Piledriver 8350 4ghz OR Radeon HD 7970..??

Moonchild · 11 May 2013 at 07:38

Ok guys help me out here. I'm currently running Bulldozer 6100 overclocked to 4.2ghz and Radeon HD 6870, primarily being used as a gaming platform. I'll probably finish up with both items in the title at some point down the line, but I can't afford both at the moment. Simple question; which one first? I'm leaning towards the graphics card at the moment, but I dont want any bottlenecking shenanigans kickiing off, although I don't reckon this will be an issue. Let me know your thoughts. Cheers in advance.

Minstadave · 11 May 2013 at 07:45

GPU for sure.

Doomedspeed · 11 May 2013 at 08:05

Welcome to the forum.

.

You do need both, as you said. The 6100 will bottleneck the 7970...

I would go GPU first then CPU. You certainly see a big increase when you install the 8350..

You motherboard supports the 8350 right?

You got a good PSU?

Spangles · 11 May 2013 at 08:11

They are both on offer this week too! Was going to see if that would have helped to decide which to get first, but it does not, it makes your decision even harder!

I would personally go CPU first, then when you get the GPU you can experience it at full whack!

Moonchild · 11 May 2013 at 08:29

Doomedspeed said:
Welcome to the forum. .

You do need both, as you said. The 6100 will bottleneck the 7970...

I would go GPU first then CPU. You certainly see a big increase when you install the 8350..

You motherboard supports the 8350 right?

You got a good PSU?

Thanks for the replies. Yup, mobo does support this CPU. Just needs a BIOS update. Also I have a bronze 80+ 650w PSU, so I should be ok there too. Decisions, desicions! :confused:

Spangles · 11 May 2013 at 08:37

Flip a coin!

Doomedspeed · 11 May 2013 at 08:51

Spangles said:
Flip a coin!

Basically this..

The CPU is less likely to be on offer here again, so id buy that while you can.

Great psu you have there.

Moonchild · 11 May 2013 at 09:03

Blimey! 150 notes. It's almost fate...........

Spangles · 11 May 2013 at 09:21

The 6870 is still a decent card anyway, hell your CPU is still a decent CPU!

I hope you enjoy whatever you go with.

anthony566 · 11 May 2013 at 09:46

CPU first and then OC your gpu then sell your current CPU and look for a 7950 as this card will OC to 7970 speeds.

Martini1991 · 11 May 2013 at 09:53

FX8320 and a 7870XT.

mmj_uk · 11 May 2013 at 10:47

You'll hardly notice any difference going from a 4.2ghz FX6 to a 4.2ghz FX8 in games as hardly any of them use that many threads, so I vote GPU.

Minstadave · 11 May 2013 at 10:50

mmj_uk said:
You'll hardly notice any difference going from a 4.2ghz FX6 to a 4.2ghz FX8 in games as hardly any of them use that many threads, so I vote GPU.

This is correct. You won't see much gain from the CPU upgrade in games, however the 7970 will give a big boost.

Martini1991 · 11 May 2013 at 10:52

But it's blasphemy to run something as pathetic as a hexcore Bulldozer with a 7970

Doomedspeed · 11 May 2013 at 10:54

Minstadave said:
This is correct. You won't see much gain from the CPU upgrade in games, however the 7970 will give a big boost.

Martini1991 said:
But it's blasphemy to run something as pathetic as a hexcore Bulldozer with a 7970

Surely the 6100 will bottleneck the 7970..

Remember its not a true hex core.

Martini1991 · 11 May 2013 at 10:57

Doomedspeed said:
Surely the 6100 will bottleneck the 7970..

Remember its not a true hex core.

But it not being a true hex core means sweet nothing in reality though, it's not going to become much faster if they removed the shared resources.

The Phenom II X6 is a true Hexcore, but doesn't mean it's going to be blazing fast.

Doomedspeed · 11 May 2013 at 11:06

Martini1991 said:
But it not being a true hex core means sweet nothing in reality though, it's not going to become much faster if they removed the shared resources.

The Phenom II X6 is a true Hexcore, but doesn't mean it's going to be blazing fast.

it means it won't be as good as the Phenom II X 6, surely? Which is true. Though like you say its not down to the fact of it having 6 cores ots down to the lousey architecture of bulldozer.

I just want to get across that just because it 'has 6 cores' it won't be a bottleneck, which you backed up, cheers

Martini1991 · 11 May 2013 at 11:08

I'd say the FX6300 is better than the Phenom II X6's (Moreso because they've got more instruction sets, and clock further) and it's not a true hexcore.
But that doesn't have anything to do with its true quad core lark.
Don't forget the Core 2 Quads weren't "True Quads" by AMD's Phenom definition, Agena was marketed as a true quad core, and look how that turned up.

In reality, it means diddly squat.

Jay85 · 11 May 2013 at 12:08

Rule of thumb, always upgrade the gpu before cpu. Linus techtips on youtube did a video on this and showed the gains for both routes and its always the gpu that wins. Yes it will bottleneck blah blah blah but the gains from the gpu regardless of the cpu bottleneck will always be better.

Marine-RX179 · 11 May 2013 at 12:29

Jay85 said:
Rule of thumb, always upgrade the gpu before cpu. Linus techtips on youtube did a video on this and showed the gains for both routes and its always the gpu that wins. Yes it will bottleneck blah blah blah but the gains from the gpu regardless of the cpu bottleneck will always be better.

Actually it's more down to the type of games people play.

Scenerio 1:
OP play mainly mmos and RTS- stick with 6870 and go Intel i5 (Haswell);

Scenerio 2:
OP play mainly latest FPS games from EA that use 6 cores- upgrade the graphic card to 7950.