AMD FX 8320 analysis

teppic · 19 Nov 2013 at 13:11

Could be for any number of reasons the difference in power use. What's consistent though is that there isn't much between the 7970 GE and 290, if it weren't for the high core temp nobody would be talking about heat.

http://static.techspot.com/articles-info/736/bench/Power_02.png

8W more for the 290 over the 7970 GE there (full system draw).

almighty15 · 19 Nov 2013 at 13:13

ALXAndy said:
My question was - name me a game that the 4670k could run, but, the 6300 could not manage. I think you would find that the answer would be 0.

GTA 4, ARMA 2, Crysis 1, Oblivion, Skyrim, Supreme commander.... There's loads...

The 4670k would easily manage a rock solid 60fps given enough GPU power, the 6300 would manage them at 60fps but not a rock solid 60fps with no dips in the frame rate.

Martini1991 · 19 Nov 2013 at 13:14

The 7970 GHZ IIRC was 1.25v, that's going to add to heat and power draw, look at the none GHZ 7970 (Which is what I owned).

Volts are going to do a lot to heat/power.

IIRC, a fair few people talked about the heat of their ref 7970's when they flashed to GHZ editions.

almighty15 said:
GTA 4, ARMA 2, Crysis 1, Oblivion, Skyrim, Supreme commander.... There's loads...

The 4670k would easily manage a rock solid 60fps given enough GPU power, the 6300 would manage them at 60fps but not a rock solid 60fps with no dips in the frame rate.

The FX6300 would have course play it, it just wouldn't be at the same level as the 4670K (Which as I said, the statement was completely illogical)

almighty15 said:
People don't complain about the i7's power draw because it has the performance to back it up.

I personally think the power draw for the FX chips is pretty decent when you consider they have 8 'cores'

If you take most performance Intel Quad Cores, double the core count they'll suck up just as much juice as an 8 'core' FX chip does.

If you had 8 Haswell cores though it'd have ridiculous performance though, the problem with the FX83's isn't their power usage, it's the performance per watt, it's not very high.

teppic · 19 Nov 2013 at 13:17

If you're comparing a 7970 at reference clock, then yes the 290 will use more power and give out more heat - but over a 7970 GE (which is a pretty low clock for a 7970 in reality) there's barely any difference.

My 7970 at 1125MHz gave out a ton of heat maxed out in benchmarks.

Martini1991 · 19 Nov 2013 at 13:23

The 7970 doesn't need 1.25v for 1GHZ though.

It's higher than it needs to be and it created more heat/power usage because of it.

The 7970 GHZ lets face it, is a clocked 7970. We should be comparing the R9 290 with the 7970 None GE.

almighty15 · 19 Nov 2013 at 13:24

You should feel the heat my 1.2Ghz 7950's give out.... I've had toturn the central heating radiator off in my room!!

And they're water cooled to boot!

Martini1991 · 19 Nov 2013 at 13:26

Overclocked it's going to get hot.
I think the problem with my comparison is I had my 7970 ref for a day (each) as my two 7970 MSI's both snuffed it (Bought one, RMA'ed, both another, RMA'ed)

And then I ran a stock 7970 Windforce 3X, and before that a stock 7970 DCII

teppic · 19 Nov 2013 at 13:29

The reason the 7970 at 1GHz uses more power is because it's at a higher voltage (usually) and higher clock. AMD underclocked the reference 7970 in order to produce a low power consumption as a selling point.

The 290 doesn't use really any more power than other similar cards - a few watts at most more than a 780, and less than a high clocked 7970. It's all been taken massively out of proportion because of the core temp and noisy cooler.

Martini1991 · 19 Nov 2013 at 13:32

AMD didn't underclock the reference 7970, that's just how it was launched.
They clocked it low that's for sure.

But it's somewhat bizzare to have the lower power consumption as a plus when GK104 bitched slapped them for performance per watt.

And I know why the 7970 GHZ uses more power/heat production, because of the higher base voltage (Which I mentioned :confused:

)

wolvers · 19 Nov 2013 at 13:34

ALXAndy said:
Some of the games actually showed drops at 5ghz.

That's because your OC isn't stable, these chips do that. It's like some kind of internal throttling i.e. clocks are stable but performance is moving around. We went through all this last year when they were released, I had an 8320 and an 8350 at the time.

Basically we did a load of benching with differing vcores where we were able to prove that increasing vcores increased benching scores. IIRC it was mostly highlighted in IBT (there's a version specifically for PD) where we were trying to break 100 GFlops. nkata managed it I think, and PCZ did a load of benching with his. I had the same thing happening in Cinebench.

almighty15 · 19 Nov 2013 at 13:35

Martini1991 said:
But it's somewhat bizzare to have the lower power consumption as a plus when GK104 bitched slapped them for performance per watt.

