Best AMD FX cpu for the GTX 970?

[Faceman]

Pretty much.  It's just most devs are focusing on pushing everything towards single thread over multicore.  FX chips are great for multicore tasks, but Intels take the crown for single thread.  So, with games becoming more and more single thread based that means the FX would be slower to process meaning that the system data takes longer to process everything, so that bottleneck there from the system's other areas then slows down the GPU.  The faster the data gets from the system to the GPU the better the performance of the GPU.  So, that's why you are seeing the increase with the Intel.  I'm just saying that's not a direct FX-GPU.  FX-bottlenecks the system and the system data-then the slow down there goes to the GPU.  To make more sense of where the actual bottlenecks are, and also what's bottlenecking what.  I'm hoping though that AMD fixes this with the new CPUs, but if they don't I clearly have other options.  

This is the most convoluted, round-about way of saying that the FX processor is the bottleneck.  It is. 

[itachipirate]

The Intel fanboys in this thread are amazing.  No not many are using it properly here they are trying to promote Intel.  As for the 9xxx I already said they have one easy advantage which=easy OCs.  Clearly you fanboys can't read.  A bottleneck is not when one gives faster/better performance.  A bottleneck is when data becomes congested or blocked that slows down the other product.  Leave it to Intel fanboys to use the term improperly.  The Intel just increases it.  Let me give you guys a metaphor of why you are using it wrong.  Let's say a car goes on stock to 120 right?  You put NOS or a turbo in it to make it go faster than an Intel.  The AMD would be stock, and the turbo or NOS would be the Intel.  The AMD can give it 100% performance, but the AMD is not bottlenecking it...the Intel is just making it go faster.  That's not a bottleneck.  The AMD dropping the stock performance would be a bottleneck.  For example.  If I put a AMD k6 in with the 970 that would be a bottleneck.  Because that's slowing down the data from actually flowing+not allowing it to flow at all.

No to most of this. I have an FX-6300 and I am really satisfied for $100. But my GTX 970 is being bottlenecked, I can't reach 100% utilization of the graphics card in some games at 1080p. A CPU bottleneck is when the CPU can not give as high of a framerate as the GPU can. And the real-world framerate will be more reflective of the weakest link. Think of it more like your racecar has an engine capable of 120mph, but the carburetor (guess it's an old racecar ) can deliver enough gas for this specific engine to go 80mph, the car goes 80mph max because the carb can't deliver enough fuel/air mixture to the engine for it to go 120mph. The 3rd or 4th gen intel carburetor can deliver enough gas to go 120mph, allowing the engine to work to it's full potential. The car goes 120mph

 

 

A low end such as the i5 4440 actually doesn't bottleneck a 970 at all, far from it. Even an old Xeon doesn't do too badly (about 80% GPU usage with my 970-61fps average in Crysis 1 on ultra-I didn't bother with 2&3).

Yea that's what I meant. Any 4th gen i5 will be able to keep up with the 970 just fine

[itachipirate]

My other posts cleared up what I meant.  There's 2 bottlenecks is why.  Unless, you're doing multicore tasks you won't get full use of your 970, due to a secondary bottleneck created by the bottleneck in the system towards singlre threaded tasks that the FX has created.  And, yes I used a very bad metaphor...yours is better.

Sorry I hadn't read above very much. I also think it's not really the CPU's fault for it being a bottleneck, but DX11 makes weak single-thread CPUs bad for gaming. If DX12 turns out to be great and allows all cores to communicate to the GPU I don't think those server type CPUs like AMD FX will perform badly. If only it were a perfect world with perfect software, we could get AMD CPUs that perform great for very cheap

[Dabombinable]

Ok, this is for the people who complain about Intel CPU's. Compare AMD's equivalents to Intel's (i3 to an FX 8350/i5 to FX 9590-and include a motherboard) and you'll see that prices are actually quite fair-just check your countries import taxes:
www.computeralliance.com.au

[Lollausen]

at this point its obvious there is no talking with you people. because we are still stuck at saying that the 8350 gets bottlenecked only if the software in question is crappily optimized. seeing as we're also seeing way more multicore usage today in a lot of games, that wont even be the case soon.

But still, to justify your claims, you need to use specifically performace crippling software (for the 8350). To go back to a better car metaphor, you're taking a ferrari, putting it on a dirt track with potholes, and then saying "see, it doesnt reach the stated speed of 300KMph". Well no shit, lets try and test intel cpus on a program that refusess to use HT. Cos thats essentially the way you are treating amd cpus.

