AMD FX 6300 upgrade to 8350 or 9370?

LTVETTE2

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Apr 16, 2010
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I have one AMD system using an Asus M5a99FX PRO R2. It is working pretty well, but I want a little faster. I have clocked it as high as it will go safely, around 3.8-4.0, I watch the multiplier in Speccy as it changes.
I would like to see this system faster, so I am looking into 8350 (159), 8370 (199) and 9370 (199)
Also I understand I will need better cooling, so I have a Be Quiet Dark Rock Pro 3 on it's way. I refuse to put water in an electrical system, old fashion I guess, but I have seen a water/electronics fire before as I watered a plant above an old Sony Trinitron TV years ago.
Will any of these processors give me a marked improvement over the 6300? I do have a decent GTX780 GPU that will be changed to an R9-380 when I open it all up.
Just curious if anyone has done a comparison/ upgrade from the 6300 to any of the aforementioned CPU's?
Thank you for reading, LT :)
 
Solution
Go the 8350 or 8370, both the 8370 and 9370 as well as the 9590 are highly OCed 8350s and the 9370 and 9590 require much more voltage + recommended water cooling (good water cooling, like realistically a H100 minimum) so add a bigger PSU also and a good rated mobo. I've got an 8370 rig (in sig) but it won't match up to a newer Intel CPU
neither the cpu or the gpu is a worthwhile upgrade. as a matter of fact the 380 is slower than the 780. 380 is about the same as a gtx 960 which is slower than a 970 that the 780 is equivalent to.
 
I already have the GPU, and it is non returnable. Was under impression that AMD processor and AMD CPU work better together? Just a myth perhaps. So a hundred or more for a faster clocked CPU isn't cost effective? I think 6300 is at 3.5 stock and 8350 is @ 4.0, of course I would need a massive cooler for the 9370 to get a base clock at 4.4, or so I hear.
 
Sell the 380 if you can't return it. As Tom said, it would be a downgrade from your current 780. There isn't any benefit to pairing an AMD GPU with an AMD CPU. If an Nvidia GPU is faster than an AMD GPU paired with an Intel CPU it will still be faster paired with an AMD CPU.

Tom was also right about his CPU advice. The cost in upgrading to another AMD FX CPU wouldn't make a big enough difference to make it worth while. To make a meaningful upgrade now you would have to switch to an Intel i5 or better. Another option is to wait for AMD's new Zen CPUs to be released so you can see how they stack up against Intel CPUs.
 
The FX 9370 is a bad idea because those require more expensive motherboards and they need a good aftermarket cooler to keep them at good temps. For the amount of money you have to put into the cooler and motherboard you could just get an i5 and compatible motherboard and have a better system.

The 8350 isn't a good upgrade from the 6300 either. The reasoning is that most games can't even use the 6 cores in your current CPU properly, let alone 8 cores. If you overclock the 6300 to the same speed as an 8350 it will perform the same in most games.
 
Thanks guys :) I have a nice i5 system I use for gaming and multitasking. This rebuild is from an old Dell I had, started with a new case and PSU, then I pulled a GTX780 from the i5, since it didn't require 2 GPU's to run 4 monitors, but I do have another re-build waiting for the GTX780.
If the 380 is decent enough for a CAD/communications system, which this AMD is doing (lost my laptop, a lovely i7 HP, that was my strictly business/comm unit).
My main objective is to get the 24/7 AMD business system up to the speed of laptop that suffered a coffee spill, and kind of close to the i5 gaming system, if possible. Sounds as if I have met the maximum performance of this AMD system. Will the new Zen amd's be backward compatible to FM3+ sockets?
And I agree that the 9370 will just be to much, although I do have a good cooler on the way. I believe the Asus M5a99FX can handle the 9370, but another 100 watts adds up these days with electricity rates going way up here in the northeast (they claim they can't get enough natural gas, so they charge more? They love excuses)
 
I assumed this would be a gaming PC. I don't have any personal experience with CAD but that might be able to take advantage of the 8 cores in an FX 8350 better than gaming can. I'm not sure one way or the other. I know some rendering programs are able to make good use of that CPU.

I don't know much about the difference between AMD and Nvidia in CAD either. I would assume that the 780 is still better because it's the better card for gaming but I don't know if the 380 has any CAD specific advantages.

I think you need someone else with more experience in CAD software to chime in and answer both of these questions for you.

Edit: What I personally would do is put both 780s in your gaming PC and run them in SLI, assuming you have a motherboard that supports it and a strong enough PSU. That will greatly increase the performance of the gaming PC and you can use the 380 in your CAD build.
 
I just have a gigabyte 970a-ud3, which is an older board now. I think they have an updated version, which is the 970a-ud3p. What I like on those boards is that for being budget boards they have the 8+2 power phasing on them.

I think to get my overclock I disabled all of the pet saving options like cool n quiet, c1e, etc and have my cpu fan at to always run at full speed.

For cooling I have the cooler master v6 gt, with the fans set up in a push/pull configuration. For my actual overclock I am using 21.5 multiplier with 1.3 volts. LLC set to normal (middle level on my board). If I don't have LLC set that way I have to turn the voltage up a step or 2 more to get stable.

I stopped at 4.3 because under full load it goes to low 50s. I used Intel burn test 10 passes on normal setting to test the overclock btw. That was where that temp cane from. It idles in the high 20s, low 30s. I could probably get more shows if I wanted to deal with higher voltage and more heat from my cpu.

