intel i5's vs amd FXs

[alex_123_fra]

This is so far from the truth.

Look at these benches nearly twice the framerate on a 3.4 haswell vs a 4.8 8350.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2013/11/14/intel-core-i3-4130-haswell-review/5

Pretty inconsistent bench method at best I'd say. Shows a 3570k having better average fps than a 4670k and even a 4770k at stock clocks. Also skyrim I believe uses 2 threads. Curious that the haswell i3 with it's higher IPC is so far behind stock sandy and Ivy as well as even the fx8350 in a poorly threaded game.

I'd like to see that bench run with lower res (as is often done) to negate any gpu differences between runs.

 

[almighty15]

Out of interest, how high end are we talking about? Multi card or single card?

Anything higher hen a 7850 will be held back on a FX chip in Crysis.

While walking through the maps and some basic fire fights will be ok, heavy firefights and overlooking certain places on the game will cause the FX chip to choke which will reduce the performance of the GPU.

My 2600k, even though it's clocked at 4.8Ghz still held back my old HD7950 in Crysis... The game requires THAT much CPU power to push GPU's to 100% utilisation in all sceranios.

 

[gpuerrilla]

My R9 290 at 1150MHZ outmatches a 7990 with FX83 in the Resi benchmark, that's the only time I've ever went to do a bench like that, but I didn't post the result, no point.

What? If we all posted like that you would be flaming for not backing up ones argument..

In a situation where a properly overclocked FX 8-core is giving you less than desirable performance in tridef 3D (which I regard as sub 30 fps), the i5 4440 would almost certainly be causing the same issue and you'd have nowhere to go in terms of overclocking that.

Agreed. Moot point made on this one.

Not sure if you meant me, but I did run the resident evil benchmark. Haven't run it with my 780 to compare. From memory, it used 1/2 cores/threads and even then, pretty poorly. I wouldn't use that as a representative measure of FX 8-cores bottlenecking single GPU setups though. It obviously isn't a game and we have no idea of what the total score is composed of as the benchmark doesn't give details of CPU/physics scores vs GPU/graphics score.

In that case it is a poor benchmark. One which can use the potential of the hardware is a balanced test. Can we stop using intel compiled biased 'benchmarks' that will clearly favour intel.

Drunkenmaster put this one to bed and needs this stickied on the CPU forum. Just because intel is the mainstream popular choice doesnt mean it's the gospel of choices. Take browsers for instance, if I just coded a website to look great on IE but looked dog-***** on Firefox it means the site has not been optimised for all browsers - not that IE is the 'best for browsing'.

 

[BurntProc]

Anything higher hen a 7850 will be held back on a FX chip in Crysis.

While walking through the maps and some basic fire fights will be ok, heavy firefights and overlooking certain places on the game will cause the FX chip to choke which will reduce the performance of the GPU.

My 2600k, even though it's clocked at 4.8Ghz still held back my old HD7950 in Crysis... The game requires THAT much CPU power to push GPU's to 100% utilisation in all sceranios.

Original crysis is from 2007, newer versions of the engine are well threaded and perform better on FX than pre-haswell i5s.

 

[slim01]

You can get intel processors much cheaper than that.

The i5 4440 is £140 and is great in games.

Vs the amd 8320 which would need a big overclock and a more expensive motherboard and a bigger psu plus would use more electric.

i5 defo works out cheaper and wins in 9/10 games.

ok so this confuses me...

-how could a locked intel even come close to winning 9/10 time over an overclocked amd (just say >4.5ghz)... and its still like £30 more?!

-why would it need a more expensive motherboard? amd ones are slightly cheaper arent they?

-my mate wont pay for the small difference in the electric bill lol, but you say a new psu? would a clocked i5 use so much less vs the clocked amd that i wouldnt need to change psu? 550w is a bit weak ill admit.

also someone mentioned with the i5 you could drop in a better chip later... all the "k" i5's are practically the same, i7s are for multithreading, so that would be a waste of cash? intel change sockets like every year and amd are still with am3+, would go in his current mobo...

Edit - cheers for the posts guys, im not an amd fan boy but as far as im concerned from what people are saying amd have indeed taken again the best bang for your buck, but if my mate wants to pay the extra £100 or so (which he wont) for a *bit* more performance THEN go for the intel...

 

[imginy]

ok so this confuses me...
how could a locked intel even come close to winning 9/10 time over an overclocked amd (just say >4.5ghz)... and its still like £30 more?!

I know it's hard to get your head round that an 8 core 4.5ghz would get beaten by a quad core 3.3ghz but that's the way it is, Intel have been getting better ipc every year where as amd still have worse ipc than old phenoms plus most games don't use them extra cores.

