Choosing between an FX 8300 and an 8320; cpu upgrade

[191x7]

Hello everyone,

 

It seems I got my tax refund and I might have enough money for a CPU upgrade.

I have just enough cash to be somewhere inbetween a AMD FX 8300 and a 8320.

 

Intel is not an option since I allready have a motherboard for the CPU, a decent air cooler and I'm fixed on a FX cpu.

The FX 8350 is outside of my budget. The 8320E might fit, but I'm not considering it since it's even weaker than the 8300 at the same TDP.

 

As I understand, they are the same; the differences beeing the base clock (multiplier changed!) and the stock voltage (8300 beeing undervolted to gain a lower TDP).

 

Here are some comparisons, the 8300 vs the 8320:

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/AMD-FX-8320-vs-AMD-FX-8300

http://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-amd_fx_8300-224-vs-amd_fx_8320-225

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/303/AMD_FX-Series_FX-8300_vs_AMD_FX-Series_FX-8320.html

 

What do you say, better getting an FX 8300 or an FX 8320? Reasons and suggestions?

http://strawpoll.me/4731752

 

The board supports both (Asus M5A97 R2.0 Evo), both of them support 1866MHz memory (my RAM is 1866 by default, Kingston HyperX Fury) and my cooler has a rating of 180W TDP (an LC-CC-120, almost like an CM hyper 212 Evo) - should also enable some overclocking (I hope arround 4.5 GHz).

[Mao_Zedong]

It won't be worth the upgrade, it won't be much better than your phenom. If you are doing a highly threaded productivity task then it will be a decent upgrade, but will be nothing for gaming. If you want something for gaming, it isn't worth getting anything less than an i5 for you.

[Theguywhobea]

The 8320 is 20 points better than the 8300

[Clyne]

It really depends on your uses, a 8 core would be fine for content creation but a 6 core would be enough for gaming since there's not much games that use more than 2/4 cores. 

8320 is working fine for me anyway. 

Some people are probably gonna say sell your board for Intel......

But i see you have a 945, there isn't much difference between a FX and a 945 in gaming wise so if you were gaming then don't upgrade. I would only suggest to upgrade if you actually have a good use for the FX CPU(Content creation, rendering).

[Clyne]

The 8320 is 20 points better than the 8300

By that logic, it should be way faster.

But not really, it's just the same core with the same IPC but different clock speeds. 

[comicsansms]

I would say the FX 8320 because it has a higher clock speed. I would suggest a FX 6350 because you don't need 8 cores and it has a higher clock speed then the 8 core ones

[Sam Z Man]

Your cooler is rated at 180 but your motherboard will become the hot swirling lava of mount doom before your CPU will be able to use 180 watts.

[i_build_nanosuits]

 

The board supports both (Asus M5A97 R2.0 Evo), both of them support 1866MHz memory (my RAM is 1866 by default, Kingston HyperX Fury) and my cooler has a rating of 180W TDP (an LC-CC-120, almost like an CM hyper 212 Evo) - should also enable some overclocking (I hope arround 4.5 GHz).

not worth the upgrade, save some more money until you can afford a modern intel CPU.

[Clyne]

Your cooler is rated at 180 but your motherboard will become the hot swirling lava of mount doom before your CPU will be able to use 180 watts.

Before make assumptions, how about knowing how the CPU will be fine on that.

I'm using a 8320 on a Asus M5A97 R2.0

A board that almost exactly the same as the OP except his is 6+2 power phase and mine is 4+2. 

VRM temps are fine so idk what your talking about.

It's mostly the G43/G46 that's shit and exploding VRMs. 

[191x7]

- The Phenom II 945 bottlenecks my HD 7770 GPU in multiple scenarios (like the multiplayer of Battlefield 3, Battlefield 4, Hardline, ...). You think it would not bottleneck a stronger card like the R9 380 4GB to which I plan to upgrade in the near future?

 

- The Phenom II shows its age when streaming to twitch and/or recording gameplay.

 

- The PII does not have the required power for some modern games on anything higher than the lowest settings. Talking about The Witcher III and such.

 

- DirectX 12 will be able to scale nicely on up to 6 or even more cores, the Phenom II quad core becomes even a more limitting factor then.

 

And to all those Intel fanboys that try to respond here - I am an Intell fanboy myself but I'm on a AMD budget. So don't sell me your jokes about going to a Intel CPU.

A unlocked i5 or even a better i7 + a decent Z97 motherboard COST A LOT mORE than I will be able to afford in the next year or more.

You work for 3000$ I work for 300$. Hardware that costs 100$ to you costs 120$ here. So fly away from this thread.

