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New CPU time - AMD, help me decide

matt_fsr

matt_fsr

matt_fsr

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OK, so while my graphics card is in for replacement under an RMA, I quite fancy replacing my ageing i3 dual core CPU for something a bit beefier, especially with COH2 and Rome Total War 2 on the horizon :p

I've always been a bit of an AMD fan, having had K6 2's, Durons, Athlons, and a lovely overclocking Opteron - so I quite fancy going back to the AMD stable after having a couple of Intel chips.

The primary use of the CPU will be games, anything else I'm not fussed about performance wise as there's no other CPU-intensive tasks that I do.

I'm a bit rusty on keeping up to speed with the generations of what's better with AMD, but it looks like AM3+ will be the best socket for me, as I'll be using dedicated graphics and I want a decent price / performance ratio.

Piledriver or Bulldozer? And why?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-313-AM&groupid=701&catid=1967&subcat=1942

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-338-AM&groupid=701&catid=1967&subcat=1825

I'm thinking 6 core as the best price / performance ratio - unless there's a reason to avoid them??

Cheers :)
 
If you could find a cheap i5 750 that's your best bet, that'll have better gaming performance than current AMD offerings.

Bulldozer's naff.
Piledriver's okay, but IPC is still a fair bit below even the Lynfield CPU's, and games aren't consistently using more than 4 cores.

If you want a new socket, then AM3+ and FX6300 isn't exactly bad.
 
Martini1991 said:
Bulldozer's naff.
Piledriver's okay, but IPC is still a fair bit below even the Lynfield CPU's
Click to expand...

Just out of curiosity, how does two 2.8 GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon E5462 (Harpertown/Penryn) compare? for IPC, not for gaming. Even against the latest Piledriver.
 
IPC I believe will be in the favour of that E5462 a little bit (45nm Core 2 was faster than Phenom II, afaik Piledriver is just around Phenom II IPC level), however, that minor IPC (We're talking a few percent, sub 5%) is offset by the FX8320's clock speed.
 
matt_fsr said:
OK, so while my graphics card is in for replacement under an RMA, I quite fancy replacing my ageing i3 dual core CPU for something a bit beefier, especially with COH2 and Rome Total War 2 on the horizon :p

I've always been a bit of an AMD fan, having had K6 2's, Durons, Athlons, and a lovely overclocking Opteron - so I quite fancy going back to the AMD stable after having a couple of Intel chips.

The primary use of the CPU will be games, anything else I'm not fussed about performance wise as there's no other CPU-intensive tasks that I do.

I'm a bit rusty on keeping up to speed with the generations of what's better with AMD, but it looks like AM3+ will be the best socket for me, as I'll be using dedicated graphics and I want a decent price / performance ratio.

Piledriver or Bulldozer? And why?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-313-AM&groupid=701&catid=1967&subcat=1942

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-338-AM&groupid=701&catid=1967&subcat=1825

I'm thinking 6 core as the best price / performance ratio - unless there's a reason to avoid them??

Cheers :)
Click to expand...

I would probably look at a Core i5 750 or 760, but remember that like your Core i3 most might have been overclocked massively now for two to three years. As long as you don't pay more than £50 to £60,then it would they would do the job.

Regarding the FX6300,looking athe few comparisons I can find with the older Core i5 CPUs,the FX6300 can match or exceed it in a number,but even the IB Core i3 are faster than the older Core i5 in certain games too.
 
Overclock a 2500K/3570K to 4.4ghz+ and you'll have super fast performance all across the board, even if you do encode heavily you aren't going to be thinking "oh I wish I had bought a PD so it finishes a bit quicker" like you'd be wishing you'd be wishing you'd bought an Intel in the areas PD is weak at.
 
matt_fsr said:
Yeah, I've been having a read today and it looks as though the AMD FX range are fairly poor on single-threaded apps, compared to an i5, and also use more power overall.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/5

Shame, as I do like AMD, but for a £40 increase I can move to an i5 and have much better single-thread performance as I do still play a fair few older games that don't support multi-core.
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Go for the Core i5 if the games are really single thread dependent at normal gaming resolutions.

The power argument is not really worth mentioning. In multi-threaded games,at stock clocks the worse case scenario(BF3 which uses all 8 threads) is around 50W extra,with an Asus 990FX(these are quite inefficient).


mmj_uk said:
even if you do encode heavily you aren't going to be thinking "oh I wish I had bought a PD so it finishes a bit quicker" like you'd be wishing you'd be wishing you'd bought an Intel in the areas PD is weak at.
Click to expand...

The OP is gaming and not encoding. Morever,an FX6300 can match a Core i5 in encoding and costs a decent amount less.

It was like the Phenom II X6 CPUs.

The Phenom II X6 1045T last year could be had for £80,and I know people with a £75 motherboard,and a £30 cooler get these to nearly 4GHZ,and for encoding they were great. The FX6300 follows in the same footsteps.

