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i5 or Piledriver

Yea...PD seem to do well only because of its default high clock...if you look at it from the view that it only got around 10-15% of overclocking headroom left, comparing to 39%-45% of Ivy...

From what I've seen so far the overclocking headroom on Piledriver is a bit higher than that. Most people on the 8320 seem to be getting 20% plus.

To the OP, it's not worth changing CPU's as the i5 is a great gaming CPU but then almost all current gen CPU's are (The graphics card is a bigger factor really). If you ended up moving into rendering more then Piledriver would be worth it but stick with what you've got for now.
 
From what I've seen so far the overclocking headroom on Piledriver is a bit higher than that. Most people on the 8320 seem to be getting 20% plus.
That's because I'm referring to the 8350 at 4.00GHz (+15%=around 4.6GHz), whereas you were referring to the 8320 at 3.50GHz...so we are talking about different things.

At 3.50GHz, the PD is pretty much just the performance of a Phenom II X4 970 at 3.50GHz but with 4 more cores (which most games don't take advantage of).
 
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That's because I'm referring to the 8350 at 4.00GHz (+15%=around 4.6GHz), whereas you were referring to the 8320 at 3.50GHz...so we are talking about different things.

At 3.50GHz, the PD is pretty much just the performance of a Phenom II X4 970 at 3.50GHz but with 4 more cores (which most games don't take advantage of).

how high it clocks seems to depend on the cooling...and which motherboard people have. Quite a few people have got the 8350 over the 5 Ghz mark (and some on 8320 too). Looking at it many are just hitting it with volts and increasing the multiplier but it seems like mixing it up with busclocking gets the best results.

And for those games that are core-limited you can always deactivate a few of the cores and increase the clock on the active cores with that increased thermal headroom. I can't wait for my motherboard to arrive so I can test it.
 
how high it clocks seems to depend on the cooling...and which motherboard people have. Quite a few people have got the 8350 over the 5 Ghz mark (and some on 8320 too). Looking at it many are just hitting it with volts and increasing the multiplier but it seems like mixing it up with busclocking gets the best results.

And for those games that are core-limited you can always deactivate a few of the cores and increase the clock on the active cores with that increased thermal headroom. I can't wait for my motherboard to arrive so I can test it.
But 4.6GHz is pretty much the realistic target in terms of overclocking for 24/7 use (same apply for Ivy i5/i7) due the temp limitation, so I don't think anyone should even bother considering either PD 8xxx or Ivy i5/i7 at above 4.6GHz on everyday use.

I get what you are saying about disabling cores for possible higher overclock, but that seem counter-productive and if people have to be put into that position, they'd be better off going Intel to start with.
 
Stick with the i5. The 8350 is only faster in certain situations and offers no upgrade path. If you decide the i5 needs more power, you can upgrade to an i7.

Every review of PD I've read describes it as almost as disappointing as BD. It's a flop, steer clear!
 
Stick with the i5. The 8350 is only faster in certain situations and offers no upgrade path. If you decide the i5 needs more power, you can upgrade to an i7.

Every review of PD I've read describes it as almost as disappointing as BD. It's a flop, steer clear!

SR's meant to come to AM3+.
Think SR might be a decent alternative, PD is in some cases already.

But I wouldn't switch from one side to other.
 
Stick with the i5. The 8350 is only faster in certain situations and offers no upgrade path. If you decide the i5 needs more power, you can upgrade to an i7.

Every review of PD I've read describes it as almost as disappointing as BD. It's a flop, steer clear!

flop? it seems ok to me and a good price compared to intels, well on other retailers.....
 
flop? it seems ok to me and a good price compared to intels, well on other retailers.....
Price isn't everything when people think from performance point of view. Phenom II level IPC and slightly higher max clock and more cores doesn't sound good enough if gaming is the main purpose...when comparing to the gaming performance to the Intel's alternative out there...
 
personally I would pick the 8 cores vs Intel 4 cores because I could play games and use it for work.

Are you serious? You would honestly go with Piledriver on the basis that it has more cores? You must be buying up AMD video cards because they have over a 1000 more cores a then the Nvidia alternative.
 
Are you serious? You would honestly go with Piledriver on the basis that it has more cores? You must be buying up AMD video cards because they have over a 1000 more cores a then the Nvidia alternative.

