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AMD vs Intel

big.rich1976 said:
Wow thats a real eye opener right there, 100 quid difference between the intel and AMD spec, GPU currently is a ATI 5870, I have 2 options foor the GPU, add another 5870 in and run in crossfire or spec a new card, Its not critical straight away as im not a massive games player.
Click to expand...

Your 5870s are heavily limited by the fact they have 1gb vram. That sort of vram was out dated as soon as Battlefield 3 launched.

However, given you're not a massive gamer then you'd find that two 5870s are bloody fast. I would use your AMD saved pennies to put to a GPU. Something like a 7950 would show you a much bigger gain than going Haswell and keeping your 5870.
 
ALXAndy said:
Your 5870s are heavily limited by the fact they have 1gb vram. That sort of vram was out dated as soon as Battlefield 3 launched.

However, given you're not a massive gamer then you'd find that two 5870s are bloody fast. I would use your AMD saved pennies to put to a GPU. Something like a 7950 would show you a much bigger gain than going Haswell and keeping your 5870.
Click to expand...


So could i crossfire the 5870 with a 7950? Either way lots of brilliant info in this thread, Much appreciated peeps and will give me some food for thought, Will keep you posted. Cheers.
 
A lot would be down too budget i would say amd can save you a fair bit give great performance too. However the latest i7 will be that bit faster but at a higher cost
 
teppic said:
Here are two options:

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £119.99
1 x Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £89.99
1 x Patriot Viper "Sapphire Blue" 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (PV38G213C1KBL) £65.99
Total : £285.56 (includes shipping : £8.00).




YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £185.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £109.99
1 x Patriot Viper "Sapphire Blue" 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (PV38G213C1KBL) £65.99
Total : £371.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).



One is a lot under budget, the other is a little over budget. The 4770K isn't feasible at ~£350.

Unless you're playing mainly RTS games I'd go for the 8320/8350 and get a decent cooler on top to overclock to 4.5-4.8GHz.
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I'd go for the AMD option, especially if you're serious about doing music related stuff (the 8320 should thrash the 4670 in these kind of tasks). The money you save can be used on all sorts of other stuff.
 
big.rich1976 said:
So could i crossfire the 5870 with a 7950? Either way lots of brilliant info in this thread, Much appreciated peeps and will give me some food for thought, Will keep you posted. Cheers.
Click to expand...

You'd be much better off selling the 5870 when the time comes and then getting something like an R9 290 in the new year once prices have fallen and custom coolers are out. Should be pretty affordable if you go for the AMD CPU combo.
 
The futures bright, The futures AMD! As long as it suits(which it sounds like it will) then major new PC upgrade happening very soon. Really appreciate the advice, Thanks guys, Wealth of knowledge in this group.
 
I use:

FX6300 @ 4.6 (max temp under load is 55c) and its under water.
ASUS M5A97 R2.0 Board Chipset 970
8GB 1600mhz corsair XMS3 ram
XFX 7950 @ 1125/1560

i can play any game @ full at 1080. i average 60-80fps depending on the game.

i also use my pc for everything, internet, video editiing, gaming, etc etc.

my fx6300 can reach 5ghz, but not with my board.

hope this helps on your decision.

jonnyp
 
big.rich1976 said:
So could i crossfire the 5870 with a 7950? Either way lots of brilliant info in this thread, Much appreciated peeps and will give me some food for thought, Will keep you posted. Cheers.
Click to expand...

No. You can Crossfire the 5870 with a 5850 or 5830. They must be from the same family of GPUs, so you can Crossfire the 7950 with the 7870 XT, 7970, 7990 as an example.

A single 7950 would pretty much double your performance now and give you 3gb of vram to play with which is just as important as balls out power. If you run out of vram your PC will 'texture stream' and it does so using your paging file on your hard drive which is less than ideal. It causes terrible input lag.
 
Before you do any OC at any board, use the CCC Catalyst CPU Overdrive to see how much speed can get from the CPU at stock voltage.

You will be surprised how much it can go.
With the 13.11b9.2 it was pulling 5Ghz on my FX8350 without any other changes (volt, fsb etc)

And was running cool.
 
Panos, is the built in stability test ample enough or have you experienced any crashes when the tool reports that clockspeed is fine?
 
If you are refer to CCC Catalyst Overdrive auto-tune, yes it does pretty good damn job, and had no stability issues.

The AMD Overdrive (different app away from Catalysts), need the stability to run for 1h after you get it stable on 2 mins run. If that passes you are fine. Had no issues.


Do not use both on the same system, since they conflict with other.
Either CCC Catalyst Overdrive, or AMD Overdrive.

And CCC Overdrive can be "hacked" if you raise bit the voltage to the CPU from the BIOS and pull better final speed.
 
For what you use it for go the FX-83## rout, it will serve you just as well as the i5.

Intel are horribly overpriced.
 
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