Intel vs AMD? (No fanboyism please)

[ADMINSKORA-1]

I'm looking a building a computer with these specifications:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/mstrt6

And i'm looking at building this machine mainly for Music Production, Virtualization, (Virtualbox/VMware) A little bit a gaming, and possibly later as a server.

You'll notice no CPU is listed, that's where i'm stuck.

I'm considering the FX-8350 because the 8 cores would benefit in multi-tasking more, however the Core i5 and i7's raw performance impresses me a lot. Which should i go with? (Again, please no biased opinions, just pure facts if possible, and also no "Just get an i7." or "Just get an i5" answers either).

 

[rolli59]

If you want to run multiple VMs while running some other programs without any conflicts you might want to consider the octo-core. I'll explain. Let's say you want to run 2 VMs, that's 2 cores you can consider gone (half of either core processor). If you attempt to split a core between a VM and anything else you are going to notice a significant performance drop. VMs should have their own dedicated core. I have no idea what you envision this machine being capable of doing but more cores means more that can be accomplished at the same time with minimal conflicts. Sure the I5 or I7 cores might have an edge core vs core but from what I infer, you are looking for some advanced multitasking.

Edit: I went back and read some of the other comments and I noticed that server processors and hyperthreading talk was going on. Server processors are an entirely different beast. They require ECC ram and I highly doubt that is a road you want to travel. HT on the other hand is just asking for other problems. Introducing logical cores to VMs is like you trying to make a sandwich while stirring a mixed drink at the same time. Sounds good but not very practical. One possibility, assuming you went with the octo-core, is to dedicate a second core to a VM if you deemed it necessary. 2 cores on the octo-core architecture share the same L2 cache.

The XEON E3 does not need ECC ram and works in any lga 1150 desktop boards that do not support ECC ram.

 

[Vic Rattlehead]

The FX-8350 has really solid performance in heavily threaded applications for the price, but an i5 will provide better performance most of the time (since most tasks still benefit from high single-threaded performance, faster cache speeds, etc.) and of course an i7 is the gravy on top of the i5.

If you can afford the Intel i5 or i7, you should absolutely go that route.

 

[bootcher]

If your budget is of no concern, intel will give you better performance, noone can deny that. For the purpose of your pc basically any intel or amd will do the job well, with intel having a better performance for a higher price. Depending on how heavy you will load your cpus maybe you won't notice the difference, maybe you will.

Whichever you choose, get a good motherboard that has enough room for ram, as that as what you will most likely need much of, especially if using as a server. And get faster ram, 1600 mhz is about the same price as the 1333 in your list and will be faster when working with large audio files.

 

[DubbleClick]

@shadismad:

That's simply not how virtualization works. You can't just dedicate two cpu cores to a vm alone due to architecture restrictions. One big thing is also that the vm should not know that it is a vm, else you're running into problems. I know that intel has vt-x, vt-d and vt-pro to counter those issues, leading to get the vm physical and virtual memory adresses and own cpu time without the step in between of the actual os/vm software, which improves performance and possibilities drastically. Probably AMD has some technology like that too and I just have not heard about it, but since I don't know of one my recommendation goes to intel by far. Not to mention features of (cheap) h97 boards you won't find until high end am3+ boards. The xeon is certainly going to do better than a 8350fx anyway, even in multi thread benchmarks its above 9370 fx level. The cpubenchmark.net test consists of various ones btw and also includes single core performance.

 

[malshan]

If your are using this for visualization (VM's) or anywhere raw processing power is needed (ex: Databases, big data processing, web servers)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

get the fx-8350. It will have near twice the performance of quad core i5 used in this area. I'm a system engineer who gives specifications for servers for VM's so i know. But remember, if you are running this 24/7, Xeon could be a better choice, as it's stable and has special features for virtualisation (because Xeon is a server processor).However I'm using Linux, so not sure whether the fx processors are having performance lags in Windows (I have heard performance issues in windows 7 with fx processors).

HP 8gen servers (some of them) use AMD opteron processors which uses the same piledriver modules as in the fx-8350, and preferred above Xeon's when high performance is required. We have them running on blade servers with Linux on many of our clients.