My suggestion would be download Intel burn test and a copy of hwmonitor. Open hwmonitor to watch your temps, and run Intel burn test for 10 passes. That should give you an idea if it's stable, you can always run prime 95 later to double check for stability.

But start your overclock out modest, like 1.2 volts is standard voltage on these chips as far as I know. I started out setting things in the bios for about 4ghz at stock voltage, and moved my way up, do that until you need more voltage, then you can increase that little by little to see if your overclock is stable or not.

As far as I know, the max voltage you want to run is 1.5, and the max temp is about 60. I think it's really like 62 or 65, but I just say 60. That way it's a nice round number, and is a safe zone. But start out lower and work your way upwards until you start having to run to much voltage, or until temps start getting to warm under loads. Depends on your comfort level how far you want to push the cpu. I'm not pushing nine too hard since I do want almost another year out of it.
 


 
4GHz is absolutely nothing for a 6300 (barely even an overclock)
You can generally push 4.2/4.3 without even touching voltage on most chips.

Always use prime blend for stress testing & always use amd overdrive for temp monitoring under load - nothing else is as accurate.

Thermal margin of 10c+ under load means everything is fine.
You don't need to worry about vrm temps with that board at all , it'll manage a 6300 at pretty much any speed.
 
1. The 6300 can safely and easily go to 4.5 GHz on pretty much any 970 based AM3+ mobo.
2. It makes no sense changing a 780 for a 380.
3. A 970 is miles faster than a 780.
4. Neither the 8350 or 9370 is worth it. The cheapest 8300 (yes, 8300) can overclock just as well as those 8370-9590.
5. There are quite a lot of games where a 380 is faster than a 780, funny enough. Enable tessellation override in AMD Control Center and the 380 will usually be faster than a 780, but still not fast enough to warrant a change from a 780 to a 380.
 


The GTX 780 is much faster than R9 380. You can go with FX 8350 its a bit faster than fx 6300. I will suggest you to get a GTX 980 or R9 Nano if you really want to see difference bump in gpu performance.

Also get a fx 8320 over than fx 8350, I am 100% sure u will have to replace the fx in a year its dated plus zen is just around the corner.
 
I had an AMD hd 5850 and I upgraded to gtx 960 and I can tell u its a shitty card. The performance was barely better than my old card and had a lot of issues while gaming like texture popping and item popping here and there in all open world games like witcher3, gta 5, fallout 4 etc. it really felt like card was struggling to put all the details. It must be due to the 128 bit bus. Fps was good but it varied quite a lot, I was surprised esp coz this is an Nvidia card and fps must be stable. I bet ur gtx 660 is just a slight bit slower than gtx 960.

I got rid of it, lost some money though and just got a GTX 970 and bam everything went right. I began to notice a lot of object and texture details in games which were never there when using gtx 960. Half cooked visuals!! Frame rate also doubled. I am using a fx 8320 4.4 ghz with the gtx 970 and I am getting 50-60 fps in maxed out +2xAA in crysis3 at "welcome to jungle".

Just get a gtx 970 and have peace of mind, If u want something in pricerange of gtx 960 get the r9 380x or r9 380. Its a better buy.

ALso the 3.5 GB VRAM is a nuisance. Even if the gtx 970 has 3.5 GB Vram its sufficient for next 2 years considering most mid range card come with 2 GB standard memory. Get it and have peace of mind.

Also I see that you have pretty basic motherboard. So I will suggest not to waste money on fx 8320, fx 8350 etc. unless u r getting it for utter cheap price. Wait and upgrade to a zen or get a skylake core i5. That way ur rig will be future proof.
 
Hi Ravi, I think the Zen will be using a different socket? This machine is a business/CAD/ communication/surfing type usage. I am trying to get it to work as quickly as my I5 system. I do have a 8350 coming tomorrow, and I am kinda stuck with the R9, since I sent in for the rebate. Autodesk seems to lean towards AMD GPU's, at least the last tech I talked to their was trying to get me to go to FirePro.
As for my next build, I am going to wait a little while to see who's processors and motherboards are working better. And prices go down if your a year or so behind. very expensive to get a nice 980 these days, like around $600. Thank you for your time, I appreciate everyones feedback, it gives me many different points of view to help me in decision making :)
 
I do have an XFX R9-380 4gb going in with the 8350 next week. I am guessing that will be as far as I will go with this particular system. I will put the GTX 780 back with it's machine I borrowed it from. Had two 780's in there, and it ran pretty well. But I figured I could still run 4 monitors, 3 WQHD & 1 hd off of 1 GPU, and it works well that way too....
 


Good to know that! I use 3D software like Catia and Pro E on my PC. They run pretty quick, I never had issues with them even when I was using a core i3. Now a days games demand more hardware than high end CAD it seems.
AMD is good for general apps.
 
Go the 8350 or 8370, both the 8370 and 9370 as well as the 9590 are highly OCed 8350s and the 9370 and 9590 require much more voltage + recommended water cooling (good water cooling, like realistically a H100 minimum) so add a bigger PSU also and a good rated mobo. I've got an 8370 rig (in sig) but it won't match up to a newer Intel CPU
 
Solution
I ended up going with the 8350 (on sale), and was able to return 6300. I also have the XFX R9-380 4gb, and this system seems to run together better than before. It could be me justifying it all, but it appears faster :)