Looking for a good processor/motherboard

[Knaj]

So recently I've done a lot of research into the computer that I want to build, and I have everything figured out, except for the processor and motherboard, which I've had a lot of trouble focusing on. I'm looking for a good processor that is at least quad core, preferably overclockable, and is preferably under $150 USD, but am willing to go up to $220 if I absolutely need it. I also need a good motherboard to go with this too, one that is under $100 USD. I'm also looking for the motherboard to be either black, or black and blue.

 

What I will be using this computer for is some everyday tasks, not too intense coding, pretty hardcore gaming, and would like it to hold up well in all of these. I've been looking at the AMD FX series, but still not too sure.

 

It also needs to be compatible with the following: 

 

 

Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory

Samsung 850 EVO-Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive

Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive

EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card

Corsair 450D ATX Mid Tower Case

Corsair CX 600W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply

 

If you guys have any suggestions on what I should get, please comment below, or if you think I should change my build up just a little please let me know too!

 

Thanks!

[niofalpha]

Processor and MoBo or just processor?

The i5 4460 is a great processor, at 190$ it's the 1/2 way point of your budget.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117302

 

AS for it's motherboard the http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-h97anniversary is a nice cheap choice.

[cheeze_tartz]

no AMD cpu's. they're terrible imo. Also, the SSDnow SSD's aren't good either. I would suggest getting a 128gb SSD, and spend the extra money on the mobo/cpu. I suggest getting an i5-4460, and the cheapest H97 board you can get.

[cheeze_tartz]

Processor and MoBo or just processor?

The i5 4460 is a great processor, at 190$ it's the 1/2 way point of your budget.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117302

 

AS for it's motherboard the http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-h97anniversary is a nice cheap choice.

You ninja'ed me again!

[niofalpha]

You ninja'ed me again!

fite me

1v1 Rust

[cheeze_tartz]

fite me

1v1 Rust

m8 ill 469 no scope u

 

meet me at 6969 420 street @ 4:20 am

[niofalpha]

m8 ill 469 no scope u

 

meet me at 6969 420 street @ 4:20 am

d8 m8?

[cheeze_tartz]

d8 m8?

hell yeaaaaaaaaa m8

[Knaj]

Ok, so I might go with the 4460, but does anybody think the AMD FX series might be better?

[Knaj]

hell yeaaaaaaaaa m8

Hey m8 maybe you can sk8 on ur d8 so you can learn to appric8 and not h8. Cmon m8, you know it's f8.

[cheeze_tartz]

Hey m8 maybe you can sk8 on ur d8 so you can learn to appric8 and not h8. Cmon m8, you know it's f8.

you. i like you.

[cheeze_tartz]

Ok, so I might go with the 4460, but does anybody think the AMD FX series might be better?

no. they are complete shit. thats a fact.

[SkilledRebuilds]

Ok, so I might go with the 4460, but does anybody think the AMD FX series might be better?

They are outclassed in EVERYTHING except when being forced to use 100% of ALL CORES Rendering and such..

 

For Gaming, they are WORTHLESS to me personally... and for many others...

Put it this way... EACH single core of Intel's is 1.65x faster than each single core that AMD can offer (Seen in Cinebench thread for comparisons)

Games do not use all cores, 2-4 cores of usage when gaming is where it's at...currently. FX suffers because when only two threads are being pushed, only two of those SLOWER cores are being used.

When Intel's two cores are used, the performance is much better due to that 1.65x faster PER-core speed, it CAN BE night and day difference on non-AAA titles.

When 4 cores are being used, same metric, half of the FX-8 potential is lost, the half in use are slow already, the Intel gets fully utilized with 4 cores each with faster processing speeds.

 

@Faceman has a well detailed post, from users on the forum as well as reviewers, full of facts why the FX is NOT a gaming processor.

 

When looking at CPU performance in Games, keep your eyes on MIN-FPS (The lowest FPS it gets to) the higher min-fps the better..

You'll see the MinFPS when the @Faceman post is up... it's quite important.

[Faceman]

[spoiler=People think they are getting a good deal on FX processors for gaming, and they are not.]

 

Introduction:

My goal with this post is to help others by avoiding costly mistakes that so many before them have made, and to help educate people on the objective reasoning why you should choose one product over another. 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 growing number of 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.  If you feel like you have something to contribute, or would like to challenge anything being said within, please speak up.

