From Intel to AMD - where to begin?

[KennethBL]

Hi guys,

Enough reading here. It's posting time... 🙂

I am about to transition from Intel to AMD for the sole reason: Battlefield 4. As you might know, Battlefield will be optimized for AMD as both PS4 and the new Xbox is AMD-driven.

I know my way around Intel, which motherboards specs to look after, what model names that are newest and which are the fastest for gaming etc... but now, when I have to find AMD-stuff... I'm all n00b. 🙂

Where to begin? Where should I begin this journey and find hardware that fit my needs?

If you care to know, this is what I have, and what I imagine I will find... somehow... hopefully with your help! 🙂

I have:
CPU: Intel i5 Sandy Bridge @ 3.30GHz
Motherboard: ASUS (Republic of Gamers) Maximus V Formula
Graphics cards: 2 x GTX 680 4 GB in SLI
Ram: 16 GB Corsair 1600 GHz

I want:
CPU: A fast CPU most suited for gaming. Which??
Motherboard: A motherboard which has 2 or more 3.0 PCIe ports. Which??
Graphics cards: I think I'll wait until next release of the new Radeon cards??
Ram: I might upgrade. Or do I need to?

Thank you in advance...


Kenneth, Copenhagen

Thank you in advance...

 

[JD88]

Which i5 do you have? If it's the 2500K, just overclock it to 4.6 and be done with it. If the AMD 8350 performs better than that in BF4, I would be very surprised.

Also, you don't need a graphics upgrade unless you are playing at a resolution beyond 1920x1080 (triple monitor setup) and even then probably not.

 

[babernet_1]

It is the AMD graphics cards that will work better, not the CPU's. Intel CPUs rule on performance. Look for new AMD graphics cards next month.

 

[Sooth1]

I found this. http://www.overclock.net/t/1403661/ggpu-battlefield-4-alpha-benchmark
Doesn't look like switching to AMD will add any benefit.

 

[JD88]

I found this. http://www.overclock.net/t/1403661/ggpu-battlefield-4-alpha-benchmark
Doesn't look like switching to AMD will add any benefit.

Going by those benchmarks, it doesn't even look like you would need to overclock the i5 to match AMD's best, and a mild overclock would put it clearly in the lead.

Another reason why I haven't needed to upgrade my 2500K and likely won't for a long while.

 

[BSim500]

I am about to transition from Intel to AMD for the sole reason: Battlefield 4. As you might know, Battlefield will be optimized for AMD as both PS4 and the new Xbox is AMD-driven.

If Battlefield 4 is the only reason, you might want to wait until it's actually released to see the benchmarks. The Jaguar AMD chips in Xbox & PS4 have 8 cores but each core is clocked at only 1.5-1.75GHz (it's not like it has 2x i5's in it!) As I commented yesterday, 8 threaded games doesn't mean Intel quad cores will run slower if they can still do far, far more each second due to much higher IPC & GHz.

You also don't need to "upgrade" 16GB of RAM. The newest consoles have 8GB - and games will be written for that. Or an SLI rig - the newest console's GFX are roughly equivalent to a single 7790-7850 GFX card.

To be honest, you already have what you're looking for, especially if you have a 2500k chip.


Edit : Just saw the above Battlefield 4 benchmark:-

FX-8350 @ 4.0GHz : 48min 57avg
i5-2500k @ 3.3GHz : 47min 59avg

What "upgrade" are you looking at exactly?

 

[KennethBL]

Which i5 do you have? If it's the 2500K, just overclock it to 4.6 and be done with it. If the AMD 8350 performs better than that in BF4, I would be very surprised.

Also, you don't need a graphics upgrade unless you are playing at a resolution beyond 1920x1080 (triple monitor setup) and even then probably not.

Battlefield 3 doesn't support GTX 680 SLI - i get 0 fps increase when playing with SLI compared to playing with a single GPU. That's 700$ I could have used elsewhere. I play on Medium settings on 1920x1080, at average 110 fps, max 200, but dips to 70 fps quite often. That's a huge dip.

Some say that my CPU might be the bottleneck, but I don't know:
The CPU is: Intel Core i5-2500 4x3.30Ghz LGA1155
... so no OC here.. :-(

 

[JD88]

Yeah it's a CPU issue. You could likely play on High or Ultra settings and would still see similar performance. Problem is, AMD isn't going to help you. In fact, no CPU is going to keep up with those GPUs in multiplayer. There really isn't a noticeable difference past around 70 anyway.

If I were you I would leave everything the same and upgrade to an i7 3770K with some aftermarket cooling if you really feel like you need the extra horsepower. Then, overclock to 4.3-4.5 if you can.

That i7 is also 1155 so you can keep the same motherboard you have to save some money.

 

[KennethBL]

Which i5 do you have? If it's the 2500K, just overclock it to 4.6 and be done with it. If the AMD 8350 performs better than that in BF4, I would be very surprised.

Also, you don't need a graphics upgrade unless you are playing at a resolution beyond 1920x1080 (triple monitor setup) and even then probably not.

I am about to transition from Intel to AMD for the sole reason: Battlefield 4. As you might know, Battlefield will be optimized for AMD as both PS4 and the new Xbox is AMD-driven.

If Battlefield 4 is the only reason, you might want to wait until it's actually released to see the benchmarks. The Jaguar AMD chips in Xbox & PS4 have 8 cores but each core is clocked at only 1.5-1.75GHz (it's not like it has 2x i5's in it!) As I commented yesterday, 8 threaded games doesn't mean Intel quad cores will run slower if they can still do far, far more each second due to much higher IPC & GHz.

You also don't need to "upgrade" 16GB of RAM. The newest consoles have 8GB - and games will be written for that. Or an SLI rig - the newest console's GFX are roughly equivalent to a single 7790-7850 GFX card.

To be honest, you already have what you're looking for, especially if you have a 2500k chip.


Edit : Just saw the above Battlefield 4 benchmark:-

FX-8350 @ 4.0GHz : 48min 57avg
i5-2500k @ 3.3GHz : 47min 59avg

What "upgrade" are you looking at exactly?

I have this:
Intel Core i5-2500 4x3.30Ghz LGA115

So that might be what needs to be upgraded? But should I upgrade to a more modern chipset then, on the motherboard-side as well?

 

[JD88]

I have this:
Intel Core i5-2500 4x3.30Ghz LGA115

So that might be what needs to be upgraded? But should I upgrade to a more modern chipset then, on the motherboard-side as well?

Chipset won't really make a big difference.

Also, not sure where you are getting that BF3 doesen't support 680 SLI

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-680-sli-overclock-surround,3162-5.html

All I would recommend getting is an i7 3770K and some sort of aftermarket cooling solution.

 

[BSim500]

The CPU is: Intel Core i5-2500 4x3.30Ghz LGA1155
... so no OC here.. :-(

Not true. On a "Z" motherboard (which you appear to have), you can often manually set the multiplier to the highest Turbo Boost setting + "4-bins limited overclock" (+400Mhz). I have an i5-3570 (non-K) and with Multi-Core-Enhancement enabled on top, it runs permanently at 4.2GHz under prime & video editing load - that's 800MHz above stock 3.4GHz.

With your 2500 (non-K), you should still get 3.8GHz 4-cores / 3.9GHz 3-cores / 4.0GHz 2-cores / 4.1GHz 1-core loaded with Turbo Boost. Non-K chips simply means you can OC them by around 500-800MHz, not that you can't OC them at all.

Go into the BIOS and enter "38x" as a multiplier as a test. Your motherboard should run it at 3.8GHz at least:-