I'm still rocking my very old FX 8120, and I'm thinking about upgrading my CPU this holiday season. I noticed that the 8370 is on sale for $170, so now would be a prime time to purchase it. However, I have a few questions. First and foremost, would the upgrade be tangible in any way? I have noticed some bottlenecking of my GTX 770 with the 8120, so I'm curious if the 8370 would bottleneck. Additionally, would the 8370 stand up if I decided to SLI or upgrade my GPU? Lastly, I'm on a very tight budget, but would it be worth it to buy a new motherboard and CPU just to go i5/i7?
FX 8120 -> FX 8370 - Worth it?
- Thread starter QuantumCD
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TechyInAZ
Titan
- Jun 23, 2014
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I would say it would be worth it if you want to get ever last drop out of your PC before having to upgrade completely.
However, if you can save up money I'd wait until Broadwell, 5th intel core i3 i5 i7 CPUs come out. it will be a significant upgrade for you and worth the wait in my opinion.
However, if you can save up money I'd wait until Broadwell, 5th intel core i3 i5 i7 CPUs come out. it will be a significant upgrade for you and worth the wait in my opinion.
- Dec 26, 2012
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The upgrade to a 8370 will gain you @20-25% better performance and you'd not see any bottleneck of the 770, especially with the good board you already have. It'll easily handle a serious OC, far exceeding the temp capabilities of the hyper212, you'd need to upgrade your cooling for sure.
As far as Intel goes, a lot will depend on just how and what you use the pc for. For games like BF4 and watchdogs, they'll use all 8 cores, so you'll be better off there with Amd, than an i5, but not quite as good as an i7. If your main interests lie with massively single threaded games like Skyrim, the Intel i5's are the value kings there, easily beating AMD, even running heavily modded. So it's a toss up.
So, you'll definitely see an improvement with the 8370, especially with the OC it's capable of, and you may or may not see much from an i5 over an 8370, but mainly you would see improvement from an i7. What you'll have to decide is if that improvement will be worth the $400+ you'll need to spend on mobo/cpu/cooler vrs the $200+ with the 8370/cooler.
As far as Intel goes, a lot will depend on just how and what you use the pc for. For games like BF4 and watchdogs, they'll use all 8 cores, so you'll be better off there with Amd, than an i5, but not quite as good as an i7. If your main interests lie with massively single threaded games like Skyrim, the Intel i5's are the value kings there, easily beating AMD, even running heavily modded. So it's a toss up.
So, you'll definitely see an improvement with the 8370, especially with the OC it's capable of, and you may or may not see much from an i5 over an 8370, but mainly you would see improvement from an i7. What you'll have to decide is if that improvement will be worth the $400+ you'll need to spend on mobo/cpu/cooler vrs the $200+ with the 8370/cooler.
- Dec 26, 2012
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The 83xx series are a much better design than the 81xx series, and will handle sli 970's no worries. I'm unsure about sli 980's, not having seen anyone test that yet. As far as a single 980 goes though, no problem.
If the programs you run now are that core extensive, and you are thinking about saving for new stuff in the future, for sli 980's and max cpu performance you may want to think about Intel-E which will have 12 cores available with hyperthreading, but those will not be cheap by any means.
If the programs you run now are that core extensive, and you are thinking about saving for new stuff in the future, for sli 980's and max cpu performance you may want to think about Intel-E which will have 12 cores available with hyperthreading, but those will not be cheap by any means.
Yeah you will notice a nice performance increase, like 25 percent conservatively and with that nice cooler you want you can get up like 4.7ghz with decent case cooling and that would be well over 30 percent just of course not every chip is exactly the same so oc results vary but you can increase your oc potential further by increasing the fsb witch will give you lower vcore.
http://sites.amd.com/us/Documents/AMD_FX_Performance_Tuning_Guide.pdf
A lot of good info in the performance tuning guide just some of it is a little.. off I guess to say for a lack of a better term. I don't recommend it to everyone but you seem like a well educated individual with the experience you have.
http://sites.amd.com/us/Documents/AMD_FX_Performance_Tuning_Guide.pdf
A lot of good info in the performance tuning guide just some of it is a little.. off I guess to say for a lack of a better term. I don't recommend it to everyone but you seem like a well educated individual with the experience you have.