Edit: Yes you will need at least an extra 100w psu for AMD 8320/8350

 

[gpuerrilla]

This is just plain poor. I carried over my 650w PSU from my E8500 system just fine. When I measured at the wall it was actually 10-20w more efficient so if anything I could have downgraded my PSU, it depends on what GPU and other devices you require.

intel i5 and amd fx are reasonable cpus for the price

fx 8320 only one worth buying and ocing rest are pointless .

This is the most sense I have ever seen Dg post. I still had to edit the other fables. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the CPU it will only get better the more support the developers put in. As martin has highlighted, only the top tier GPU's will bottleneck it out which is not the average gamer.

 

[=XDC=FluphyBunny]

....

also someone mentioned with the i5 you could drop in a better chip later... all the "k" i5's are practically the same, i7s are for multithreading, so that would be a waste of cash? intel change sockets like every year and amd are still with am3+, would go in his current mobo...

Mulithreading At its most basic the i7 gives you 8 threads, same as an AMD 8 core, so same threads + quicker ipc = upgrade path.

 

[alex_123_fra]

I know it's hard to get your head round that an 8 core 4.5ghz would get beaten by a quad core 3.3ghz but that's the way it is, Intel have been getting better ipc every year where as amd still have worse ipc than old phenoms plus most games don't use them extra cores.

Edit: Yes you will need at least an extra 100w psu for AMD 8320/8350

Yet in the very review you posted, the Haswell i3 (with it's improved IPC) was behind a stock and overclocked 8350. I don't actually think that review is worth anything but your statement isn't fact.

I would buy it if you said that an unlocked i5 (4670k for example) beats an fx 8 core in games that utilise less than 4 threads heavily, even at stock clocks. But in relation to the i5 4440 and how it compares with an 8350/8320 @ 4.8 or 5 GHz, you just haven't shown any evidence. Max boost clock of 3.3GHz for the i5. I think even if the overclocked fx 8-core did lose, it wouldn't be by much and in games which utilise 4+ threads heavily, the locked i5 would be nowhere. I'm sounding like a broken record here but you keep posting, so...

 

[Hades]

Mulithreading At its most basic the i7 gives you 8 threads, same as an AMD 8 core, so same threads + quicker ipc = upgrade path.

I7 Hyperthreading uses unused CPU cycles to present a second virtual thread for each physical core. So while I7 has 8 threads they are most useful when running heavily threaded processes and the CPU is not being maxed out. Once the CPU becomes maxed out HT is less effective. Admittedly this will be most scenarios but there will be a few scenarios where a process is maxing out more than 4 threads. In this scenario the hyperthreading is less effective and the I7 will behave more like a maxed out I5.

There is no doubt that the I5 and I7 have far better IPC than the FX8 and the HT on the I7 is certainly a great thing to have. But a maxed out 8 thread process on an FX8 will actually be faster than the same scenario on an I5/I7 because the Intel would only be able to use 4 cores to support those thread.

The Intel is more performant in most scenarios but not all and for £107 the 8320 is an absolute bargain if your use case is likely to heavily use more than 4 threads.

EDIT: Let's assume for now that the FX8 is 60% the performance per core of an I5 (it's probably much better than that and I've just plucked that random figure out of thin air for this scenario below):

I5 Core 1 = 100 units of work
I5 Core 2 = 100 units of work
I5 Core 3 = 100 units of work
I5 Core 4 = 100 units of work

I7 Core 1 = 100 units of work
I7 Core 2 = 100 units of work
I7 Core 3 = 100 units of work
I7 Core 4 = 100 units of work
I7 Thread 5 = only uses spare capacity from core 1
I7 Thread 6 = only uses spare capacity from core 2
I7 Thread 7 = only uses spare capacity from core 3
I7 Thread 8 = only uses spare capacity from core 4

FX Core 1 = 60 units of work
FX Core 2 = 60 units of work
FX Core 3 = 60 units of work
FX Core 4 = 60 units of work
FX Core 5 = 60 units of work
FX Core 6 = 60 units of work
FX Core 7 = 60 units of work
FX Core 8 = 60 units of work

In the above scenario the I5 and I7 will win in lightly threaded scenarios or heavily threaded but light usage scenarios (4 x 100 = 400) but not in heavily threaded scenarios where the CPU is maxed out (4 x 100 = 400 for Intel but 8 x 60 = 480 for the FX). Once again the "100" and "60" is just a made up number but should demonstrate how the FX can win in some circumstances, for less money.

If it were my money I would buy:

I5 for purely gaming on a budget, especially older games which will be lightly threaded.
I7 for gaming and other heavier workloads (video manipulation etc) where budget is less of an issue.
FX8320 for budget gaming and heavier workloads where budget is important.