[i_build_nanosuits]

- The Phenom II 945 bottlenecks my HD 7770 GPU in multiple scenarios (like the multiplayer of Battlefield 3, Battlefield 4, Hardline, ...). You think it would not bottleneck a stronger card like the R9 380 4GB to which I plan to upgrade in the near future?

 

- The Phenom II shows its age when streaming to twitch and/or recording gameplay.

 

- The PII does not have the required power for some modern games on anything higher than the lowest settings. Talking about The Witcher III and such.

 

- DirectX 12 will be able to scale nicely on up to 6 or even more cores, the Phenom II quad core becomes even a more limitting factor then.

 

And to all those Intel fanboys that try to respond here - I am an Intell fanboy myself but I'm on a AMD budget. So don't sell me your jokes about going to a Intel CPU.

A unlocked i5 or even a better i7 + a decent Z97 motherboard COST A LOT mORE than I will be able to afford in the next year or more.

You work for 3000$ I work for 300$. Hardware that costs 100$ to you costs 120$ here. So fly away from this thread.

-yes, so would any AMD FX CPU.

-So does the AMD FX

-neither does the AMD FX

-that's all BS in the air..and all the DX11 games will still run like crap...you'll need games developped for DX12 which will take another couple years before those hit the shelves and even then an i5-4460 will still perform better than the outdated FX.

 

Also, if you sell your motherboard and CPU for 90$ online, this is only a 100$ upgrade:

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($166.95 @ SuperBiiz)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B85M-GAMING 3 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($39.99 @ Newegg)

Total: $206.94

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-06-24 20:49 EDT-0400

[KenJimmY]

w8 till Windows 10 comes out , then see some more benchmarks and after that pick which one you like , cuz they're all the same once you overclock them at a certain speed

[191x7]

-yes, so would any AMD FX CPU.

-So does the AMD FX

-neither does the AMD FX

-that's all BS in the air..and all the DX11 games will still run like crap...you'll need games developped for DX12 which will take another couple years before those hit the shelves and even then an i5-4460 will still perform better than the outdated FX.

And you tested that yourself? Or you just try to sell "BS"?

 

The topic is not FX vs i5. Try not to make it that. It's just about choosing inbetween the FX lineup. Nothing more, nothing less.

[191x7]

Also, whoever told you that a overclocked FX 8-core 8300/8320/8350/8370 is not near the performance of an regular modern i5 is selling you some BS not even he believes.

The FX even beats many i5-s in some scenarioes (but not many)

.

Here you have an 8320E overclocked to 4.8 battling a i5 4690: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1403?vs=1198

And an FX 8350 vs the i5 4690 both on stock speeds: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/697?vs=1198

 

And don't tell me Anandtech is not a trusted source, that would even go against Linuses beliefs.

 

 

@i_build_nanosuits

Why would I sell the MBO I bought maybe 2 months ago with the intention on slowly upgrading my PC?

Also, once again, you're using the prices for the US market and so on.

I will upgrade to Intel when I decide to. This machine started as a Athlon XP 2500+ Barton and it will stay AMD untill I decide to go with a completely new system!

[i_build_nanosuits]

And you tested that yourself? Or you just try to sell "BS"?

 

The topic is not FX vs i5. Try not to make it that. It's just about choosing inbetween the FX lineup. Nothing more, nothing less.

Absolutely son, i owned one for a little bit over 3 months...this thing was chocking my GTX 780 pretty bad in most games to the point where i had to perform an early uprade...in my mind AMD still owes me a little over 200$

 

Proof i owned one:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sxzGshuqVtFe_2zgRhN3gXCraR7d8p-NazJ6z0nsGGc/edit#gid=0

[i_build_nanosuits]

Also, whoever told you that a overclocked FX 8-core 8300/8320/8350/8370 is not near the performance of an regular modern i5 is selling you some BS not even he believes.

The FX even beats many i5-s in some scenarioes (but not many)

For video rendering and encoding it does perform pretty close to a modern core i5...but when it comes to modern gaming or other task that rely on strong CPU cores...nowhere near...your phenom chip has better single threaded performance than an AMD FX chip mind you...piledriver is a big failure.

[191x7]

I agree, the cores themselves are weak. But I can't agree that those "8" cores are the same as 4 Phenom II cores.

If I had a unlocked Phenom II x6 I would not upgrade. But the quad core is weak. And it's not even overclockable.

 

Also, I agree, a FX 83x0 can bottleneck a 780 in some scenarioes. But I won't be able to afford a card like that for years.