The FX8300 series are great for encoding and not only support AVX,but also FMA3 and FMA4. FMA3 is being released with Haswell,and is absent from SB and IB too. They can get near to a Core i7 and both CPUs on average cost less than a Core i5 3570K. Also,under Linux things like XOP can lead to great encoding performance too.
 
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matt_fsr said:
Yeah, I've been having a read today and it looks as though the AMD FX range are fairly poor on single-threaded apps, compared to an i5, and also use more power overall.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/5

Shame, as I do like AMD, but for a £40 increase I can move to an i5 and have much better single-thread performance as I do still play a fair few older games that don't support multi-core.
Click to expand...

any modern CPU is more than enough for older games surely ? unless 250fps instead of 200fps is important to you?
 
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/109?vs=699

It doesn't look all that cut and dry.

Those games like World of Warcraft, Dawn of War..... where Intel's low threaded performance is usually the default option, does not look all that different with Lynfield. and the Multi-thread performance + encoding ecte... will be better on the FX-6300.
It also has unlocked multipliers so its easy to get more performance out of it.
 
humbug said:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/109?vs=699

It doesn't look all that cut and dry.

Those games like World of Warcraft, Dawn of War..... where Intel's low threaded performance is usually the default option, does not look all that different with Lynfield. and the Multi-thread performance + encoding ecte... will be better on the FX-6300.
It also has unlocked multipliers so its easy to get more performance out of it.
Click to expand...

Analytical skills are still failing you :p

Look at the i5 clock, they go to 4GHZ-4.2GHZ fairly easy.

That's about 1.4-1.6GHZ clock OC potential the FX6300 has about 1.1-1.3GHZ in it, percentage wise that's heavily in the favour of the i5.

With this upgrade, the cost favour is also in the favour of a lynnfield, as you don't just have the CPU cost to factor in.
 
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Martini1991 said:
Analytical skills are still failing you :p

Look at the i5 clock, they go to 4GHZ-4.2GHZ fairly easy.

That's about 1.4-1.6GHZ clock OC potential the FX6300 has about 1.1-1.3GHZ in it, percentage wise that's heavily in the favour of the i5.
Click to expand...

A 60% overclock is impressive, no i did not know they would do that at all, let alone easily, who would have thought that?

Aside from the mighty impressive overclocking abilities, don't they have locked multipliers?
 
Well the i7 9XX's are exactly the same, their base clock is 2.6GHZ, and I've seen them go all the way to 4.4GHZ stable (Although mainly in the 4-4.2GHZ)

Intel used to keep low clocks on stuff, then they'd charge a huge premium on the higher clock stuff.

Not 100% sure on the multipliers, think it was all via BLCK.

I never touched any 1156/1366 stuff myself.

Although I don't see why wouldn't assume it could, the old 1366 silicon does it, Phenom II stuff can do similar stuff and they slightly predate the 1156 stuff, I mean you've seen an over 50% overclock on my 1055T.
 
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I had a go with the Pildriver out of your options and it clocked well on both a respectably priced Asrock Extreme 3 and Gigabyte UD3 board.

I am actually having a lot of fun with the Piledriver CPU and for what your using it for you can put together a great performing system at low cost. Yes Intel has some great offerings in this price bracket too for sure. Arguably better offerings at that. But AMD is still a great product too at this level.
 
CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
The OP is gaming and not encoding.
Click to expand...

Very much so, if I do any encoding it's possibly once a month or less, so isn't a factor at all.

Martini1991 said:
I can bog down my 2500k easily in Rome Total War, that's an old game.
Click to expand...

Love RTW! :D Playing a Seleucid game at the moment, early on. I'm allied with everyone, which is gonna make expansion a bit difficult.

Drooling over RTW2, I hope it's even 50% as epic as it looks.... that'll give the CPU a workout!

8 Pack said:
I had a go with the Pildriver out of your options and it clocked well on both a respectably priced Asrock Extreme 3 and Gigabyte UD3 board.

I am actually having a lot of fun with the Piledriver CPU and for what your using it for you can put together a great performing system at low cost. Yes Intel has some great offerings in this price bracket too for sure. Arguably better offerings at that. But AMD is still a great product too at this level.
Click to expand...

Fair comment, have you got any 'real world' findings? Reviews are all well and good, but I always like to see a direct comparison. :)

At the moment I'm not strapped for cash, but I do still like a bargain, so I'd rather spend say £140 on an i5 3330 and overclock it and feel I've got my moneys worth, than just buy a top end i7.
 
matt_fsr said:
Fair comment, have you got any 'real world' findings? Reviews are all well and good, but I always like to see a direct comparison. :)

At the moment I'm not strapped for cash, but I do still like a bargain, so I'd rather spend say £140 on an i5 3330 and overclock it and feel I've got my moneys worth, than just buy a top end i7.
Click to expand...

The Core i5 3330 can only be overclocked a small amount,ie,from 3GHZ to 3.2GHZ and you would need a suitable motherboard too.
 
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