AMD - Piledriver chitchat

[martober]

I think being as energy efficient as possible is a good idea even at the absolute top end. Power usage should be considered when comparing the price of different chips (as well as the price of additional cooling and a more powerful motherboard if you're overclocking). GPUs do tend to use more power under load, but that isn't a reason to ignore cpu power usage. It's also unlikely that you'd pair a budget cpu with a high end gpu.

cat-the-fifth: I was specifically comparing with the 8320 because that was requested. I agree the fx6300 is a decent budget chip and I find it easier to recommend than the 8 core FXs. Neither it or an i3 are ideal for gaming, but they're both good enough in most cases so which one you pick probably depends on the individual games.

[teppic]

I think your argument is coming apart, sorry.

You can't argue for high end gaming using a large amount of energy on the graphics card, and then praise a low powered CPU for using less, one that you don't think is suitable for a gaming system anyway. The fact is that the increase in power usage in a mid to high end gaming system with an 8320 absolutely full out or a quad core Intel CPU is generally small (less than a typical light bulb), especially as a proportion of total system draw, and nobody games at maximum load on 8 cores 24/7.

[martober]

You can't argue for high end gaming using a large amount of energy on the graphics card, and then praise a low powered CPU for using less

I don't see why not. The i3 performed at roughly the same level as the fx chip in those benchmarks while using a lot less power. Inevitably a high end gaming system is going to use more electricity than a budget system but with that increased power usage you get increased performance. The problem with the high end FX chips is that they use more electricity than the intel competition and with few exceptions perform worse.

I think the fx6300 and i3 are perfectly suitable for budget/mid range gaming (though I'd generally prefer the fx just because gaming is likely to become more dependent on multiple cores in future), but there are tradeoffs to be made so that neither is ideal.

[watercooled]

What price of additional cooling/'more powerful motherboard'? You get a stock cooler with either, and aftermarket cooling is generally compatible with both. Motherboards with comparable feature sets are generally cheaper for AM3+. A few dozen watts tops isn't cause for a more expensive power supply.

The 6300 is by far and away a better choice than any i3 for gaming, equalling and surpassing i5 in modern games played at real settings.

[teppic]

@martober - you cut off half what I said in the quote. It was the inconsistency of the argument.

For FPS gaming the 8320 beats the i3 in terms of overall performance, and beats the i5 in terms of price while matching real life performance. The 6300 beats the i3 CPUs in basically every way, as watercooled said. Not much added electricity - and on a gaming system I think this argument is tenuous at best, given the small amount compared to the graphics card and rest of the system. If you've got an nvidia 560/570/580 you'll be using more power on your Intel system than an FX one on a 7850.

[martober]

Why not have an intel system with a 7850 and get the best of both?

I don't think it's fair to narrow the scope to just fps gaming, especially as those games are frequently gpu rather than cpu limited. Even then, the link I posted last page showed an i3 scoring marginally higher frame rates than the fx8320 in fps games (borderlands 2, farcry 2) while the i5 remained consistently ahead. The 6300 does not beat the i3 in essentially every way. How well the fx chips perform really depends on how multithreaded the game engine is, many games are still essentially dual or single threaded and in those cases the i3 is likely to perform better.

watercooled: additional cooling and a more powerful motherboard if you want to overclock, the same applies with intel of course, but you can't compare overclocked 8320 with stock 4570 without factoring in the additional costs of the overclock.

[watercooled]

the link I posted last page showed an i3 scoring marginally higher frame rates than the fx8320 in fps games (borderlands 2, farcry 2)

Two FPS games, neither of which are running particularly new/well optimised engines. It's a completely different story for many recent games, and looking forward considering the new consoles.

[teppic]

Farcry 2 is a bad port. Poor console ports typically run better on Intel CPUs as they don't use the cores well at all. Also bear in mind that every 8320 will easily overclock to 8350 speed (and further).

@martober - you're changing your argument completely every time it's disputed. For typical FPS and modern games the facts are all there based on price and performance.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I had the SB Core i3 2100 and a mate who has the FX6300. I think over two years ago it was fine,but the landscape is changing and we are coming to a new generation of multiplatform games.

Look at the BF4 Alpha results for example:

http://www.bf-blog.cz/wp-content/upl...f4procesor.jpg

My Xeon E3 1220 is slightly below a Core i5 2500K at stock clockspeeds,and that is with the latest Frostbite 3. CryEngine 3 already runs better on an FX6300 rather than a Core i3,and UE3 based games seem to be around the same for both as it only uses upto 4 threads. UE4 is probably going to be like the newer engines and thread better(it has to),so I can see the FX6300 leading there,although we will need to see Fortnite benchmarks first. Since idTech5 uses megatexturing it probably works better on a FX6300 too,looking at this:

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4955/41704.png

[martober]

Like it or not most games are console ports, most games are lightly threaded and because of that where the cpu is the limiting factor most games favour intel cpus. You don't have to play those games, but when making broad statements about the gaming performance of a cpu all games should count. There are exceptions and everything could change when we start seeing ports from the new consoles but we'll have to wait and see for that.

http://techreport.com/review/23750/a...essor-reviewed for example shows the fx8350's gaming performance to be roughly equal to an ivy bridge i3.

edit: the bf4 alpha screenshot is interesting, but it's comparing piledriver with sandy bridge. Haswell and Ivy results are missing.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Like it or not most games are console ports, most games are lightly threaded and because of that where the cpu is the limiting factor most games favour intel cpus. You don't have to play those games, but when making broad statements about the gaming performance of a cpu all games should count. There are exceptions and everything could change when we start seeing ports from the new consoles but we'll have to wait and see for that.

http://techreport.com/review/23750/a...essor-reviewed for example shows the fx8350's gaming performance to be roughly equal to an ivy bridge i3.

edit: the bf4 alpha screenshot is interesting, but it's comparing piledriver with sandy bridge. Haswell and Ivy results are missing.

