Intel Core i5 4690 VS AMD FX 8350

[Lambe]

As the title states, I'm debating on picking between one of these processors. Hear me out. I would like to hear some of your opinions.

If I do decide to go with the intel side, I will be running a H97 motherboard, with a stock cooler. Bare in mind it's not very warm where I live, and I got usually around 50 C under load playing a game like Battlefield 4 on my previous i5.

If I do decide to go with AMD's side, I will be purchasing a MSI 970 Gaming Motherboard, and a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo to keep it cool and possibly overclock it a little bit.

With this PC, I plan on multi-tasking a some amount, like playing a game and having multiple tabs open on my browser, and sometimes even streaming as well. Would love to hear your opinions, thanks.

 

[velo3100]

It depends on if you are going to oc it. The i5 will be better if you don't oc it but the amd will have the advantage if you do. Also the amd may have the advantage while streaming.

 

[AreH]

Well,

I wrote the same on a few post. Had an opportunity to replace my old six core phenom build with new i7 4790k based system. For a few months I used my old hd 6950 gpu in new build without significant improvement in everyday computing and gaming except few more fps here and there in games. After gpu upgrade there was huge improvement in gaming but obviously as a result of new more powerful gpu. Judging by benchmarks intel cpus are better and yes they are but I doubt I will ever notice that in my everyday use. If I'm now to decide I would probably go with amd because it is cheaper and save money for better gpu. In your case my choice beside all I said above would be 8350 just because it has 8 cores. 4 cores are simply not enough for multitasking in near future.
Hope it was helpful. At the end the choice is yours and best luck with it.

 

[synphul]

@AreH, that was also comparing a phenom ii x6 1090t to a 4790k on an old gpu where the gpu was the bottleneck. It wasn't comparing them with the new gpu and when pairing a new more powerful gpu the amd cpu's can become a bottleneck and also lower min fps which can show up as 'lag'. It depends on the game, if the game is purely gpu heavy than even an i3 will suffice and no there won't seem to be much difference. Pair it with a gtx 980, 980ti or 970's in sli and the amd cpu's can hold back performance. If the game is cpu heavy like bioshock infinite, f1, bf4, or others there will be a more significant difference. When those games are running an sli configuration the difference gets worse and can be 10-20fps different.

The money you save between an 8350 plus a decent enough mobo to overclock it on and an aftermarket cooler (even a cheap 212 evo) compared to a stock i5 like a 4590 or even the 4690k won't be enough for a gpu upgrade that matters. For instance going from a gtx 970 to 980, the difference is a couple hundred dollars. The difference between an 8350 and i5 is maybe $50.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz 8-Core Processor ($164.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($25.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($109.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $293.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-07-25 17:40 EDT-0400

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($189.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H97M-D3H Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($67.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $257.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-07-25 17:41 EDT-0400

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($219.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($25.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97MX-Gaming 5 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($99.99 @ Micro Center)
Total: $345.96
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-07-25 17:42 EDT-0400

I didn't include the 4690 non k because it represents poor value. $25 isn't really worth the additional 100-200mhz. The 4590 or 4460 are better value for the money spent and perform nearly the same if not overclocking.

In addition, for streaming there will be a performance hit if gaming/streaming from the same hdd, it will depend on your internet connection and if using an nvidia card consider using shadowplay which puts very little stress on the cpu. Streaming is more of a lumped catch all as 'gaming' or 'video editing', it depends on more than just the cpu and it depends on which program in those categories.

 

[AreH]

@synphul. I mentioned that in my case it would be better that I went with some amd cpu e.g 8350 instead i7 4790k. With money I would saved this way I could buy better gpu for example 970. For the Lambes case I said my choice would be 8350 just because more cores. Don't think it is good idea today to buy anything with less than 6 cores or ht. That was reason I bought i7. Furthermore I am completely aware of intel domination over amd in this moment but also think its price hardly can be justified with performance it can offer.

At the end perhaps I'm wrong, but still think that in my case better combination would be 8350 with gtx 970 or R9 390 than what I have now. Anyway future will show.

Best wishes!

 

[synphul]

It needs to be considered what multitasking means to different people. In Lambe's case, they mentioned gaming while having browser tabs open. Obviously you're either actively browsing the web or playing a game, not both. No one can unless there's a dual mouse setup I'm unaware of. In this case, it means more ram will be beneficial, the cpu will only be running the game or the browser and a browser takes up very little cpu. Even if there are multiple webpages loading, this will depend more on the internet connection speed downloading in the background and if downloading to the same hard drive (or ssd) as the game is being played from that will be the bottleneck in i/o transfers.

Most people who do even frequent streaming think it's all about the cpu and there's more to it. Unfortunately there's never a simple solution to anything such as 'just this' or 'just that'. Those serious about streaming and who want quality streams use a second system. Again there are storage and memory system issues that can crop up and affect the quality of a stream using a single system with multiple cores.

It also depends on the software used, some software imposes higher load on the cpu than others. Shadowplay with nvidia cards works really well and offloads most of the work to the gpu so there's little performance hit to the cpu. We already know there are some games that are cpu heavy and others that are gpu heavy so it's not accurate to simply say a 'gaming' pc. One has to consider which games. Same goes for other software as well.

More cores isn't always the answer, obviously or the fx series wouldn't be so easily outperformed by intel's i5's and i7's which are just quad core cpus. A quad core without hyperthreading (4c/4t) system may lag a little while live streaming but an fx 8350 will perform less in just about all games. In terms of streaming using obs to twitch, the i5 has a lot less frame drops than the fx 8350.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26UKz42uQ1Y

If more cores were better, ps4 and xbox would be better than even budget g3258/i3/fx 4xxx/athlon x4 860k. It's pretty evident this isn't the case, more weaker cores don't equate to better performance. This was pretty quickly made clear when amd hyped their 8 core bulldozer chips and they decided 'moar' was better. They convinced people this was the case and it's not true. In very few cases are more weaker cores better. It's not that I'm a particular fan of either, I'm a fan of performance. If amd had it I'd buy it and have no issue recommending it. It would be ridiculous to buy intel if it performed worse and vice versa.

This isn't necessarily a 'benchmark', just a user's experience where performance even while streaming went up switching to an i5 over an 8350. It basically coincides with what was found in the results from techyescity's review.
http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/2r9opt/will_an_i5_4690k_be_enough_for_daily_streaming/

A similar experience on an xsplit forum.
https://support.xsplit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16871