How future proof is a AMD FX 8350?

[Eran Mayshar]

If I have a good graphics card, 8-16GB of fast ram, how long would such a CPU last for modern gaming at the highest graphical settings? If I'm not mistake, most Modern games depend more on the GPU than the CPU so wouldn't such a CPU be good for the next 3-5 years as long as I upgrade the graphics card? What would I gain from having a FX 950 instead?

 

[aatje92]

Nothing is future proof, you never know what's around the corner. But a FX-8350 comes close i guess.

 

[patrick47018]

The only real "future proof" aspect of the 8350 is hoping that games in the future will utilize more than 2-4 cores, and if so then I believe you could somewhat call it "future proof". And the FX-9370/9590 are pretty much just highly OC'd 8350's. So get a good cooler and OC your 8350. And yes a lot of games need a great GPU, but also a lot of modern games require a pretty beefy CPU also.

 

[Dblkk]

If I have a good graphics card, 8-16GB of fast ram, how long would such a CPU last for modern gaming at the highest graphical settings? If I'm not mistake, most Modern games depend more on the GPU than the CPU so wouldn't such a CPU be good for the next 3-5 years as long as I upgrade the graphics card? What would I gain from having a FX 950 instead?

The fx 9000 series is still the same chip as the 8320/8350, it is just stock clocked higher. So as far as that route goes, if you overclock your chip to 4.4 you'll be at the same as the higher 9000 chip. The top end 5ghz 9000 series chip might be a little harder to obtain, but either overclocking yours or running that specific chip will require beasty power supply and massive cooling. So your fine going the 8350 route.

As for how long will it last? No one knows for sure. The watchdogs recommended requirements were just released, and they say 8350 is recommended. So its still good now, both the 8000 and 9000 series fx are old technology, but still good. It should last 2 years for sure without limiting gpu performance on current gpu's. But the great thing about the future is new technology is accelerating rapidly.

 

[JOOK-D]

It would make more sense to get a quad core i5 (k series) or a Xeon 1230v3. These already outperform the FX's (99%) and will continue to do so, the extent to which differs.

 

[lowriderflow]

save sopme $ and get the 8320 and a decent all in one liquid like the cooler master 120xl. Like you said... games are more GPU limited, so anything 4cores or more at 4ghz is plenty. Theres only a few games out now using 8 cores, but more should be coming.

i have the 8320 and 120xl cooler on asus mfa99fx mobo, running at 4.5ghz and 2020mhz RAM. rock solid stability.

 

[maddogfargo]

It would make more sense to get a quad core i5 (k series) or a Xeon 1230v3. These already outperform the FX's (99%) and will continue to do so, the extent to which differs.

This is true in some apps, some synthetic benchmarks and some old games that are poorly optimized for multicore CPUs.

For example, Skyrim, which Tom's uses as an indicator, was released in 2011. It uses 2-4 cores and the Havok engine, which is highly Intel optimized. It was a good indicator at the time, but is no longer an accurate indicator for current games.

In current, well threaded CPU intensive games like Far Cry 3, Crysis 3, BF 3 and 4, Metro, Naturalral Selection...you will see the FX 8350 usually ties and sometimes beats the i5 and is very close to an i7. But we're only talking +/- 3-5% difference max, whether it is winning or losing.

So for gaming you can't say one is better than the other as a blanket statement anymore. You need to know how many cores your games and apps can use and whether they are better optimized for an Intel or AMD. That will help you pick the right platform for your purposes.

But the big take-away here is that nothing is future-proof. It is always speculation, because we simply don't know what innovations, changes and optimizations are coming.

 

[JOOK-D]

It would make more sense to get a quad core i5 (k series) or a Xeon 1230v3. These already outperform the FX's (99%) and will continue to do so, the extent to which differs.

This is true in some apps, some synthetic benchmarks and some old games that are poorly optimized for multicore CPUs.

For example, Skyrim, which Tom's uses as an indicator, was released in 2011. It uses 2-4 cores and the Havok engine, which is highly Intel optimized. It was a good indicator at the time, but is no longer an accurate indicator for current games.

