AMD v Intel build

sybaris · 17 Nov 2012 at 14:16

I am starting to spec out a new rig.

I've always gone with Intel, however for the price and the 8 cores, the AMD 3850 4.0 looks more appealing than the i7 3770K.

Looking at the anandtec site the AMD does seem to rate a bit better in the areas that apply to me. However I am a sceptic, there is a big price difference. What is the catch? What am I missing?

My PC is used for everything. Gaming, office and business use, internet, movies and media, web design. I am not a FPS hardcore nut though.

I have a basic understanading of over clocking and have clocked a few CPUs but that was more luck than judgement and was from reading a lot of posts here and following what others have done. I would like to clock the 4.0 to maybe 4.5 (on air). What scope is there for clocking the I7 on air?

What should I go for?

Thanks

~>Dg<~ · 17 Nov 2012 at 14:53

just buy intel i5

only reason to buy amd bd/ pd is if you already have a am3+ board

other than that no real point as intel is faster in majority of things

sybaris · 17 Nov 2012 at 15:07

why and i5 and not an i7 ?

humbug · 17 Nov 2012 at 15:12

There is no real difference between the i7 and the FX-8350 in most modern day workloads, Photoshop, encoding, rendering and 'most' games its i7 <> FX-8350.

The i7 has much better single core / Floating point performance, there are some games like World of WarCraft and Skyrim where the i7 does much better, but even then those games perfectly playable on the FX-8350.

The only real difference between them in the real world is price.

sybaris · 17 Nov 2012 at 15:22

OK so i7 is a better choice than the FX-8350. but how does the i7 compare to an i5? other than about £100 difference?

humbug · 17 Nov 2012 at 15:35

sybaris said:
OK so i7 is a better choice than the FX-8350. but how does the i7 compare to an i5? other than about £100 difference?

In gaming there is virtually no difference, the i5 is a bit slower when it comes to encoding, rendering... stuff like that.

The i5 is in the review you already read, i5 3570K / 2500K ect... http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested

Anand also use Photoshop CS4, which is old, really old.

Toms Hardware used the latest CS6 which suits the FX much better http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8350-vishera-review,3328-9.html

Kaapstad · 17 Nov 2012 at 20:55

If your on a budget get the i5.

If you can afford it grab the i7 3770k and you won't have to worry about an upgrade for a good few years.

Marine-RX179 · 17 Nov 2012 at 21:42

Generally speaking, you would always get better overall gaming performance by getting i5 with a better graphic card than an i7 with a slower card.

Linear single player FPS games that use 4 cores or more would generally wouldn't have much different gaming performance between the AMD and Intel because they always tends to be GPU bounded, but most other games that are more CPU demanding would see the Intel CPU ahead in general between a little to a lot depending on the individual games. Far too often some people think CPU bottleneck hidden by GPU limitation makes AMD CPU a equal gaming performer as Intel.

The biggest short-coming of AMD CPU would be performance on mmos, or gaming on 120Hz monitor.

Don't see any reason to go for AMD build from scratch; for people that already got AM3+ board though...then it might be worth thinking about.

Sumer · 17 Nov 2012 at 22:38

Going from a stock phenom 965 (still using the same gpu) i literally see no difference in say crysis, metro 2033 etc but on mmo's and 64 man bf3 i do see increased performance with the 3570k

sybaris · 17 Nov 2012 at 22:41

Will be using a GTX 480 card with it

Rroff · 17 Nov 2012 at 22:52

Marine-RX179 said:
The biggest short-coming of AMD CPU would be performance on mmos, or gaming on 120Hz monitor.

If your trying to hold 120fps (or close as) in a relatively CPU heavy game with a high end multi-GPU setup the difference between say a i7 2700k and a FX-8350 is huge. For general useage you may not notice a huge difference in real world rather than synthetic benchmark terms but personally I'd rather pay the extra £50 for the more consistant all around performance.

Marine-RX179 said:
Far too often some people think CPU bottleneck hidden by GPU limitation makes AMD CPU a equal gaming performer as Intel.

Makes me s****** when I see obviously GPU bound benchmarks of various CPUs and they are proclaiming one as faster when its getting say 61.4 fps and all the rest 59-60fps.

