upgrade from q6600

[topher]

Looking to upgrade CPU, MB and RAM..
PC used for Gaming at 1920x1080, and general browsing etc

current spec
Q6600
MSI 6950 twin frozr ii
Crucial M4 SSD
4GB DDR 2

won't be changing the SSD or GFX card.

was looking at i5 4670k £180, but I could save a bit of cash and go AMD!
FX6350 £105
FX8320 £110

how do the AMD's fair against the I5?
I know the I5 is a better chip, more efficient, runs cooler.
Seen various benchmarks 3dmark etc, but how about real world performance.
Is there anything that uses the extra cores in the AMD?

Cheers

 

[Smoogels]

Whats your total budget? The AMD FX CPUs offer great price to performance however, the 8 cores ideally require a beefy motherboard (preferably a 990FX chipset) because of it's high power requirements. The Intel on the other hand is generally fine in even a value motherboard.

In general browsing the difference between these two processors would not really be noticeable. Web browsing, office tasks etc all use little processing power and both CPUs do this while the clock speeds are reduced to save power.

For gaming, most often the i5 is better however, if you play modern titles such as Battlefield 4 or Crysis 3, the FX 8 cores will perform equally, slightly worse or slightly better than the i5. Older games, or games which do not use many cores such as Total War Rome 2, will favor the Intel greatly because of it's stronger single core performance.

There are a few applications which use 8 cores but they are rather limited at the moment. I'm sure that more heavily threaded applications will become available in a few years though. Generally, tasks like video rendering use all 8 cores and I think stuff like Photoshop might, but I'm not that sure

 

[Martini1991]

The i5's the better gamer, there's exceptions where there's pretty much no difference (At least with current graphics cards) as you've got a 6950 though, there will be pretty nil difference overall in gaming though, an i5 4670K isn't worth IMO pairing up with a 6950.

I'd go for an FX8320 and board, overclock, that'll be a hefty upgrade.

There's only really a handful of games that do use all of what the AMD has to offer (But doing so doesn't guarantee the best performance, as below, RTW2), but like I say, when it's powering a 6950, the FX832 will handle it fine pretty much regardless of game.

EDIT : @ Smoog, I'm pretty sure RTW2 uses a fair amount of cores, it just maxes them out (Causing the FX more problems than it causes the i5 strangely, I ran the latest up to date RTW2 on my R9 290 and 4770K maxed out, it was a pretty enjoyable experience tbh)

 

[almighty15]

As said above, for your current card an FX8320 would be the best option.

 

[topher]

So the upgrade to a i5 or even fx8320 and the 6950 becomes the bottleneck!

games will be BF3/4, Titanfall, Thief. all modern titles

how does this look for I5, will have to have a look for AMD options
also isn't AM3 end of life, no more processers to be released on that socket?

i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £179.99
Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £89.99
TeamGroup Vulcan GOLD 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit£65.99

Total : £345.56

 

[Martini1991]

AM3+ is a dead socket yes, 1150 has higher potential performance too, but who knows what bar the Haswell refresh will hit 1150 as we know it.

I like that Intel option personally.

 

[alex_123_fra]

I suspect Haswell refresh will be a bump in base and boost clock with virtually nil added beyond that. I'd be surprised if it gives any sort of upgrade path. If you are considering the upgrade, do it now. No point waiting.