Best CPUs (Archive)

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alextheblue

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Then there are folks who believe the Athlon X4 880K is worth an extra $25 for its higher clock rate and beefier cooler. For some, it might be. But the 95 W thermal solution you get with the 860K is already an improvement over the old OEM heat sink
If you don't plan on doing ANY overclocking (or you're building the machine for someone else who is a neophyte and you don't even WANT them overclocking), get the Carrizo-based 845 instead. It uses less power, performs at least as well, and costs a few bucks less. Unless you're using an older board with questionable BIOS support. If you're doing very light overclocking, with AMD now including the new Silent 95W cooler, I would agree the Kaveri-based 860K is the better buy than either the 845 or the 880K.

But if you plan on touching voltage even a tiny bit, you're MUCH better off just buying an 880K. For starters to get an equivalent aftermarket cooler you're going to spend at least as much money. Stock clocks are higher and it's Godavari-based (or Kaveri refresh, if you prefer). I have been told that original Kaveri (and possibly it's predecessors?) used thermal compound/epoxy for the heatspreaders, while Godavari-based chips have soldered lids. This seems to be supported by numerous reports of them hitting better clocks without having to throw as much voltage at it.

So the heatsink and possible better binning aspect makes it worth it if you are going to boost the voltage. But I really want more confirmation about the soldered lids. For the longest time I thought the Kaveri chips all had soldered lids too... now I'm not so sure.
 

alextheblue

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OK, I just found a reliable article that verifies the claims of FM-based chips using thermal paste for the heatspreader TIM. I guess I never paid attention.

https://www.ekwb.com/blog/what-is-delidding/

Here's one of the posts talking about Godavari being soldered.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1560598/apu-amd-a10-7870k-godavari-heatspreader-soldered

If all Godavari chips use soldered heatspreaders, there's no point in using 860K over 870K/880K (both are Godavari) for voltage-tweaked overclocking purposes. Otherwise yeah the price differential favors the 845/860K options. Just depends on what you're doing.
 
I see now we've dropped the " gaming cpu's for the money" part. I find that quite unfortunate as the 8300 stands nowhere near the 6100 as far as gaming goes, frankly suggesting anyone purchase a AM3+ for any reason comes off as absurd and merely a way to calm the fanboys.

Keep the price low and the ZEN benchmarks honest Ill join the party. Until then the 8300 stinks out loud.
 

rush21hit

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Until Zen came out, the FX8300 is like the best value options for AM3+ with much more tolerable TDP as icing on the cake.
And Tom is right. Considering FX8300 potentials at such price, no Intel CPU can get near it.
 

1991ATServerTower

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Wow those US prices. Must be nice. Have a look at Newegg.ca some say - the difference in the dollar doesn't equate to the crazy prices in Intel and Nvidia stuff... AMD seems really reasonable though, hence the disappointment with the others...
 
@ 1991ATSERVERTOWER, from what I found using a currency conversion calculater for current exchange rates, intel cpu's are actually cheaper in Canada than the US. Not by much, for instance the i5 6500. Lowest price with shipping included in the US is $205 usd. That works out to $270.37 cad. However when looking at Canadian prices, the lowest price shipped from ncix is $269.99 cad. Meaning the 'high' price in Canada is due to currency exchange rates, you're not really paying more than the US.

You could take your $270 cad and exchange it for US dollars across the border and still have the amount needed to buy that cpu with nothing left over. If you had money left over it would indicate overall prices being higher in Canada.

Same thing when I checked prices for the 6600k, they're even across the exchange rate. When considering the i3 6100, if Canada's pricing were equal across the exchange rate then the i3 6100 should cost $151.67 cad and yet it can be had for $145 cad shipped from amazon.ca so it's a few dollars cheaper in Canada. By contrast, the fx 8350 going by the exchange rate should only be $197.84 cad and yet the lowest shipped price I could find for it was from amazon.ca and it costs $211.50 cad shipped.

It appears that intel cpu's are costing the same in Canada when taking into account the exchange rate. Amd aren't reasonable, they're costing more in Canada even with the exchange rate applied. Maybe something to consider but that's going by the current exchange and current pricing via pcpartpicker. Maybe it used to be the other way around but not anymore from the looks of it.
 
Ordinarily Synphul I would agree with you but you forgot to include sales tax, which all Canadian provinces have - to varying degrees - and most US States don't. So add another 10% at least and in some cases 15%. The only saving grace is the occasional sale.
 
True, it depends on the location for taxes. Some pay higher tax rates than others, whether it's a state sales tax, not sure how Canada's taxes work. US taxes are a bit odd, if buying locally then local and state sales tax apply. If buying online like off Amazon, there isn't a sales tax. If buying from an online vendor/company who has a brick and mortar location within your state, you pay state sales tax.

Taxes have been an issue for online purchases in the US because it's a new concept and they're not sure how to iron it out. Some think the state where it was purchased from should get the tax, others think the state in which someone lives should get the tax money which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Either way it's confusing.

Vat taxes can be pretty high depending where someone is at, but the tax isn't the fault of the company whether amd, intel or nvidia. Taxes are beyond their control and if taxes make one item high priced it will likely make all items that are taxed higher in price. That's a local/national issue. It wouldn't be fair to expect intel or nvidia or anyone else to sell their products heavily discounted to a particular country because that country has high tax rates.
 