Depends on how you view performance per watt...... Compute performance is another matter completely between the 2 chips.

Martini1991 · 19 Nov 2013 at 13:42

almighty15 said:
Depends on how you view performance per watt...... Compute performance is another matter completely between the 2 chips.

Hasn't AMD somewhat followed Nvidia with compute? I don't know if there's anything behind it though, but I'm sure they've ripped out some compute stuff with the R 2XX stuff.

gpuerrilla · 19 Nov 2013 at 14:15

dmferrett said:
The 8350 will need circa 200w-250w at 4.5Ghz (thats a guess I dont know their exact energy burn) to match a cpu running at 35-50W's.
Its a total eye opener.

Is this another 99/100 or 15% factoid being banded about?

teppic · 19 Nov 2013 at 14:17

Martini1991 said:
Hasn't AMD somewhat followed Nvidia with compute? I don't know if there's anything behind it though, but I'm sure they've ripped out some compute stuff with the R 2XX stuff.

They've improved it quite a lot over the 7970/280X.

gpuerrilla · 19 Nov 2013 at 14:19

Martini1991 said:
Using more power and not having the performance advantage isn't the same as being years ahead of your competitor and using more power.

Yes and we all know why, trying to bankrupt your competitor and admitting to it eventually settling on a cash payout would have stifled development! :rolleyes:

Martini1991 · 19 Nov 2013 at 14:42

teppic said:
They've improved it quite a lot over the 7970/280X.

That's good.

Make · 19 Nov 2013 at 14:52

Th0nt said:
Yes and we all know why, trying to bankrupt your competitor and admitting to it eventually settling on a cash payout would have stifled development!

Are you an AMD stockholder or why do you care if they get fined or not?

The only thing I care about is the prices and performance, no fanboyism because company 1 seems like they are saints. They are corporate big boys, all of them. They'd run a monopoly if they could on both sides.

dmferrett · 19 Nov 2013 at 15:30

Th0nt said:
Is this another 99/100 or 15% factoid being banded about?

If that figure (99%-100%) refers to my dual gpu usage in BF4 with crossfire absolutely. Likewise jumping from 75% cpu usage with a single gfx card to 90-95% with vsyn off is yes another factoid..

My estimates are that in BF4 an i7 yeilds a reduction in cpu utilisation from 95-99% for a 3750k down to circa 75-80% for a haswell or ivy i7. Noting wrong here.

dmferrett · 19 Nov 2013 at 15:41

Make said:
Are you an AMD stockholder or why do you care if they get fined or not?

The only thing I care about is the prices and performance, no fanboyism because company 1 seems like they are saints. They are corporate big boys, all of them. They'd run a monopoly if they could on both sides.

+1

Intel could take a run and jump if AMD had the price and performance. I for one dont want to be stuck with Intel forever. I/WE all hope for AMD to make better cpu's in the future.

These discussions are really about the reasons people say they are buying 8*** cpu's over Intel parts. The difference in price performance doesn't explain things. It must be mainly budget or affordability (some people wont buy intel because they hate corruption), which isn't a big issue imo. Its the BS excuses for the purchases that I got issues with, say it as it is. AMD is affordable for me and Intel is out of your budget. It doesn't matter.

On pure performance terms Intel are way ahead in price performance i5's are usually the sweet spot and in most games beat 8350's I believe.

AMD is best if your budget cant stretch to the cost of Intel. It doesn't make Intel users better people or smug. Although I've heard the phase snobbery, It just means at that particular time you coull afford or chose to buy AMD (if your could stretch to Intel).

Maybe what i've said is wrong.

nikki5974 · 19 Nov 2013 at 15:49

dmferrett said:
+1

Intel could take a run and jump if AMD had the price and performance. I for one dont want to be stuck with Intel forever. I/WE all hope for AMD to make better cpu's in the future.

These discussions are really about the reasons people say they are buying 8*** cpu's over Intel parts. The difference in price performance doesn't explain things. It must be mainly budget or affordability (some people wont buy intel because they hate corruption), which isn't a big issue imo. Its the BS excuses for the purchases that I got issues with, say it as it is. AMD is affordable for me and Intel is out of your budget. It doesn't matter.

On pure performance terms Intel are way ahead in price performance i5's are usually the sweet spot and in most games beat 8350's I believe.

AMD is best if your budget cant stretch to the cost of Intel. It doesn't make Intel users better people or smug. Although I've heard the phase snobbery, It just means at that particular time you coull afford or chose to buy AMD (if your could stretch to Intel).

Maybe what i've said is wrong.

The budget i just had which was £850-£900 i could have gone intel but after having an 2500k and i7 3820 and reading so much about haswell and ivy needing delids if you want to clock high etc i decided to try FX out.
And im glad i did