To be honest his whole post was a bit out there :D When I was reading it I just thought to myself, what the hell are you writing!

If you were buying new, either platform would be nice(I'd still go I5 because of the 1155 upgrade options) But since you already own the I5 though, changing 1 for the other would be pointless.
 
Stick with the i5. The 8350 is only faster in certain situations and offers no upgrade path. If you decide the i5 needs more power, you can upgrade to an i7.

Every review of PD I've read describes it as almost as disappointing as BD. It's a flop, steer clear!

The i7 will only provide a 5% boost usually in games. So not massive. It does a bit better again in software that can utilise mutithreaded CPU's but in those instances Piledriver is superior. It hasn't been a flop. IPC was boosted over Bulldozer, it clocks higher and uses less power. It's also been launched at an ultra competitive price (It's the same as a multiplier locked i5...which it can beat with a mild overclock). It's reduced the gap that was there. And as has been mentioned before me Steamroller is also believed to be AM3+ so there will be an upgrade path.
 
The i7 will only provide a 5% boost usually in games. So not massive. It does a bit better again in software that can utilise mutithreaded CPU's but in those instances Piledriver is superior. It hasn't been a flop. IPC was boosted over Bulldozer, it clocks higher and uses less power. It's also been launched at an ultra competitive price (It's the same as a multiplier locked i5...which it can beat with a mild overclock). It's reduced the gap that was there. And as has been mentioned before me Steamroller is also believed to be AM3+ so there will be an upgrade path.
Please don't use linear single player FPS/action games to generalise gaming as a whole...

Even with my i5 2500K overclocked to 4.5GHz the frame rate would dip down to 30fps in Guild Wars 2 World vs World mode with 60-100 people duking it out...AMD CPUs would be brought to their knees in this situation.

Games mostly still only use 3 cores or below, 4 cores sometimes, and rarely more than 4 cores.

And also, I have no idea where you get the 5% from.
 
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Please don't use linear single player FPS/action games to generalise gaming as a whole...

Even with my i5 2500K overclocked to 4.5GHz the frame rate would dip down to 30fps in Guild Wars 2 World vs World mode with 60-100 people duking it out...AMD CPUs would be brought to their knees in this situation.

And games mostly still only use 3 cores or below, 4 cores sometimes, and rarely more than 4 cores.

Actually I was comparing the i5 to the i7. The boost for which wouldn't be massive. As you've said, most games don't utilise more cores/threads yet. The performance boost in games would be minor over the i5. The i7 would excel in more intensive threaded tasks, but then again so would an 8320/8350.

Essentially if someone has a Socket 1155 board then sticking with Intel is sensible, if they've got an AM3+ then Piledriver is an attractive option.

Me personally I'm going to be mixing up general office tasks, Video editing, Photoshop and encoding Handbrake with occasional gaming at 1920x1080. PileDriver (and even Bulldozer before it) makes sense. It's horses for courses.
 
Are you serious? You would honestly go with Piledriver on the basis that it has more cores? You must be buying up AMD video cards because they have over a 1000 more cores a then the Nvidia alternative.

I don`t think you even understood a word i said (Apart from the number of cores) or what I conveyed in my message - you even failed to quote me fully.
 
I'd still go I5 because of the 1155 upgrade options

What upgrade options? Unless you have a Celeron, Pentium or Core i3, then the upgrade options will be pretty limited as Intel are now focusing on Haswell (which uses a new socket). Haswell will most likely be here in the next 6 months, so i'd say 1155 days are numbered... Remember how quickly Intel ditched 1156 when 1155 arrived :rolleyes:.
 
i5 if you havent got am3+ board already everything else i5

i am a amd big fan but there is no other reason to go pd other than having a motherboard compatible in 99.9 percent of the time.
 
Not really.... No.

From the benchies I have seen, the i5 and PD are either similar in some games or the gulf is pretty massive in favour of the i5.

See the gaming benchies at the bottom of the page.

A game has to be massivly multithreaded or gpu bottlenecked for PD to match the i5.

More gaming benchies, pretty massive gulf if you ask me.

Basically nothing has changed since the 2500k/8150. If your after a gaming cpu then the i5 is the clear winner (2500k or 3570k)

Yet more benchies, showing massive difference, where games are cpu bottlenecked.
 
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