Upgrade AMD or swap to Intel??

[Blue-Knight]

a $300 processor is required for high end gaming.

Actually, a $999 processor is required for high end gaming. Otherwise it isn't high end gaming at all.

 

[TristanD27]

Let me blow that out of the water for you right now. I could get the same FPS on a crappy little AMD 750K on a stock FX cooler with a 780 on BF3 as I could on a 3570K OC'd to 4.5ghz on watercooling all on a 1440p monitor. Processors in terms of gaming mean bugger all unless you're playing RTS games like Civ V, SC 2, Total war, but in small exceptions like Crysis 3 the extra cores matter. For everything else, stop listening to people saying a $300 processor is required for high end gaming. It isn't, and I've had first hand experience with such things.

I totally agree and have had first hand experience at this, I have a Phenom II x4 960T right now and although I haven't got BF4 yet I still play BF3, Metro 2033 and everything else I have tried on max settings.

 

[RCoon]

Actually, a $999 processor is required for high end gaming. Otherwise it isn't high end gaming at all.

I feel stupid for replying to your post, but your cynicism made me laugh

 

[TristanD27]

Actually, a $999 processor is required for high end gaming. Otherwise it isn't high end gaming at all.

Well not really, different people define it in different ways but I don't think you can define "high end" on price alone, its more performance, altough, those who do choose to define "high end" with a price tag say that a PC costing £2000 is high end... but like I say, high end is not a price tag, its about performance.

 

[Vario]

Based on what your sentiments are, you should keep the Phenom II...

Buying an 8320 would be a sidegrade anyway.

 

[RCoon]

Based on what your sentiments are, you should keep the Phenom II...

Buying an 8320 would be a sidegrade anyway.

4 threads on blender vs 8 threads on blender, essentially up to 100% increase in rendering speeds.

 

[HD64G]

FX-8350 slightly OCed. Easy choise.

 

[suraswami]

To OP - please clarify if you mobo is GA-990XA-UD3 or GA-990FXA-UD3 and what revision. I think plain XA has only 4 phase VRM but FXA has 8 phase. If you going to OC a 8 core make sure you get the 8 phase one or you need to be very careful in not blowing out the VRMs.

I have 8320 OCed to 4.2 no turbo and I enjoy all games I play with my 7950. I only spent $150 for upgrade (proc and mobo) from old 790GX board.

 

[TristanD27]

4 threads on blender vs 8 threads on blender, essentially up to 100% increase in rendering speeds.

This is exactly it, if I was just gaming then I probably could just keep the phenom but I want to do a lot more 3D modelling which I really enjoy so it will help with that.

To OP - please clarify if you mobo is GA-990XA-UD3 or GA-990FXA-UD3 and what revision. I think plain XA has only 4 phase VRM but FXA has 8 phase. If you going to OC a 8 core make sure you get the 8 phase one or you need to be very careful in not blowing out the VRMs.

I have 8320 OCed to 4.2 no turbo and I enjoy all games I play with my 7950. I only spent $150 for upgrade (proc and mobo) from old 790GX board.

I think mine is the GA-990XA-UD3 rev: 3.0, I did think about what your saying not long ago and wondered if I was going to need a board upgrade, maybe the Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5 or the Asus Sabertooth 990FX, I know the sabertooth is better but, and this may sound stupid, I really really do not like that gold/brown colour, it is hideous. Now, if I look at upgrading the mobo it is going to start raising the point, why dont you get a socket 1150 and get an Intel, well the only Intel worth getting over the 8350 is the 4770K which is still £100 more for something I don't need.

 

[Vario]

Thats kind of a flawed viewpoint, since the i5 is also competitive with the 8350. I think you should get an 8320, theres no reason to pay more for the 8350 when both processors are unlocked. Other approach is to buy a used sandy bridge (~$150). Both of my chips are preowned, not really that big a deal. Used motherboard might be a bad idea but CPUs don't really go bad if the prior owner wasn't crazy.

