FX 8350 vs i5

[genericusername]

So, my current gaming computer system is getting old, and I am considering upgrading it soon in order to "future proof" it and hopefully save some money come Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

Currently, I have an FX 8350 and a 2GB GTX 960 attached to a mediocre Gigabyte 970a-DS3P motherboard that doesn't really support overclocking. My plan is to upgrade to a GTX 1060 sometime in the next year or so, but I feel the 8350 will bottleneck it since it's not overclocked.

 

In particular, I would be interested in something like an i5 6500 with a decent, but not overly expensive motherboard (roughly around the $100 USD range). In addition, I would probably need new DDR4 RAM, which will only add to the overall cost. All told, I figure it will cost me roughly $350, not including any cyber Monday discounts I may find.

 

An alternative would be to buy a Haswell i5 CPU, which will save me from getting new RAM and overall cost a little less at the expense of some performance.

 

But will an non-overclocked 8350 really bottleneck a 1060 enough to warrant the cost of either?

 

I typically play games like Battlefield, Total War, Rainbow Six, GTAV, etc.

[dizmo]

If you can find a second hand Haswell CPU cheap, that's the way I'd go. I think it'd still have about a year of warranty on it.

The 8350 is as powerful as an i3 when it comes to gaming. I think a 1060 would be fine. I wouldn't want to step up to a 1070.

[Hamil_P1]

For best improvement/$ I'd say just get the 1060 and upgrade CPU/mobo/ram in the future. There may be a bottle neck but it should still be a decent improvement.

8 minutes ago, dizmo said:

 

If you can find a second hand Haswell CPU cheap, that's the way I'd go

 

 this is also good advice^

[SteveGrabowski0]

EDIT: I don't think this post was good advice

[SLAYR]

The 8350 is going to be pretty much the same performance as the i5, especially since games are moving toward using more threads.

 

An i7 would be the only worthwhile cpu upgrade.

 

You are better off getting a 1070 or something rather then a whole new platform, or get a 1060 and wait to see what AMD zen has to offer.

[SteveGrabowski0]

You know, I take back my recommendation about the platform upgrade. Battlefield 1 might actually perform pretty well with the FX-8350. I know Battlefield 4 did, as JayzTwoCents constantly showed on his channel.  GameGPU.ru shows really stellar BF1 performance on the stock FX-8350, though their benchmark is for SP.

 

I don't think Rainbow Six Siege gives a shit what cpu you run. GTA V is pretty lousy on the FX-8350. Total War Warhammer eats through any cpu, the FX-8350 and the i5-4670 perform equally badly. So 3 out of 4 ain't bad if you want to stick to your FX-8350.

 

But if you do want to do a platform upgrade, do it next week or it's going to cost you significantly more. If you don't do the platform upgrade then get the 1060. It should pay big dividends in Battlefield.

[Clyne]

7 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

You know, I take back my recommendation about the platform upgrade. Battlefield 1 might actually perform pretty well with the FX-8350. I know Battlefield 4 did, as JayzTwoCents constantly showed on his channel.  GameGPU.ru shows really stellar BF1 performance on the stock FX-8350, though their benchmark is for SP.

 

I don't think Rainbow Six Siege gives a shit what cpu you run. GTA V is pretty lousy on the FX-8350. Total War Warhammer eats through any cpu, the FX-8350 and the i5-4670 perform equally badly. So 3 out of 4 ain't bad if you want to stick to your FX-8350.

 

But if you do want to do a platform upgrade, do it next week or it's going to cost you significantly more. If you don't do the platform upgrade then get the 1060. It should pay big dividends in Battlefield.

It's really not that bad, you could eliminate the CPU bottleneck if you played at higher resolutions or used DSR to scale the resolution up...

I'm using a 4GHZ 8320 and a R9 Fury, it's not that bad when its at 1440P and 2160P.

[SteveGrabowski0]

9 minutes ago, Bubblewhale said:

It's really not that bad, you could eliminate the CPU bottleneck if you played at higher resolutions or used DSR to scale the resolution up...

I'm using a 4GHZ 8320 and a R9 Fury, it's not that bad when its at 1440P and 2160P.

Are you talking GTA V? If I was running an FX cpu the first thing I would do is turn down grass quality and draw distance, those are both real cpu killers. Shadow quality would be the next thing I'd try cutting to get to 60 fps. I wouldn't scale resolution up with DSR on a 1080p screen unless it's large. I really can't notice much benefit from DSR on my 24 inch 1080p panel unless I'm downsampling from native 4k with DSR on an old game that doesn't do any temporal antialiasing. Then I notice the ant crawl effect is decreased pretty noticeably on edges of geometry, but for 1440p DSR I'd be floored if I could tell the difference even in older games that provide no form of TAA.

