The 8 core showdown and analysis thread.

[McstylisT]

Only it's not true because the Athlon XP absolutely battered anything Intel could muster up yet AMD kept the costs down. So sadly they've already been given the chance yet still didn't extract the urine.

Then let's look at their graphics cards. Radeon 295X2 is £1044.99

Titan Z is £1999, the 295x2 is faster.

So AMD have had plenty of chances to go mad with prices but have failed to do so.

So I'm not having that. That's just more excuses from camp blue to justify the massive price premiums they charge for their products. And they've always been like that, given the chance or not. Even the P4s that were massively underpowered were still stupid prices.

Some people will just pay anything to go to the blue team, even if they're slower.

Edit. AMD will never be deemed good enough to charge those sorts of prices. They did in the past, they ended up losing money. People see AMD as a dirty brand and thus, even when their products are better people just won't pay the high prices. Only Intel and Nvidia get away with that, and they do it by brainwashing and spending millions on salesmen to go around making their products sound like the sun shines out of their ass.

Even in this day and age, where people have the internet at their disposal and full and complete means to use an AMD CPU and see what it actually does there are still a million blue mound hounds running around completely misinformed. And this is down to Intel's marketing strategy and how they court people.

I do remember some of those days Andy. I had as many Intel pentiums as i did Athlon XP/64. It was a closer engagement, but due to shall we say "lack of technically demanding consumers" unlike now, I can never remember ever being that cheap ? Obviously now the stiff competition for all the manufactures and us the demanding consumers, prices are hammered down under the pressures of business.

I got no qualms of AMD gpu line up. Check my sig ,,, AMD for past 5 years without a blink. But hey ,, the 295x2 is an amazing card ok ,, but how are they not charging a premium for it ????? its like £1139.99 inc VAT thats one thousand one hundred and forty quid. Not too far from the titan z.

I will repeat, you pay a premium for the best in class. If its that good people will buy it and they are.

This logic must then apply to the processor sector too, no ?

I will say though to the rest, that completely having battles over Intel vs AMD is pointless and cant really understand those who seem to enjoy the digs. They are not bad cpus, they work well. Will make a good gaming system and youll be surprised at what you get. But if you have the cash ,, and want the best as things stand, after time the inevitable happens. You'll switch.
They dont deserve being bashed down at all.

AXLAndy is a prime example, He was very happy with his 4.9/5ghz FX. Loved it posted all his benchmarks etc. He is now using and Intel i7 3970x - I will bet you dont see this main rig change back to AMD anytime soon.

 

[John24]

FX-8350 @ 4.5Ghz

26.4 FPS, You're 15% faster at 4.6Ghz.

Thanks humbug, always wondered how an FX would do in a highly threaded app. Couldn't find a review that had a direct comparison.

What's your RAM at? Dropped mine down to 4.5 and RAM to 1600 9-9-9-24-2T, was 2400 11-13-13-35-1T before, also included my 1100T results:

[B]4790K[/B]
4.5 1600 9-9-9-25-2T    - 29.27 AVG FPS

[B]FX-8350[/B]
4.54                    - 26.42 AVG FPS -9.73%

[B]1100T[/B]
4.0 2400 11-13-13-35-2T - 20.65 AVG FPS -29.44%

The FX isn't too far behind, but this bench shows best case. With the encode settings I use day to day the advantage of my 4790K over my old 1100T goes from 31% in this bench to between 35-47% depending on the settings I use.

A high clock on the FX along with some fast tunned RAM could get very close to the intel in video encodeing with certain settings but it's clear Intel has the edge even in this highly threaded situation.

If I'd got the FX I wouldn't be too dissapointed but I would still be pinning after an I7.

 

[SlugForAButt]

And the price difference is what?
Like I said before, performance/£ for gaming I think AMD has it sewn up.
I know all you Intel fanboys will shout me down but I think AMD has been quite cute recently.
They release 8 core CPUs that are comparable with i5s, they get the deal to put their 8 slower core CPUs in consoles and then miraculously come out with Mantle that makes the i7 pretty much irrelevant for gaming for most people.
Let's see how DX does the same thing in the new release, but it will also just nerf AMD hardware in some way.
I'm using Intel atm so I'm not an AMD fanboy, but I hate their business practices.

 

[humbug]

Thanks humbug, always wondered how an FX would do in a highly threaded app. Couldn't find a review that had a direct comparison.

What's your RAM at? Dropped mine down to 4.5 and RAM to 1600 9-9-9-24-2T, was 2400 11-13-13-35-1T before, also included my 1100T results:

[B]4790K[/B]
4.5 1600 9-9-9-25-2T    - 29.27 AVG FPS

[B]FX-8350[/B]
4.54                    - 26.42 AVG FPS -9.73%

[B]1100T[/B]
4.0 2400 11-13-13-35-2T - 20.65 AVG FPS -29.44%

The FX isn't too far behind, but this bench shows best case. With the encode settings I use day to day the advantage of my 4790K over my old 1100T goes from 31% in this bench to between 35-47% depending on the settings I use.

