AMD fanboys.

[k1ng_alex]

So even though AMD is been behind in the CPU race I would like to hear from people running AMD cpu's and your overall feel for your cpu.

I started in the good old days of the Q6600 I was too young to value computer power, a while latter i got me an intel 2600 which was great halo CE was a blast.

Fast forward a few years and the death of that PC I was forced to switch to something cheaper for school ( I didn't own a laptop) so i bought a 35$ cpu the classic AMD sempron 140.

And yes that sucked alot but after a few months of using it i didn't really notice the slow performance , my beefy amd 6990 did the heavy lifting.

Fast forward to today im running an amd 4100 @ 4.5GHZ I play all modern games do modern things and even with the cost of all of my upgrades it still would have been cheaper than some "Gamer grade" intel cpu.

 

[Nena Trinity]

Fanboys only huh now I feel discriminated!

But yes I love my FX-8370 & Athlon X4 860K both does all that I need them to do at more than playable frame-rates!!!

[k1ng_alex]

Just now, Nena360 said:

Fanboys only huh now I feel discriminated!

But yes I love my FX-8370 & Athlon X4 860K both does all that I need them to do at more than playable frame-rates!!!

I just feel the hate all the time , 

My peeve is when someone says " man a core 2 duo is faster than the best amd cpu"

[jslowik]

Currently running an FX-8150. No complaints. Haven't felt the need to overclock it yet since I haven't had any problems playing the handful of games I play regularly, but that's on the to-do list in the near future.

 

Wouldn't classify myself as an AMD "fanboy", but this is the first machine I built that wasn't Intel based. I'm not disappointed.

[SamwiseDB]

I have an 860K. It's not the fastest, but it clocks well (I run it at 4.2GHz, seen it up to 4.5GHz I think). The reason I love it is because it's a quad core. The same price range as the G3258, but a lot faster. I need to upgrade soon, as I'm starting to notice it's becoming a bottleneck in my system, so I'm looking at an i5-4590. I'll be sad to see it go.

[Nena Trinity]

4 minutes ago, k1ng_alex said:

I just feel the hate all the time , 

My peeve is when someone says " man a core 2 duo is faster than the best amd cpu"

Yeah it cannot even beat Phenom II it is the competition for a first gen Phenom at best!

[aisle9]

I'm a fan of their APUs, particularly the A8's and A10's, if they're used properly. My wife's laptop has an A8, and while she does exactly zero gaming on it, I'm of the opinion that the A-series APUs are perfect for mid-tier laptops. I know this is going to sound ridiculous given AMD's heat issues, but if I'm looking for a mid-range laptop to do some light gaming and lots of watching 1080p videos, I'm going for an A8 or A10. I wouldn't even consider Intel in that scenario.

 

My wife's old desktop also has an A8 in it. The desktop was an HP pre-built, and there's really not much else to like about it, but considering that it was $150 cheaper than an almost-identical system from a different manufacturer that had an i3 instead of an A8, I'm quite happy with how it's turned out.

[givegomezthegun]

Most of my computers throughout the years have been AMD systems.  k6-2, Thunderbird, Duron, Athlon 64 and 64x2, phenom x3, and more recently a fx6300(I wasn't happy with it so it turned into the system I have now) and my wife has a fx4300 she's perfectly happy with.  

 

I'm certainly no 'fanboy' of anything though

[Dionyz]

Running with an single threaded game is an pain with AMD.

 

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

 

Just look at that. Try to find at least one AMD chip from the top. 

[Dionyz]

You can clearly see the difference when playing Vindictus (Free 2 Play). I have 2 computers one of them FX 8350, and the other i7 4790k. The AMD has major hic ups/ studdering. The 4790k is very smooth, and is stable. It's most likely from the hyper threading.

 

Vindictus will bottleneck any CPU. It's unheard of hosting 8 man raid and getting 60 FPS. It's an old game also, but the best of any MMO's out there, since they all seem to miss the DODGE mechanic. An actual combat game.

[Dabombinable]

There is a lot I can say about AMD's CPU being only suited to a niche market and unsuited to anything else, but I feel like I'm beating a dead horse. All I will say this:

• CPU pre Bulldozer/CMT=very competitive and good value for money
• Bulldozer/CMT=poor value unless you need a rig that needs a lot of threads on a tight budget
• Excavator and/or Steamroller=good value in laptops, depending on how the rest of the system is configured
• Zen=AMD's last chance at competing in the CPU market, and should provide excellent APU due to the die shrink, which will make budget laptops an even more viable choice over laptops with CPU+dGPU

 

Also, FX 4100 get destroyed by older Phenom II (which run on AM3/AM3+ motherboards), and even more so at the same clock speeds.

 

 

Edit: BTW when I say good value for money in point 1, I mean in reference to Intel's CPU of the same age.

[Fgtfv567]

inb4 lock

Zen better do something to increase overall performance with Intel

[Humbug]

Don't have an AMD CPU, only GPU.

 

But my neighbor games with an FX-8350 CPU and a strong GPU.

