Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: January 2012 (Archive)

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"Of course, on the desktop, we were finally introduced to AMD's Kaveri-based APUs (check out AMD A10-7850K And A8-7600: Kaveri Gives Us A Taste Of HSA for more). Unfortunately, those two processors sell for $185 and $160. They don't offer much additional value over the $130 A10-6790K, assuming you want discrete graphics for a true gaming configuration."

Im afraid you assume too much. The built-in graphics on the Kaveri are sort of equal to the entry-level graphic cards at 80 or so dollars, effctively "lowering" the cost of the CPU-part of the Kaveri.
I understand its difficult to rate, but id love to see them at least at the (CPU & GPU) hierarchy-charts.
 


They are not comparable performance. The CPU chart is not very reliable. A10 Trinity and Richland is slower than Phenom II X4 and Kaveri is about on par with Ph II X4.
 
Hey guys, what about the FX8320? At $160 it's $20 cheaper than the i5 3350P that you post up there, and gets similar performance. Its increase in integer thread count could also benefit it in professional workloads, and the lower platform costs make it even cheaper.And it's overclockable.Furthermore, even though it's a bit behind the times in terms of only supporting PCIe 2, it has 32 lanes of that, which gives equivalent total bandwidth to the Z77 platform.Was it just the odd pricing? $160 kind of places it in the odd price range; I would think most people would aim low-end, mid-end, and high-end, and that's somewhere in-between. Furthermore, while you can call the 3350P a "deal," since it's so much cheaper over the 3570k, which is loved and respected, you can't really call the 8320 a deal over anything except the i5, and then you get into some really controversial territory.
 
Doesn't AMD's 8300 series at least deserve an honorable mention though, just for providing an overclockable chip with i5-like performance in a much cheaper package?
 


This is a gaming CPU article, not a productivity CPU article. If it were, the recommandations would be different.

The Core i5's are *much* better gaming processors than the FX series in some titles, and this keeps the FX-8000 series from getting a recommendation. The Core i5s have no gaming weaknesses at all:

http://www.tomshardware.com/preview/preview,2-3427-9.html?key=4ca1316bd298fe77e856cb1a43c21583c3d16fa1



 
And yet you again FAIL to add on 9370 as a very potent gaming cpu. I've seen it going for 239$ to 289$ including the liquid cooling kit. Don't tell me that the liquid cooling kit provided is not worth 30-50$ to a user ...you are then left with a ~200$ to 250$ 4.7ghz 8 cores cpu that matches high end i7 chips in almost all games. Yet it still fails to make the list as even a mention ?? And don't bring me the 220W TDP as a reason ...I am in a heating climate where 70% of year, addition W dumped into the house doesn't does not count as additional expense ( alot of people are in the same situation ) and being a " GAMING" CPU , TDP should not even be mentioned . ( the 9xxx cpus don't consume much more power than their 8 serie counterparts when not 90%+ loaded neway ) Also, the 6300 should have a defenite mention as potential overclocking processor as it is fairly cheap with alot of headroom with even mid level cooling device.Still performs less than the OCed i5, but the price difference might justify its use on entry to mid level rigs.
 


Considering I've seen HD7750s in the $70 price range, which means you can probably find HD7730s even cheaper? I really don't think they are a good value for gaming. the ONLY place i can see them being a use is the low end APUs might be good for an HTPC...although they are selling the Jaguar quad APU on Newegg for just $150 and that includes the motherboard so even there the value is kinda iffy.

This is why the AMD roadmap worries me, they have no replacement for the FX chips in the pipe and the APUs are really only good for a few use cases and gaming isn't really one of them. I have a feeling if they don't either come out with some new AM3+ chips by the end of the year OR lower their prices, say $89 for the hexa and $115-$125 for the octo? That gamers really won't have a choice, it'll be Intel or nothing.

That said with mature FX chips it probably wouldn't be hard to get the prices down and its not like the current or even past gen had any trouble with most games, heck I'm still running the low end Phenom II X6 and have yet to find a game I couldn't play. But for the APUs to really fly off the shelves for gaming they really need more performance or lower prices as they just can't compete with even the $70 discrete cards.