A high clock on the FX along with some fast tunned RAM could get very close to the intel in video encodeing with certain settings but it's clear Intel has the edge even in this highly threaded situation.

If I'd got the FX I wouldn't be too dissapointed but I would still be pinning after an I7.

RAM is at 1600Mhz until i get myself some new RAM.

Spoiler

It really isn't as bad as some people think, it can get close or keep up with an i7 clock for clock in a lot of situations, encoding, compression, decompression... there isn't much else to do in everyday computer use.

In 3DMark SkyDiver CPU Physics it scores 9400 @ 4.6Ghz with 1600Mhz RAM, thats faster than an i5 and not that far off an i7, with faster RAM it will easily pass 10K.

Games, in BF4 DirectX ultra setting it never drops below 70+ and even thats rare.

Crysis 3 again it does well.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Sure its not as fast as an i7 or even an i5 in something like Planet Side 2, but the performance in those games is still good enough.

Its a £130 CPU that does get pretty close to an i7 in most modern games and Applications, i don't see what the fuss is about, its a powerful CPU full stop, not just for its money.

Its a checky chip thats not supposed to cut it with the big expensive ones and yet does, its a great thing.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The ONLY people who really care about brand perception of CPUs and GPUs are probably hardware enthusiasts on forums,and Joe and Jane public might care when hardware enthusiasts or salesmen push one brand over another.

This is why companies like Apple and Samsung have done so well with their tablets which have eaten into traditional desktop and laptop sales,and are powered by ARM chips,which are even less well known than anything AMD or Intel make. The vast majority of people out there could not care less who makes the CPU or GPU in their consumer products at all.

Companies like Qualcomm have more free money in the bank than Intel,AMD and Nvidia(over $30 billion) combined with hardly any debt too,and are making massive profits each year,and does anyone care who made the chips in the iPad for example?

See many threads about Qualcomm on hardware forums?? Nope.

On top of this loads of gamers out there in the last 30 years used consoles and have no clue or even care who makes the CPUs or GPUs in them. Even look at the most popular PC games like LoL,DOTA,The Sims,Minecraft,etc - tens of millions of users and most are probably running them on ancient desktops and cheapo laptops,and could not honestly give a damn either way. They are designed to run fine on crap hardware and for a very good reason.

Honestly be happy we have an enthusiast segment still and have a choice - in another 10 years we might not have one,especially with the way things are going towards Cloud computing and mobile form factors.

 

[John24]

RAM is at 1600Mhz until i get myself some new RAM.

Cheers.

Don't do any gaming myself but my brother still has an athlon x4 with a 270X and it plays everything fine. I get a bit miffed when I see people default to Intel all the time in their recommendations. If I didn't need the grunt I'd probably have an amd chip still.

 

[gpuerrilla]

Very true statement there CAT.

My nephews played minecraft on their budget laptops (for a while) and when they seen my "budget" FX rig there jaws hit the floor.

Why anybody see's value in arguing one is better than the other is beyond me when in one to two years time the tech will have made what is current substantial at best.

 

[McstylisT]

And the price difference is what?
Like I said before, performance/£ for gaming I think AMD has it sewn up.
I know all you Intel fanboys will shout me down but I think AMD has been quite cute recently.
They release 8 core CPUs that are comparable with i5s, they get the deal to put their 8 slower core CPUs in consoles and then miraculously come out with Mantle that makes the i7 pretty much irrelevant for gaming for most people.
Let's see how DX does the same thing in the new release, but it will also just nerf AMD hardware in some way.
I'm using Intel atm so I'm not an AMD fanboy, but I hate their business practices.

Not a bad post slug4b. True facts and most I agree with you. The console deal is a huge one, kudos to amd for that it's very good business indeed. I hope it will help massively in there continuing efforts to improve there IPC.

I agree with you on intel business practices. Since the 10% improvement plan began I skip a couple of gens to make things worth while. They could easily give a 20% improvement but they don't and they won't. They don't have too with lack of premium end performance competition.

Use cars a example, BMW and Mercedes or Audi will charge you a premium for a performance engine and all the little extras you require, where you could probably get a VW or a FORD nowadays with fully loaded spec , super build quality but for a fair whack cheaper. Yet people still love and pay for their premium cars. Because they can afford it and want the best. There is nothing wrong with the other options , they just choose the upper tier. I am happy with my current ford , it's fully loaded and it's quick (ST) but if I ever am in a position, then oh yes my Mercedes is being ordered.

 

[Phixsator]

First thank you AlxAndy for taking the time to do this, spite some minor flaws imho. I always like when people do these "out of the ordinary" tests. Its what being an enthusiast is all about.