- Dec 26, 2012
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The 8320, 8350, 8370 and both of the 9 series cpus are the same exact chip. The differences lie in the factory clock settings and the cpu lottery. The 8320 has the broadest binning range, the 9series the smallest, the factory certifying that the given cpu will run at rated clock speeds. Basically, your chances of 5.0GHz+ are best on a 9 series, and certainly 4.6GHz. Whether you'll get 4.6GHz from an 8320 is a crapshoot, odds being better with an 8350 and better still with an 8370. But it is still a lottery as you found with the 8120, although with that series the deck was stacked against you from the start.
Any CPU can bottleneck any GPU in the right conditions, so all this rubbish about what CPU's will and won't bottleneck particular GPU configuration is nothing more than hardware mysticism fueled by from-the-hip conjecture about computer hardware. I advise ignoring input from anyone who placates to such nonsense. Without references to specific games, specific visual quality settings, and specific conditions in those games, there is absolutely no way to definitively say what CPU/GPU combination do and don't "bottleneck."
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The CPU presents hard limits of performance (fps) in gaming no matter what GPU it is used with. In some games and conditions, these hard limits are at levels far beyond the performance goal so are negligible. On the other hand, in many popular multi-player games, these hard limits can be very intrusive. Zambezi typically performs worse than Phenom II in these conditions and is known for putting up some pretty pitiful FPS in many popular multi-player games in congested and/or high unit count conditions.
Vishera is absolutely an improvement, but it's not going to be earth shattering unless you could put up a strong overclock to widen the gap. The difference in computation performance between the 8120 and 8370 at stock clocks can be anywhere from ~20-50% depending on the specific workload. Unfortunately, in the workloads that plague these CPUs (poorly threaded but compute intensive games), the advantage of the 8370 over the 8120 leans more towards the 20-30% end of that spectrum. In some cases, a 20-30% difference may be pretty useful, but in some cases it's not going to be enough to close the gap on a performance goal. You'll have to decide if it's going to be enough to reach your performance goals.
Unfortunately, the Extreme3 990FX board is probably the worst 990FX board for overclocking. If you were already on a better AM3+ board I would say it might be worth a go at switching to vishera and overclocking to get a nice step up in performance, but beings that any overclocking attempt is going to hit some power limitations very quickly, I'd be inclined to wait it out for a total platform replacement.
If you're itching for a new CPU, consider picking up a used 6300/6350 instead, as it will be cheap (~$75 or less) and be apt to clock higher and perform better within the restrictions of your VRMs in gaming worklaods.
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The CPU presents hard limits of performance (fps) in gaming no matter what GPU it is used with. In some games and conditions, these hard limits are at levels far beyond the performance goal so are negligible. On the other hand, in many popular multi-player games, these hard limits can be very intrusive. Zambezi typically performs worse than Phenom II in these conditions and is known for putting up some pretty pitiful FPS in many popular multi-player games in congested and/or high unit count conditions.
Vishera is absolutely an improvement, but it's not going to be earth shattering unless you could put up a strong overclock to widen the gap. The difference in computation performance between the 8120 and 8370 at stock clocks can be anywhere from ~20-50% depending on the specific workload. Unfortunately, in the workloads that plague these CPUs (poorly threaded but compute intensive games), the advantage of the 8370 over the 8120 leans more towards the 20-30% end of that spectrum. In some cases, a 20-30% difference may be pretty useful, but in some cases it's not going to be enough to close the gap on a performance goal. You'll have to decide if it's going to be enough to reach your performance goals.
Unfortunately, the Extreme3 990FX board is probably the worst 990FX board for overclocking. If you were already on a better AM3+ board I would say it might be worth a go at switching to vishera and overclocking to get a nice step up in performance, but beings that any overclocking attempt is going to hit some power limitations very quickly, I'd be inclined to wait it out for a total platform replacement.
If you're itching for a new CPU, consider picking up a used 6300/6350 instead, as it will be cheap (~$75 or less) and be apt to clock higher and perform better within the restrictions of your VRMs in gaming worklaods.
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