Most games don't take advantage of all the cores the fx 8xxx offers. It's apparent when an i3 often matches an fx 8xxx, or even when an fx 8350 for example manages to match 'even an i5' in some games. Keep in mind the fx is an 8 core cpu, the i3 is a dual core, the i5 and i7 are both only quad cores. The additional cores of the fx 8xxx are offering diddly in games.
If gaming and streaming then yes, the additional cores will be an advantage over an i3 or i5. It won't improve gameplay any, it will just allow easier streaming of the gameplay the fx 8xxx can provide.
Dx12 doesn't automatically turn an 8 core cpu into a beast, it reduces the workload of the cpu which is something amd can always benefit from to help offset their weaker core performance. It offers a more direct path to the gpu so the cpu isn't having to handle the game physics AND translate everything via the drivers to the gpu for the graphics side of things. Dx12 is also realizing about the same kind of real world introduction as 64bit processing. We finally got win10 and then what? We're still waiting on all those dx12 games to materialize. Current games will still be dx11.
In terms of intel being 3x more money for a minor improvement, that's a typical fanboy comment. An i5 6600 can be had for $220, the 6600k can be had for $240. Right now the fx 8350 is much cheaper at around $150 though that's due to prices tanking again. It's normally around $170-185.
In gtaV for example, the 4th gen i3 pretty much matched the fx 8350 and came close to the best case scenario for amd, the 9590. 2nd gen i5's outperformed amd's best cpu's much less 4th or 6th gen. That was tested with a gtx titan x.
http://www.techspot.com/review/991-gta-5-pc-benchmarks/page6.html
So similar performance in that game (within 4fps) was achieved with an i3 costing $120 vs the $150 fx 8350. A slightly faster i3 4160 can be had for $120 shipped. That doesn't make intel 3x the price, if anything it makes intel the better bargain. Just because one is a dual core i3 and the other an 8 core fx 8350, if they game similarly and the i3 costs less then intel has the advantage. The i5's and i7's are just the cherry on top at that point. People don't seem to realize that the cpu's are priced according to their performance levels and have to remain competitive to sell like any other product.
Yes an i3 performs a bit less than the 8350 in games like witcher3, and it should. It has 1/4th the cores and costs $30 less even with the fx 8350 heavily discounted. Add $30-40 to an fx 8350 and that gives you $190, the price range of an i5 6500 which suffers from less fps dips/drops than the fx 8350 does. It's all relative. Performance - i3 > fx 8350 > i5, price, i3, fx 8350, i5 .. and in roughly the same price increases, $30-40 per jump. To say the extra $30-40 over an i3 is worth it for amd but then turn around and say it's not worth it for the i5 is fanboyism at its finest.
Looking at those techspot benchmarks for witcher 3, yes the fx 8350 has a slight advantage. The 8350 gives 3fps higher min fps and 5fps higher average fps. A 4th gen i5 (much less 6th gen) offers 10fps better min fps than the 8350 and 8fps higher average fps than the fx 8350. In this game, going from i3 to fx to i5 at $30-40 price increases, amd's price premium offers 3fps/5fps min/avg over the i3 while the i5's same price premium over amd offers 10fps/8fps min/avg. Amd is still the better 'value'? I think that depends on how someone wishes to spin it.
Spdragoo is right, in some games the fps is so high it likely won't be noticeable one way or the other. The testing eurogamer did on a game like gta 5 did show a difference. The i5's averaging over 60fps and the fx 8350 averaging below 50fps. That will show up on a 60hz panel. In shadows of mordor, on a 60hz panel will it matter? Probably not, what if someone's on a 120hz panel? The 8350 averages over 30fps slower than the i5's and drops it to 100fps while the i5's easily manage fps to 130.
It will essentially come down to what hardware a particular person is using and what games they want to run at what levels of performance. If the 8350 is bottlenecking a gpu it's about as much fault the games not being multicore encoded as it is amd being weak on core performance. Assuming the bottleneck is compared to i5/i7 which are quad core cpu's, half the processing cores.
Games need to learn to code because amd can't figure out how to get horsepower from the cores they have? Sounds like complaining that game encoding isn't specialized to try and make up for amd's weak performance. If quad core cpu's are performing just fine I don't think it's a coding issue. Most games don't use more than a few cores and they shouldn't have to bloat themselves up and be rewritten just because a hardware manufacturer can't sort it out. Since hardly any games can take advantage of more than a few cores the reason for the bottlenecking comes from variation in games. Some are just more cpu heavy than others. They're more advanced and have more going on than just solitaire's physics.
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