Searching for a cpu + mother combo for US$350 to use with the rx480
13 minutes ago, Homero06 said:Point made, now im really considering your combo, but what about this one, http://pcpartpicker.com/product/M9g323/asus-motherboard-crosshairvformulaz + http://pcpartpicker.com/product/ykphP6/amd-cpu-fd8350frhkbox
Compared to one another, and in overall terms (not only raw power), which is better, the i5-6600k you recommended or this FX-8350?
*Thanks for your patience
As Luke stated on his Budget Motherboard Series, motherboards are just the board that connects all the parts of the system together, they don't really bring more performance to the system, just more options and features. Going with a higher end (more expensive) motherboard can give you more ports (Regular USB, USB 3.1/Type-C, Sata ports, U.2 slots, M.2 compatibility, more memory Slots, more Ethernet Options, Wifi, Thunderbolt, etc.) as well as more features (easy-overclock, better software utilities, better audio, etc). However not any of this things I mentioned makes your system faster, they are just extra functionality (sometimes a bit gimmicky) which could be valuable to you if you ever end up using them.
This is why, for a non-overclockable CPU, the best value is between $50-80, and for overclocking the best value is $100-150ish; anything over that is totally not necessary, useful if you need the extra features for something, and that's about it.
So it just comes to a fight between CPU and CPU choice. There are many benchmarks out there, with many different configurations on them which in fact show that the Skylake i5 beat the FX CPUs without much effort, specially in gaming scenarios. On single threaded performance (which defines your results on most games) current Intel i3 CPUs beat the FX CPUs that are currently on the market, the i5 having less cores, still beats the FX 8 core CPUs on pretty much most workloads, even the multi-threaded optimized ones.
You can OC the FX CPUs to match the Intel ones, but you can also OC the i5 6600k and outperform OC'd FX CPUs, by quite a lot sometimes.
Just to be clear, I'm not fanboying or hating on the AMD CPUs, The FX 6300 is still today a compelling choice for those who want to overclock, and the Athlon x4 800 series CPUs can be found from $50 to $80 being outstanding options for those with a very tight budget. However, until AMD brings something new to the table (AMD ZEN CPUs should be here on the first half of 2017, which will, in theory, compete with Intel's offerings) there is no place for them on the mid tier to high end CPU market for gamers.
I used an FX8320 which I OC'd until last year, when I moved to Skylake. The FX CPU is in my spare rig, and I don't regret spending money on the Skylake upgrade for my main system.
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