 

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 whether it be i3 Vs. 860K/FX6 or i5 Vs. FX8/9.  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 don't hate AMD, I don't like Intel.  What I love are facts and the facts are very clear that Intel is the better option at this point in time regardless of price point.  Evaluating performance is no place for personal opinion or bias.  No one gets to have an opinion on this.  You don't, I don't, no one does.  This is because laborious testing has been done to provide facts and through the observation and dissection of these facts, it has been emphatically shown that the Intel processors are currently the better performing option.

 

The Main Issues Surrounding FX Processors

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.

 

Gaming on FX Processors

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. 

 

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, Bioshock, CoD:Ghosts, and many more.

 

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  at an acceptable level, when you could play 5 out of 5 games at an excellent level, with no bottlenecking, lower energy costs, and future upgrade paths while paying the same amount of money.

 

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. 

 

*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.

 

[spoiler= Issue: I Architecture and IPC]

The culprit behind the FX's poor gaming performance is its Micro-architecture and Instructions Per Cycle(IPC)

 

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(CMT).  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 GPUs I would pair with an FX that won't limit the card's potential is around the R9 280X/GTX 770 level.

 

Synthetic Benchmarks:

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.

 

Real-World Applications:

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:

 

 

---

 

-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. 

 

[spoiler= Issue II:  Core Count]

 

When you recommend someone an FX8 for gaming, you're really recommending them an FX4.  This is because the architecture between all FX variants is the same.  The only thing that is changed is core count, and speed.  A man(Faa) who knows a lot more about this than me did some research and found, 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. Linus did a video about this recently. 

 

 

I'm going to link you over to Faa's 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 below, and all of the links in the FX Vs. i3 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 between the FX4/6/8.

 

Cores Vs. Modules

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.

 

[spoiler=Issue III:  Upgradability]

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.

 

[spoiler=General Use and MultiTasking]

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.

 

Multi-Tasking Benchmarks

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?  In some situations, yes, but overall, no.  It really depends on the programs being used, and the vast majority of programs are single core dependent, and running these programs simultaneously will be much more fluid on the strong Intel processors.

---

---

 

 

[spoiler=The strengths of FX Processors]

 

Productivity and Content Creation is an area that the FX does very well in, provided it is an application that can make use of all those threads.  There are very few tasks that benefit from 8 threads, but in those that do, the FX processors are amazing budget workstation processors.  A program that really benefits from all the threads you throw at it is a real niche area, often reserved for certain types of content creation and calculations-not games.  This niche area is where the FX processors really shine because those specific programs benefit from many threads 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 cores.  Below are some very popular content creation benchmarks.

 

Content Creation Program Benchmarks:

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

 

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's 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.techspot.com/review/943-best-value-desktop-cpu/page3.html

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

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

 

[spoiler=Feasibility and Cost]

 

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 is why you have to buy a sufficient motherboard for the FX series, which makes the overall cost of an FX based system more expensive, and we haven't even included cooling or factored in energy costs.  Often times people will look at just the price of the processors, compare that number and stop there.  This is not an accurate representation of what it costs to build a PC.

 

This is the bare minimum for an overclocked FX8 processor that will still under achieve compared to an Intel processor no matter how high you manage to overclock it, all while bottlenecking high end GPUs, and with no upgrade path.  Because AM3+ is such an old platform, it also lacks some modern features such as PCI 3.0, and SATA Express.

 

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.

Don't forget that you will likely need an aftermarket cooler as well.

 

Every region on PcP, it is less expensive to go Intel than AMD.  I have also found that in regions not supported by PcP it is less expensive to go Intel than AMD.  These regions that I have personally found are: Scandinavia, India, and Poland.  If you would like me to check for you, send me your frequently used online retailers and I will be happy to look into it for you.

 

WHEN BUYING COMPONENTS PLEASE CHECK FOR COMPATIBILITY. NOT ALL INTEL CPUs and MOTHERBOARDS ARE COMPATIBLE OUT OF THE BOX. IF YOU AREN'T SURE, ASK IN THE FORUM!

 

WHEN BUYING COMPONENTS PLEASE CHECK FOR COMPATIBILITY. NOT ALL INTEL CPUs and MOTHERBOARDS ARE COMPATIBLE OUT OF THE BOX. IF YOU AREN'T SURE, ASK IN THE FORUM!