Now i see the biggering has begone yet again, people are being rude, dividing themselves up into the usual red/blue camps spite claiming otherwise, because something was posted that they did not agree on. Its sad that many cannot appreciate the hard work someone have put into benchmarks like these even if they disagree with the results or the way it was done. A simple "thank you for doing this, but i think this way would have been better" is a simple yet a lot less agroo mentality to put forth, so please consider this the next time you post.

 

[alex_123_fra]

AMD are seen as a dirty brand because of peoples' personal experiences with their products, just because there is a highly committed and vocal minority on internet forums who pretend that everything is hunky dory with their products doesn't change the reality of what people experience first hand when they buy into AMD.

NVidia and Intel charge premiums because people have experienced their products first hand and deem what they offer to be worthy of a premium, if AMD tried to match them they would be simply pricing themselves out of the market.

As things stand on the processor front you can buy an Intel quad core which has consistently fast performance all across the board and modern motherboards, or an 8 'mini core' AMD FX which can vary from a match for Intel's quad core to laughably slow depending on application and has motherboards which haven't been updated technology-wise since March 2010 (990FX is a rebadged 890FX). Then there are all of the other factors, heat, power draw, necessary cooling which is in Intel's favour.

Intel simply offer more elegant products, as do NVidia in the GPU market. AMD offer value and that's about it.

Fair amount of opinion in this post rather than fact, most of which is BS. Pretty sad seeing this kind of post on an enthusiast forum. Nvidia, AMD and Intel all make lots of superb products.

Andy thanks for your effort and contribution, very interesting results.

 

[ALXAndy]

Why not benchmark a AMD 6 core vs an Intel 6 core both at say 4.5ghz ?, that would make sense for a like for like comparison.

But it isn't a like for like comparison because as we know, the AMD suffers due to IPC and single threaded performance.

That's the sort of crap people want to see. Then they can go "Oh look ! Intel win again, wow etc"

But it isn't that clearly cut I'm afraid. When you actually sit down and take a look at the figures sure, the Intel wins. But it's not all about what product costs the most money.

People say that Piledriver is a failure. If that's the case then given that it's an extension product of Bulldozer why are AMD still making it and why, if no one buys them, are they still selling it?

Surely they would have gone bankrupt years ago (right at the launch of Bulldozer) if that was the case yes?

No instead of that they are binning chips and packing them with AIOs that supposedly no one buys. If their marketing staff really were the blind gibbons people say they are they would be no more.

The elite few that want the absolute best and will pay the massively, disgustingly over inflated price for it are the minority. They are the 1% of the 1% and no company exists purely to pander to their needs. Trust me on that, business does not work that way.

I bet there are more people reading this thread with an AMD CPU (and not posting) than there are the type who come here to rubbish AMD.

 

[humbug]

I think AMD probably sell quite a few of them.

The sort of people who say "only Intel regardless of cost" are very much in the minority and overwhelmingly are they ones who post on enthusiast forums.

Some just know what a CPU is, know they need one of sorts and then buy any old CPU that fits their price range.

Others will read around forums and see "AMD this and that.... only buy Intel"

Some of those will then do that while others will look at Intel's prices, gulp, get a Games Console and unknowingly end up with AMD anyway!

 

[ALXAndy]

I think AMD probably sell quite a few of them.

The sort of people who say "only Intel regardless of cost" are very much in the minority and overwhelmingly are they ones who post on enthusiast forums.

Some just know what a CPU is, know they need one of sorts and then buy any old CPU that fits their price range.

Others will read around forums and see "AMD this and that.... only buy Intel"

Some of those will then do that while others will look at Intel's prices, gulp, get a Games Console and unknowingly end up with AMD anyway!

Of course they're selling. AMD would not manufacture a product that makes them a loss (they've done that before it nets you nothing as a business). They're wildly popular out in the USA..

Let's use Corsair as an example. What they been doing lately? coming up with tons of cheap products so they can afford to stay in business. Companies like OCZ who only made two or three products (ssd, psu and memory) have gone under. Why? because they're not catering to the masses with horrifically expensive PCIE SSDs.

Asus still very much embrace AMD AM3. They still come up with a new board from time to time, they still hold the crown for AM3 products. They would not do so if they weren't making money.

It's the boring stuff that actually makes the money tbh.

 

[Svyper1]

Some of those will then do that while others will look at Intel's prices, gulp, get a Games Console and unknowingly end up with AMD anyway!

the thing about this is Intel are not that expensive. Xeon is expensive but really the product range of desktop processors are not that extreme.

You can get decent and better intel based pc's at all ranges of cost depending on each persons builds. It can be cheaper, it can be the same, a little more or more expensive...

You could spend a lot on things you don't actually need and say "there see intel is expensive".