 

[TristanD27]

Thats kind of a flawed viewpoint, since the i5 is also competitive with the 8350. - CPUs don't really go bad if the prior owner wasn't crazy.

Yeah the i5 is competitive with the 8350 but when it costs £30 more for something which is not much difference, there is only one choice.
Yeah but I don't know if he was "crazy" or not and I don't like to risk it. There is also more to it then just, it might go wrong, as I explained before, I just like buying new, for various reasons.

 

[suraswami]

This is exactly it, if I was just gaming then I probably could just keep the phenom but I want to do a lot more 3D modelling which I really enjoy so it will help with that.



I think mine is the GA-990XA-UD3 rev: 3.0, I did think about what your saying not long ago and wondered if I was going to need a board upgrade, maybe the Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5 or the Asus Sabertooth 990FX, I know the sabertooth is better but, and this may sound stupid, I really really do not like that gold/brown colour, it is hideous. Now, if I look at upgrading the mobo it is going to start raising the point, why dont you get a socket 1150 and get an Intel, well the only Intel worth getting over the 8350 is the 4770K which is still £100 more for something I don't need.

If your board is this?
http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3901#ov

Then I take back my statement. Get a 8350 and you are good to go. Cheaper 8320 and OC to 4.2 also saves you bit more money and gives you OC satisfaction lol!

 

[vega22]

Let me blow that out of the water for you right now. I could get the same FPS on a crappy little AMD 750K on a stock FX cooler with a 780 on BF3 as I could on a 3570K OC'd to 4.5ghz on watercooling all on a 1440p monitor. Processors in terms of gaming mean bugger all unless you're playing RTS games like Civ V, SC 2, Total war, but in small exceptions like Crysis 3 the extra cores matter. For everything else, stop listening to people saying a $300 processor is required for high end gaming. It isn't, and I've had first hand experience with such things.

not really a shock that considering all games are gpu bound at that res is it?

i mean it is about as shocking as water being wet if you ask me...

i bet the dips in fps where much worse on the amd cpu than the 4.5ghz i5 too, but again that aint a shocker either.

tristan i would test it again, with it unlocked and overclocked if you can, you might find that doing that alone is like a cpu upgrade and you could spend the money on something else?

 

[MxPhenom 216]

That's not saving money, buying an 8350 and OC'ing to 9590 figures is. Not to mention OP's cooler might not handle 9590 thermal output.

If his cooler cannot handle fx9590, then it wont handle 8350 at 9590 clocks.

 

[TristanD27]

If his cooler cannot handle fx9590, then it wont handle 8350 at 9590 clocks.

Yeah I thought about that but my cooler will handle the 8350 on stock and then I will upgrade the cooling soon so I can OC.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Yeah I thought about that but my cooler will handle the 8350 on stock and then I will upgrade the cooling soon so I can OC.

Fair enough, I would still try and push for an Intel rig with a 4670k and a decent Z87 board.

 

[TristanD27]

If your board is this?
http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3901#ov

Then I take back my statement. Get a 8350 and you are good to go. Cheaper 8320 and OC to 4.2 also saves you bit more money and gives you OC satisfaction lol!

Yeah that's the one, thought it was revision 3.0 but maybe not as I cannot find a revision 3.0 of that board.
The 8320 is £30 cheaper so nice little extra but the 8350 can OC to the 9370 (or so I hear on here) and until I get a better cooler for OC'ing the stock speed will be better.

Fair enough, I would still try and push for an Intel rig with a 4670k and a decent Z87 board.

If all I really want is to just play games on max settings at 60FPS and boost my render speeds then please explain to me why getting a 4670K and Z87 is worth an extra £200? (Sorry if that sounded condescending, I didn't mean it to, I just don't see the justification for spending an extra £200)

 

[MxPhenom 216]

What are you rendering? 3D modelling, or Videos? What applications are you using for this? Sorry if you have already mentioned it, I just skimmed through the OP and didn't see it.