 

Yes, I did post that twice on purpose.  Please check and double check for compatibility, I would hate for anyone to get incompatible components.  Just ask, we are always happy to help if you are confused.

 

[spoiler=FX Vs. i3]

 

You will see below that even the Intel i3 which costs considerably less, is outperforming the FX6/8/9s in many games, and the locked i5, which costs the same, is running away with it.  There have also been a lot of new, modern, multi-threaded games that take advantage of all threads available, but are still performing poorly on the FX platform because of the poor per-core performance. 

 

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://www.techspot.com/review/943-best-value-desktop-cpu/page6.html

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."

 

"In the end, AMD's FX-8320E is an affordable quad-core processor that overclocks decently, but even if you pushed it to 5GHz it would struggle to match the slightly pricier Core i5-4430 and even the Core i3-4360 at times. Then after you take the power consumption figures into account, arguments for the FX-8320E begin to seem rather indefensible."
 

 

"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."

 

 

[spoiler= FX Vs. i5]

 

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.

 

 

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 an aftermarket cooling solution.  You can squeeze by on a 6+2 motherboard, but you aren't going to get as consistent results as an 8+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, because it is.  What people fail to account for are the ancillary components needed for the FX processors, which end up making it cost the same as a locked i5.

 

i5-4670k Vs. FX8350 Aggregate Comparison

 

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.

 

"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 :)"

 

 

[spoiler=Testimonials]

 

This next section is reserved for users who have previously owned FX processors and made the switch to Intel.  They discuss their experience with both and offer insight into what both platforms are like from a user's perspective.  I invite anyone to submit their own testimonial, positive or negative to be shared in this section.

 

Suika:

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 overclocked 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 by his FX8, and his expensive GPU wasn't being fully utilized.

 

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.

 

UnbendingNose:

 

UnbendingNose is a member 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.

 

itachipirate:

 

Itachipirate is an LTT member 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 who 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."

 

He eventually created his own thread talking about the games that are specific to him.  While not AAA titles, these are very popular games that people play.  People often forget that there is a broader gaming consumer base who enjoy games other than just AAA titles. 

 

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)"

 

itzhalo:

 

Another member 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:

 

He had this to say: "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:

 

Another member who created their own thread talking about their switch from an FX8350 @ 4.8Ghz to an Intel i5-4670k.  Simply titled:  Made the AMD to Intel Switch.

 

[spoiler=Conclusion:]

"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 i5 is better than AMD's FX8. Regardless of however you look at it, in most situations,

the i5 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 FX processors are good for certain workloads, but apart from those workloads, it is simply not where it should be. Its IPC, which is weaker than the i7 920's, which is 6 years old, is simply too weak to put it as any sort of real competition to the i5. 

 

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 FX processor for any usage apart from calculations and specific content creation programs, you are either being a fanboy or just plain stupid.  You can no longer plead ignorance because I just presented you all of the facts as to why the Intel processors are 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 FX8

against an i5, know that you are suggesting a worse option, especially for a gaming PC. To argue that the FX8 is competitive with an i5

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

 

Referring to the FX processors as good for the money, or budget options has got to stop.  $225 = $225 but the performance of one does not equal the other when it comes to gaming performance.  The FX processors should not be recommended outside of very specific workloads.  They are fantastic budget workstation processors, but not fantastic gaming processors.  Why recommend a processor that can only play 4 out of 5 games at an O.K. level of performance, when you can pay the same for a different processor that plays 5 out of 5 games at an excellent level of performance, is much more energy efficient, performs better in daily tasks, doesn't bottleneck high end GPUs, and gives you an upgrade path?

 

AMD is not bad, they are just bad right now.  When Zen is released, I'm hoping they pick up the slack, but until then, it is negligent for people on this forum and for moderators to continue to allow these people to recommend FX processors when the situation doesn't call for it.  Or to let people run around with baseless conjecture when there is an infinite amount of results out there showing exactly how far behind the FX processors are for gaming compared to Intel CPUs at the same or lower price.

