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Why AMD?

Number_25

Number_25

Number_25

Soldato
Joined
23 Dec 2010
Posts
3,483
Hey guys,

I've decided to save up for the next month or so and upgrade my current Q8300 system to something more... new.

I've used Intel since the release of the P4 and I fancy a change.

Why would I chose the AMD FX-8350 over the Intel Core-i5 3570k?

Thanks.
 
FX-8350 advantage = Better multi-threaded application performance, cheaper.

3570K Better single threaded performance, better power efficiency.

There is no advantage going one or the other unless you have specific needs for the above, they both have thier strong points and weak points, none are perticulary bad at anything.

I play games like BF3, other modern FPS and car racing games, the 3570K has no advantage there, i also use compression tools, Photoshop CS6 and video converters / encoders, the FX-8350 has the advantage there, it also costs less (if you look around for prices)

So for me the FX-8350 wins out.
 
Depend on what you use it for really.

But strictly speaking gaming performance wise, while AMD CPU "could" match Intel's performance "at times", most of the time it doesn't (when graphic card is not the bottleneck).

Quite a lot of people justify AMD CPU performance by saying it's better and faster than Intel CPU in high-threaded task such as encoding etc, but even then they are not really that "hugely" faster, but only marginally (something like 5% I think it was). Some would say AMD has the price advantage for being cheaper, but the truth is unlike Intel, spending extra for a 3rd party cooler is pretty much a "necessity", so it's not really "cheaper" after factoring that in. Also, now that the i7 2700K is at under £200, that makes the AMDs even less attractive.

So if all you use the PC for everyday general usage and gaming, and no video encoding etc involved, you'd be better off going Intel.

To be honest I think switching to AMD now is not the best move. Back in the days you should had gone for AMD Athlon 64 over the Intel P4 as it outright OWNED it...but now the positions has changed, and the Intel's CPU offering "all-round overall" better performance than the competing AMD CPUs.
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
Depend on what you use it for really.

But strictly speaking gaming performance wise, while AMD CPU "could" match Intel's performance "at times", most of the time it doesn't (when graphic card is not the bottleneck).

Quite a lot of people justify AMD CPU performance by saying it's better and faster than Intel CPU in high-threaded task such as encoding etc, but even then they are not really that "hugely" faster, but only marginally (something like 5% I think it was). Some would say AMD has the price advantage for being cheaper, but the truth is unlike Intel, spending extra for a 3rd party cooler is pretty much a "necessity", so it's not really "cheaper" after factoring that in. Also, now that the i7 2700K is at under £200, that makes the AMDs even less attractive.

So if all you use the PC for everyday general usage and gaming, and no video encoding etc involved, you'd be better off going Intel.

To be honest I think switching to AMD now is not the best move. Back in the days you should had gone for AMD Athlon 64 over the Intel P4 as it outright OWNED it...but now the positions has changed, and the Intel's CPU offering "all-round overall" better performance than the competing AMD CPUs.
Click to expand...

Justify?

For a starters you don't need to spend anything on a 3'rd party cooler unless your running more than a mild overclock, and even then a £30 cooler will get you 4.6 to 4.8Ghz.

Your text comes across a little as tho AMD owners are idiots

The performance gap between the '£240' 3770K and the '£145' FX-8350 is the same as it is from the '£175' 3570K to the FX-8350 in the fore mentioned apps i use, while those apps are far from 'unique'

No Intel CPU is better for the games i play with my overclocked 7870 or a 7950/70, which is / are pretty mainstream enthusiasts GPU's (BF3, Crysis 2, Black Ops 2, MWF, Dirt 3 Dirt Showdown ect....) which again are far from unique.

Would i not BE justified in spending less on the same and more performance?
 
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humbug said:
Justify?

For a starters you don't need to spend anything on a 3'rd party cooler unless your running more than a mild overclock, and even then a £30 cooler will get you 4.6 to 4.8Ghz.

Your text comes across a little as tho AMD owners are idiots

The performance gap between the '£240' 3770K and the '£145' FX-8350 is the same as it is from the '£175' 3570K to the FX-8350 in the fore mentioned apps i use, while those apps are far from 'unique'

No Intel CPU is better for the games i play with my overclocked 7870, which is a pretty mainstream enthusiasts GPU (BF3, Crysis 2, Black Ops 2, MWF, Dirt 3 Dirt Showdown ect....) which again are far from unique.

