Is AMD FX Still Viable For a System Build? Rev. 2.0

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I'm actually going to wait for second generation Zen. My FX 8370 is clocked at 5Ghz for everyday use and can easily handle 5.5Ghz if needed. That will keep me gaming till Zen is in its second generation and has some of the inevitable "bugs" worked out of it. What I love is with the FX 8370 I was able to hit 4.7Ghz (1.33V) while on a Hyper 212 EVO (2 delta 3400rpm fans in a push pull configuration), upgraded to H100i GTX and got her to 5 (1.42V) then 5.5Ghz (1.52V), changed out my water cooling for a no muss no fuss NH-D15 air cooler (with my 2 delta 3400rpm fans in a push pull on that huge beast) and have basically the same cooling I did with the H100i GTX. The amazing binning of the FX 8370 allows for much better overclocks at lower Vcore and thus lower heat (when compared to FX 8320 - FX 8350). At 5 - 5.5Ghz the FX 8370 is a beast of a processor and a beast while gaming.
 


Wow, 5.5ghz!! You've got a lottery chip right there man. 😀
 
We are going towards a wrong direction here. Most people ask the same questions; can Fx 'beat' i3 or i5? Or they make claims such as, "since the i3 can beat Fx..."

In the theoretical sense, one CPU is always better than the one next to it. However, we seem to forget that we have realistic limitations to what we use our system for, these realities do not proportionally reflect any theoretical advantages any CPU may have.

For example, the Fx may be 'worse' than the i3 6100 but that depends on what you are intending on archiving. If goal is gaming at 60fps, then the Fx 6300 is still viable. But if the intend is to do multi threaded tasks, then the Fx 8xxx is viable as a budget option. I would like to avoid the absolute claims such as 'since skylake is out there is no reason to look at AMD'. From this kind of presumption, there can be no possible discussions, which is fundamental to this forum.
 
What hurts AMD's value the most is the need for better cooling, because they are so power hungry. Why buy an FX 8350, with decent OC board, and cooling, when you can get a 1231v3, for a similar cost, and get better overall performance? The only AMD chips that make any kind of real sense are the FX 6300, and the 860k, for the low end rigs. FX 6300 is good for those that cannot afford an i5, but need better multitasking, than the i3 can provide, and I would probably want an 860k, over a pentium.
 
I own and use an FX-8350 on a daily basis, I also have in the house an A10-7850k building a A8-7600 budget pc and many others, all of our laptops are Intel. That said, If I was building a computer RIGHT NOW, I would buy an Intel, no question, I could start with an I3 then get an I7. My only reservation is due to the lack of competition from AMD, Intel has been sitting on their hands, why why why is a 2nd gen I5 is still so damn good, and while they have improved it in the 4 generations that followed, it hasn't been by very much.

AMD chips right now, except maybe AM1 are on dead platforms. AM3+ and FM2+ are going away this year, the wisest move is to wait for Zen, then wait for Intels "reply" to Zen then make a choice, hopefully there is a noticeable bump in CPU power by then.
 
The 8370 with the new wraith cooler @4.0/4.3 seems pretty reasonable with the now $69.99 Gigabyte GA970A-UD3P with 8+2 power phase. Arguably still a viable budget option. The extra $45 saved from not getting an xeon or i5 'k' can go a long way in a budget rig, extra 1 TB HDD, 8 GB of DDR3, next grade of GPU, or 120 GB SSD.
 


I'd disagree. I just built a rig with the Pentium G4500 and it's pretty fast for the price. Sure though, for anything intensive, good luck.
 
Over the past few weeks, I've spent about $600 trying to make an AMD build work, and it hasn't so far. I get 25 FPS on Elder Scrolls Online with an 8350 and an R9 390, while my friend gets 60 FPS using an I7 4790k and a GTX 770ti... Never buying AMD again tbh.
 
It is interesting to compare the questions you get on Toms Hardware from Intel and AMD users.
On the intel side, there are quite a few gamers with 3 year old i5 3570 PCs or even 5 year old i5 2500 PC's looking to upgrade, and the consensus is often.. why upgrade? you don't need a new CPU and mobo, yours still works OK.
On the AMD side, there are plenty of gamers who have an admittedly cheaper AMD based computer, found a game that it won't play, upgraded the GPU, and it still won't play it, and are now looking for a CPU and motherboard upgrade.
Saddest of all are the people who bought a 8350 or 9590 as an upgrade, without realizing that although the CPU will run in their motherboard, the VRMs cannot take the power demand, neither can their PSU, and they also need to improve their cooling.

Therefore, when people ask for advice, I learn from history, and so I usually suggest they get an i5.
 


Pentiums may have a really good purpose, and that would be running older real-time strategy games from like a decade ago that heavily task a single or two cores of the CPU. For instance, when I played Age of Empires 3 on my I5-4460, when there was a ton of stuff all on the map, my CPU was actually being tasked very highly in single core performance. If you could snag and OC a Pentium to 4.5Ghz, that'd be a viable option if you need strong single core performance without buying an I5 or I7.
 