 

In the mean time, the best we can do is continue to help people out who seek advice.  Win them over with logic and reasoning, while attempting to mute the nay-sayers who continue to propagate false information.  At the end of the day, we shouldn't be arguing, because there is no argument to be made.  Hopefully the person asking for help can see this in the information we provide rather than the "results" the FX users claim to have.  Arguing with those fanatics is tiresome.  I am really really sick of it, but when they are lying to people, and wasting others money it gets to me.  There is no better way to shut them down than with this wall of text on all of the information I have compiled over the past year with the help of others on this forum.  This post covers it all, and I don't feel like typing it all out multiple times a day, because it is a discussion being had multiple times a day.

 

There is a lot of duplicitous marketing, propaganda, and bad word of mouth that goes into the FX processors remaining relevant, and I am trying to help people, one by one if that's what it takes, but for every person I help, I am happy, and they are happy because they message me and say thank you, or send me pictures of their build, or appreciate that I took the time to actually break it down for them criteria by criteria instead of "It played fine for me in the games I like, so it should play fine for you in the games you like."

 

 

 

[spoiler=Appendix:]

In this section I will include a lot of gaming graphs, as well as touch on a few other subjects such as AMD's up and coming microarchitecture(Zen), as well as DX12.

 

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

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

---

---

---

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

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

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

---

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

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

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.

---

---

---

---

This one above is Witcher 2

---

---

 

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 properly 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."  I strongly feel that this is the wrong attitude to have, especially when an i5 can be purchased for the same price.

 

Why buy a processor that can only play 4 out of 5 games at an ok level of performance, when you can pay the same and play 5 out of 5 games at an excellent level of performance? 

 

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 those games!  In not a single game does the i5 perform worse than the FX8.  A locked i5 + H81/B85 motherboard can be purchased for the same, or less than the cost of an FX8 + 8+2 VRM Phase Motherboard as I demonstrated above.

 

I also want to throw in these power consumption graphs because it is something that one must consider when going with the FX processors.

 

The 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 bottom graph is of Metro Redux, and using an FX(E) processor which is lighter in terms of power consumption than the non-E variants.  In order for the FX to be competitive, it must be overclocked, and look how dramatically the power consumption increases!  Not to mention, if you follow the corresponding link, the overclocked FX still falls behind the stock i3 when it comes to in-game performance.  This is a common theme throughout most games.

---

 

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 sizable 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

 

 

2011 was the last time AMD actually released a new architecture.  Don't be confused by their rehashes such as the FX8320E/FX8370.  Those are still the same processors, with the same architecture, just with minor tweaks and highly binned into their respected SKUs.  Think Haswell Vs. Devil's Canyon, a minor tweak, but the same underlying architecture.

 

AMD does have a new microarchitecture in the works, codenamed "Zen."  It is rumored to be released in Q2/3 of 2016, and will be on the AM4 Socket.  It is being designed by Jim Keller, who is the engineer responsible for the venerable Athlon 64.  I hope that when AMD releases Zen it will bring AMD back into high end consumer CPU 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.

 

We should also be rooting for Zen in general because AMD needs a win badly.  The Fury has been fantastic for them, but I don't think it is enough to dig them out of the hole they are currently in.  Hopefully Zen is the answer to AMD's woes.  This industry needs competition, because competition breeds technological advancements.

 

 

DX12 is almost here, and with it comes a lot of excitement.  It should really help these old FX processors, but what people fail to understand is that it is not a miracle fix to what the main problems surrounding the FX processors are.

 

The main thing DX12 is going to do is increase the draw calls between the CPU and GPU, reducing the GPU bottleneck.  This will only be in games coded for DX12, which we wont see for many years. Remember how long it took for DX11 to be adopted completely?  Keep in mind it won't fix games that aren't coded for DX12.  Also, DX12 is going to help Intel processors, so until we see gaming benchmarks it doesn't make much sense to hype DX12 as the cure to mediocrity.

Buying an FX processor with the assumption that DX12 will fix it, is like going to the beach and not applying sun screen, hoping that a cure for skin cancer is right around the corner.  You just don't do it.

 

You also have to be aware that there are many games, and many features/settings within games that are still going to rely on strong single core performance, which DX12 isn't going to fix.

 

[SkilledRebuilds]

[spoiler=People think they are getting a good deal on FX processors for gaming, and they are not.]

