i7 870 vs. FX 8320

[Eric_Cartman]

My friend is looking to upgrade.

He currently has an i7 870 overclocked to 3.8GHz.

He's looking at an FX 8320 which he hopes to clock to 4.4-4.6GHz with a H100.

He has SLI GTX 660 Ti's and games on a 60" 1080p HDTV.

Will the FX 8320 give a noticeable boost in performance?

I tried googling for benchmarks but most don't compare the older i7 to the FX processors.

So I couldn't really get an idea of how they compare.

Also, his i7 870 is at its max for overclock.

So don't suggest just overclocking that further.

He bought the H100 in hopes of pushing the i7 further but it just isn't stable past 3.8GHz.

No matter how high he sets the voltage it will not go any higher.

I think his board is actually the limiting factor here.

So since he has to replace the motherboard anyway he wants to upgrade to a more modern CPU at the same time.

And good socket 1156 motherboards are impossible to find new.

 

[cdawall]

Its not an upgrade going to an 8320 more of a sidegrade. Maybe at max clock it could be faster than an 870@3.8ghz, but it won't be much or noticeable in games for that matter.

 

[NdMk2o1o]

I'm sure the 8320 would be an improvement especially in multithreaded scenarios though not sure it would be night and day, you say will it give a noticeable improvement, in what? games? likely not, or not a very bog improvement anyway, video editing and other multithreaded tasks yes, quite noticeably.

 

[GSquadron]

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/322/AMD_FX-Series_FX-8320_vs_Intel_Core_i7_i7-870.html
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-870-vs-AMD-FX-8320

If you ask me, having already the i7 is not worth upgrading.
Maybe trying to buy a core i7 4770 later is the best option
and still if he has two 660, the i7 is not really a limit.
I mean, what limits him there? Maybe a little bottleneck, not a major one
If he does gaming, it is not worth it, but if he does video editing, then it will be worth it
Just gather money for a better option

 

[Dent1]

I agree with the above. It's a side grade. You'll gain performance in some areas and lose performance in other areas. Not worth the hassle or money.

If he wants to throw money around maybe the GPU or RAM area is a better focus.

 

[vega22]

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/322/AMD_FX-Series_FX-8320_vs_Intel_Core_i7_i7-870.html
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-870-vs-AMD-FX-8320

If you ask me, having already the i7 is not worth upgrading.
Maybe trying to buy a core i7 4770 later is the best option
and still if he has two 660, the i7 is not really a limit.
I mean, what limits him there? Maybe a little bottleneck, not a major one
If he does gaming, it is not worth it, but if he does video editing, then it will be worth it
Just gather money for a better option

it will be a little bottlenecked by the cpu but i would agree its not worth making that as an "upgrade". i was watching sli 660 being held back by an i7 920 the other day so i cant see the 870 doing much better, even at 3.8ghz.

if he must upgrade i would give some real hard thought to getting a 2nd hand sandy or ivy i7 myself as they are much better bang per buck and also much cooler running.

 

[Lionheart]

I'm an AMD fan but I wouldn't bother upgrading/sidegrading to that CPU, if he really want's to upgrade I would go with a haswell setup i5 4670k, 8GB - 16GB RAM kit and a decent non overpriced Z87 mobo should do the trick & just keep the rest of the hardware

 

[Eric_Cartman]

There are other reasons he wants to upgrade.

Yes, gaming is his main priority, but he also does video editing.

But he really wants USB3 and SATA3.

It is hard to believe that AMD is that far behind.

The 870 is 4 years old and AMD still hasn't caught up to it?

Is it just a matter of games being mostly single threaded and Intel is really good at single threaded apps while the AMD is better at multithreaded due to the 8 physical cores?

 

[Absolution]

Go for the Intel build. AM3+ socket's future doesnt look too bright atm.

 

[cdawall]

The 8320 with an overclock will beat a clocked 870 depending on the scenario. It is better at multithreading no ifs ands or buts. Single threaded ipc just isn't on par.

Go for the Intel build. AM3+ socket's future doesnt look too bright atm.

Terrible reason all intel sockets are dead end the op is dealing with that right now on lga1156.

 

[Jstn7477]

All sockets are dead...eventually. Why anyone wants to hang onto the same motherboard for 3-5 CPU generations is beyond me.

On topic, as others mentioned this upgrade will probably just be a sidegrade. If your friend wants the best gaming performance and/or high efficiency then I would get a 4770K or even one of the new Ivy-E chips if they have a lot of $$$ to put into this and don't mind a new socket replacing that platform late next year.

 

[Deleted member 67555]

There are other reasons he wants to upgrade.

Yes, gaming is his main priority, but he also does video editing.

But he really wants USB3 and SATA3.

It is hard to believe that AMD is that far behind.

The 870 is 4 years old and AMD still hasn't caught up to it?