Everything works smooth for him. Probably if you benchmark it it will be weaker than i5 and i7 intel parts.

 

I wouldn't purchase them over modern intel CPUs. But he's getting good enough performance that he doesn't look into it.

[Coaxialgamer]

The fact is,  when bulldozer came out,  it struggled to beat the phenom 2 series.  Not to mention CMT hasn't exactly been a very successful approach with amd saying bulldozer was a failure and all that. 

[Dabombinable]

13 minutes ago, Coaxialgamer said:

The fact is,  when bulldozer came out,  it struggled to beat the phenom 2 series.  Not to mention CMT hasn't exactly been a very successful approach with amd saying bulldozer was a failure and all that. 

One of AMD's really big problems with the FX series is that they were going after ever higher core clocks to get those who think more GHz=better to buy their CPU, just like Intel with Netburst, although they quickly realised that it wasn't going to work and kept refining P6 while they still sold Netburst until we ended up with the Core architectures. AMD could have refined K10 further while still selling FX and done the exact same thing, and be better off than they are now-a lot better off.

[Coaxialgamer]

6 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

One of AMD's really big problems with the FX series is that they were going after ever higher core clocks to get those who think more GHz=better to buy their CPU, just like Intel with Netburst, although they quickly realised that it wasn't going to work and kept refining P6 while they still sold Netburst until we ended up with the Core architectures. AMD could have refined K10 further while still selling FX and done the exact same thing, and be better off than they are now-a lot better off.

If intels and amd's places were reversed,  that is amd had a huge part of the market share,  their cmt approach may have worked better,  because their would have been much more of an incentive to optimize software for bulldozer,  however,  no one wants to optimize software for a few percent of the market share. 

[KuJoe]

I love my FX-6300. The more cores for me the better, plus I have the added benefit of being able to run every game at max settings without any issues so that's a plus. I have mined OC'ed to 4.1GHz (same as the turbo speed, but I just used the one-click OC button in the BIOS). Maybe I'll OC it more or upgrade the CPU when it can't run everything I throw at it but I don't think that day will be any time soon (and for the heavy stuff, I have a lot of Xeon cores I can utilize).

[Prysin]

5 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

There is a lot I can say about AMD's CPU being only suited to a niche market and unsuited to anything else, but I feel like I'm beating a dead horse. All I will say this:

• CPU pre Bulldozer/CMT=very competitive and good value for money
• Bulldozer/CMT=poor value unless you need a rig that needs a lot of threads on a tight budget
• Excavator and/or Steamroller=good value in laptops, depending on how the rest of the system is configured
• Zen=AMD's last chance at competing in the CPU market, and should provide excellent APU due to the die shrink, which will make budget laptops an even more viable choice over laptops with CPU+dGPU

 

Also, FX 4100 get destroyed by older Phenom II (which run on AM3/AM3+ motherboards), and even more so at the same clock speeds.

 

 

Edit: BTW when I say good value for money in point 1, I mean in reference to Intel's CPU of the same age.

pre bulldozer is outdated and not very competitive at all.

as ive told you before, whilst IPC is unquestionably higher, the IMC is worse. K10 (Phenom II) has so shit IMC, it barely, if ever get any boost with DDR3 above 1600MHz... it simply cannot utilize that speed.

K10 cannot turbo all cores, making it REALLY weak in DX11 games, as almost all DX11 games uses atleast 4 cores.

K10 has so outdated instructions that it affects daily usage.

K10 wins in synthetics, because synthetics hasnt really "evolved" that much since the K10 era... its practically the same shit, just with a few more tweaks.

 

FX multi core performance scales, at best, around 6.64x single core performance. Which is REALLY bad. Ideally you should scale 1:1... meaning if you have 8 cores, you should have 8x single core performance.

An i7 has 4.84x single core to multi core scaling... meaning in theory (using incredibly stupid ass math that is prolly not correct at all)... HT adds 21% performance per core..

A FX 6300 has 5.09x single core performance... meaning it is a lot more efficient.

 

However, end result is. If you look at every benchmark to date. a FX 6300, which is a 95w TDP part, will be equal or faster then a 125w PH2 1100T BE....

 

PH2 has superior multi core scaling... Which is good, really good. But that doesnt help it in games. Because if you cannot turbo more then 3/6 cores, then you cannot perform at your best.

So even though it has 10-15% higher IPC, it cannot do jack shit about 3/6 cores running at 10-15% lower clock rates.

Add in a better IMC, utilizing memory faster and better, and you end up with the current Piledriver products being equal OR BETTER.

 

If you own a laptop, a PH2 x4 is a good choice, FX wouldnt win there.

If you own a desktop, a PH2 x4 or x6 is a fucking colossal waste of money due to higher power draw and they will be slower in many tasks due to lower turbo, missing instructions etc...

 

FX4300 vs PH2 x4 980BE (had to use 4300 to get more then 5 test results. FX 4100 isnt even sold anymore, as it is based on BUlldozer, not Piledriver which is current FX)

http://anandtech.com/bench/product/362?vs=700

 

aaaaand conclusion... they are about the same give or take...

