Thinking of switching from Intel to AMD

[Akagi]

I would rather keep my 2500K than have the FX9370. If someone offered me to swap (with the condition that I have to keep the 9370 and not sell it) I would decline.

Also the AMD Mantle not requiring much CPU power blah blah applies to any CPU, not just AMD CPU's.

 

[BurntProc]

arma is faster on intel as is 99 percent of games.

for those who actaul think about it take as many benchmarks as possible not some that favour amd or intel then look. intel control gaming regardless of what people say.

arma benchmark 3 posts up...

 

[teppic]

...and about 9 out of 10 other games will be anything up to 40% faster on the overclocked i5 due to the superior single thread performance, why cherry pick the few situations where AMD's slower but more numerous cores excel?

An overclocked i5 has roughly the same multithreaded performance as any Piledriver give or take a few percent but blitzes them in single thread performance.

Pointing out that things are far from as simple as '2500K beats 8350' and giving an example of a game isn't cherry picking.

An overclocked 8350 is more powerful in multithreaded performance than a 2500K overclocked, it's not roughly the same. As to single threaded performance, in many games it won't matter. You can get lots of old and current games running well over 150fps with any modern CPU, Intel or AMD.

 

[alex_123_fra]

any i5 from sandy up is faster than any current 8 core cpu once oc.

benched them and a guy on my ts now has just upgraded from a 8320 @ 4.5 to a i5 3570k he says in games its quite a lot better.

arma is faster on intel as is 99 percent of games.

for those who actaul think about it take as many benchmarks as possible not some that favour amd or intel then look. intel control gaming regardless of what people say.

The misinformation in this place is quite incredible. You are generalising beyond belief. In multithreaded applications and games which utilise 8 cores/threads, AMD Piledriver FX 8-core CPUS are superior to i5 2500k CPUs.

Who has an 8320 and keeps it at 4.5 GHz? Most poultry overclock I have seen in a while. Most can easily reach 5 GHz+ as we are seeing in the 83x0 thread. Can we see some of your benchmarks in games which utilise 8+ cores? Have a look at mine in the BF4 core utilisation thread (page 10). I'd like to compare those to an i5 2500k with a 7990. I'd be very impressed if the latter beats the 8320 at 4.8 GHz+.

As for the OPs question, as things stand and if Mantle lives up to the theoretical advantages (that is more efficient workload execution scheduling between CPU and GPU(s)), I would MUCH rather have a CPU with 8 cores or 4 cores/8 threads if I were to want to play upcoming games at ultra settings on 1080p and 1440p+ displays. CPU bottlenecking should be vastly reduced anyway using Mantle but a higher number of CPU cores will allow use of multi GPU setups without fear of CPU bottlenecking.

In short, unless you plan on playing lots of old games which utilise 1-2 cores, you will not go wrong with an AMD FX 8-core CPU going forward. It will be more future-proof than an i5 2500k, especially in multi-GPU setups.

 

[gpuerrilla]

 

[beasty6]

i dont understand why AMD would allow mantle to work with intel CPU's

surely they would want it to help sell AMD products and not improve the competitors chips?

i personally think the AMD is amazing value and i may go that route as im still on LGA1156 but as you are on a newer platform i would wait for mantle to be released and see how it goes with other games as well, just my opinion.

i mean a 8320 that can be clocked to 4.5-4.7 ghz for £120!
and a 990 mobo for £100!
thats £220 right there, that wont get you a i7 chip on its own

 

[Akagi]

MHz is not everything, and it would be unreasonable to screw over the people who have bought AMD GPU's but want/need Intel CPU's if they make Mantle AMD CPU only. It wouldn't make any sense. Plus I don't think the CPU has any bearing on how Mantle works.

 

[alex_123_fra]

MHz is not everything, and it would be unreasonable to screw over the people who have bought AMD GPU's but want/need Intel CPU's if they make Mantle AMD CPU only. It wouldn't make any sense. Plus I don't think the CPU has any bearing on how Mantle works.

Agree with this. Although in terms of the last sentence, the company which makes the CPU won't matter but the number of cores it has, I suspect, will.

 

[Cooper]

i mean a 8320 that can be clocked to 4.5-4.7 ghz for £120!

What does that matter if it only gives the same performance as an Intel CPU @3.4Ghz...

..and can then be easily clocked to 4.5Ghz, which an 8320 would need to run @ nearly 6Ghz to match.

 

[Akagi]

What does that matter if it only gives the same performance as an Intel CPU @3.4Ghz...

