Where is Zen?

[Relentless81]

Hello,

How far off is Zen in terms of performance desktop CPUs?

There doesn't seem to be much posted about it recently, I'm on an 8350 and still waiting for Zen, every time an offer comes up for an Intel motherboard and/or CPU setup its very hard to sway temptation. I'm constantly messing with my 8350 trying to find the balance of noise/heat/performance and I'm looking forward to a new gaming setup that I can leave on default settings and game rather than constantly tinkering

The new AMD Wraith standard cooler looks OK too http://www.silentpcreview.com/AMD_Wraith

Is Zen going to be a new socket (AM4) needing new aftermarket cooling support? If so the standard cooler looks decent enough to tide everyone over for a while.

Does anyone know how much cooler Zen will be and what kind of performance increase we'll be looking at? I read 40% but that seems quite high?

Cheers

 

[Relentless81]

Thanks for the informative reply, its good to hear that there will be such an increase and it seems it will be worth waiting for, end of the year though

I only just bought a new cooler but by the time its released I'll more than likely fancy a change anyway so I'll sell it on and see what the Wraith cooler is like for a bit and what after market stuff follows.

You're right about OC and games, used to run my 8350 at 5GHZ with a Corsair H110 its now at 4.2GHZ on a Scythe air cooler and I cant tell any difference in BF4 which I play pretty much daily

I'll keep running my 8350 until Zen hits and look to replace my 290X first with one of the new GPUs when they appear, exciting times.

 

[Relentless81]

I'd buy a Skylake or Haswell-E if you want a guranteed good performing, quiet CPU, which will last many years. Why suffer for 1 year+ until Zen is out, then it turns out to be mediocre?

Its a good point but they are expensive arent they? I remember when I built my 8350 originally the cost vs the Intel equivalent at the time was significant and I believe that margin has increased even more so since.

Then what if it comes out and its cheaper performs just as well or better as current Intel offerings, I would be kicking myself for not being patient

Still though, temptation is there as I'm mainly interested in increased FPS at the moment, how much would a current gaming Intel setup cost me with the following in mind -

Paired with a 290X for now, most played game is BF4 which is a CPU intensive game, I average between 70/80FPS on most maps with current setup

Cool
Quiet
Gigabyte motherboard

 

[Relentless81]

I'm going to keep it to see what Zen brings for sure, happy with it now I've removed the OC and re-cased it its much cooler and loads quieter and I'm can live with 70/80fps on bf4 ultra settings 1080p for now