Would i not BE justified in spending less on the same and more performance?
Click to expand...


My idea is to upgrade from my current mobo and CPU combination and gradualy improve the system throughout the year.

Would the fact that AMD are going to stick with the AM3+ socket motherboard be beneficial to me as it means I don't have to purchase a new motherboard to keep up with the product line.
 
Intel has better max power usage, overclocked AMD are rather beasts, but idle is comparable.

AMD has better performance in some area's, intel in others.

However now, I'd go AMD for the future upgrade path. Intel is a worse choice in anything but high end cpu performance. AMD's not quite there on all out single thread performance, but its closer than people think and Steamroller is going to be a huge upgrade in single thread performance, its probably going to be 25-30% faster in single thread. Unfortunately Haswell, is going for way more IGP performance, and little CPU performance. Which means ultimately a year from now(ish) AMD will have a full on eight core cpu that has awesome performance in the £200 price range, while Intel will have a quad core with a huge IGP... that half of us on this forum wouldn't use :(

If Haswell was coming like AMD with a eight core no IGP, and a quad core + igp version, like AMD should be doing an eight core no IGP and their APU quad core version, I'd say go Intel. There is just no significant move forward from Intel in CPU performance from really 2 years ago and for another 2 years. I'm also assuming there will be a Haswell hex core like Sandybridge and probably Ivybridge, but the price range Intel is pushing those in is retarded.

In reality, you probably won't find many situations in real life(the average user, depends what you do with a computer) where you'd notice the difference between AMD/Intel, or AMD/Nvidia on GPU's.

I like that AMD cpu's are cheaper, and ignoring bias and looking at multiple reviews its very easy to see the AMD chip is far more competitive than the average user chooses to believe. If you want an APU, AMD's gpu's ARE far far superior to Intel, so when I buy a Intel chip it feels like basically throwing money away on the IGP. I've got a 2500k, I've not once, ever used the IGP, if they put an extra 2 cores in there and didn't force me into another platform, it would cost Intel the same amount to produce but I'd get more performance.

I'd take a cheaper quad core without an IGP from Intel, it makes more sense, I don't want the IGP and don't want to pay for something I'll never use, nor the power it uses. Intel really need to offer hexcore's under £200, and I'd happily go Intel in the future and recommend it.

AMD isn't far behind in performance, and from Steamroller I think they'll be on par, with better options for CPU onlys, and the improved CPU performance will only strengthen their already far far superior APU's.

Today Intel chips are faster, but not by much, but there is no upgrade future at all, AM3+ will have steamroller. Intel seem focused on improving their APU's, but they suck so badly no one should care. so close now, then I think AMD will have the best options in each market segment(except £400+ cpu's) for a while, and hopefully Intel will go on a CPU performance upgrading cycle after Haswell... but that is miles away from now.

Right now Intel has high end performance, AMD APU's are far far far better, Intel is focusing on improved IGP and bettering their APU's, while AMD is focusing on single thread performance and all out CPU performance. Problem being for Intel, AMD aren't as far behind as people think and Steamroller fixes by far its biggest limitation in that sense, and Intel could quadrouple their IGP size, crap drivers and crap GPU's means its 4 times the waste, not 4 times better. AMD's APU's will still be superior, and their better IGP's will move further ahead with improved single thread performance on their APU's.

Intel are fighting AMD in the one place Intel won't win, while AMD are coming hard at the bit Intel might lose a lot of ground because they aren't improving it.

in 18 months Intel will have, fast quad cores with a wasteful IGP and similar cpu performance to 2 year old cpu's, and £400+ hexcores most can't afford, and nothing inbetween.

AMD will have quad cores without gpu's, APU's which spank Intel, and 8 cores without GPU's which will likely wipe the floor with Intel's quad cores, they do now, 8 threads they will pawn Intel, 4 threads it will be close. AMD just has the better spread of products and their high end cpu performance in an affordable price range, intel don't.

That would all change if Intel put a hex in the FX8350 price range... but they likely won't :(
 
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Number_25 said:
My idea is to upgrade from my current mobo and CPU combination and gradualy improve the system throughout the year.

Would the fact that AMD are going to stick with the AM3+ socket motherboard be beneficial to me as it means I don't have to purchase a new motherboard to keep up with the product line.
Click to expand...