Ironically, the FX 4300 scores higher in WoW, which is a MMO, which we all know means HEAVY reliance on single treaded workload.

 

 

FX 6300 vs PH2 1100T BE

http://anandtech.com/bench/product/203?vs=699

 

same result. PH2 is better in synthetics, but loses out in games. I wonder. Could it be because it cannot turbo all cores and have a utterly atrocious memory controller? Not to mention lacking 4MB L2 Cache vs the FX6....

 

 

I can keep going. But no matter how much you glorify PH2, it is not better then FX. It is equal or worse.

Sure, IPC didnt improve, but clock speeds DID. Single core performance is the result of Clock speed + IPC. Single core performance will remain the same aslong as clock speed and IPC is balanced equally to eachother.

 

100% IPC + 100% MHz = 100% raw Single core performance

90% IPC + 110% MHz = 100% raw Single core performance

110% IPC + 90% MHz = 100% raw Single core performance

150% IPC + 50% MHz = 100% raw single core performance

50% IPC + 150% MHz = 100% raw single core performance

 

The only way to improve raw single core performance is to increase IPC or clock speed higher then previous generation.

 

Why is Intel faster then AMD?

because their IPC is higher, whilst clock speed is about the same as AMD products.

Does this mean that Intel is better? yes and no.

Core count comes into play.

 

Whilst a PH2 or FX6 may not be much better in gaming then a Core i3, they would run circles around it all fucking day long in rendering/video editing tasks. Why? Because core count makes them wastly superior.

 

Whilst single core performance of PH2 may be about equal to a FX, meaning around 60% or so lower then a Haswell Core i3 at equal clocks. The scaling of their core count causes the multi core score to massively outperform the i3, which only has hyperthreading. Hyperthreading alone is like 20-50% boost to single core performance depending on application. But it is not enough. Even then it is far from enough to overcome the power of multiple cores.

 

 

ill end with a conclusion here.

Doesnt matter if it is FX or PH2... their 6 and 8 core products are NOT WORTH BUYING now that skylake has dropped in price.

 

The only real AMD products you should buy today, at this very moment, is the Steamroller based Athlon x4 860-880k or the Excavator based Athlon x4 845.

APUs are only for sub $350 USD builds. Above that a Athlon x4 845 or Haswell i3 + dGPU is a better option by far.

 

THE END.

Singed by: Perhaps the biggest AMD fanboy, still not paid by AMD

[Bhav]

One thing I hate about the term 'Intel fanboys' is that most people don't simply pick Intel based on brand loyalty, they pick them because very clearly they perform better by a landslide.

 

If AMD could ever put out a CPU at least equal in every way to Intel's I5, a lot of these people including me would have no problem buying that.

 

AMD killed themselves in the CPU market, if the Zen doesn't finally match up to Intel then I think it will mark their final death sentence. 

[paulmohr]

I tend to mostly use AMD cpu's. Is it because I think they are better? Nope, it is because I am poor lol. I look at it this way. AMD is to the CPU market what KIA is to the automotive market. They will do what most people need them to do. They are reliable and have good customer service, and they are affordable.

 

Intel would be more like Chevy. They have a wide range of products, and if you want the sports car performance model you can get it. However you will pay for it.

 

Intel will most likely always out benchmark AMD, not to mention Intel boards tend to have better chipsets and more features. As far as I know AMD doesn't currently support DDR4 or PCIE 3.

 

That being said, I have never had an AMD set up not do what I need it to. I haven't found a task that I do that can't be done with an AMD CPU. And I have never had one fail. Sure they won't bench mark as well as some Intels, but I am really only concerned with real world performance. I am not going to pay hundreds more just for fancy benchmark scores. If the extra money and performance doesn't actually help me in my day to day tasks then it is a waste of money I simply don't have.

 

If money were not an issue for me I would have an i7 tomorrow.

[Bhav]

I'll never understand the price argument because you can get Intel I3s.

[minibois]

Fanboys from either side are annoying, all products have their cons and pros

[PlayStation 2]

3 minutes ago, Minibois said:

Fanboys from either side are annoying, all products have their cons and pros

Amen. 

I've said it before, I wouldn't be able to have enough legroom with an i5, but throw a HT'd Xeon or i7 my way, and I'd take that over an FX-8320E any day.

[ShiftHitTheFan]

I'm happy with my computer. It was the best value build I could do at the time of purchase, and runs everything I need it to fine. The six cores really helps in multitasking (I'm always using at least a few programs), and runs great on all of my games. No regets.

[paulmohr]

2 hours ago, Bhav said:

I'll never understand the price argument because you can get Intel I3s.

For 150 dollars you could either get an Intel Core i3-6300 or a AMD fx-8350 black edition. In this case the AMD actually benchmarks better than the intel. The i3 is a dual core and the 8350 is an 8 core with an unlocked clock. If all I had was 150 bucks I know which one I would be getting.