 

Introduction:

My goal with this post is to help others by avoiding costly mistakes that so many before them have made, and to help educate people on the objective reasoning why you should choose one product over another. 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 growing number of 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.  If you feel like you have something to contribute, or would like to challenge anything being said within, please speak up.

 

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 whether it be i3 Vs. 860K/FX6 or i5 Vs. FX8/9.  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 don't hate AMD, I don't like Intel.  What I love are facts and the facts are very clear that Intel is the better option at this point in time regardless of price point.  Evaluating performance is no place for personal opinion or bias.  No one gets to have an opinion on this.  You don't, I don't, no one does.  This is because laborious testing has been done to provide facts and through the observation and dissection of these facts, it has been emphatically shown that the Intel processors are currently the better performing option.

 

The Main Issues Surrounding FX Processors

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.

 

Gaming on FX Processors

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. 

 

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, Bioshock, CoD:Ghosts, and many more.

 

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  at an acceptable level, when you could play 5 out of 5 games at an excellent level, with no bottlenecking, lower energy costs, and future upgrade paths while paying the same amount of money.

 

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. 

 

*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.

 

[spoiler= Issue: I Architecture and IPC]

The culprit behind the FX's poor gaming performance is its Micro-architecture and Instructions Per Cycle(IPC)

 

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(CMT).  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 GPUs I would pair with an FX that won't limit the card's potential is around the R9 280X/GTX 770 level.

 

Synthetic Benchmarks:

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.

 

Real-World Applications:

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:

 

 

---

 

-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. 

 

[spoiler= Issue II:  Core Count]

 

When you recommend someone an FX8 for gaming, you're really recommending them an FX4.  This is because the architecture between all FX variants is the same.  The only thing that is changed is core count, and speed.  A man(Faa) who knows a lot more about this than me did some research and found, 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. Linus did a video about this recently. 

 

 

I'm going to link you over to Faa's 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 below, and all of the links in the FX Vs. i3 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 between the FX4/6/8.

 

Cores Vs. Modules

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.

 

[spoiler=Issue III:  Upgradability]

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.

 

[spoiler=General Use and MultiTasking]

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.

 

Multi-Tasking Benchmarks

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?  In some situations, yes, but overall, no.  It really depends on the programs being used, and the vast majority of programs are single core dependent, and running these programs simultaneously will be much more fluid on the strong Intel processors.

---

---

 

 

[spoiler=The strengths of FX Processors]

 

Productivity and Content Creation is an area that the FX does very well in, provided it is an application that can make use of all those threads.  There are very few tasks that benefit from 8 threads, but in those that do, the FX processors are amazing budget workstation processors.  A program that really benefits from all the threads you throw at it is a real niche area, often reserved for certain types of content creation and calculations-not games.  This niche area is where the FX processors really shine because those specific programs benefit from many threads 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 cores.  Below are some very popular content creation benchmarks.

 

Content Creation Program Benchmarks:

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

 

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's 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.techspot.com/review/943-best-value-desktop-cpu/page3.html

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

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

 

[spoiler=Feasibility and Cost]

 

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 is why you have to buy a sufficient motherboard for the FX series, which makes the overall cost of an FX based system more expensive, and we haven't even included cooling or factored in energy costs.  Often times people will look at just the price of the processors, compare that number and stop there.  This is not an accurate representation of what it costs to build a PC.

 

This is the bare minimum for an overclocked FX8 processor that will still under achieve compared to an Intel processor no matter how high you manage to overclock it, all while bottlenecking high end GPUs, and with no upgrade path.  Because AM3+ is such an old platform, it also lacks some modern features such as PCI 3.0, and SATA Express.

 

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.

Don't forget that you will likely need an aftermarket cooler as well.

 

Every region on PcP, it is less expensive to go Intel than AMD.  I have also found that in regions not supported by PcP it is less expensive to go Intel than AMD.  These regions that I have personally found are: Scandinavia, India, and Poland.  If you would like me to check for you, send me your frequently used online retailers and I will be happy to look into it for you.

 

WHEN BUYING COMPONENTS PLEASE CHECK FOR COMPATIBILITY. NOT ALL INTEL CPUs and MOTHERBOARDS ARE COMPATIBLE OUT OF THE BOX. IF YOU AREN'T SURE, ASK IN THE FORUM!