EDIT: lol at the filtering

sybaris · 17 Nov 2012 at 22:55

if I am building a new rig £50 extra is not a big additional expense

smilertoo · 18 Nov 2012 at 04:39

i7 are generally the fastest normal cpu you can get; my i7 920 is nearly 3 years old now and still runs the latest software just fine, for new games the gpu is more important for squeezing out those extra few frames.

Marine-RX179 · 18 Nov 2012 at 05:47

Rroff said:
If your trying to hold 120fps (or close as) in a relatively CPU heavy game with a high end multi-GPU setup the difference between say a i7 2700k and a FX-8350 is huge. For general useage you may not notice a huge difference in real world rather than synthetic benchmark terms but personally I'd rather pay the extra £50 for the more consistant all around performance.

Yea. I've seen a bench for Skyrim which with a GTX690, i5 3570K at 4.8GHz managed minimum frame rate of 111fps and average of 165fps, where as the FX8350 at 4.8GHz only managed minimum of 61fps and average of 111fps.

I certainly wouldn't want to have a AMD CPU getting in the way of moving onto 120fps gaming...in fact, I just ordered a B Grade Samsung S23A700D 120Hz monitor yesterday...couldn't resist at that price

Next thing to do is slowly save up for a graphic card upgrade

Another problem with AMD is that the PD is far overdue in terms of performance. Phenom II X6 was out in 2009 (if I'm not mistaken), and a CPU of PD's level performance should had been out in 2010...or early 2011 at the latest, instead, it was only became available toward the end of 2012. 9 months delay on Bulldozer and then 1 more further years wasted on selling them really hurt AMD. If only AMD have managed to launch PD performance CPU as BD after the 9 months delay at the current price, they would at least be in a slightly better position than they are at now.

~>Dg<~ · 18 Nov 2012 at 09:43

Sumer said:
Going from a stock phenom 965 (still using the same gpu) i literally see no difference in say crysis, metro 2033 etc but on mmo's and 64 man bf3 i do see increased performance with the 3570k

benchmarked quite a few games i did similar upgrade not long ago in some games its nearly twice as quick in some

for eg in arma two my minimums could be as low as 20-25 now its 40-45.

skyrim is a lot faster probably 20-30 percent quicker

bf3 about 10 fps better on minimums.

obviously depends on games but its a lot faster in everything else aswell.

Sayso · 18 Nov 2012 at 14:28

Ive gone from a x6 to a ivy 4 core and i was a bit wary as benchies don't always relate to real life usage but im quite impressed so far...but as i upgraded the GPU at the same time its hard to be subjective because the my FPS has more than doubled in some games

sybaris · 18 Nov 2012 at 17:00

I am sold on an i7 however, I am sad to ditch my q9550 as it has been a trusted and faithful CPU. At least it will keep going until I build my new rig.

Kaapstad · 18 Nov 2012 at 18:48

sybaris said:
I am sold on an i7 however, I am sad to ditch my q9550 as it has been a trusted and faithful CPU. At least it will keep going until I build my new rig.

If you had asked this question 3 years ago people would have probably sugested an i7 920, these CPUs are still going strong and have plenty of life left in them. Going for the modern equivalent (i7 3770k) should do the same for you.

Rroff · 18 Nov 2012 at 23:27

sybaris said:
I am sold on an i7 however, I am sad to ditch my q9550 as it has been a trusted and faithful CPU. At least it will keep going until I build my new rig.

Haven't bothered updating from my Q9550 (currently at 4GHz on my gaming rig) even with GTX470 SLI and a good clock on the cards its rarely a bottleneck except in a very few CPU heavy games. I'd only really bother personally if I was moving onto GTX670/680 SLI or the 690 or maybe when the next generation of GPUs are released.

V F · 18 Nov 2012 at 23:59

~>Dg<~ said:
benchmarked quite a few games i did similar upgrade not long ago in some games its nearly twice as quick in some

for eg in arma two my minimums could be as low as 20-25 now its 40-45.

skyrim is a lot faster probably 20-30 percent quicker

bf3 about 10 fps better on minimums.

obviously depends on games but its a lot faster in everything else aswell.

Curious, whats your new system?