Is it just a matter of games being mostly single threaded and Intel is really good at single threaded apps while the AMD is better at multithreaded due to the 8 physical cores?

motherboards have expansion slots for a reason...If he wants USB 3 and SATA 3 he could just buy cards to do just that...seriously tho...just like your PCI-E slot those other slots are fairly useful.

 

[Frick]

motherboards have expansion slots for a reason...If he wants USB 3 and SATA 3 he could just buy cards to do just that...seriously tho...just like your PCI-E slot those other slots are fairly useful.

Exactly. And for what is would he use eSTATA3? No HDD can reach those speeds anyway.

http://www.caldigit.com/fasta-6gu3/

Something like that. There are extremely cheap ones on ebay but I don't know how those perform.

 

[Eric_Cartman]

Expansion cards are ugly.

USB3 cards require an extra power cable.

And SATA3 cards require extra drives before Windows will pick them up.

And booting from them can be a pain.

Since he plans to get an SSD for his OS easy booting and installing Windows is important.

 

[Fourstaff]

Z79 if he is doing video editing. The people who started off with 1366 are still rocking on with their i7 970, beating almost everything including 4770K in multithreaded programs. 3930K will last at least as long, if not longer. Also, all the rams

 

[GSquadron]

tell your friend wait for ddr4

 

[Aaron95]

I don't know why people seem to hate AMD so much..

When the FX 8320 came out it was considered a rival for the i5 2500k, the i7 3770k is commonly put up against it and the AMD falls short all across the board, but not that far..
Unfortunately for AMD the prices made Intel the clear winner, but things have changed. Now assuming you don't wait for ddr4 or the next gen CPUs (I have read its no far away ut not certain..) then you should absolutely go the AMD

i7 920 passmark: 5024 (out of interest, mine and a common 1366 CPU)
i7 870 passmark: 5433
FX8320 passmark: 8175 cost: $189
i7 3770K passmark: 9581 cost: $379

"Its not an upgrade going to an 8320 more of a sidegrade." Yeah rightio mate.

These are my own current costs if I were to purchase the CPU now, no bias. As I said when the CPUs were released intel won hands down, not now. Also the scores are base brobably using all cores to max, but AMD is the obvious choice to me.

Yeah AMD isnt so good at single threaded apps, what serious game cant handle at least dual cores??

In all honesty however, it's probably not worth an upgrade at the moment.

 

[Fourstaff]

Yeah AMD isnt so good at single threaded apps, what serious game cant handle at least dual cores??

Starcraft II struggles on any AMD processor, and that is the most serious game I can think of. There may potentially be others like Battlefield 3 which struggles on AMD.

 

[Schmuckley]

I don't see any point to that.IPC is higher with Lynnfield...has hyperthreading, no?
no..no point.

This is a point in time when new x79 cpus are available...

 

[cdawall]

Starcraft II struggles on any AMD processor, and that is the most serious game I can think of. There may potentially be others like Battlefield 3 which struggles on AMD.

BF3 plays fine on amd...

 

[Aaron95]

Starcraft II struggles on any AMD processor, and that is the most serious game I can think of. There may potentially be others like Battlefield 3 which struggles on AMD.

perhaps you forgot to read my whole post before immediately dissing AMD, the CURRENT price/performance ratio favors AMD.
I found some reviews, one in particular I will use for an example:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1669746/8320-good-gaming.html

now diving the performance of each CPU by their respectable prices, the result for price/performance ratio is as follows: (using starcraft II)

i7 3770K: 0.1897
FX8320: 0.2381

So you're telling me at its absolute worst AMD performs 1.255 times better than intel (right now). Thanks so much for proving my point!!

Keep in mind these are current prices i'm using, AMD's CPUs have dropped in value considerably, therefore I cannot say the same for future generations, however right now is the time to go AMD assuming you upgrade now and don't wait for the next gen Intels.

 

[Dent1]

Starcraft II struggles on any AMD processor, and that is the most serious game I can think of. There may potentially be others like Battlefield 3 which struggles on AMD.

So explain why 4 year old Athlon II X4 gets about 80FPS in StarCraft II and plays BF3 online with 64 players on ultra settings without hiccup?

 

[d1nky]

So explain why 4 year old Athlon II X4 gets about 80FPS in StarCraft II and plays BF3 online with 64 players on ultra settings without hiccup?

graphic cards.....

 

[Aaron95]

graphic cards.....

have you never heard of 'bottleneck'?

Last time i checked graphics cards improve graphics capabilities, not the CPU's
Doesn't matter how good your graphics card is, the Athlon won't magically go faster.

 

[vega22]

no aaron it wont, but a faster cpu will stop the gpu from starving of data and the fx8 will not feed the gpu anymore data than the old i7 would.

really, a 2nd hand 25 or 2600k is the best bet.