[Dabombinable]

at this point its obvious there is no talking with you people. because we are still stuck at saying that the 8350 gets bottlenecked only if the software in question is crappily optimized. seeing as we're also seeing way more multicore usage today in a lot of games, that wont even be the case soon.

But still, to justify your claims, you need to use specifically performace crippling software (for the 8350). To go back to a better car metaphor, you're taking a ferrari, putting it on a dirt track with potholes, and then saying "see, it doesnt reach the stated speed of 300KMph". Well no shit, lets try and test intel cpus on a program that refusess to use HT. Cos thats essentially the way you are treating amd cpus.

Evidence has been given, its been proven time and again. Your just ignoring the same way the other wandering fanboys do. Before I take a leaf out of your book and ignore you, I'll leave this: Only use a mid range GPU with a mid range CPU such as the FX 8350 (aka R9 280X/GTX 960 and below).

[Lollausen]

Evidence has been given, its been proven time and again. Your just ignoring the same way the other wandering fanboys to. Before I take a leaf out of your book and ignore you, I'll leave this: Only use a mid range GPU with a mid range CPU such as the FX 8350 (aka R9 280X/GTX 960 and below).

you decided to ignore me when you decided that the only reliable way to test a cpu is using poorly programmed software. The way i see it somethings power is measured using its full potential, not using an ad hoc test to limit it on purpose.

And again you ignored me when I asked what games you wanted me to test out of the ones I have, because they're not poorly optimized MMOs for the most part. 

It's not my fault if you keep posting rants without reading other people's posts, including the one specifically asking what you would like me to test on. 

At least @SkilledRebuilds (sorry to pull you back into this) and I have differences of opinion but we try to hear and understand each other out rather than ignoring what the other posts, even though we know we don't agree with each other.

[Morgan Everett]

Evidence has been given, its been proven time and again. Your just ignoring the same way the other wandering fanboys do. Before I take a leaf out of your book and ignore you, I'll leave this: Only use a mid range GPU with a mid range CPU such as the FX 8350 (aka R9 280X/GTX 960 and below).

 

Why? My FX 6300 works just fine with my 290. It'll work even better when we see the back of DX11, which is something conveniently forgotten in discussions like this. 

[DimasRMDO]

Why? My Fx 6300 works just fine with my 290. It'll work even better when we see the back of DX11, which is something conveniently forgotten in discussions like this. 

Can you send us the benchmarks? Or at least screenshot.

[Dabombinable]

Why? My FX 6300 works just fine with my 290. It'll work even better when we see the back of DX11, which is something conveniently forgotten in discussions like this. 

1. Average GPU usage-use MSI afterburner to see it

2. DX 11 will bein use for quite a while still, and few if any current games will be ported.

3. You really should monitor how smooth your GPU usage is. Because after using my Xeon-which is far stronger in single threaded performance than an FX 6300 (while also having 4 full cores instead of 3 modules) and around 80% GPU usage with my GTX 970 was normal.

[Umeshwarnath]

an fx 8320 or 8350 clocked 4.2+ ghz will do a good enough job.

[Dabombinable]

an fx 8320 or 8350 clocked 4.2+ ghz will do a good enough job.

its around 5GHz actually, because there is quite a large IPC gap to close.

[DimasRMDO]

8320 can hit up to around 4.9 at the most, and the 8350 can hit up to around 5.4, but that's with extreme cooling.

Well, "Extreme" cooling.....

[Joegeddon]

With the money that most people spend on HT i5's. You could get an FX 9590. It's got 8 cores which may be a bit overkill but it has an 8MB cache.

[SkilledRebuilds]

With the money that most people spend on HT i5's. You could get an FX 9590. It's got 8 cores which may be a bit overkill but it has an 8MB cache.

YOU REALLY REALLY REALLY NEED TO READ BACK PAGES.

The FX 9000 series is POINTLESS IN EVERY ASPECT of its existence.

 

Intel's CPU's are NOT more expensive in the long run... initially it is by a slight margin, CPU price alone..

But for FX CPU's (let alone the 220w 9000series), you need a QUALITY motherboard with GOOD 8+2 power phases, and this plus the cooling system in place that you need to cool the 220w CPU (let alone the 8000 series),.. make it more expensive actually.. and it still performs WORSE in many scenarios against the lower end Intel counterparts.

 

Read back pages... it's all there.