 

[TristanD27]

What are you rendering? 3D modelling, or Videos? What applications are you using for this? Sorry if you have already mentioned it, I just skimmed through the OP and didn't see it.

No prob. 3D modelling, nothing too big at the moment as I'm just starting it as a hobby, doing my first real project at the moment but I'll mainly be doing characters, not for use in games or animation, just for pictures

 

[MxPhenom 216]

@crazyeyesreaper might be able to help in that regard a bit more then anyone else I think.

Though I think the 8350 would be fine, but the 4670k will be faster in games. Though it might cost more money then you are willing to spend currently.

 

[TristanD27]

@crazyeyesreaper might be able to help in that regard a bit more then anyone else I think.

Though I think the 8350 would be fine, but the 4670k will be faster in games. Though it might cost more money then you are willing to spend currently.

If you look at the benchmark I put up even the 4770k is only 1fps better then the 8350 and correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the 4770k better then the 4670k? That is just one game though so I don't know. To be honest, I'm happy with anything above 60fps, your not going to notice a huge difference higher then that and the 8350 can play bf4 at 97 which most TV's and monitors don't display anyway. I'm not going to lie, if I had more money then I knew what to do with, I'd happily get the 4770k with a Gigabyte GA-Z87-G1.Sniper 5 Intel Z87 Socket 1150 Motherboard but at the moment I have to think logically about what I'm really happy with and can afford.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

If you look at the benchmark I put up even the 4770k is only 1fps better then the 8350 and correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the 4770k better then the 4670k? That is just one game though so I don't know. To be honest, I'm happy with anything above 60fps, your not going to notice a huge difference higher then that and the 8350 can play bf4 at 97 which most TV's and monitors don't display anyway. I'm not going to lie, if I had more money then I knew what to do with, I'd happily get the 4770k with a Gigabyte GA-Z87-G1.Sniper 5 Intel Z87 Socket 1150 Motherboard but at the moment I have to think logically about what I'm really happy with and can afford.

That board would be completely unnecessary IMO. you could get away handedly with ~$150 Z87 board.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128671

 

[Vario]

The benchmark you put up does not really matter what CPU you use. Other games require CPU power. Clearly BF4 doesn't. You can cherry pick any benchmark you want but the fact remains you probably don't require more than 4 cores for any task you do and the Intel quad cores are much faster than the AMD modules (AMD uses 4 modules, 8 threads) . Quick example: Starcraft 2 and WoW...

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/701?vs=697

If you want to get the most for your money, Intel is probably a better choice as it will go obsolete a lot slower due to faster instructions per clock.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

Depending on the 3d software used the 8350 is comparable to a 4670K most of the time. However in most CPU limited games Intel wins hands down. as mentioned above Starcraft 2 / WOW then add Total War series among others Intel enjoys a massive lead.

For most typical uses however an 8350 is fine. 4670K is more economical in the long run with better feature support.

 

[TristanD27]

That board would be completely unnecessary IMO. you could get away handedly with ~$150 Z87 board.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128671

Oh yeah I just meant if I had money to throw away

Depending on the 3d software used the 8350 is comparable to a 4670K most of the time. However in most CPU limited games Intel wins hands down. as mentioned above Starcraft 2 / WOW then add Total War series among others Intel enjoys a massive lead.

For most typical uses however an 8350 is fine. 4670K is more economical in the long run with better feature support.

Well first of all WoW? I run wow on my current CPU, it's not a power hungry game and the 8350 does 90FPS, as I mentioned before, yeah 90 is great and the FPS from the intel is better but you don't need it, your just over paying for unnecessary power. I'm asking what's better for me? With my current board and budget, for 60FPS on max settings (which the 8350 does) and good 3D modelling capabilities (which the 8350 wins at). I think we are going slightly off the point here, this isn't an Intel vs AMD battle. I still have yet to hear any reason why, in my current situation, for my needs, I would go for an intel, even if I needed to buy a board, I still see no reason to go Intel, I just think proe find it hard to say, AMD is better in this situation, too many people with more money then logic