 

WHEN BUYING COMPONENTS PLEASE CHECK FOR COMPATIBILITY. NOT ALL INTEL CPUs and MOTHERBOARDS ARE COMPATIBLE OUT OF THE BOX. IF YOU AREN'T SURE, ASK IN THE FORUM!

 

Yes, I did post that twice on purpose.  Please check and double check for compatibility, I would hate for anyone to get incompatible components.  Just ask, we are always happy to help if you are confused.

 

[spoiler=FX Vs. i3]

 

You will see below that even the Intel i3 which costs considerably less, is outperforming the FX6/8/9s in many games, and the locked i5, which costs the same, is running away with it.  There have also been a lot of new, modern, multi-threaded games that take advantage of all threads available, but are still performing poorly on the FX platform because of the poor per-core performance. 

 

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://www.techspot.com/review/943-best-value-desktop-cpu/page6.html

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."

 

"In the end, AMD's FX-8320E is an affordable quad-core processor that overclocks decently, but even if you pushed it to 5GHz it would struggle to match the slightly pricier Core i5-4430 and even the Core i3-4360 at times. Then after you take the power consumption figures into account, arguments for the FX-8320E begin to seem rather indefensible."

 

 

"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."

 

 

[spoiler= FX Vs. i5]

 

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.

 

 

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 an aftermarket cooling solution.  You can squeeze by on a 6+2 motherboard, but you aren't going to get as consistent results as an 8+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, because it is.  What people fail to account for are the ancillary components needed for the FX processors, which end up making it cost the same as a locked i5.

 

i5-4670k Vs. FX8350 Aggregate Comparison

 

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.

 

"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 :)"

 

 

[spoiler=Testimonials]

 

This next section is reserved for users who have previously owned FX processors and made the switch to Intel.  They discuss their experience with both and offer insight into what both platforms are like from a user's perspective.  I invite anyone to submit their own testimonial, positive or negative to be shared in this section.

 

Suika:

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 overclocked 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 by his FX8, and his expensive GPU wasn't being fully utilized.

 

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.

 

UnbendingNose:

 

UnbendingNose is a member 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.

 

itachipirate:

 

Itachipirate is an LTT member 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 who 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."

 

He eventually created his own thread talking about the games that are specific to him.  While not AAA titles, these are very popular games that people play.  People often forget that there is a broader gaming consumer base who enjoy games other than just AAA titles. 

 

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)"

 

itzhalo:

 

Another member 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:

 

He had this to say: "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:

 

Another member who created their own thread talking about their switch from an FX8350 @ 4.8Ghz to an Intel i5-4670k.  Simply titled:  Made the AMD to Intel Switch.

 

[spoiler=Conclusion:]

"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 i5 is better than AMD's FX8. Regardless of however you look at it, in most situations,

the i5 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 FX processors are good for certain workloads, but apart from those workloads, it is simply not where it should be. Its IPC, which is weaker than the i7 920's, which is 6 years old, is simply too weak to put it as any sort of real competition to the i5. 

 

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 FX processor for any usage apart from calculations and specific content creation programs, you are either being a fanboy or just plain stupid.  You can no longer plead ignorance because I just presented you all of the facts as to why the Intel processors are 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 FX8

against an i5, know that you are suggesting a worse option, especially for a gaming PC. To argue that the FX8 is competitive with an i5

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

 

Referring to the FX processors as good for the money, or budget options has got to stop.  $225 = $225 but the performance of one does not equal the other when it comes to gaming performance.  The FX processors should not be recommended outside of very specific workloads.  They are fantastic budget workstation processors, but not fantastic gaming processors.  Why recommend a processor that can only play 4 out of 5 games at an O.K. level of performance, when you can pay the same for a different processor that plays 5 out of 5 games at an excellent level of performance, is much more energy efficient, performs better in daily tasks, doesn't bottleneck high end GPUs, and gives you an upgrade path?

 

AMD is not bad, they are just bad right now.  When Zen is released, I'm hoping they pick up the slack, but until then, it is negligent for people on this forum and for moderators to continue to allow these people to recommend FX processors when the situation doesn't call for it.  Or to let people run around with baseless conjecture when there is an infinite amount of results out there showing exactly how far behind the FX processors are for gaming compared to Intel CPUs at the same or lower price.