[NeatSquidYT]

With the money that most people spend on HT i5's. You could get an FX 9590. It's got 8 cores which may be a bit overkill but it has an 8MB cache.

1. Hyperthreaded i5s? Wat.

2. Cache isn't everything. Cores aren't everything. It's all down to how strong the cores are.

[DimasRMDO]

With the money that most people spend on HT i5's. You could get an FX 9590. It's got 8 cores which may be a bit overkill but it has an 8MB cache.

1. i5 isn't Hyper-Threaded, only i3 and i7.
2. Yes it has 8 cores but they're weak and caches.... Yes it does affect performance but it's not number 1.

[DimasRMDO]

I wouldn't call them weak, but they are horribly utilized.  They're similar to 4 cores than actual 8 cores because they shove 2 physical cores in each module.  There's 4 modules, and 2 per.

Yeah.... Most applications don't use 8 cores, but still they have lower IPC.

[SkilledRebuilds]

I have to disagree with you slightly there.  Th 9xxx are enthusiast chips for OCing, and an okay start for beginners who don't want to mess with the bios, not use custom liquid cooling, but want to get to around 5GHz+ while keeping it cool easily with an all in one.  If you are talking about actual benefits in anything else then not really because they are just the 8320 and the 8350 oced in factory to a higher clock.  With them all you have to do is check the tune box and agree to the thing that pops up...it then tunes it to around 4.8-4.9 or 5.4-5.5.  Then it restarts your computer, and tada simple OC.  

Using non-manual overclocks are stupid because the motherboard almost ALWAYS puts more voltage than necessary into the CPU. Seriously this is a common trait amongst motherboards, using the easy-OC options are not good.. It's not "Simple at all"

Dial it in manually.

 

The 9000 is an OC'd already chip i know (8350+OC), I get that it saves the uninitiated some time and effort, but it does not stay at 5Ghz much ever, usually at 4.7Ghz-5.0Ghz with MUCH variability. And still does not outperform the i3 in Gaming,.. great for rendering,.. but I'd rather worse render times and better gaming performance.

 

Btw - the 9000 series pretty much requires watercooling, esp if you do not wanna throttle from high temps. (Not saying air cooling is impossible, but for that CPU, its seriously silly to do)

 

 

I wouldn't call them weak, but they are horribly utilized.  They're similar to 4 cores than actual 8 cores because they shove 2 physical cores in each module.  There's 4 modules, and 2 per.

They are weak, (as a single core) the Intel 4th-5th gen singlecore performance is around 1.6x faster than the singlecore performance than what AMD has.

(See the cinebench singlecore results for both CPU's to see this is near accurate) The numbers are close to being...1.05 VS 1.65.

 

Utilized or not,.. the Intel CPU's are utilized the same way AMD's are by the software. (However many cores used+threads involved is the same for each CPU)

Just that Intels are 1.6x'ish faster so thats where the performance gap comes from.

 

I'm not saying that your machine is bad,...or anything like that.. Don't take my posts that way (not saying you are, just saying dont if you do)

I'm just stating the facts (even tho I provide no physical proof, forums are full of this info, I can even link you if you want) that have been gathered and shared/experienced by the users and myself, here at LTT.

[Morgan Everett]

1. Average GPU usage-use MSI afterburner to see it

2. DX 11 will bein use for quite a while still, and few if any current games will be ported.

3. You really should monitor how smooth your GPU usage is. Because after using my Xeon-which is far stronger in single threaded performance than an FX 6300 (while also having 4 full cores instead of 3 modules) and around 80% GPU usage with my GTX 970 was normal.

 

1. What about it?

2. DX12 games are to become available towards the end of this year, from what I've read. I don't care if no current games are ported.

3. My GPU usage is fine.  I don't know what CPU you're using, so comparisons are impossible. 

[Morgan Everett]

Can you send us the benchmarks? Or at least screenshot.

 

Benchmarks and screenshots of what?

[flibberdipper]

Holy fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck, this thread turned into a shitstorm. Oh. My. God.

[Dabombinable]

1. What about it?

2. DX12 games are to become available towards the end of this year, from what I've read. I don't care if no current games are ported.

3. My GPU usage is fine.  I don't know what CPU you're using, so comparisons are impossible. 

My CPU at the time was a Xeon X5450-which is in the cinebench thread alongside my i5 4440.

[DimasRMDO]

Holy fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck, this thread turned into a shitstorm. Oh. My. God.

Brace yourself, they're coming.

[flibberdipper]

Brace yourself, they're coming.

Apparently.