AMD FX 8350, i5 3570k or i5 4670k?

[scaryjim]

Not spending as much money on one part so you can get another one is sacrificing one of the parts for the other.

No it's not, because ...

If you have a 295x2 and a dual core you're not going to hit 60fps in any modern game all you'll be doing is creating a bottleneck.

Although at 1080p I'd question your assumption, given a Pentium anniversary and a 750 Ti hit 50fps at 1080p. But anyway, if one part is botlenecked by another, then you're not "sacrificing" it, because you're not getting the performance out of it anyway, due to the bottleneck. Giving up something you're not using isn't a sacrifice....

That was my point if you don't know the other parts you can't really pick what CPU OP should buy.

That's exactly the point everyone else is making, so I'm not quite sure why you're taking issue with the people saying it?

[scaryjim]

... I have a low budget and not going to bother changing my GPU atm, it ain't the best, but I am keeping my GTX 550 Ti for the moment. ....

What CPU do you have at the minute? And how long do you think it will take to save up for a new GPU? You might find you're better off upgrading the GPU first - as DancesWithUnix says you may find you can do rendering on the GPU, and you should be able to do video encoding on it too, and gaming will probably benefit more from a GPU upgrade. So unless you have a very weak CPU at the minute, you may be better off upgrading your GPU now then saving up money for the CPU/Mobo/RAM upgrade later.

[sam0]

Not spending as much money on one part so you can get another one is sacrificing one of the parts for the other. If you have a 295x2 and a dual core you're not going to hit 60fps in any modern game all you'll be doing is creating a bottleneck. Obviously that combo will be well balanced but what has that got to do with anything? That was my point if you don't know the other parts you can't really pick what CPU OP should buy.

Note what I said:

(as long as there's no bottleneck).

Clearly if the OP has the money then get a better CPU, but my point was, that for gaming, GPU should be the priority. But I agree with your point, we would need to see the rest of the system first.

[PixL]

What CPU do you have at the minute? And how long do you think it will take to save up for a new GPU? You might find you're better off upgrading the GPU first - as DancesWithUnix says you may find you can do rendering on the GPU, and you should be able to do video encoding on it too, and gaming will probably benefit more from a GPU upgrade. So unless you have a very weak CPU at the minute, you may be better off upgrading your GPU now then saving up money for the CPU/Mobo/RAM upgrade later.

I get what you mean, but my old PC was like a first try PC thing from eBay second hand but that's not the point. It was OLD, from 2006, it was a Dell Precision 470 with a random Intel Xeon Quad Core (I think actually Dual Core hyper-threaded), as it was an old corporate workstation, it had a server MoBo, needed server ECC RAM of a maximum DDR2 (Which is also a big poop) and yeah.. Didn't need or want the hassle of finding random compatible stuff and slow ram, and everything having to be Server orientated.

Anyways, not of that is really relevant now as I have just sold it anyways....


The GPU has CUDA and is quite capable of pretty decent rendering improvements compared to CPU only ect. (I use Sony Vegas 12).

[PixL]

And also, I know this is totally off topic, but I just wanna say, that from what I have seen so far at least of Hexus, it is a really awesome techy forum. The users are cool and there is no abuse or hate ect.

My Dad uses this forum frequently and since I am looking to build a PC and stuff he said why don't you try Hexus? (I had already seen him on it, but never been a user myself). Some of you may even know my Dad on Hexus as 'fuddam'.

[mikeo01]

A 295X2 is going to churn out > 60fps @ 1080p regardless of what CPU you have.

That is a bit misleading. Depends on the application


From a gaming point of view it completely depends on how the game engine is built. Whether the logic is primarily ran on one thread, multiple threads and ultimately how much "logic" is actually going on in that game.

Personally my vote would go to the I5-4590 or the I5-4690 and opt for a lower end B85 chipset (or Z97 if you want to opt for the I5-4670K). Save you some cash on the PSU, energy bills (only slightly) and net you better performance (especially single threaded).

From a non-gaming point of view the FX-8320 completely depends on the application at hand. If you can make full use of its threads it is a very good chip.

[scaryjim]

From a gaming point of view it completely depends on how the game engine is built. Whether the logic is primarily ran on one thread, multiple threads and ultimately how much "logic" is actually going on in that game.

True to a point, but a 295X2 is so fast at 1080p that even with a weaker CPU I doubt you'd manage to pull it below 60fps, and particularly not something like the Pentium Anniversary edition (AMD's Sempron 2650 might struggle, though ). OTOH, you'd probably find that you'd get the same level of performance out of something like a single 290. There's only so much a CPU can hold back a fast GPU in gaming (unless the game engine is really badly written, but then even a powerful CPU would struggle).

As the OP's sold their old PC, I guess a mobo/CPU/RAM bundle is the right choice now My only concern with any of the options are that there's no guarantee that either AMD or Intel will stick to their current CPU sockets. If you're looking at future proofing then more cores seems to be the likely way to go (DX12 is meant to work better across more slower cores than fewer fast ones) which would point to the FX8350, BUT AMD's enthusiast platform hasn't been upgraded in several years and is definitely due for retirement sooner rather than later. Given s1155 is already EOL that only really leaves the Haswell i5s on a Z87 or Z97 motherboard, but again we have little guarantee that Intel will stick to socket 1150 for future CPUs. Both Intel and AMD will also be looking to move to DDR4-supporting platforms in the near future, which again limits the shelf life of anything you buy now.

Personally, I'd look at getting an FX6300 or FX6350, an AMD 970 chipset motherboard, and 4GB of the cheapest DDR3 you can find (fast DDR3 doesn't really benefit the AM3+ platform). Those parts should be a noticeable upgrade over your old stuff, are ready for overclocking, and should sell on well when you're ready to build a new computer after all the DDR4 platforms have come out. They'll also save you a bit of money that you can put away towards the next round of purchases

[PixL]

What does EOL mean?

