Upgrading - AMD FX8350 or Intel 4770K?

[Revvin]

My current system is an AMD Phenom X4 965 3.4Ghz CPU with a 6870 graphics card and 8GB of RAM. I want a new system with 16GB of RAM and will likely go with the AMD 7970 Graphics card but I'm torn between sticking with AMD and getting perhaps a little more bang for buck with an FX-8 8350 4.00GHz CPU or perhaps go with a Haswell 4770K - perhaps even an overclocked bundle.

My concerns on a Haswell system is first heat, especially if I go the overclock route and also considering the cost difference of perhaps as much as £250 - will I really benefit from that £250's worth extra. I play mainly flight sim's, racing sims and FPS like ARMA 2, ARMA 3.

 

[arknor]

a 4770k will very much faster core for core I could see a 8350 being thread limited in gaming

 

[Smoogels]

The processors have a considerable price difference and is not really fair to compare. The 4770K is better. However, is it worth the extra cost to you?

A 8350 is good for gaming and can produce very playable framerates but in CPU intensive titles (like ARMA) the 4770K will have a advantage. It might be worth looking at the 4570K if you are just going to be playing games as in most cases the extra threads on the 4770K wont give a significant performance boost for a few more years.

 

[imginy]

my 3570k was a nice upgrade over phenom for gaming

 

[Avenged7Fold]

It might be worth looking at the 4570K if you are just going to be playing games

^
This

Don't worry about heat too much, it still performs incredibly well. You can always de-lid it if you have the courage. If your motherboard is as old as your CPU, you will most likely need a new motherboard either way. Though the phenoms board might technically be compatible, the power draw of the 8350 will make the VRMs throttle the CPU as the older boards don't have as high power phasing and are simply not built for it. For an 8350 the cheapest boards i would recommend would be around 90-100 quid, while you could get cheaper 1150 boards which will do the job fine with a 4670k. In the end, if you go cheap reliable 1150 board with 4670k, the price difference will probably be the same or 10 more at the most than getting a 8350 and a board like the Asus evo.

 

[Harlequin]

theres about a £300 cost difference (although that does depend on your current motherboard)

as it could be as simple as buying an 8350 , whereas the i5 would need a new motherboard as well

 

[McstylisT]

theres about a £300 cost difference (although that does depend on your current motherboard)

as it could be as simple as buying an 8350 , whereas the i5 would need a new motherboard as well

Agree here.

If its a drop in upgrade in your current motherboard then that has to be a massive plus point. 4770 is better all round but if you only need a cpu and maybe a little ram to add , go that way in my view.

 

[Revvin]

Either way I'd be buying a new motherboard and RAM to go with the new CPU anyway, my missus inherits my old rig I have a Corsair 650W PSU in my system now but I see Overclockers have Haswell compliant ones, is this necessary or is my current PSU sufficient? The new system will have to last me a few years like this current one has so maybe i7? If I went the AMD route again the motherboard I have looked at is the Gigabyte UD3 990FXA motherboard, I'd always used ASUS until my last upgrade when I bought a Gigabyte 880GA-UD3H and I've found it to be a really good motherboard.

I appreciate the advice, and glad to see none of the Intel vs AMD fanboism found on other sites.

 

[old gamer]

I appreciate the advice, and glad to see none of the Intel vs AMD fanboism found on other sites.

you have to go to the graphics card section for that

 

[ubersonic]

Go for a i5-4670K, it basically costs the same as the FX-8350 and is ~ just as fast if not faster at stock as an overclocked FX-8350 in games that cannot use the additional cores. The games you play will benefit more from 4 powerful cores than 8 less powerful ones.

If you do decide to go the AMD route though and intend to overclock then the FX-8320 is almost as good as the FX-8350 for a lower price.

 

[Freddie1980]

I wouldn't even get the 8350, the 8320 is much better value for money. As for gaming I really wouldn't worry about it to much as your video card is going to the bottleneck 9/10 times. And if a game is limited by the cpu you will most likely be getting super fps rates at that point.

 

[arknor]

but I see Overclockers have Haswell compliant ones,

older PSU's might not be compliant with the lower power sleep state , AFAIK it only effects anything if your computer "sleeps" most people with desktops surely do not use send there computer to sleep?
they just leave it with the monitor turned off or shut it down surely

It's a feature you can disable in the bios anyway

 

[Harlequin]

Go for a i5-4670K, it basically costs the same as the FX-8350 and is ~ just as fast if not faster at stock as an overclocked FX-8350 in games that cannot use the additional cores. The games you play will benefit more from 4 powerful cores than 8 less powerful ones.