Those games and those engines are the basis of multiple console ports.

Come back in a year and then you will see where it is heading.

The FX8350 scores lower latency than a Core i3 in both Crysis3 and BF3.

The performance difference between the Core i3 2100 and the Core i3 3220 is minimal. Even the Core i3 3240 cannot beat an FX6300 in Crysis3. I have first hand experience of both CPUs. I had my Core i3 2100 for 21 months.

The difference is that people who NEVER have used a SB or IB Core i3 for their primary gaming CPU seem to think its great.

Its massively overrated as a CPU. Yes its OK,but I don't think it has legs so to say.

Edit!!

Lets look at the latest TR review then:

http://techreport.com/review/24954/a...pus-reviewed/6

Oh,it seems in the new TR suite the Core i3 3220 can only match the FX6350(the FX6300 will score 5% to 10% less) in one game.

In Crysis3,Tombraider and Metro:Last Light it has worse latency figures and framerates.

Then add in the pcgameshardware figures and gamegpu figures for their testing of Crysis3 and BF4 and you can see how long the Core i3 3220 will be relevant.

Moreover as a person who played Crysis3 in Alpha,Beta and the final version,the part pcgameshardware tests is cpu heavy.

On my G15 I can see all 4 cores on my Core i5 being pushed,since the vegetation animation(IIRC) load is spread across the 4 cores,and will use upto 8 threads.

Even Skyrim which is a favourite to show how good a Core i3 is irrelevant because:
1.)Its not an FPS
2.)The initial version used X87 instructions,and further mods and patches improved performance anyway as it forced code to run via SSE. Check out Skyboost which the community developed.
3.)Bethesda won't use the engine anymore. Skyrim Online was prototyped using an engine which was used in a SW game which used upto 4 cores. Hence,its more likely the final game will show at least that level of threading. I expect the next Fallout game to probably use the same engine as Skyrim Online. Gamebryo/Creation is getting very creaky now,and it does not support DX11 or any of the newer graphics technology which the new consoles have.

In a few months the PS4 and XBox One are being launched. They use 8 core X86 CPUs(probably 6 to 7 used for games though and one for housekeeping),and GPUs which have support various new features(including the set of DX11 features although they will probably use custom APIs).

The main new engines from big companies all use upto 8 threads. Its not a coincidence at all.

If Intel even made the Core i3 as standard with agressive Turbo like the Core i5 CPUs,it might have been OK. However,they don't so they can protect Core i5 sales. They locked Core i3 overclocking to protect Core i5 sales. They don't care if the Core i3 line is left to whither because TBH they would rather everyone got a Core i5 instead,especially the £200 ones.

This is why I had to ditch my Core i3 as I realised keeping it longer was not worth it.

[watercooled]

Ivy and HW don't improve CPU performance significantly over Sandy.

Some games are poor console ports, but such games don't tend to be that hard to run now e.g. CoD.

In your link, apart from Skyrim, most of the games simply aren't CPU limited at those settings (apart from with the Pentium) - you're looking at a couple FPS difference. Skyrim's poor performance on AMD CPUs is due to ancient x87 codepath, such games are extremely rare nowadays, and are even less likely once future consoles appear.

[teppic]

Also, that BF4 benchmark has the 3970X, which is a far better performer than Haswell (and costs over £800). You could extrapolate from that that the 8320 @ 4.5GHz would be very close to the 3970X.

[martober]

My understanding is that sandy bridge e is better because it has more cores, but the individual cores perform slightly worse than ivy and haswell cores as they're based on older technology. I know the quad core sandy e is beaten by the mainstream ivy and haswell i7s in some benchmarks, so in a lightly threaded game a haswell or ivy i5/i7 should come out slightly ahead.

It seems dishonest to limit the comparison to games where fx does well (multi threaded, non console port, fps) and ignore hugely popular games like Skyrim where it doesn't. If those are all you play then an fx chip is a great choice for you, but when talking about gaming as a whole it still seems to perform poorly and inefficiently when compared with the competition. It's likely to change when the new console generation appears, but I don't think we know enough to say for sure or to what extent until we start seeing ports from next gen console games. For overall gaming today though I feel intel is the clear winner in all except low budget systems.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

My understanding is that sandy bridge e is better because it has more cores, but the individual cores perform slightly worse than ivy and haswell cores as they're based on older technology. I know the quad core sandy e is beaten by the mainstream ivy and haswell i7s in some benchmarks, so in a lightly threaded game a haswell or ivy i5/i7 should come out slightly ahead.

It seems dishonest to limit the comparison to games where fx does well (multi threaded, non console port, fps) and ignore hugely popular games like Skyrim where it doesn't. If those are all you play then an fx chip is a great choice for you, but when talking about gaming as a whole it still seems to perform poorly and inefficiently when compared with the competition. It's likely to change when the new console generation appears, but I don't think we know enough to say for sure or to what extent until we start seeing ports from next gen console games. For overall gaming today though I feel intel is the clear winner in all except low budget systems.

DISHONEST?? Who the hell do you think you are saying I am dishonest,you troll.

[martober]

I apologise, it was a poor choice of words and I didn't mean to imply that you were dishonest. I'm not trolling though and I feel the point still stands. If you're going to compare gaming performance between chips then it should cover all kinds of game and not just a small subset. I see no good reason to ignore games like Skyrim or strategy games in a general comparison of gaming performance.