8320 versus 8370?

[Mattl12]

Worth the 50 bucks?

Not an overclocker yet but looking to build some wiggle room in should I wish to start, I'm pretty risk averse.
Not looking to split the difference with the 8350.
Want an 8 core since that is where the console development will push game developers.
Don't like the intel options at that price bracket, see also 8 core statement.


Current rig AMD 965 Black 3.5
GA-78LMT
GTX 760 ACX
Corsair 600w PSU


looking like the mobo will be GA 990FXA and the graphics card will be a (RECOMMEND?) 970 variant? Possibly looking into SLI, I realize that will require a new PSU.

 

[popatim]

They are all Vishera cores and will overclock to near the same point. Unless you are wanting to overclock to high setting the 8320 would likely overclock nearly as well. The 8370 is likely to be a better binned part and you might get a higher overclock in it but really a few hundred mhz is not really noticeable in anything but benchmarks.

 

[madbiker]

I have a 8120 (3.1GHz stock) been running all day everyday @ 4.5 -4.6 GHz since nearly 3 years ago ... I'd say all these chips run safely at about 4.4 - 4.6GHz with good cooling. I play Battlefield 4 at about 45c on CPU temp.. video rendering tends to heat things up a little more ...

Basically, I'm saying get the cheaper CPU, it'll run the same and overclocking it is very, very easy.. I use an Asus 990FX sabertooth, but, the Asrock fatilty1 board is better suited toward gaming or the Gigabyte UD3 is nice .

 

[Calculagator]

I don't think it's worth the $50 since you can overclock the 8320 to match.
For what it's worth, I don't think the upgrade from the 965 is worth it. You will be spending a lot of money for a not so huge upgrade especially in gaming performance. Only a few applications will see any significant performance benefit. I know that significant is relative, but Tom's advice agrees with me. If you look in their gaming cpu chart, the 965 is only one tier lower. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-5.html
You will get a pretty good boost just upgrading from your GTX 760 to a GTX 970 without doing anything else. You can save your money for when AMD actually releases a faster CPU (which they haven't done in quite some time) and/or new platform. Even better: spend it on a nicer screen/SSD/more RAM.

 

[Mattl12]

Calculagator Every other place I find online says a 965 Phenom II X4 will bottleneck the hell out of a 970??? The word bottleneck pops up in virtually every result on google.

My guess is the 970 draws on more than 4 cores to reach near 100% utilization?

 

[Calculagator]

Calculagator Every other place I find online says a 965 Phenom II X4 will bottleneck the hell out of a 970??? The word bottleneck pops up in virtually every result on google.

My guess is the 970 draws on more than 4 cores to reach near 100% utilization?

I would be interested in seeing some numbers. If by bottleneck they mean that it will have lower performance then that is certainly true. If they mean that the 970 won't ever be able to run at full throttle then that is probably not true.

Here is what I base my conclusion on:
AMD's Bulldozer CPUs (FX 8150) matched the older phenom II's in gaming performance give or take a few percent. At the same clock, an 8 core bulldozer was similar to a Phenom II X4.
The CPUs you are looking to upgrade to--the Vishera--improved on the Bulldozers in gaming by a margin of about 10% at the same clock rate. Depending on drivers/optimization/etc, the improvement could be more, but for many games, it still won't matter. The improvements primarily show up where games are not GPU limited, which is relatively uncommon.
Check out the fairly detailed Anandtech review of Bulldozer and Vishera for specific gaming benchmarks:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested/8
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/5
Keep in mind that they were benchmarking CPU intensive games looking for improvement: Many games would be even closer in performance.
Practically, that means for $300 or so, you can expect between a 0% and 30% improvement in gaming FPS going from a 965 to an 8320. If you are willing to turn off some of the more CPU intensive features and/or overclock, that gain can be practically eliminated. For me, it wouldn't be worth it: I'm not a competetive twitch-reflex gamer; I'm content to game at 1080p; and I don't care what my FPS is as long as it is usually over 60.

If you upgrade your GPU first, you can test it out and see if the performance is good enough for you or not. If you really need more performance than your 965 can provide, you should probably be looking toward a better CPU than the current FX series.

Other thought: 8 core AMD CPUs only have 4 modules: they don't actually have 8 full, independent cores. The 8 core CPUs in consoles are really pretty weak. If you could compare them on like terms (which you can't), your 965 would probably beat them in every benchmark.