In current, well threaded CPU intensive games like Far Cry 3, Crysis 3, BF 3 and 4, Metro, Naturalral Selection...you will see the FX 8350 usually ties and sometimes beats the i5 and is very close to an i7. But we're only talking +/- 3-5% difference max, whether it is winning or losing.

So for gaming you can't say one is better than the other as a blanket statement anymore. You need to know how many cores your games and apps can use and whether they are better optimized for an Intel or AMD. That will help you pick the right platform for your purposes.

But the big take-away here is that nothing is future-proof. It is always speculation, because we simply don't know what innovations, changes and optimizations are coming.

I maintain my blanket statement that in 99% of games the intel quads will outperform the FX's. There are a few games that use more than 4 threads (and I hope the trend continues) but they will be reliant on strong-single core performance due to the presence of main threads and subthreads. Maybe by next year or the year after multithreading will be the norm. However even in titles like BF4 the i5s can happily sit up there with the 8 core FX's. Games are still being released that are dependent on strong single threads.

I couldn't agree with you more that you should know what your usage is and should select the correct processor based on that.

I'm sure we've all seen/had this debate 100 times by now so I'll leave it at that. Either a quad i5 or an FX should be relevant for many years to come, I'd personally grab the i5 without a second thought (or then potentially instead look at a Xeon 1230v3).

 

[Eran Mayshar]

My motherboard supports AMD, not Intel so unless I want to spend a lot more money, I'll stick with an AMD CPU. Furthermore, intel CPU's of the same performance tend to cost a lot more than their AMD counterparts.

 

[JOOK-D]

My motherboard supports AMD, not Intel so unless I want to spend a lot more money, I'll stick with an AMD CPU. Furthermore, intel CPU's of the same performance tend to cost a lot more than their AMD counterparts.

You had not given that information. What's your motherboard model? If it's already AM3+ there's no need to switch.

The point was that intel and AMD CPU's are not of the same performance, and are often suited to different tasks. Intel take the lead in single-threaded performance that AMD has a very hard time matching.

 

[mustang man]

that fx 8350 will be good for the nex 2 of maby 3 yr's

 

[jaguarskx]

The FX-8350 is an okay CPU, but you need to overclock it to get decent performance in CPU intensive games. An underclocked Intel CPU can more or less provide about the same or better performance in games compared to an overclocked AMD CPU. See below for some results. The Core i7-4770k is pitted against AMD's FX-9590 and FX-8350. Games generally do not benefit from Hyper Threading, but it would have been nice if a Core i5 CPU was used instead of a Core i7 CPU.


http://www.techspot.com/review/991-gta-5-pc-benchmarks/page6.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/979-battlefield-hardline-benchmarks/page5.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/970-homeworld-remastered-benchmarks/page4.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/962-evolve-benchmarks/page5.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/956-dying-light-benchmarks/page5.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/921-dragon-age-inquisition-benchmarks/page6.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/917-far-cry-4-benchmarks/page5.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/903-alien-isolation-benchmarks/page5.html

 

[DubbleClick]

It would make more sense to get a quad core i5 (k series) or a Xeon 1230v3. These already outperform the FX's (99%) and will continue to do so, the extent to which differs.

This is true in some apps, some synthetic benchmarks and some old games that are poorly optimized for multicore CPUs.

For example, Skyrim, which Tom's uses as an indicator, was released in 2011. It uses 2-4 cores and the Havok engine, which is highly Intel optimized. It was a good indicator at the time, but is no longer an accurate indicator for current games.

In current, well threaded CPU intensive games like Far Cry 3, Crysis 3, BF 3 and 4, Metro, Naturalral Selection...you will see the FX 8350 usually ties and sometimes beats the i5 and is very close to an i7.

Just no. In all games you mentioned intel cpu's perform better by a little to a little more. I don't even think there's a single game that performs better on amd cpus than on intel cpus - it wouldn't make sense that there is one.