[sam0]

What does EOL mean?

End Of Life, meaning a product is no longer sold and possibly no longer supported by the manufacturer.

[Extinc]

Although at 1080p I'd question your assumption, given a Pentium anniversary and a 750 Ti hit 50fps at 1080p. But anyway, if one part is botlenecked by another, then you're not "sacrificing" it, because you're not getting the performance out of it anyway, due to the bottleneck. Giving up something you're not using isn't a sacrifice....

By dual core I was meant to say a core 2 duo.

That's exactly the point everyone else is making, so I'm not quite sure why you're taking issue with the people saying it?

What issue? I'm not making an issue, I was the first person to mention that fact, that's why I called out the other guy for recommending spending more on a GPU without knowing any other specs.

Note what I said:

Clearly if the OP has the money then get a better CPU, but my point was, that for gaming, GPU should be the priority. But I agree with your point, we would need to see the rest of the system first.

I was not referring to you at any point within that sentence, I was talking to the person saying that no matter what CPU you have the 295x2 will produce more than 60fps.

[PixL]

I was talking to the person saying that no matter what CPU you have the 295x2 will produce more than 60fps.

I don't get how that is possible. So even with like a single core 1 GHz, with the 295x2 it can run anything at 60+ FPS?! That doesn't make sense to me.

[DanceswithUnix]

I don't get how that is possible. So even with like a single core 1 GHz, with the 295x2 it can run anything at 60+ FPS?! That doesn't make sense to me.

Don't try to read too much into it, extreme examples don't usually work

However, look at this slide from a recent Anandtech review:

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph8316/66043.png

Check out the i3 and the fx4350. Those are far from high end parts, and here they are driving a pair of GTX770 cards in SLI and doing just fine.

Here is an amusing one, a video of someone running an Athlon 5350 (so 2.05GHz, single channel ram) with an HD6870 plugged in. You would expect it to be a one frame per second slide show, but while it sounds like the game is laggy I am actually quite impressed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPXE...ature=youtu.be

So the CPU isn't quite as important as some would have you believe. At the level you are looking at, I really don't see how you can be disappointed tbh.

I see you have chosen an FX8350. I have one, and a GTX460 graphics card so a similarly quick system to what you are building. I know my graphics card is the slowest part of the system, but so far I haven't played anything that stuttered enough to get me to open the wallet up and part with money on a new card.

Do you have a motherboard in mind yet?

[PixL]

What kind of things do you do on your system with the FX 8350 and GTX460?

The motherboard I have chosen is the MSI 970A-G43

[scaryjim]

What issue? I'm not making an issue, I was the first person to mention that fact, that's why I called out the other guy for recommending spending more on a GPU without knowing any other specs.

The other guy you "called out" specifically said if the OP had a GT630 we'd probably advise them to spend less on the CPU and more on the GPU, whereas if they had a more powerful GPU we'd advise a more powerful CPU. In other words, they were saying exactly what you were saying.

I don't get how that is possible. So even with like a single core 1 GHz, with the 295x2 it can run anything at 60+ FPS?! That doesn't make sense to me.

It's about what your base FPS are in the first place, which depends on your settings. Back in the good old days a lot of CPU reviews played games with a powerful graphics card at something like 800x600 minimum settings, to put the emphasis on the CPU rather than the GPU. Some review sites *still* do that, despite it being totally unrepresentative of a real world situation. The outcome was always frame rates in the hundreds.

The 295X2 is so powerful, that playing a modern game at 1080p high settings on it is basically the same: you'll get well over 100fps with a desktop i5 or i7 (if anyone doubts me go read some reviews - Crysis 3 @ over 100fps average is pretty impressive ). There's so much spare GPU power on tap, that unless the game is really badly coded, or you have an exceptionally weak CPU, you should still beat an average 60fps most of the time. The point here is that there aren't any mainstream single core 1GHz desktop CPUs available any more - the lower end AM1 CPUs (dual or quad core @ < 2GHz) might struggle, but any mainstream desktop chip from the last couple of generations should keep up.

But remember, we're talking about getting 60fps out of a GPU that can do well over 100fps - you'd be looking at losing half the potential performance from the GPU by matching it with a weaker processor. You might not notice the difference (particularly on a 60Hz monitor), but your bank balance and your parent's electricity bill might...

[PixL]

The point here is that there aren't any mainstream single core 1GHz desktop CPUs available any more - the lower end AM1 CPUs (dual or quad core @ < 2GHz) might struggle, but any mainstream desktop chip from the last couple of generations should keep up.

I know there aren't any CPU's that weak, that was just to imagine if there was and what would happen if it was paired up with a ultra GPU. However, when you say any mainstream desktop chip from the last couple of gens should keep up, I kinda want one that I don't have to constantly upgrade it more than I need to. That mostly makes up why I chose the FX8350 over something like the FX6300/FX6350, my GPU will hold up fine atm, and when I need some extra GFX juice, I will get something new, but I would rather have a more powerful CPU atm than a suped up GPU, because I am not going to be really really needing it so far...

[DanceswithUnix]

What kind of things do you do on your system with the FX 8350 and GTX460?

The motherboard I have chosen is the MSI 970A-G43

I am a programmer, so I got it for writing and benchmarking code on in Linux.

It dual boots into Windows, where it gets used for playing games. Currently playing Far Cry 2 from the Steam summer sale, yesterday I played some WoW. Might play some Civ V later (am on holiday looking after the kids).

Hmm, looking on the MSI website I can't see 8350 in the supported CPU list for that motherboard, have I got the right one?

http://uk.msi.com/support/mb/970AG43.html#support-cpu