If you do decide to go the AMD route though and intend to overclock then the FX-8320 is almost as good as the FX-8350 for a lower price.

£179 for the i5 versus £161 for the 8350... although the 8320 is £120

and an i5 tbh is as good as an i7 in games (Better ever , where HT makes things worse)

 

[arknor]

I don't see why anyone would go AMD right now apart from loyalty tbh, I reckon those 8 slow cores will get thread limited in games in the near future if they aren't already in some games

my 4670k @ 4ghz is already pulling 73% cpu usage on the most used core in the most cpu intensive game I own.
surely the awful single core performance of the amd chips will be a huge issue very fast for gaming.
when in games that multicore well you're hitting 73% cpu usage and 50% on every other core you knows it's going to make an 8350 keel over because that 73% cpu usage clearly cant be split between threads any better than it already is.

Cinebench 11.5 - Single Threaded
Score in CBMarks - Higher is Better
fx 8350 = 1.1
haswell 4670k = 1.7

thats a huge difference in core for core performance.

I know people are expecting ps4 and xbone games to be really awesome at multi coring but I just don't see it happening, the main task in any game generally gets much higher cpu usage than all the little things that can easily be offloaded to other cores.
when that main task gets thread limited it's going to slow everything else down and drop your fps, next gen consoles don't care the devs are already saying ps4 launch titles will be limited at 30fps

 

[Harlequin]

amd 8 core are better than intel quads in some games already.

 

[Martini1991]

amd 8 core are better than intel quads in some games already.

Crysis 3 as far as I know and that's it, and with Haswell that's probably changed due to it also having the instruction set which gave AMD the advantage.

Although just looking at tech report ; http://techreport.com/review/24879/intel-core-i7-4770k-and-4950hq-haswell-processors-reviewed/9 the difference is nil.
Wish they'd tested a 4670k though, as I think the HT Intels are an unfair test given their price.

 

[~>Dg<~]

amd 8 core are better than intel quads in some games already.

on avg slower over the board. they wont increase with newer games .

intel are faster for games.

if on budget get a 8320 and oc or get a i3570k , i3770k , or haswell equivalent

also arma games are faster on intel

 

[arknor]

amd 8 core are better than intel quads in some games already.

not due to raw power though
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/697?vs=837

8350 @ stock
haswell @ stock
look at everything on the bench list that isn't a single thread benchmark the performance is pretty even apart from the 7 zip benchmark that the 8350 for some reason wins easily.

the single thread performance difference is huge as I said already

4* 4670k cores are pretty much the exact equivalent of the 8* 8350 cores at stock
the smart money is on the 4 powerful cores being powerful enough for gaming along time after the 8350 starts to struggle which I'm betting it already does in some games.

You can consider this a next gen game it's coming out sometime half way through 2014 most likely

look at dat cpu usage on one of those cores, would love to see someone who owns pcars show us the same thing on a 8350 you can guarantee that core would be easily over 100% if it were possible

BTW as you can see that's even GPU limited as my gpus is at 99% with a better graphics card than I have (7850) I'd imagine the cpu usage would rise even further?

 

[Martini1991]

To be honest, the smart money were the 2500k's, they're over 2 years old now, and are still very good.

Very good value chip to be honest, and we've had 150 quid 3570k's too.

For people on AM3+ already though, the FX8320 offers undeniable value.

 

[arknor]

To be honest, the smart money were the 2500k's, they're over 2 years old now, and are still very good.

Very good value chip to be honest, and we've had 150 quid 3570k's too.

For people on AM3+ already though, the FX8320 offers undeniable value.

well I upgraded from a x6 1055t, the single threaded performance was letting me down in certain games , upgrading to a 8320/8350 would have done very little for me

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/697?vs=147

Whilst it's a lot faster at multi-threaded stuff the single core performance gain is not

Cinebench R10 - Single Threaded Benchmark
Score in CBMarks - Higher is Better
amd 8350 @ 4ghz.....- 4319
x6 1055t @2.8ghz...- 3547
1.2ghz faster and only a 772 higher score lol....
I'd have been better off just overclocking my 1055t which was always at stock

Where as by upgrading to haswell
Cinebench R10 - Single Threaded Benchmark
Score in CBMarks - Higher is Better
4670k - 7335
x6 1055t - 3547

I pretty much doubled my core for core performance.
that single core performance of the x6 1055t will be roughly the same as every other am3 cpu