And you can't tell me a FX 8-core would bottleneck a R9 380. A PII 945 will.

 

 

For video rendering and encoding it does perform pretty close to a modern core i5...but when it comes to modern gaming or other task that rely on strong CPU cores...nowhere near...your phenom chip has better single threaded performance than an AMD FX chip mind you...piledriver is a big failure.

 

Modern gaming? Haven't you even opened the links I provided? Or are those games too old to be considered modern?

Well, guess what, a modern game runs crappy on everything, especially untill a few patches (looking at Arkham Knight and a few others).

[Guest trucker2]

Same price 8320 but there close enough that whatever is cheaper might be better.

PS thanks for the articles

[i_build_nanosuits]

I agree, the cores themselves are weak. But I can't agree that those "8" cores are the same as 4 Phenom II cores.

If I had a unlocked Phenom II x6 I would not upgrade. But the quad core is weak. And it's not even overclockable.

 

Also, I agree, a FX 83x0 can bottleneck a 780 in some scenarioes. But I won't be able to afford a card like that for years.

And you can't tell me a FX 8-core would bottleneck a R9 380. A PII 945 will.

no, for 1080p gaming an overclocked FX 8 is a good match for an R9 380...but not a 390 or 390X or 290X or any other higher end card...and i didnt realised your CPU is locked...in that case, get the cheapest AMD FX 8 you can find (probably a used one) and overclock it yourself they are all the same.

[191x7]

no, for 1080p gaming an overclocked FX 8 is a good match for an R9 380...but not a 390 or 390X or 290X or any other higher end card...and i didnt realised your CPU is locked...in that case, get the cheapest AMD FX 8 you can find (probably a used one) and overclock it yourself they are all the same.

Sub-1080p to be exact, I'm on a 1680x1050 monitor and a few years away from a 1440p Freesync one.

 

Yes, my CPU is locked. And a bad overclocker at that (maybe degrading, ran OK on 3,6 but now I have to hold it under 3,5). And it supports memory up to 1333 MHz so my RAM even runs underclocked (the memory controler on Phenom II quad cores can handle up to 1333 MHz ddr3, my ram is 1866).

 

And the fact that I know they're "all the same" is what made me open this thread and ask. It might be that a 8300 is a better overclocker since it's a better chip - the reasoning as follows - if it can be undervolted by a fair ammount it probably needs less power to achieve an overclock / to get it stable on a certain clock speed. I mean - if it runs stable on a lower voltage it should, in theory, need less voltage to be stable at a higher clock.

[i_build_nanosuits]

Sub-1080p to be exact, I'm on a 1680x1050 monitor and a few years away from a 1440p Freesync one.

 

Yes, my CPU is locked. And a bad overclocker at that (maybe degrading, ran OK on 3,6 but now I have to hold it under 3,5). And it supports memory up to 1333 MHz so my RAM even runs underclocked (the memory controler on Phenom II quad cores can handle up to 1333 MHz ddr3, my ram is 1866).

 

And the fact that I know they're "all the same" is what made me open this thread and ask. It might be that a 8300 is a better overclocker since it's a better chip - the reasoning as follows - if it can be undervolted by a fair ammount it probably needs less power to achieve an overclock / to get it stable on a certain clock speed. I mean - if it runs stable on a lower voltage it should, in theory, need less voltage to be stable at a higher clock.

if you run games at lower resolution, your GPU is not working as hard therefore the CPU is much more likely to limit your gaming experience.

 

About the other question, it's somewhat correct: for example the FX-8320E is an higher bin than the FX-8320...it can indeed hit his clockspeed with less volts therefore it can theoretically hit higher clockspeed if you add more volts and probably overclock a little bit better than my FX-8320 was for example. (i got lucky i had one that could do 4.6ghz 24/7...most aren't that good these days...AMD has like 7 or 8 bins for these...FX-8300/8320/8320E/8350/8370/8370E/9370/9590 ...all the same crap really...just pick the cheapest you can find...you'll most likely be disappointed anyways.)

[191x7]

Both cards I might upgrade to (the R7 370 and the R9 380) support VSR (virtual super resolution) so that might be used.

That is the only way I could run a rez higher than 1680x1050 and I do not have an intent to upgrade to a 1080p monitor since that upgrade would bring almost nothing. Not worth the money I would spend if I decided to do so. 1680x1050 16:10 vs 1920x1080 16:9. WOuld need to be at least 2560x1080 or even 1440p to be a worthwile upgrade.