Most of what i've seen is the over spending on these things that they don't need to make the pc work. best example is motherboards, the difference between the "low" end and "high" end motherboards is simply features and a lot of the features no one actually uses... why spend on full atx equipment and a 2billion watt psu when you only have 2 sticks of ram 1 gfx and an efficient processor...

 

[ALXAndy]

the thing about this is Intel are not that expensive. Xeon is expensive but really the product range of desktop processors are not that extreme.

You can get decent and better intel based pc's at all ranges of cost depending on each persons builds. It can be cheaper, it can be the same, a little more or more expensive...

You could spend a lot on things you don't actually need and say "there see intel is expensive".

Most of what i've seen is the over spending on these things that they don't need to make the pc work. best example is motherboards, the difference between the "low" end and "high" end motherboards is simply features and a lot of the features no one actually uses... why spend on full atx equipment and a 2billion watt psu when you only have 2 sticks of ram 1 gfx and an efficient processor...

They are expensive. Even when they were losing badly to the Athlon XP they still remained expensive. People bought Intel because they saw AMD as a dirty brand.

Going on your posts I would say that Intel should have gone out of business due to Netburst and RDRam. But they didn't.

The difference between a high end and crap motherboard is usually the power phases. Which are terribly important if you are into safe overclocking. They're not worth the money usually, much like any high end boutique product.

I read an article just after Sandy launched (Sandy was only reasonable because they did not know how Bulldozer was going to be) and it said that Intel had been getting into these 3D transistors which could be stacked upon each other. Note, using this method it would be far cheaper to produce CPUs because they are smaller, require less silicon ETC.

Sandy I5 = £160 or so.
Ivy I5 = £160 or so.
Haswell I5 = £160 or so
DC = £160 or so.

Even though they shrank the dies and then cheaped out on actually manufacturing them (poor TIM etc) they remained at the same price.

They released DC and people go "Ooo look, Devil's Canyon !". What they fail to see of course is that DC is actually Haswell that's been made better than it was because it was a poor product. If it wasn't Intel would not have replaced it.

What made me laugh the most was when Nvidia released Fermi. It was absolute total fail, yet people were still trying to see good parts of it. Nvidia were so close to going out of business that they actually started blocking out their partners and selling their own boxed branded GPUs.

Thankfully for them the GPU in question was the GTX 460 which was actually quite epic. A lesson to Nvidia - stop making big fat inefficient dies. They survived it, got fluke with Kepler (smaller cheaper and clocks higher, what they should have been doing before) and people go "oooo kepler !".

A GPU core that has 150mhz or so in it for overclocking headroom with terrible VRMs yet to people like you they can't do no wrong.

I remember the GTX 590. Overclock it and it simply blew up. Great product

 

[Svyper1]

ok how much did you spend to overlcock an 8320 to get it at i5 performance?

say 160 total package or so

<_< hypocrite

 

[SlugForAButt]

ok how much did you spend to overlcock an 8320 to get it at i5 performance?

say 160 total package or so

<_< hypocrite

I've not always agreed with ALXAndy but I'm with him 100% on this occasion.
And thanks for putting that thorough OP together Andy, it must have taken some time.

 

[gpuerrilla]

But it isn't a like for like comparison because as we know, the AMD suffers due to IPC and single threaded performance.

That's the sort of crap people want to see. Then they can go "Oh look ! Intel win again, wow etc"

But it isn't that clearly cut I'm afraid. When you actually sit down and take a look at the figures sure, the Intel wins. But it's not all about what product costs the most money.

People say that Piledriver is a failure. If that's the case then given that it's an extension product of Bulldozer why are AMD still making it and why, if no one buys them, are they still selling it?

What was interesting on the PD front was at streaming whilst playing it was a good performer which does not get factored into the average benchmark. People are increasingly doing this, and for a great price offers a lot of grunt.

Now if only the vocal naysayers started to produce some of their own material or benchmarks like you have Andy.

 

[gpuerrilla]

ok how much did you spend to overlcock an 8320 to get it at i5 performance?

I spent £37.50 on a refurbished H100 and got a Sabertooth board for £116. Processor was £102, all in I thought was pretty good value.

 

[Svyper1]

I spent £37.50 on a refurbished H100 and got a Sabertooth board for £116. Processor was £102, all in I thought was pretty good value.

not bad but thats £255.5 on basically using a second hand cooler otherwise an h100 would have cost you : £88 = £306 total

seeing as that is just to make it i5 performance forgetting i5 k can be overlcocked, so a non overclockable i5 is:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4690 3.50GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £161.99
1 x Gigabyte H97M-HD3 Intel H97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £67.99
Total : £239.58 (includes shipping : £8.00).



saving of ~£20 on second hand old tech and all brand new or really £70

and p off with any motherboard rubbish - this will work perfectly fine and pawn anything you need it for...