 
I think the biggest value with Kaveri will come with virtualizing native ARM workloads on desktop/server class hardware for development and virtualization of mobile platforms. Eventually there will be datacenter class VMI(Virtual Mobile Infrastructure vs. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure/VDI). AMD/NVidia are making the chips to do this. The new tegras will have ARM x64 included which would allow the virtualization of iOS devices in the datacenter.
 


Honestly? Unless you already have a board or are going for the K series? I just don't think they re a good value. This is of course strictly talking about gaming, if you are doing some serious number crunching that is different.

I've been seeing the FX8 chips in the $130 range and just today I saw an FX6120 for $88! At those prices you can buy an FX AND really nice board AND memory for less than the $300 asking price for the 4770 and then buy parts that will give your gaming a real boost like a fast SSD or a nicer GPU.

Again this is talking about gaming and while Intel's lead in IPC helps in other tasks most games aren't even stressing out the 965 X4, much less an FX6. 8 threads is kinda overkill for gaming and by the time games come out that can do 8 threads the 4770 will be long enough in the tooth to probably be a bottleneck.

 


That hasn't been my experience. Quite a few games really like Intel's IPC (that's instructions per clock, not necessarily implying a high number of threads) nowadays, and there are cases where a Core i3 puts the hurt on Phenom X4 and FX processors.

When it comes to the Core i5, it often beats FX and Phenom X4s by a significant margin.

We're talking gaming here. If you're looking for multi-threaded productivity, the FX-6300 is obviously a better choice than a Core i3. But for gaming, not so much, with a small but significant nod to the Core i3.

 
I would like to see more cpu bottlenecked games on that evaluation of performance. More of genre of simulation games such as DCS A10c or Arma3. Starcraft, farcry3, etc. Aren't limited much by your CPU, so although mainstream they are not suited for that.
 


Actually, Starcraft 2 is notoriously CPU limited. It likes Intel, and high clocks:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/starcraft-ii-radeon-geforce,2728-8.html

Far Cry 3 not so much, but it doesn't like Phenoms:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/far-cry-3-performance-benchmark,3379-7.html

 


Speaking in a stripped down world, if you pair each of those CPUs with a 780 Ti then would there be a considerable difference in the raw FPS averages? (Yes, I realize this is not the best/most accurate way to represent gaming performance, but it is the simplest that still gives some semblance of accuracy.)
 




What if you are absolutely not overclocking? How would gaming performance compare in that case, stock CPU, when pairing each CPU with the same GPU?
 
Having been running a FX-8320 for the last few months, one reason to prefer it on a general-purpose PC is the additional threads (despite shared resources) to handle all kinds of background tasks. On a pure gamer however, I think the i5-3350P is probably going to be better, and that's what the benchmarks measure. Because "background tasks" can mean so many different things, it's probably hard to benchmark. I've got any number of things running while I'm playing games, and yet another task (e.g. an Acronis backup) kicking off doesn't have much if any effect. I don't bother to shut down my AV, or MalwareBytes, or an ASIC miner, BTC wallet, etc. I think I'd see the effects more readily with the i5. That said, there's no way I'd argue that the i5 isn't the better performer on a more stripped system.
 
Do you have your CPU running at stock settings Onus?

EDIT: Just for clarification, I'm not an Intel fanboy trying to attack AMD users. I'm an IT Professional and gamer who is about 2-3 years past when I probably should have upgraded. I've been hearing non-stop how much better the newer Intel stuff is over AMD, and the counter from AMD users is always that you can OC the AMD processors higher. I don't plan to OC, at least not initially (I might consider doing it for the first time in 3 years when the warranty has expired if my computer is feeling slow) so I'm planning on a 4670K, assuming Micro Center has them the next time I am near one. So my questions stem more from a desire to understand why I'm suddenly seeing people insisting that AMD processors that have been around a while are better than Intel at the same price range.

In other words, would the 8320 or 8350 be a better choice than the 3350P if you never overclock it and why?
 
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