Should i Set my Sights on AMD??

[joeyjojo]

Considering the OP uses an i7-920, surely Piledriver would just be more of a sidegrade? I would say wait for next gen CPUs.

In x264 it's a decent upgrade. At stock it's a 63% improvment.

If we pretend a 4 GHz overclock on the 920 makes it 50% faster, then the 8350 at stock is still 8% faster.

For games it is obvs a different story. I'm just a bit tired of people saying the 8350 is useless.

 

[~>Dg<~]

its not its a decent cpu if you on a budget . if you not on a budget you just buy intel. i love amd stuff myself but in the cpu department they arnt as good.

 

[V F]

For games it is obvs a different story.

More so for multi-gpu setups.

I'm just a bit tired of people saying the 8350 is useless.

I don't think it's useless but from the other opinions I've read across some forums, they make it sound AMD blows Intel away.

I have noticed at times how quick my AMD encodes big clips. OK in multi-gpu setups but nowhere as good as Intel.

 

[lettuce]

I guess one think i havent taken into consideration in regards to video encoidng with a new gen Intel chip, is Intel Quick Sync feature. As i had a first gen Bloomfield chip i never had access to this feature before.....am i right in saying that this halfs the time it take to encode a video?

 

[JonJ678]

i wasnt even aware that the AMD line actually had 6 or 8 actual hardware cores i thought they were like Intels Hyperthreading BS, but this is not the case

It's a bit more complex than that. Hyperthreading involves doubling some hardware within the cpu but not others. Iirc you get more registers, no more cache, no more execution units. It can be a means of hiding memory latency or of doing some surprisingly elegant precaching (one thread pulls data into the cache, the second does things using it).

AMD have doubled up some hardware, but not all. A four core intel chip has four sets of execution units, four L1 cache, some things duplicated to allow the extra thread. An eight core AMD chip has eight of some things but four of others - most critically for me, it only has four floating point units. The idea is to keep the single FPU busy all the time but having two cores waiting on it. Consequently a quad core intel chip should be able to do floating point stuff at about the same speed as an eight core AMD. In practice it tends to be silly amounts faster (better memory bandwidth is the critical aspect I think - though there are probably other differences).

So yes, AMD does have eight "hardware cores", but half of them are missing bits. Intel have four "hardware cores", each with some extra bits. It's not that fundamental a difference outside of marketing.

 

[Nuclear Fusion]

I guess one think i havent taken into consideration in regards to video encoidng with a new gen Intel chip, is Intel Quick Sync feature. As i had a first gen Bloomfield chip i never had access to this feature before.....am i right in saying that this halfs the time it take to encode a video?

I seem to recall that quick sync is fast and power efficient but at the expense of quality as compared to normal X264 encoding on handbrake etc.

 

[Phixsator]

Being a former x58 member with a 920 as well under the hood I would say don't upgrade at this point. The FX-8350 and its little brother 8320 does a fantastic job in any game I play or program I use and is rather cheap to purchase but if I had a choice I would stay on the x58 platform. The 920 and its siblings are fantastic CPUs. Its possible to get a 40-50% overclock out of the box putting it in ivy stock territory. Intels offerings are just to expensive to validate a purchase that would make sense comparing to a i7 920. It would have to be the x79 platform and a 6 core 12 thread CPU and they are just to darn expensive at this point, unless of course one has a money tree in their back yard.

 

[humbug]

If its modern games you play and Video encoding the FX-8350 can be a viable alternative.

But as it stands today Intel still have the edge as a lot of stuff still does not make full use of AMD architecture, having said that there are real signs that this will change.

I currently use an i7 930, like you i'm pondering something new. I really don't like the price of Intel CPU's, I think the only reason Intel charge what they do for something like the 3770K is because they can.

AMD's Steamroller is also on the horizon, add that to increasingly better Multicore CPU optimisation in software and games Intel's price will start to look unjustified, though I suspect they will keep the price as high as they can for as long as they can.

My advice is wait for Steamroller.

 

[Skynet5]

don't forget there is the 3820 on the x79 platform...gives u a great upgrade path imo.

Might not be a x or k, but easy peasy to OC with the strap. Got mine running just under 4.9.

 

[lettuce]

I seem to recall that quick sync is fast and power efficient but at the expense of quality as compared to normal X264 encoding on handbrake etc.

Ah so it doesnt actually use x264 codec, it uses its own??

I guess if your uploading stuff to YouTube it would matter, as YT just use a horrid encoding process, i think 1080p vids are capped at 8000 kbps

 

[joeyjojo]

Ah so it doesnt actually use x264 codec, it uses its own??

I guess if your uploading stuff to YouTube it would matter, as YT just use a horrid encoding process, i think 1080p vids are capped at 8000 kbps

It uses H.264 with settings comparable to x264's "superfast" profile.