Come on, when talking about VM's, even my fx-6300 beats the quad core i5's. I bought mine to basically test a hadoop cluster running on 2 VM's and my base machine. I'm not a gamer 😉

 

[DubbleClick]

Come on, when talking about VM's, even my fx-6300 beats the quad core i5's. I bought mine to basically test a hadoop cluster running on 2 VM's and my base machine. I'm not a gamer 😉

This doesn't even make the slightest sense. A fx 6300 is inferior to a haswell i5 in absolutely every way.
Aside of that, I'll link to my post above.

 

[SF95070]

I have 2 systems I use for video editing, one is I-7 and one is A-8, both using Corel Video Studio.

The I-7 system is definitely faster than the A-8, but it also cost twice as much by the time you get everything to match performance.

If I hand you the A-8 system and don't let you try the I-7, my guess is that you would find it perfectly fine. i like my I-7 based HP, so I certainly have nothing against it if you want to spend the money, just offering a reality check.

So, while I agree that the I-7 rules the roost in raw performance, in the real world you sometimes get a better price/performance package with AMD. The same argument applies to great I-5 machines that cost a lot less than an I-7.

As the old saying goes, YMMV, but there is some charm to buying a cheaper system that gets the job done and replacing it more often over spending your life savings for the ultimate.

 

[Sc0urgeTR]

@shadismad:

That's simply not how virtualization works. You can't just dedicate two cpu cores to a vm alone due to architecture restrictions. One big thing is also that the vm should not know that it is a vm, else you're running into problems. I know that intel has vt-x, vt-d and vt-pro to counter those issues, leading to get the vm physical and virtual memory adresses and own cpu time without the step in between of the actual os/vm software, which improves performance and possibilities drastically. Probably AMD has some technology like that too and I just have not heard about it, but since I don't know of one my recommendation goes to intel by far. Not to mention features of (cheap) h97 boards you won't find until high end am3+ boards. The xeon is certainly going to do better than a 8350fx anyway, even in multi thread benchmarks its above 9370 fx level. The cpubenchmark.net test consists of various ones btw and also includes single core performance.

The proof is in the website pudding: http://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/hyper-v-virtual-cpus-explained/

 

[CTurbo]

You could get this and it would be great. You would be perfectly happy with it's performance.

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/7KXw8d
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/7KXw8d/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor ($124.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($74.98 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Kingston Fury Black Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($139.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Crucial M500 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($51.99 @ Directron)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R7 260X 1GB Core Edition Video Card ($88.00 @ Newegg)
Case: Enermax ECA3253-BW ATX Mid Tower Case ($47.99 @ Mwave)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($32.99 @ NCIX US)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24F1ST DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Newegg)
Monitor: Acer S241HL bmid 60Hz 24.0" Monitor ($151.08 @ Amazon)
Monitor: Acer S241HL bmid 60Hz 24.0" Monitor ($151.08 @ Amazon)
Wireless Network Adapter: Rosewill N600PCE 802.11a/b/g/n PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter ($19.99 @ Amazon)
Case Fan: Cooler Master SickleFlow 69.7 CFM 120mm Fan ($2.99 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: Cooler Master SickleFlow 69.7 CFM 120mm Fan ($2.99 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: Cooler Master SickleFlow 69.7 CFM 120mm Fan ($2.99 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: Cooler Master SickleFlow 69.7 CFM 120mm Fan ($2.99 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: Rosewill RNBL-131409R 55.4 CFM 140mm Fan ($9.99 @ Amazon)
Case Fan: Rosewill RNBL-131409R 55.4 CFM 140mm Fan ($9.99 @ Amazon)
Keyboard: Cooler Master CM Storm Devastator Gaming Bundle Wired Gaming Keyboard w/Optical Mouse ($29.95 @ Amazon)
Other: Behringer UM2 Audio Interface ($49.99)
Other: OKGEAR 18" SATA 6 Gbps Cable, Straight to Left Angle W/ Metal Latch, Black, Backward Compatible 3 Gbps and 1.5 Gbps ($4.29)
Total: $1084.23
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-19 00:43 EST-0500



I don't normally recommend AMD anymore because they're cpus are outdated compared to Intel Haswell. Even an i5 will outperform any FX most of the time. I love the e3 Xeon being suggested here. The 1231v3 in particular is probably the biggest bang for your buck you can get. It will literally outperform the FX8350 in every way. The question is, do you want to pay more for it?

