I hope the crown does go to AMD again, because I'm a longtime AMD buyer (K6-2, Athlon XP 1800+, Athlon 64x2 4000+, Phenom II x4 965 Black) and my current system is the first build I have done with Intel since the mid 90s. But their FX CPUs are indefensible right now for gaming the same way the Pentium 4 was back when the Athlon XP was the monster CPU on the block. AMD went that same route as Intel did back then, hoping high clockspeed numbers would fool people into thinking their CPU was better.