All ways funny ppl only upgrade there cpu en gpu dont think about psu ram bios and that stuff al need work togethere to make a fast pc aldo i have amd fx 6350 runs all my games fine between 40 to 60 :)
 
True, Turkey, true, playing decade old games may work, but I'd not recommend anyone buy a dual core just to play them. An i3 maybe, probably, but not a pentium. I recently ran through Kotor, a game I've not touched in years, and while my 970 and 3770k weren't exactly taxed, my biggest limiter was windows 7. Those old games just don't like the new OS. Took me hours of searching the net to find patches and hacks because even running it under win98 didn't work right, game constantly crashed. So I'd imagine many more of those decade old games will suffer similar issues, and not have the fan support for those cracks.
 
Lodders,

I think you have point to the general public's gullibility rather than the Fx performance. The fact that's often overlooked is the almost 4 years old Fx series is still handling most tasks sufficiently. When set up properly, there is very little reason for home users to upgrade other than for the sake of having a newer platform.
 
I also agree to that. I mean even systems I've set up for people that had an Athlon quad core and 4 or 8gb of ram are usually running fast and still more than enough for their needs. Face it, you go to buy a new system, on the low end stores are pushing celerons and pentiums. The celeron who knows why they even bother to make anymore. It's clear that they can make decent chips cheaper, but I digress. Most folks with a quad or better at say 2.8-3ghz may not see or recognize the difference when all they are doing is checking email etc.
 


With the return of BLCK overclocking, I would probably still rather have an i3 6100.
 
I was actually meaning the older x4 chips. I saw one I set up maybe 3-4 years ago, and it's a Phenom II x4 820 or 840 I think. System still happy as a lark, it's upgraded to windows 10. Just had to swap out the power supply for a new unit, and it's happy again.
 


The FX 8370 becomes even better when you consider that some people need the power of an i7 build for multi-tasking, but their wife won't allow them to spend that kind of money on something she views as a "hobby". And yes, I may be a da*n big redneck and don't take anything from any man, but at the end of the day I didn't get married to sleep alone. So for my needs of running two businesses keeping track of all expenditures, profits, losses.... Having on average at least three or four spreadsheets open to cross compare, while having Word running, while doing heavy power research online (a lot of times 20- 30+ windows of both Edge and Firefox open), video editing HD clips from my phone to update my advertising pages online... Most of the time when I sit down at the computer to finally catch up on that work I'm doing everything at once. Now for doing all those things at once high core count and fast cores become very important.

i5 is a great gaming CPU, but all that multitasking is going to bog it down. i7 would be ideal, but would also cost several hundred (possibly even twice what I paid) more. I upgraded an old computer from Phenom II 965BE to a FX 8350 and then to FX 8370. The FX 8370 has been an amazing performer and overclocks better than any other FX chip I've ever worked with. Performance wise it sits between the i5 and i7 for heavy multitasking (actually much closer in performance to the i7 than i5) while costing less than an i5 (that it outperforms in heavily multi-threaded workloads). When I have free time it can also play any game I want (including Witcher 3 and Fallout 4) on all ultra settings 1080p 60+ FPS.

We get so bogged down with talking about nothing but gaming here that we tend to overlook a lot of people have other requirements, not just gaming. When you rely on your computer to keep track of all your record keeping, advertising and promotions for a business and you have to constantly be keeping up with the latest developments for that field (ie internet research) you really need a computer with as many high speed cores as you can afford. AMD offers a very affordable solution in their 8 core processors for people like me who could really use the high core power of the i7s but for one reason or another simply can't go to that expense.
 
FX 8370, decent cooling, and decent board, are not going to save you much, vs a 1231v3 and an h97 board, really. This several hundred you speak of isn't accurate.

If not going for big overclocks, then this would be minimum I would want for an FX rig, with single GPU. If you want to actually do some real overclocking, better cooling, and possibly a better board would be necessary.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-8370 4.0GHz 8-Core Processor ($190.95 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($34.50 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($71.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $297.43
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-05 15:08 EST-0500

vs

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($244.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock H97 PRO4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($83.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $328.88
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-05 15:09 EST-0500


No need for expensive cooling, and the power savings would pay for itself. My FX 8320 was always quite the space heater. Kinda helpful in the winter. The summer months, it was expensive to keep things cool.
 


Who would actually pay that much for an FX 8370? A few quick web shopping searches and:
http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.aspx?Ntt=FX+8370

Or even better for someone who needs 8 cores but doesn't have the budget for performance motherboard and cooling:
http://www.microcenter.com/product/437623/FX_8370E_33GHz_AM3_Black_Edition_Boxed_Processor

The FX 8370E is 95W and is a full $100 cheaper than the Xeon. At 95W it won't require aftermarket cooling unless you overclock it, and will overclock even on a mid grade Motherboard. For heavily multi-threaded tasks the FX 8 core processors are still your best bang for the dollar. Better multi tasking capabilities than an i5, very competitive with some i7s and at a price point cheaper than most i5s.
 


Right there is the crux of this thing.

I need to see one single benchmark where 8 cores vs all the other ingredients that determines a processor's performance is the crucial determinant of performance.

It is the one single fable that keeps "high-end" AMD processors on the table - the mistaken belief that "cores" are crucial to some mythical performance advantage.

 
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