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Bulldozer to Intel

lazypnk

lazypnk

lazypnk

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19 Feb 2011
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Liverpool,UK
Upgrade itch has smacked me in the face :)
I have £150 in cash with the option of flogging my 8120 an claw back some of the cash paid for it, but will there be FPS gains in games with my 5850 if I switch to a i5/i7 or should I sell my GPU and get a 7850?

Ive crossfired my 5850 in the past but the ATI drivers drove me up the wall when skyrim was released Ive seen the 570's marked up for 150 which is tempting if it's worth it on the Bulldozer platform.

Thanks J.
 
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Since most games only use, up to max 4 cores, the threads of the i5 will be stronger in games and will give more fps. BD is a decent chip, and not like an athalon so you should already be getting good fps. Won't be a massive upgrade games wise I think. Will be good future proofing though.

I'd be inclined to get a 7850 and overclock it.
 
A 7850 may be a better choice overall yes. Also I believe the successor to bulldozer will be compatible with the same motherboards and comes out in a few months so that may be a better performance per £ upgrade path rather than switching over to intel. Intel is obviously a lot stronger per clock at the moment though.
 
 
Save a bit more and grab a 7850 and overclock the nuts off it! Yes Intel is better, faster cooler, etc but right now with a budget of around £200 you'll get the most performance improvement (in gaming) by getting a better video card. Remember you could sell your 5850 for around £70-80 without too much trouble.
 
shadow_boxer said:
Save a bit more and grab a 7850 and overclock the nuts off it! Yes Intel is better, faster cooler, etc but right now with a budget of around £200 you'll get the most performance improvement (in gaming) by getting a better video card. Remember you could sell your 5850 for around £70-80 without too much trouble.
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This GPU generation is pretty meh so far.
CPU Wise Intel has a lot of performance headroom, if he goes Intel now, sticks with his 5850, or goes for a slight upgrade, he'd be in a much better situation for the later GPU generation which hopefully won't suck as much price/performance wise.
 
IMO overclock your 5850s in CF and you will be shocked at what the will deliver with a overclocked 2500k at 4.8 or more. Keep your cards and wait till PCIe 3.0 is up and running.
 
Well and truly confused.. it seems like a toss up, AMD to Intel has huge benefits and so does my 5850 to 7850.
Switching back to crossfire 5850 is a cheap option but the minimum fps and shoddy drivers is what got me last time on my old 955 rig, negative scaling on skyrim :S one of the biggest AAA games of the year an theres no day1 support for crossfire. my mind boggles.

Nothings stopping me from selling ether cpu or gpu for extra funds for the upgrade ofc.

vicious circle :S
Thanks J.
 
AllBodies said:
A 7850 may be a better choice overall yes. Also I believe the successor to bulldozer will be compatible with the same motherboards and comes out in a few months so that may be a better performance per £ upgrade path rather than switching over to intel. Intel is obviously a lot stronger per clock at the moment though.
Click to expand...

Depends if the successor to BD is more IPC or not. (I doubt it will touch on Intels IPC but it can only improve since the BD IPC was worse than the Phenom II's)
 
Ollie1132 said:
Depends if the successor to BD is more IPC or not. (I doubt it will touch on Intels IPC but it can only improve since the BD IPC was worse than the Phenom II's)
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Yeah, I was just thinking about price since OP said he had £150 unless he sold things. They say the bulldozer replacement will have 15% better IPC and use resonant clock mesh for higher frequency headroom. So if that's actually true and if you can get an '8 core' one for ~£170 then it might be ok lol.
 
Lol. "might" being the operative word :p there are other things to take into account as well. One of the BD's main problems was the amount of power it was drawing when overclocked was insane and a few other things. for £150 I would say save it. an 8120 may not be ideal but it should at least last long enough to save for a complete upgrade.
 
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