Despite AMD saying Steamroller is AM3+ There is no solid guarantee of that, nothing ever is, so don't pin your equations on that.
But if it is; not having to upgrade the Motherboard sure is a bonus (which is why its something AMD really want to do) and i think the chances are it will happen.
Steamroller will be 28nm and comes with some nice architectural upgrades. what performance upgrades that translates into is purely speculation.

What i think it will be is much better than Piledriver.
 
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Quick question regarding power consumption, as I don't really know a lot about it.

Should I be worried that my current 500w PSU wont have the capabilities to power the 8350?

Is there much of a difference in comparison to the Q8300 in that sense?
 
Number_25 said:
Quick question regarding power consumption, as I don't really know a lot about it.

Should I be worried that my current 500w PSU wont have the capabilities to power the 8350?

Is there much of a difference in comparison to the Q8300 in that sense?
Click to expand...


If your PSU is a good one, Antec, Corsair, XFX and the like.... and your not running 7950's in xFire.
There is no problem with using such a PSU, its perfectly adequate.

I have absolutely no idea what the power consumption is for the Q8300, But i'm going to stick my neck out and say its probably 'about' the same.
 
Number_25 said:
My idea is to upgrade from my current mobo and CPU combination and gradualy improve the system throughout the year.

Would the fact that AMD are going to stick with the AM3+ socket motherboard be beneficial to me as it means I don't have to purchase a new motherboard to keep up with the product line.
Click to expand...
As we were asking above...what are you using the PC for?

Going for AMD might not be siginificantly slower than Intel if you were using current gen single GPU since the bottleneck is with the graphic card, but it's been proven that when graphic cards is fast enough (i.e. SLI and Crossfire setup), Intel is FAR ahead of the AMD CPU. What this basically mean is that you can keep the Intel platform for longer and will last for more graphic upgrade before the CPU becomes the bottleneck, unlike AMD's platform even with high overclock is just enough keep up with the current gen high-end single GPU card. Yes going for AM3+ socket would most likely allow you one more upgrade to their next gen CPU, but there still no guarantee that it would be as fast as the current Intel...and even if AMD's next gen is faster than Intel current gen, it would mean you ended up paying for TWO CPU, but you could have just gotten a single Intel CPU right now and be done with it. Another thing to consider is, while AM3+ might "support" AMD's next gen CPU, but it would most likely have limited capability on overclocking without the latest chipset board that are launched alongside with the new CPU.

drunkenmaster said:
Intel has better max power usage, overclocked AMD are rather beasts, but idle is comparable.

AMD has better performance in some area's, intel in others.

However now, I'd go AMD for the future upgrade path. Intel is a worse choice in anything but high end cpu performance. AMD's not quite there on all out single thread performance, but its closer than people think and Steamroller is going to be a huge upgrade in single thread performance, its probably going to be 25-30% faster in single thread. Unfortunately Haswell, is going for way more IGP performance, and little CPU performance. Which means ultimately a year from now(ish) AMD will have a full on eight core cpu that has awesome performance in the £200 price range, while Intel will have a quad core with a huge IGP... that half of us on this forum wouldn't use :(

If Haswell was coming like AMD with a eight core no IGP, and a quad core + igp version, like AMD should be doing an eight core no IGP and their APU quad core version, I'd say go Intel. There is just no significant move forward from Intel in CPU performance from really 2 years ago and for another 2 years. I'm also assuming there will be a Haswell hex core like Sandybridge and probably Ivybridge, but the price range Intel is pushing those in is retarded.

In reality, you probably won't find many situations in real life(the average user, depends what you do with a computer) where you'd notice the difference between AMD/Intel, or AMD/Nvidia on GPU's.

I like that AMD cpu's are cheaper, and ignoring bias and looking at multiple reviews its very easy to see the AMD chip is far more competitive than the average user chooses to believe. If you want an APU, AMD's gpu's ARE far far superior to Intel, so when I buy a Intel chip it feels like basically throwing money away on the IGP. I've got a 2500k, I've not once, ever used the IGP, if they put an extra 2 cores in there and didn't force me into another platform, it would cost Intel the same amount to produce but I'd get more performance.

I'd take a cheaper quad core without an IGP from Intel, it makes more sense, I don't want the IGP and don't want to pay for something I'll never use, nor the power it uses. Intel really need to offer hexcore's under £200, and I'd happily go Intel in the future and recommend it.