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/8gnRCJ
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/8gnRCJ/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($248.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: MSI Z97 U3 Plus ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Kingston Fury Black Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($139.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Crucial M500 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($51.99 @ Directron)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R7 260X 1GB Core Edition Video Card ($88.00 @ Newegg)
Case: Enermax ECA3253-BW ATX Mid Tower Case ($47.99 @ Mwave)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($32.99 @ NCIX US)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24F1ST DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Newegg)
Monitor: Acer S241HL bmid 60Hz 24.0" Monitor ($151.08 @ Amazon)
Monitor: Acer S241HL bmid 60Hz 24.0" Monitor ($151.08 @ Amazon)
Wireless Network Adapter: Rosewill N600PCE 802.11a/b/g/n PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter ($19.99 @ Amazon)
Case Fan: Cooler Master SickleFlow 69.7 CFM 120mm Fan ($2.99 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: Cooler Master SickleFlow 69.7 CFM 120mm Fan ($2.99 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: Cooler Master SickleFlow 69.7 CFM 120mm Fan ($2.99 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: Cooler Master SickleFlow 69.7 CFM 120mm Fan ($2.99 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: Rosewill RNBL-131409R 55.4 CFM 140mm Fan ($9.99 @ Amazon)
Case Fan: Rosewill RNBL-131409R 55.4 CFM 140mm Fan ($9.99 @ Amazon)
Keyboard: Cooler Master CM Storm Devastator Gaming Bundle Wired Gaming Keyboard w/Optical Mouse ($29.95 @ Amazon)
Other: Behringer UM2 Audio Interface ($49.99)
Other: OKGEAR 18" SATA 6 Gbps Cable, Straight to Left Angle W/ Metal Latch, Black, Backward Compatible 3 Gbps and 1.5 Gbps ($4.29)
Total: $1203.23
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-19 00:57 EST-0500



You don't need so many fans. You don't need an after market cooler unless you want to overclock the FX. You may want a 2GB video card.

 

[malshan]

Come on, when talking about VM's, even my fx-6300 beats the quad core i5's. I bought mine to basically test a hadoop cluster running on 2 VM's and my base machine. I'm not a gamer 😉

This doesn't even make the slightest sense. A fx 6300 is inferior to a haswell i5 in absolutely every way.
Aside of that, I'll link to my post above.

Databases, big data processing (talking about map reduce here) uses more integer calculations (as I know). And running VM's will not increase floating point calculations unless user decides to run such programs.

Reason why fx-6300 lags behind far from i5 in Desktop usage is fx-6300 only have 3 FPU's for it's 6 cores (and i5 has 4). But when it's not needed that much, fx-6300 should work more near to a true 6-core processor thus bypassing i5 performance.

However for following programs needing heavy floating point calculations is not good for fx-6300:
---------------------------------
- Any kind of modern PC games
- zlib
- music production may include a lot of FP calculations ( )
- cinebench and cpubenchmark
- scientific calculation software (mathlab, frotran etc..)
and many more.

 

[DubbleClick]

The issue here is that an i5 4690k also beats a 6300 fx in integer maths. On stock speeds as well as overclocked.

 

[Chibuzo Nwoko]

Since you are going to use it mainly for virtualization and music production I would recommend that you get the top of the line core i7. This is because it is the best performing processor available. What you gain in graphics using AMD FX-6350 is only marginal.

 

[nikoli707]

if said "non gaming computer" is not being used for professional work where "time is money", AND the user has a little patience, the fx8320+hyper 212=4.4ghz overclock is unbeatable in price to performance and that is just bang for buck right there. you can get a little to a log more speed with a xeon/i7, but your going to pay for it.

i have seen the 8320 on sale for $109 and the 212 evo for $25, throw in a $69 970 mobo, and its just unbeatable. i dont feel the 8350 deserves any credit since paying $25 more for a slightly higher binned chip is at all worth it, considering this is a battle of budget vs enthusiast.

 

[Beezy]

your decision (assuming power consumption isn't a huge deal) should be between the FX 8 core and the Xeon 1230 or 1231 v3. I know the FX is a lot older but its a good price, a real bargain for the performance. Plus the FX architecture was built from a server, was it not?