..and can then be easily clocked to 4.5Ghz, which an 8320 would need to run @ nearly 6Ghz to match.

 

[alex_123_fra]

What does that matter if it only gives the same performance as an Intel CPU @3.4Ghz...

..and can then be easily clocked to 4.5Ghz, which an 8320 would need to run @ nearly 6Ghz to match.

 

[Cooper]

Err...it's well known that on a per core basis, the FX Cpu's are 30-40% slower than the Intels.

As they say, 'you do the math'

 

[alex_123_fra]

Err...it's well known that on a per core basis, the FX Cpu's are 30-40% slower than the Intels.

Yes, we know this. Which part of "utilising 8 cores/8 threads" didn't you see earlier in the thread?

 

[Cooper]

Yes, we know this. Which part of "utilising 8 cores/8 threads" didn't you see earlier in the thread?

Was my post factually incorrect?

No..thought not, now do one.

 

[SiDeards73]

So umm i was only merely asking what people thought of the idea, not trying to incite some AMD vs Intel war haha.

Im seriously considering the swap across, the only "old" games i play are MMOs and as pointed out they will probably run like crap on an AMD chip, however im pretty sure with a 290 and 16gb of ram pushing the system i wont notice too much right?

And future proofing *IF* and thats a big IF, Mantle + More Cores = able to run Xfire 290s at a mental brainmelting FPS rate, them im all over that

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

You will never - EVER - change martins mind on this topic. Invest that energy on something more positive!

In fairness I don't remember an argument/discussion on this forum where ANYONE had their mind changed as a result of the argument/discussion.

It's hard to suggest to the OP what to do. I don't think either chip is bad. The domination of the 8-core chip in future games is speculation at this point. It seems reasonable, but it's still speculation around how games will work with less cores. If one core is running fast enough can it run 2 threads as well as 2 cores running slower? I mean back when we had single core CPUs it didn't mean we could only run 1 thing at a time. Well, I suppose it did, but it didn't seem like it. There's nothing to say a thread has to be active every single millisecond. Maybe a thread can be run and then swapped out. Unless we're seeing 100% utilisation of every core on 8-core cpus surely that means there's downtime?

I'll say this, I don't plan to switch my 4-core 8-thread 4770K or my 6-core 12-thread 3930K for an 8-core 8-thread 8350 (which I already own and in fact upgraded to the 4770K).

As for 8320s hitting 4.5-5.0Ghz, well that shows how unlucky I am. My 8350 need around 1.45v to hit 4.5GHz. Both my i7s are running at 4.3GHz as 4.4GHz requires quite the VCore jump. Or maybe I'm not unlucky, maybe I'm just not good at overclocking. But it's possible that 4.5GHz+ isn't guaranteed on either 83X0 chip.

 

[alex_123_fra]

What does that matter if it only gives the same performance as an Intel CPU @3.4Ghz...

Was my post factually incorrect?

No..thought not, now do one.

Your post was not factually correct. It was a gross generalisation as many people on here seem to fall into the trap of. I'll say it again, the FX8320 and FX8350, in multithreaded applications utilising 8 cores (including games) will perform better than an i5 2500k (even if you overclock both to their usual/average OC limits).

So posting something that no one disputes about per core performance and adds nothing to the discussion except make you look like an Intel fanboy is your idea of contribution?

I don't think I will "do one".

 

[nikki5974]

So umm i was only merely asking what people thought of the idea, not trying to incite some AMD vs Intel war haha.

Im seriously considering the swap across, the only "old" games i play are MMOs and as pointed out they will probably run like crap on an AMD chip, however im pretty sure with a 290 and 16gb of ram pushing the system i wont notice too much right?

And future proofing *IF* and thats a big IF, Mantle + More Cores = able to run Xfire 290s at a mental brainmelting FPS rate, them im all over that

I played WoW,SWTOR on all 3 cpu's i5 ,17 and 8350 with the same gpu and noticed no difference in fps between them all played max settings

 

[Martini1991]

What GPU?
As factually WoW will not be the same in FPS with any half decent card.

 

[ALXAndy]

LOL facts and figures from thin air in true Intel fashion ! you gotta love it.

If you think an I5 2500k can beat a 8320 or 8350 then please to kindly stop by the Cinebench R15 thread and prove it. When you're done doing that you can stop by the 3dmark Firestrike thread in the CPU forum too.

I'll see a 2500k beat a properly supported 8320 when I see a elephant fly.