AMD isn't far behind in performance, and from Steamroller I think they'll be on par, with better options for CPU onlys, and the improved CPU performance will only strengthen their already far far superior APU's.

Today Intel chips are faster, but not by much, but there is no upgrade future at all, AM3+ will have steamroller. Intel seem focused on improving their APU's, but they suck so badly no one should care. so close now, then I think AMD will have the best options in each market segment(except £400+ cpu's) for a while, and hopefully Intel will go on a CPU performance upgrading cycle after Haswell... but that is miles away from now.

Right now Intel has high end performance, AMD APU's are far far far better, Intel is focusing on improved IGP and bettering their APU's, while AMD is focusing on single thread performance and all out CPU performance. Problem being for Intel, AMD aren't as far behind as people think and Steamroller fixes by far its biggest limitation in that sense, and Intel could quadrouple their IGP size, crap drivers and crap GPU's means its 4 times the waste, not 4 times better. AMD's APU's will still be superior, and their better IGP's will move further ahead with improved single thread performance on their APU's.

Intel are fighting AMD in the one place Intel won't win, while AMD are coming hard at the bit Intel might lose a lot of ground because they aren't improving it.

in 18 months Intel will have, fast quad cores with a wasteful IGP and similar cpu performance to 2 year old cpu's, and £400+ hexcores most can't afford, and nothing inbetween.

AMD will have quad cores without gpu's, APU's which spank Intel, and 8 cores without GPU's which will likely wipe the floor with Intel's quad cores, they do now, 8 threads they will pawn Intel, 4 threads it will be close. AMD just has the better spread of products and their high end cpu performance in an affordable price range, intel don't.

That would all change if Intel put a hex in the FX8350 price range... but they likely won't :(
Click to expand...
Wall of text as usual...not that I am challenging what you "predict" for the Intel vs AMD war as a whole, but there are game benchmarks out there that comparing FX8350 to i5 3570K both overclocked to 4.8GHz using GTX690 or other high-end SLI/CF setup clearly showing the FX8350 falling hopelessly behind...and these are proven fact showing the full capability of the current hardware, whereas what you are saying is base on strategic approaches that the two companies "might" take. Let's assume Steamroller does catch up with with Intel's current gen, wouldn't it be better to just get a Intel CPU right know, than wait for another...I dunno, 1 to 2 years?
It might be different it actually becomes a standard that all games would use up to 8 threads in 2-3 years time, but there's no guarantee on that, as none of us are time-traveler from the future.


Also, I'm not sure why you bring APU into this...we are not here discussing whether Intel or AMD's business model would become more successful in the future, as most of us would be using discrete graphic card anyway and don't see the iGPU being anything significant, unless wanting to build a casual gaming system at a low price.
 
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If you can find a FX 8350 at it's RRP, they are great value, (Some retailers overcharged at launch making them look worse value) Now most are dropping them to the £150 mark, excellent value considering performance is between i5 - i7 level and better in highly threaded software.. Look at this below..

M5p3d.png
 
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Hi, i just built a AMD system with the FX 8350 and a ATI 7950 and loving the performance , my mates got a i7 and honestly when playing games cannot see any difference , thats games on highest settings at 1080p
 
uscool said:
Hi, i just built a AMD system with the FX 8350 and a ATI 7950 and loving the performance , my mates got a i7 and honestly when playing games cannot see any difference , thats games on highest settings at 1080p
Click to expand...
Most games at on a single GPU it would tends to be GPU bounded at below 60fps on a 60Hz monitor thus not much difference. If it was MMO or gaming on 120Hz monitor on dual GPU or single GPU card on medium/high graphic settings, it would be a different story.

Playing Guild Wars 2 (which scale up to 4 threads) even my i5 2500K overclocked to 4.6GHz is lacking at times considering GPU usage would drop to around 75% frame rate drop to around 30fps when fighting dragon and the minions with around 30~40+ people...if I was using a PD on the same clock, the frame rate would most likely have dropped to below 20fps, since the extra 4 cores/modules does nothing for the game.
 
~>Dg<~ said:
i3570k is ten percent faster than the 8350

this is reflected in price
Click to expand...

Well that's not a blanket figure pulled from thin air.
You can't go it's Y or X faster, as each situation is different, and in each situation it can be either plus or minus (Plus being better, minus being worse) differing amounts.
 
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