From AMD8320 - i7 6700. Impressions

[regulus]

Despite being vocal on occasion that the 8320 is still fine for cutting edge gaming, a great deal for an i7 6700(non K) fell into my lap. When the buying and selling were done, I was out of pocket about £90 for the entire upgrade of CPU/MOBO/DDR4. So not too bad really.

Playing AC: Unity on my widescreen at near enough max settings on a 1080gtx and the frames were ... well, not 60FPS. So I'd hope the i7 would help somewhat.

No difference. Although RAM usage came down a little bit.

Threw on Witcher 3. Max settings again. Think I was a few frames up on occasion but essentially, no difference.

Lastly I tried Farcry Primal. Max settings, no difference over the 8320 system.

Take into account that while I can't overclock the i7, I also never really overclocked the 8320 and played at stock MHZ for nearly the entire time I owned it. Guess I'm not much of an overclocker

I'll give GTAV a whirl later today but I can kinda guess what to expect ...

Will try some more games later and hopefully see some sort of upward trend across the range.

Either way, glad I went for the upgrade as I was always going to wonder. Piddly amount of money was spent buying 2nd hand gear (all less than 6 months old) so not begrudging it.

Maybe I'm missing a clever setting or button somewhere that'll magically start pumping out some performance everyone is raving about, and I'll definitely look for it, but if you happen to be in exactly the same position that I was, don't expect miracles. Quite impressive that a 4 year old CPU was still holding its own.

One LOL-worthy comment. Was in my local PC store last week chatting to a guy who works there. Told him about going from a 8320 to an i7. Got the old 'man, get ready for some serious frames. You're looking at least 30-40fps extra over your AMD system'. He was also on about how 'we both know that your 1080GTX would be more than enough GPU power for the next 5 years but your AMD was holding you back'. Sounds like someone that easily gets caught up by hype.

Maybe next gen we'll start seeing some decent gains?

 

[regulus]

1080gtx

Same for both

 

[regulus]

Hehe. How do I test for a faulty CPU?

Seems to run the specified Mhz and acceptable temps.

 

[regulus]

For instance , what fps were you getting on your 8320/1080 at max settings? On mine i was getting approx 55fps and thats with a 980ti

I can post some screens when I get home as I especially took some for this purpose.

On AC: Unity. 1080 GTX, 3440x1440. Ultra Settings

8320: Around 30-40 FPS at any given time
i7: Honestly, see above. Was hovering around 37-38FPS with the odd spike to 59fps but very very rarely.

Witcher 3. 1080 GTX, 3440x1440. Ultra, Hairworks on.

8320: Low to mid 30s.
i7: Low to mid 30s

Those are the only two I've tested extensively. As said in my OP, I've also had a dabble in Far Cry Primal and FPS was the same, but didn't go to enough areas in the game to be certain. But initial thoughts are that there's no difference there either.

 

[regulus]

For instance , what fps were you getting on your 8320/1080 at max settings? On mine i was getting approx 55fps and thats with a 980ti

Do you game at 3440?

What game did you get 55fps on? I can probably test here at my end

 

[regulus]

You game at 3440x1440? The onus is quite heavily on the GPU at that resolution.

And the titles you've mentioned are gameworks, performance can vary rather crazily.

The benefit of an Intel CPU is generally for consistency of frames, higher minimums, but that's going to level out as the load increases on the GPU (Which, considering you're basically saying you're playing at 30-40 FPS, it's not exactly great, 4 FPS gain is 10%, but it's not going to mean much)

Yea I thought as much. Whilst the FPS aren't great, it does feel somewhat smoother when using FastSync. Happy to admit that most if it is all my head, but it doesn't 'feel' like 30-40 fps.

I know that it's a brutal resolution for a single card which is what set this whole upgrade of GPU/CPU/Mobo/RAM thing in motion.

Doom on the other hand is butter smooth at 60 FPS. Even on my old 980GTX/8320 combo @ 3440x1440.

Oh well. Next year I might sniff out a cheap 1080Ti and with an upgrade to a G'Sync monitor looming at some point, it should be ok.

 

[regulus]

Just been running some Heaven benchmarks.

Went from 97 FPS to nearly 119 FPS. Clocked the card harder this time but it wouldn't have been a 20% increase on FPS doing just that.

The CPU clearly is better in that case.

Guess just not seeing it in games yet

 

[regulus]

Small update.

Had chance to extensively test this yesterday with AC: Unity. Running a small overclock on the 1080 GTX and frames jumped quite a bit. And I'm talking not even a 3-5% OC.

I'm now running close to 60 but then there's drops where is suddenly goes down to low 30s on the frames. I'm putting this down to crappy coding.

One area in particular was quite good as it doesn't matter what I did in OC'ing my 8320 or GPU, I was getting mid to low 20s, and that's in the restaurant area that you buy in game. Now it's hitting a consistent mid to low 50s in there. So clear improvement.

 

[regulus]

Played a bit more AC: Unity last night. While I hate to sound cliched, it does feel a bit smoother overall. Didn't run any frames as I got tired of looking at numbers instead of playing the game, but there's been no noticeable slow downs or stuttering.

I wonder if there's such a thing where a CPU takes time to 'settle in' to the system. The past 24 hours everything suddenly sped up a bit, from loading games to booting into Windows. Maybe someone more tech savvy can comment on that.

With all the upgrading final completed ... I kinda miss having something to obsessively research

I wonder if an NVME SSD drive is worth it over a normal SSD ...

 

[regulus]

I'm glad of this thread, getting itchy for a new cpu to replace my 8350 and again it just doesn't seem worth it regards the return I'll get vs the cost

Some games you will, some you won't. If you're a 'benchmark' type guy, don't hesitate and go for the Intel, I've seen a 15-20% rise across the board on all benchmarks since getting the Intel. Gaming, overall it feels a bit more smooth and as I said, certain areas in certain games run more stable, but it's not 'incredible' or 'amazing' or whatever adjectives I've seen people use here to justify their upgrades. Not for me anyway.

If you can get a second hand one at a throw-away price because some idiot is convinced that Intel's latest 5% incremental upgrade will change his life, it might be worth looking at it. If you're like me and purely buy on value for money, look at the 2nd hand market. Some incredible deals to be had there if you're patient enough. I've bought my last two systems (before moving to NZ) from the MM for practically nothing and it's lasted me around 9 years combined.

But as always, all about the GPU!

 

[regulus]

Noticed another improvement last night. Played (or tested rather) ROTTR on the dreaded Soviet Installation level. Exact same setup as previously apart from new CPU. Played at High Settings (as before) and it ran smooth as butter for me. Couldn't tell you the FPS as for some reason I couldn't get any of the counter overlays to work. Didn't feel like fiddling with it either. All I know is that my PC did not like that level very much previously and even I could notice a stutter the whole way through. This time it felt smooth throughout the entire level.

Reason I didn't end up going for a 6700k or 6600k is that all gaming benchmarks I've watched online don't show THAT much of a difference between the two CPUs. Same with some benchmarks on here. I only do Heaven and ROTTR benchies and I'm pretty sure I got some higher scores than some guys on there that do have 6700k's running at 4.5ghz. But to be fair, I don't think they've spent much time clocking their GPUs before running those benchmarks.

Anyhow. I'll end up running another 1080 in SLI a few days after my next big 'whiskey drinking' night and get closer to a consistent 60fps