 

In the mean time, the best we can do is continue to help people out who seek advice.  Win them over with logic and reasoning, while attempting to mute the nay-sayers who continue to propagate false information.  At the end of the day, we shouldn't be arguing, because there is no argument to be made.  Hopefully the person asking for help can see this in the information we provide rather than the "results" the FX users claim to have.  Arguing with those fanatics is tiresome.  I am really really sick of it, but when they are lying to people, and wasting others money it gets to me.  There is no better way to shut them down than with this wall of text on all of the information I have compiled over the past year with the help of others on this forum.  This post covers it all, and I don't feel like typing it all out multiple times a day, because it is a discussion being had multiple times a day.

 

There is a lot of duplicitous marketing, propaganda, and bad word of mouth that goes into the FX processors remaining relevant, and I am trying to help people, one by one if that's what it takes, but for every person I help, I am happy, and they are happy because they message me and say thank you, or send me pictures of their build, or appreciate that I took the time to actually break it down for them criteria by criteria instead of "It played fine for me in the games I like, so it should play fine for you in the games you like."

 

 

 

[spoiler=Appendix:]

In this section I will include a lot of gaming graphs, as well as touch on a few other subjects such as AMD's up and coming microarchitecture(Zen), as well as DX12.

 

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

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

---

---

---

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

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

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

---

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

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

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.

---

---

---

---

This one above is Witcher 2

---

---

 

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 properly 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."  I strongly feel that this is the wrong attitude to have, especially when an i5 can be purchased for the same price.

 

Why buy a processor that can only play 4 out of 5 games at an ok level of performance, when you can pay the same and play 5 out of 5 games at an excellent level of performance? 

 

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 those games!  In not a single game does the i5 perform worse than the FX8.  A locked i5 + H81/B85 motherboard can be purchased for the same, or less than the cost of an FX8 + 8+2 VRM Phase Motherboard as I demonstrated above.

 

I also want to throw in these power consumption graphs because it is something that one must consider when going with the FX processors.

 

The 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 bottom graph is of Metro Redux, and using an FX(E) processor which is lighter in terms of power consumption than the non-E variants.  In order for the FX to be competitive, it must be overclocked, and look how dramatically the power consumption increases!  Not to mention, if you follow the corresponding link, the overclocked FX still falls behind the stock i3 when it comes to in-game performance.  This is a common theme throughout most games.

---

 

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 sizable 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

 

 

2011 was the last time AMD actually released a new architecture.  Don't be confused by their rehashes such as the FX8320E/FX8370.  Those are still the same processors, with the same architecture, just with minor tweaks and highly binned into their respected SKUs.  Think Haswell Vs. Devil's Canyon, a minor tweak, but the same underlying architecture.

 

AMD does have a new microarchitecture in the works, codenamed "Zen."  It is rumored to be released in Q2/3 of 2016, and will be on the AM4 Socket.  It is being designed by Jim Keller, who is the engineer responsible for the venerable Athlon 64.  I hope that when AMD releases Zen it will bring AMD back into high end consumer CPU 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.

 

We should also be rooting for Zen in general because AMD needs a win badly.  The Fury has been fantastic for them, but I don't think it is enough to dig them out of the hole they are currently in.  Hopefully Zen is the answer to AMD's woes.  This industry needs competition, because competition breeds technological advancements.

 

 

DX12 is almost here, and with it comes a lot of excitement.  It should really help these old FX processors, but what people fail to understand is that it is not a miracle fix to what the main problems surrounding the FX processors are.

 

The main thing DX12 is going to do is increase the draw calls between the CPU and GPU, reducing the GPU bottleneck.  This will only be in games coded for DX12, which we wont see for many years. Remember how long it took for DX11 to be adopted completely?  Keep in mind it won't fix games that aren't coded for DX12.  Also, DX12 is going to help Intel processors, so until we see gaming benchmarks it doesn't make much sense to hype DX12 as the cure to mediocrity.

Buying an FX processor with the assumption that DX12 will fix it, is like going to the beach and not applying sun screen, hoping that a cure for skin cancer is right around the corner.  You just don't do it.

 

You also have to be aware that there are many games, and many features/settings within games that are still going to rely on strong single core performance, which DX12 isn't going to fix.

 

Thanks man, wasn't sure if you were awake... then again I don't know your timezone or if you even sleep...