[Clyne]

Just now, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Are you talking GTA V? If I was running an FX cpu the first thing I would do is turn down grass quality and draw distance, those are both real cpu killers. Shadow quality would be the next thing I'd try cutting to get to 60 fps. I wouldn't scale resolution up with DSR on a 1080p screen unless it's large. I really can't notice much benefit from DSR on my 24 inch 1080p panel unless I'm downsampling from native 4k with DSR on an old game that doesn't do any temporal antialiasing. Then I notice the ant crawl effect is decreased pretty noticeably on edges of geometry, but for 1440p DSR I'd be floored if I could tell the difference. I'd just apply some light SMAA/MSAA, as supersampling satisfies so much framerate for pretty modest increases.

I'm running GTA 5 at 4K with decent framerates(45-60FPS), just AA is X2 and everything else is left to High or Very High. 

[SteveGrabowski0]

1 minute ago, Bubblewhale said:

I'm running GTA 5 at 4K with decent framerates(45-60FPS), just AA is X2 and everything else is left to High or Very High. 

Are you running a nice FreeSync monitor? For me 45-50 fps is completely unacceptable on a 60 Hz screen because of the frame pacing being so desynchronized from the refresh rate. I'll always drop settings to get good frame pacing.

[Clyne]

Just now, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Are you running a nice FreeSync monitor? For me 45-50 fps is completely unacceptable on a 60 Hz screen because of the frame pacing being so desynchronized from the refresh rate. I'll always drop settings to get good frame pacing.

It's just a normal 60HZ monitor...

[genericusername]

Just to clarify, i am perfectly aware that an 8350 will bottleneck a 1060, especially in CPU bound games like Total War or whatever. The question if it bottlenecks it enough to buy a new motherboard, CPU AND RAM, even if I find them on sale.

 

Chances are I'll just browse around and look for deals. If I can find decent a CPU/RAM/Mobo combo for less than the price of a 1060 (Say, $250?), I'll probably jump on it. Otherwise I'll probably just get a 1060 and worry about the rest of it later, hopefully after Zen comes out or RAM prices decrease.

[SteveGrabowski0]

9 minutes ago, genericusername said:

Just to clarify, i am perfectly aware that an 8350 will bottleneck a 1060, especially in CPU bound games like Total War or whatever. The question if it bottlenecks it enough to buy a new motherboard, CPU AND RAM, even if I find them on sale.

 

Chances are I'll just browse around and look for deals. If I can find decent a CPU/RAM/Mobo combo for less than the price of a 1060 (Say, $250?), I'll probably jump on it. Otherwise I'll probably just get a 1060 and worry about the rest of it later, hopefully after Zen comes out or RAM prices decrease.

$250 for cpu+board+ram probably isn't happening, at least not for something that would be a worthy upgrade over an FX-8350. I don't typically see the midrange locked i5 get sold on good deals for BF, it's usually the unlocked i5 and the low end i5. If you're really fast newegg will sometimes do a really crazy combo deal that they have maybe 10 of in stock. I remember one year they did a bundle with an i5-4690k, a really high end EVGA Z97 board, and an 8GB stick of HyperX Fury DDR3 for like $280, but obviously that deal went out of stock within a minute or two considering that was a $230 CPU, a $200 board, and a $50 stick of RAM at the time.

[genericusername]

2 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

$250 for cpu+board+ram probably isn't happening, at least not for something that would be a worthy upgrade over an FX-8350. I don't typically see the midrange locked i5 get sold on good deals for BF, it's usually the unlocked i5 and the low end i5. If you're really fast newegg will sometimes do a really crazy combo deal that they have maybe 10 of in stock. I remember one year they did an i5-4690k, a really high end EVGA Z97 board, and an 8GB stick of HyperX Fury DDR3 for like $280, but obviously that deal went out of stock within a minute or two considering that was a $230 CPU, a $200 board, and a $50 stick of RAM at the time.

Its not impossible. I have seen some pretty good black Friday and cyber Monday deals before, and full retail would be something like $370 for those three parts. If I can save 30% I would be happy, which isn't really that unreasonable. Only time will tell though.

[genericusername]

Just now, genericusername said:

Its not impossible. I have seen some pretty good black Friday and cyber Monday deals before, and full retail would be something like $370 for those three parts. If I can save 30% I would be happy, which isn't really that unreasonable. Only time will tell though.

That being said, I bet I can find a discounted 1060 too. Chances are I will buy a 1060, unless I find a crazy deal for the Ram/CPU/Mobo combo.

[Clyne]

1 minute ago, genericusername said:

Its not impossible. I have seen some pretty good black Friday and cyber Monday deals before, and full retail would be something like $370 for those three parts. If I can save 30% I would be happy, which isn't really that unreasonable. Only time will tell though.

It's possible to get a 4670K combo for around 270, provided if you looked used...

 

[Sintezza]

6500 + H110 / B150  would be possible for lest then $300,-

Will be a perfectly fine balanced match for a GTX1060.

Overclocking the cpu isnt realy needed at all with midrange gpu´s like that.

Its more hype then anything else.

[Nena Trinity]

FX is not comparable to 6th gen but it can compete if compared to 4th gen. (if the game is not poorly optimized lol)

 

Edit: Yes I am aware some more recent games the FX-8370 did beat a i5-6400 in some tests...