 

As for CPU ussage; the CPU pre-remders frames for the GPU. People call that calculating physics, sizes, positions etc. The resolution of the image has a low impact on that, especially if there are minor resolution differences like when we talk 1680x1050 vs 1080p or 1080p vs 1920x1200. Even the ingame FOV has a higher impact than a difference in 10-20% more or less pixels.

 

What I have now in BF4 MP -> low GPU ussage on LOW settings (and on higher settings too); arround 70-80% or even less. Have to play on the lowest settings to have playable framerate. If I increase the graphics, what happens is that the CPU still does about the same job but then even the GPU becomes a limiting factor.

 

The cheapest I can find is a FX 8300. But the difference between it, the 8320 and the 8320E is in the range of 20-30$.

The 8300 comes arround 160$, the 8320 some 180$ and the 8320E some 190$.

There are no used FX 8-cores beeing sold since people still use them (and consider them mid or even high end).

[i_build_nanosuits]

Both cards I might upgrade to (the R7 370 and the R9 380) support VSR (virtual super resolution) so that might be used.

That is the only way I could run a rez higher than 1680x1050 and I do not have an intent to upgrade to a 1080p monitor since that upgrade would bring almost nothing. Not worth the money I would spend if I decided to do so. 1680x1050 16:10 vs 1920x1080 16:9. WOuld need to be at least 2560x1080 or even 1440p to be a worthwile upgrade.

 

As for CPU ussage; the CPU pre-remders frames for the GPU. People call that calculating physics, sizes, positions etc. The resolution of the image has a low impact on that, especially if there are minor resolution differences like when we talk 1680x1050 vs 1080p or 1080p vs 1920x1200. Even the ingame FOV has a higher impact than a difference in 10-20% more or less pixels.

 

What I have now in BF4 MP -> low GPU ussage on LOW settings (and on higher settings too); arround 70-80% or even less. Have to play on the lowest settings to have playable framerate. If I increase the graphics, what happens is that the CPU still does about the same job but then even the GPU becomes a limiting factor.

 

The cheapest I can find is a FX 8300. But the difference between it, the 8320 and the 8320E is in the range of 20-30$.

The 8300 comes arround 160$, the 8320 some 180$ and the 8320E some 190$.

There are no used FX 8-cores beeing sold since people still use them (and consider them mid or even high end).

BF4 was playing perfectly fine on my FX...even with a GTX 780. Not the case for many other games, but if you're primarily a battlefield player(or star wars battlefront, hardline or anything else built upon frostbyte 3 game engine) you're good.

And you are correct, screen resolution does not impact the CPU load...but the GPU load is different, and as i said you will hit the CPU bottleneck much sooner at lower resolution because your GPU simply doesnt work as hard...for example, if you would run BF4 at 1440p with your current setup...your GPU would be pinned at 99% load consistently...you understand? you wouldnt get higher framerates though, but you wouldnt be hitting the CPU limitations.

[191x7]

BF4 was playing perfectly fine on my FX...even with a GTX 780. Not the case for many other games, but if you're primarily a battlefield player(or star wars battlefront, hardline or anything else built upon frostbyte 3 game engine) you,re good.

 

Yes, I do play Battlefield 4 the most. But maybe a couple of hours a week.

 

What I'm looking for is the next Fallout (4), the next Doom (4) and such. I'm a bit picky when it comes to games. Not playing everything, truly enjoing only a few games a year.

Not that many good games came out in the last year or two, at least not to me.

 

I'm aiming for a mid-range machine, to get it done this year and be free of upgrades untill I find a better job and become able to afford a true tech enthusiast pc (something that can run benchmarks without stuttering ).

[i_build_nanosuits]

Yes, I do play Battlefield 4 the most. But maybe a couple of hours a week.

 

What I'm looking for is the next Fallout (4), the next Doom (4) and such. I'm a bit picky when it comes to games. Not playing everything, truly enjoing only a few games a year.

Not that many good games came out in the last year or two, at least not to me.

 

I'm aiming for a mid-range machine, to get it done this year and be free of upgrades untill I find a better job and become able to afford a true tech enthusiast pc (something that can run benchmarks without stuttering ).

yes i see...so long as you do consider the AMD FX 8 a mid range option, it's great man...it's when you pair that with an higher end GPU and aim for 60FPS consistently in most games that it becomes salty.

I play many games, all kind of games...often...and i'm picky, i like to be pinned on my 65FPS cap...that's why the FX to me was a big no no...

i had it paired with an HD7950 (same as R9 280) and it was perfectly fine...GPU was pinned in every games or pretty much you know...but then i had the chance to upgrade to a much stronger card (GTX 780) and the FX showed me it's weaknesses in all it's glory.