The other benefit of the 8320 is that it supports hardware virtualisation and overclocking out of the box. For intel you have to choose:

I5 : Only 4 cores and 4 threads
I7 K : 4 cores, 8 threads and unlocked for overclocking but no hardware virtualisation
I7 non-K : 4 cores, 8 threads and hardware virtualisation but not unlocked so no overclocking
FX : 8 cores, 8 threads, unlocked for overclocking and supports hardware virtualisation extensions.

I'm not denying that the I5 and I7 is the better chip but when people suggest that the AMD is not competitive I really don't agree. For a really cheap chip it gives you everything that most people would need including "acceptable" gaming performance even if not the best.

 

[Martini1991]

Cinebench 100% uses the cores, but an i7 gains over an i5 somewhat significantly (And frankly a properly clocked i7 does a decent number on the FX8's)

So that HT thing isn't really made of facts, because when more cores are used 100%, the i7 doesn't revert into an i5, and the i7's using besting the FX8's (Winrar benchmark sees the FX83's with a massive advantage however, but that's the only time)

However that was my understanding at first years ago, but it doesn't appear to be like that.

 

[gpuerrilla]

Cinebench 100% uses the cores, but an i7 gains over an i5 somewhat significantly (And frankly a properly clocked i7 does a decent number on the FX8's)

So that HT thing isn't really made of facts.

But like this thread is about an i5 and FX8 - the FX beats the i5 in cinebench for cheaper.

 

[Martini1991]

NVM.

 

[Rroff]

Cinebench 100% uses the cores, but an i7 gains over an i5 somewhat significantly (And frankly a properly clocked i7 does a decent number on the FX8's)

So that HT thing isn't really made of facts, because when more cores are used 100%, the i7 doesn't revert into an i5, and the i7's using besting the FX8's (Winrar benchmark sees the FX83's with a massive advantage however, but that's the only time)

However that was my understanding at first years ago, but it doesn't appear to be like that.

From my experience the situations where the HT units become totally ineffective are rare, in most heavily threaded stuff I still get better results even though sometimes its only about 30% over having just 4 cores. One of the bigger difference I notice though in more recent games that do make good use of 6-8 threads on an i5 type CPU its running maxed out at 98-99% per core and in some situations you can feel the CPU is maxed out but same thing on a i7 type CPU with 8 threads and it doesn't get as bogged down feeling and your seeing 60-70% use per "core". (The inverse can actually be true in some older games where HT actually results in more stutter/bogged down feeling but you can always disable HT then if it comes to it).

I think in many future games though you won't see disadvantages from having the HT units over 8 real cores as games that do spread over a lot of threads seem to be console focused and/or optimised for lots of lower performance cores which happens to work quite well with HT.

 

[Martini1991]

Only 30% over 4 cores? What'd you expect it to be, that's good for HT.

 

[Rroff]

Only 30% over 4 cores? What'd you expect it to be, that's good for HT.

I wasn't making an "only" comment in that I expected more but that I rarely see it dropping out much below that in stuff that actually takes advantage of more threads.

 

[Martini1991]

I wasn't making an "only" comment in that I expected more but that I rarely see it dropping out much below that in stuff that actually takes advantage of more threads.

Fair enough

Tbh, I thought you were Hades

 

[Rroff]

I do a lot of stuff though that does take good advantage of HT - compiling level data for some game engine maps for instance can see easily 50% improvements 4 core / 8 thread v 4 core / 4 thread.

 

[ALXAndy]

I know it's hard to get your head round that an 8 core 4.5ghz would get beaten by a quad core 3.3ghz but that's the way it is, Intel have been getting better ipc every year where as amd still have worse ipc than old phenoms plus most games don't use them extra cores.

Edit: Yes you will need at least an extra 100w psu for AMD 8320/8350

LOL what a lot of plop.

I know it's hard to get your head around but when the AMD is supported properly it beats the I5 every single time. Don't use Intel's IPC in this argument, given that you're only taking wins with that I5 because of poorly made software.

Load up Cinebench, given it does this.



Rather than poorly coded crap (like GIMP, which does this)



And compare your results. And if you thought it was a fluke then by all means try out Asus' new Realbench 2.0 which actually contains two benchmarks that support the AMD, and compare your encoding and multi tasking scores.

And in games that support the AMD? the results will be the same. Overall, as a whole entire package no I5 is as quick as a 8 core PD. You'll get the wins on Intel only when the software simply doesn't work with the PD properly, and only then.

 

[Marine-RX179]

LOL what a lot of plop.

I know it's hard to get your head around but when the AMD is supported properly it beats the I5 every single time. Don't use Intel's IPC in this argument, given that you're only taking wins with that I5 because of poorly made software.

And games are commonly poorly made/optimised software...

Have a look at games outside the EA and Ubisoft circles, and look at how many games can even use 4 cores fully/properly...

Almighty already summed it up very nicely:

The Intels are worth the extra money if you lay a wide range of games that has various levels of core use.