AMD A10 7850K vs i5 4460 - For simulations and photo/video editing

[bernardolk]

Hello guys.

I want to upgrade my system and i have noticed that AMD processors are about half the cost of the intel ones i was targeting to buy (i5 4460 and i5 4590). A A10 7850K seems to be a great processor just looking at the specs, but i want to know, what justifies the low cost? I know intel generally gives you more stability, but is it worth the money? I'm focusing here on using computational fluid dynamics simulations and autocad, photoshop, etc softwares, so memory bandwidth and memory speed are important factors.

What do you guys think? Thanks.

 

[Ecky]

The i5's cores are in the range of 50-75% faster than the 7850K's, it draws less power while performing higher, and is on a platform that has the option of upgrading in the future.

i5 is generally compared (favorably) to AMD's 8-core CPUs; AMD's quads tend to fall more between a Pentium and i3 overall.

The A10 comes with a better integrated GPU, which is irrelevant if you're going to be using a discrete card.

 

[bernardolk]

The i5's cores are in the range of 50-75% faster than the 7850K's, it draws less power while performing higher, and is on a platform that has the option of upgrading in the future.

i5 is generally compared (favorably) to AMD's 8-core CPUs; AMD's quads tend to fall more between a Pentium and i3 overall.

The A10 comes with a better integrated GPU, which is irrelevant if you're going to be using a discrete card.

Hm, Ok. So comparing to an FX 8370 would be a fair comparison? I really don't mind the integrated graphics. Now the FX 8370 and i5 4460 are on the same price range (at least here, locally) and the AMD cpu just looks so much overpowered with it's octa core and advanced GPU.

I bet intel's architecture just proves to be more efficient with it's own cores and clock speeds that it doesn't even need to scale up to amd's numbers, is that correct?

Thank you.

 

[king3pj]

The i5's cores are in the range of 50-75% faster than the 7850K's, it draws less power while performing higher, and is on a platform that has the option of upgrading in the future.

i5 is generally compared (favorably) to AMD's 8-core CPUs; AMD's quads tend to fall more between a Pentium and i3 overall.

The A10 comes with a better integrated GPU, which is irrelevant if you're going to be using a discrete card.

Hm, Ok. So comparing to an FX 8370 would be a fair comparison? I really don't mind the integrated graphics. Now the FX 8370 and i5 4460 are on the same price range (at least here, locally) and the AMD cpu just looks so much overpowered with it's octa core and advanced GPU.

I bet intel's architecture just proves to be more efficient with it's own cores and clock speeds that it doesn't even need to scale up to amd's numbers, is that correct?

Thank you.

The FX 8370 does not have integrated graphics. If you went with that option you would also have to buy a GPU.

 

[Ecky]

The i5 is generally better than an FX8xxx CPU, too, in most tasks. The FX might pull ahead in some things where all 8 cores can be fully utilized, but it will do so while drawing a lot more power and making a lot more heat.

And yes, FX CPUs do not have integrated GPUs, either.

 

[bernardolk]

Ok, my bad about the GPU, but as i said, i don't mind it since i have a discrete card. So, it appears that intel's are the way to go no matter what.

 

[Ecky]

For 95% of cases, Intel is the better choice right now, yeah. AMD CPUs make sense in a few situations, but for the most part they're not competitive.

 

[Professur]

I got an i5-4690 + GTX 960 last Christmas for gaming and Photoshop.

Before that I had the A10 CPU, 16gb DDR 1333 ram, dual 22" monitors, for my PhD thesis and amateur photography stuff.

If you stick with Photoshop and Microsoft Words then I can tell you I was actually satisfied with my $500 AMD build. Not sure about AutoCad and other industrial software but I doubt if they can take advantage of 4th gen i5.

 

[synphul]

Photoshop and autocad both aren't very heavily threaded/multicore oriented. They both perform better on a few faster stronger cores which is what intel excels in. Many people are using macbooks and imac's for these tasks as well which to my knowledge only come with intel cpu's. The 8 cores on something like an fx 8350 are going to go largely unused and the slower/weaker core performance will likely impact those programs.

Not to say an amd can't run them, for that matter a core 2 duo 'can' run both photoshop and cad. How well it will run it is another story compared to other available options. Cpu's tend to be priced according to their performance. If all you wanted to do were emails, a few light steam games or something, play videos and stuff then the amd apu's are an ok choice. They're not known for being powerhouse cpu's though.

You need to compare actual cpu performance not just random numbers. Speed from amd to intel means nothing, a 3.2ghz i5 will often outperform a 4ghz fx 8350 despite the amd 'appearing' better on paper.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1200?vs=1646

 

[gokitty199]

check out the xeon E3 1220v3 and the E3 1230v3. you will need a dedicated gpu for these since they do not have onboard graphics, but if the program can use gpu acceleration then its a plus.

 

[Anurag20]

In almost all Benchmarks, the i5-4460 is 20-30% better..

http://us.hardware.info/comparisontable/products/205614-215524

Comparison 2:

CPU.USERBENCHMARK,COM -- An Actual User-uploaded-data portal ranks the 4460 ahead than the 7850K by 19% in DESKTOP, 20% in GAMING and 11% in WORKSTATION applications..

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-4460-vs-AMD-A10-7850K-APU/2310vs2937

If you want to see individual CPU benchmarks for a particular software suite,

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/cpu-charts-2015/benchmarks,187.html

 

[MisterMeow]

The moral of the story here is, figure out what kind of workload you'll be doing most. Things like gaming benefit more from stronger cores. Editing and rendering will benefit from having many cores and threads. Which is why xeons clocked at 2.4ghz dominate in synthetic benchmarks like CB R15. So a fx 8370 @4.5ghz may come out ahead of a stock 4690 in some instances like editing and rendering video. But for the most part, intel offers better overall performance for nearly every task.