cheaper and better alternative to AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz 8-Core Processor? for new system

ShadowPass

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Oct 21, 2015
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Hello I was wondering whats the cheaper and better alternative to a AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz 8-Core Processor for a new system gaming pc
 
That "eight core" is really four modules with two processing threads each that share resources. It isn't a true 8-core processor. This a similar mentality with the Intel i7 series... The i7 has four cores with each core having an associated hyperthread that shares resources. Again... not a true 8-core processor (they sport eight processing threads though and are marketed that way).

Any somewhat recent, non-overclocked i5 will give gaming performance as good, or better, than an overclocked FX-8000 series processors.

Skylake - i5-6500 & i5-6600
Haswell Refresh - i5-4460 & i5-4590
Haswell - i5-4440 & i5-4570
Ivy Bridge - i5-3340 & i5-3550
 


Not true, try reading up on the FX8350.
 
Bulldozer and Piledriver that followed it (including the FX-8320, FX-8350, and FX-9590) are all 4 module, 8 thread parts. There's a great diagram on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldozer_(microarchitecture)

It clearly is labeled as "Block diagram of a 4 module design with 8 integer clusters" - and the diagram clearly shows how the pairs of cores share common resources, namely the 64K L1 cache, instruction decoder, and the FPU. Each integer cluster has its own 16K L1 cache and the modules have a dedicated 2MB L2 cache, while the entire CPU shares 8MB of L3 cache. Compare this with the Intel i7 chips which also have 4 FPUs. How useful this design is heavily depends on the workload. If it's going to be a lot of floating point calculations, like Folding@Home or any scientific application or modelling application, then it will run like a 4 core part. If it's going to be a lot of integer calculations, then it runs better.

It is fundamentally correct to say that Bulldozer/Piledriver is a 4M/8T part, just like Core i7s (for desktops) are 4C/8T parts. The trouble is when people call AMD's part an 8 core CPU. It's simply not.

Also given the power used by the FX-8350 (125W TDP) and the faster FX-9590 (4.7GHz, 220W TDP), the fact that Intel can completely outperform these CPUs with an 84W TDP envelope is impressive. Of course AMD was forced to go to such high TDPs because their design is so outdated it was the only way they could compete with any of Intel's 4C offerings, even the lower-end i5 CPUs.
 


The hyperlink included an underscore (_) which doesn't play nicely with the forum format. Use the one (same link) in my post...
 


Nope. Four modules... each modules has two processing threads. There are no "cores". The module's two processing threads share resources (four sets of resources for each of the four modules).
 

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