 

[shadismad]

@shadismad:

That's simply not how virtualization works. You can't just dedicate two cpu cores to a vm alone due to architecture restrictions. One big thing is also that the vm should not know that it is a vm, else you're running into problems. I know that intel has vt-x, vt-d and vt-pro to counter those issues, leading to get the vm physical and virtual memory adresses and own cpu time without the step in between of the actual os/vm software, which improves performance and possibilities drastically. Probably AMD has some technology like that too and I just have not heard about it, but since I don't know of one my recommendation goes to intel by far. Not to mention features of (cheap) h97 boards you won't find until high end am3+ boards. The xeon is certainly going to do better than a 8350fx anyway, even in multi thread benchmarks its above 9370 fx level. The cpubenchmark.net test consists of various ones btw and also includes single core performance.

I did some research online and realized I had a misconception about pCPUs vs vCPUs vs threads (all three are separate items when dealing with VMs.)

AMD does have a lot of support for virtualization. http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/GPU120AMDRVICPUsHyperVWin8.aspx

When talking about benchmarking most are referring to synthetic with some reflecting possible real world benefits. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/309152-28-passmark-benchmark-score-mean

 

[DubbleClick]

I see, I didn't know about hyper-v.

As for "synthetic" vs "real world" benchmarks, opposed to usually very well optimized benchmarks using all available threads evenly, intel cpu's would show even more advantage in less optimized programs, due to their far superior single core performance.

 

[Beezy]

Something about server and quad core in the same sentence just seems odd though it will greatly depend on exact use

 

[Ryanrenesis]

INTEL! INTEL! INTEL!

Trust me you wouldn't want an AMD. Compared to AMD, Intel is like alien technology from Crysis 3.

 

[DubbleClick]

INTEL! INTEL! INTEL!

Trust me you wouldn't want an AMD. Compared to AMD, Intel is like alien technology from Crysis 3.

Not at all. They're ahead in performance right now, but for multi threaded tasks in the mainstream segment not by much.
A xeon e3-1231v3 is about 10-15% faster than a 8320 fx (considering solely well threaded tasks), but considering you don't want to overclock and can live with some performance loss and features, a $110 fx with a $70 board is more price efficient than the xeon that goes for $250 with a $70 board.
I'd never recommend getting an amd cpu for gaming, not even if on i3 level, but for rendering on a tight budget they certainly have their qualification.

 

[shadismad]

I see, I didn't know about hyper-v.

As for "synthetic" vs "real world" benchmarks, opposed to usually very well optimized benchmarks using all available threads evenly, intel cpu's would show even more advantage in less optimized programs, due to their far superior single core performance.

The benchmarks made now are more in line with real world workload. Another thing to keep in mind is what the devs and coders used to write said benchmarks and programs. Intel and AMD seem to have their defaults. If you look in depth into the results you will notice scores are consistent with each OEM. There is always varience and exceptions to be considered.

I thought everybody would find this interesting. Keep in mind that the FX is last gen or technically the gen before that and the intel chip has igpus. Having said that notice individual results. http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-4690K-vs-AMD-FX-8350

 

[rolli59]

I see, I didn't know about hyper-v.

As for "synthetic" vs "real world" benchmarks, opposed to usually very well optimized benchmarks using all available threads evenly, intel cpu's would show even more advantage in less optimized programs, due to their far superior single core performance.

The benchmarks made now are more in line with real world workload. Another thing to keep in mind is what the devs and coders used to write said benchmarks and programs. Intel and AMD seem to have their defaults. If you look in depth into the results you will notice scores are consistent with each OEM. There is always varience and exceptions to be considered.

I thought everybody would find this interesting. Keep in mind that the FX is last gen or technically the gen before that and the intel chip has igpus. Having said that notice individual results. http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-4690K-vs-AMD-FX-8350

I liked the benchmark comparison in that link FX wins Passmark which is based on synthetic benches memory bandwidth being one of them FX has great memory performance and would be fantastic if they had processing power to utilize it.

 

[ImDaBaron]

Well most of the people on here have stolen my thunder. I definitely think you will benefit from the Xeon 1231.

 

[Sc0urgeTR]

AMD is out of the game for CPU's no question there. There was a time when intel and amd were at "war" for the cpu's. But that time is far over. If you have the money intel is always better.

I think AMD likes to think they were at war. It was more like a slaughterhouse... 😀

Bit like the threat Apple had early on to Windows... Limited.