1991ATServerTower

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I said to look at Newegg.ca, not to scour the internet to find specific items that match your contrary agenda. The exchange rate cor the Canadian dollar has fluctuated from 0.59 all the way to 0.84 in the last few months, from my casual observation. Using a single retailer, Newegg in this case, and comparing many of their products (as I tend to do out of boredom and curiosity), you absolutely will find that Canadians pay a $5 to $100+ premium even after factoring in the exchange rate.

Canada closed the tax loophole on internet purchases a while ago. You pay the provincial tax and recycling fees of the province associated with the billing address. However, I wasn't even considering that.

Anyway, we Canadians need to wait for "deals" much of the time in order to get prices that are not gouging us. It's not like we're sitting here earning considerably more money per hour than Americans, the average wages are about the same. Yet, we're expected to pay more for the same things. In the case of the book industry, they admitted Canadian prices are higher, because "the market will bear it", not because they need to be higher (in some cases double...). That's the kind of thing that is disappointing to say the least. Nvidia products appear to be the worst for this in the computer industry, as it's almost impossible to find current and ast gen at anywhere near MSRP, even refurb in a lot of cases.

The R9 270 I bought a few years ago was $50 cheaper than the Nvidia 750 non Ti, for example. That's insane, but that's what I was faced with at the time and not much has changed since.
 

joex444

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At least the start of the article says "gaming machine." There are plenty of uses for a CPU more powerful than an i5-6600K, but by sneaking "gaming machine" at the start it's easy for the author to reject those as not fitting for their intended audience.
 

logainofhades

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This particular monthly article has always been for gaming machines. Why gaming was not kept in the article title, I am unsure.
 

FritzEiv

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The Best CPUs is still gaming focused. We just wanted to simplify the title for presentation purposes, and to make it easier for people to find via search (more people search with that term -- and yeah, we care about that, as you can imagine). It also gives us some future flexibility in case we might want to add non-gaming focus at some point.
 
".. The recommendations we made last quarter still make a lot of sense. So, let’s talk a little bit about why...." what followed was the best part of the article. Hope you continue to include (and update) this section each month.
 
I kinda wish you could include like say the i3-6320 as a "if you have more than $120, but less than $200" as an addendum. And maybe also add the FX-9XXX series as a "not recommended even though it's in this price range because of reasons 1, 2 and 3."
 

triangle2234

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"Even if you think you only care about single-threaded performance, a quad-core/threaded host processor is the smarter baseline."
Quoted from the Author.
Can anyone advise how single-threaded performance is not the top indicator of processing speed in games like World of Warcraft that are known to be CPU and single thread intensive? Any comments welcome.
 


There are two ways of looking at it, one is that someone may be buying from only one source. If comparing newegg.ca to newegg.com there may be a difference. That's on newegg though, they're the retailer. It's not intel's fault, far as I'm aware there's no Canadian only version cpu with a higher price.

The other way of looking at it is the price comparison I did was using pcpartpicker and choosing the lowest offered price with shipping included. If people aren't willing to shop around they can't very well complain if they're overcharged because they were too lazy to look beyond a single source. That's true of anything.

I didn't really have to go digging too far, took less than 2min to look at the site. Not entirely sure how it works in Canada, maybe there's an issue ordering from a different vendor or something for someone. I do know there's more than just newegg in Canada, there's amazon, ncix and others. If it's a matter of newegg not having the best prices around that's pretty much old news. There was a time when they used to but anymore many places offer better prices so it pays to look around.

It's entirely possible that books and other things cost more, I was referring strictly to cpu's and using the exchange rate it shows the cpu's to cost the same, amd at times to be more expensive in comparison between the two currencies and intel is sometimes cheaper in Canada. If there's a disproportionate wage gap or any other factor that's a separate issue. If the average wage in one state is $12/hr and $8/hr in another, the same $200usd product is still $200 and doesn't become more expensive based on varying wages. More expensive for the person making $8/hr maybe, but that's a situational issue. The product itself isn't to be faulted when the pricing is so similar.
 


Intel sorts the CPU chips before choosing which chips get lowest frequency, which become K and all the different SKU in between. They all come off the same wafers, some are good, some are great.

A K sku Skylake chip is apt to be stable at lower voltage at stock frequency and OC easier than a non-K. Because intel wants a product mix to optimize profits, there are apt to be K sku capable ships shipped as lesser chips -- thus the chip lottery concept.

Same thing with video cards. If a company makes 3 different video cards for the GTX 1060, they sort the chips they get from nvidia and use the best chips for their highest OC card and use the worse chips for the stock clock. Yes you can overclock all those video cards, but the highest factory OC card is on average going to get a better OC than the stock clock card. The difference here is video card makers are less apt to care about product mix, the base cards are ones they could not get to run reliably at higher OC at stock voltage.
 
I'm not a fan of the FX-8300 recommendation for much of anything right now, especially if you're overclocking it. The extra cost of getting a better motherboard and aftermarket cooler push the total platform cost of the 8300 close to, if not above, that of a locked i5 on a basic B150/H170 board. Unless you absolutely NEED the eight integer cores for the absolute lowest cost, I don't think it's worth it to be stuck on such old technology.
 


I agree with this. Even an i3-6100 is better for straight up gaming in over 99% of titles. The only reason to get the FX-8300 at this point would be streaming/recording ect.
 
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