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

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Man you just said it to perfection, I have had systems that I built that I donated to churchs and deseving kids, I would replace cpu, and memory from the last of my updates. They always thought they were the fastest systems that they had ever seen, some of them I would install ubuntu if they had never had a system before, some of them are still running. I have two amd systems in our home now one a amd phenom II x4 840 that is crossfired, my wife uses it to design our church bulletin board and special events, she loves it, we have not had a problem with it for two years, it is fast enough and powerful enough to do what she needs for it to do. I have a fx2+ plus 6800k with just a nvidia 740, and 8 gigs that plays project cars and the rest of my games at high settings. I did alot of research and got everything matched, I wanted to upgrade, and I waited to see what amd was going to do with zen, but now that I know I will be getting a amd 8370 combo deal from microcenter, mainly because I dont want to have to go to ddr4, when I have so much ddr3 sitting around my house, that will keep me playing until I see what is going on in the computer world!
 
You know I just saw your post, and I have done that too, people think of us as fanboys, but I used to own intel machines till I found out how powerful amd was back in the day, I have just not found a reason to change in all this time, everytime I think about it and start pricing and researching, intel is just now needed for what I do, I have built systems for people who have had intel machines go bad, and I give a proposal, I show both intel, and amd, and let them choose, when they see the just how little the difference is they usually pick amd, with a ssd, and sixteen gigs of the fastest ram they can afford. They are usually happy and I know my pockets are!
 
On ddr3 vs ddr4, I'd hold out. I was looking and it looks like on ebay you can get about 10-15 bucks for 4 gb of ddr3. If you have enough, sell that stuff off and that pays for the ddr4. One thing I have learned, even if buying AMD, always buy the best cpu you can afford, that way you don't have to upgrade as soon. That said, if you are going to look at the 8370, I'd consider skipping that. It is probably a better binned cpu, but right now for example, you could pick up an FX 8320E, so still the 8 core, and a ASUS M5A99FX board on a combo for 175. Same combo with the 8370 is 245. Pocket the coin and get a nice cooler, then overclock the 8320E.

Although since I got the combo deal, I actually picked up an FX 6300 and replaced my old FX 8120. Going to sell the 8120 on ebay I think. Just gotta get it listed. But I can say esepecially once overclocked a bit, the 6300 seems to do fine for my games and what not. I am planning when zen hits though to save my $$ and try to get a setup.
 


I agree, that the minimum is what matters most.
 


Correct. I completely forgot about this with 4k resolution lol.

However, it all depends on frame rate, 4k at 60fps and 720P at 60fps will yield the exact same CPU load overall. However if your system can only output 4k at say 35fps and 720P/1080P at 120fps, then the CPU will have a harder time at 120fps.
 
FX 6330 vs i3 6100.

http://wccftech.com/amd-fx-6330-vs-intel-core-i3-6100/

No surprises.
 

There is no bottlenecking at 4k (via DSR until I get a TV). I have proof too
 


I just saw this today and read it! I'm going to link this article whenever I see someone choosing an FX for a gaming rig over an I3. There's just evidence after evidence the I3 is better for games. Not hearsay, actual benchmarks.
 

I picked the 8350 over the 4670k (the best i5 when I bought it) because of its extra multi core performance and because I couldn't afford an i7 back then.

 
To be fair, i3 6100 is still $26 USD more expensive than the Fx 6300. For people who are paying sub $130 on CPUs, they won't get a $400 GPU. And if you're looking at a budget or mid end system, the difference of $30 is the difference between 270x to 280 to 280x/380. At the sub $300 range GPU, every dollar counts and the bottleneck is at the GPU almost every time. I would rather spend the extra budget on GPU than CPU when looking at a budget build. A better, and more expensive, CPU have no room to 'stretch its legs' when paired with a mid-end GPU. Thus, you won't see that difference as you read in the Techspot article using the 980 ti.

I think the i3 6100 is one of the best budget CPU, still, it doesn't entail that there is no market for the Fx. If anything, this entails that there is no market for the i5s.

Look here, the i7 4790k and the stock 8350 make almost no difference when using a mid-range GPU such as the r9 280.
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Systems/Quad-Core-Gaming-Hardware-Roundup/Metro-Last-Light-and-Middle-Earth-Shadow-Mordor
 


To be fair as well, the i3 6100 has hyperthreading, 2 cores 4 threads. It is hard to distinguish it from a quad core and can beat out some older i5 Haswell processors in certain games. The better single core performance of the Intel is no surprise, nor is the better multithreaded benchmarks of the FX 6330. What people have to keep in mind is that the FX Piledriver processors only compete against i3 and i5 Intel, FX Piledriver has no answer for the i7 line. I think it is actually impressive that FX 6330s can still compete against the i3 6100 (which is more expensive) and the FX 8370 can still compete against the i5 6600K (which are more expensive). In single core execution the Intel is always going to win (that horse has been beat way beyond death) but in multithreaded applications the FX line can still compete even against Skylake (which is a much newer arch).
 


I would like to know how some of these test rigs are set up for these benchmarks. I wonder just how unstable they have the FX 8320E's overclock. There is no way that a properly overclocked FX 8320E @ 4.6Ghz should ever benchmark under a stock clocked FX 8320E as the one Shadow of Mordor benchmark shows. That shows there is something "off" with that test rig.

As for Fallout 4 I have no problems playing it on ultra settings 1080p, have never had a drop in FPS or lag in game play. For all the tested games, in real world gaming anything over 60 FPS isn't going to do anything for most people on a 1080p monitor that can only refresh at 60 (which the vast majority of people have), so all that extra power and FPS that the Intel lineup has on Fallout 4 means what exactly? Your paying a hefty premium (in most cases) for FPS that the vast majority of 1080p monitors can't even utilize.

It will be interesting to see what the benchmarks are for DX12 games when they hit the market.
 


With DX 11 most games never used more than 4 cores, but Kaby Lake and Zen will only be supported by Windows 10 and DX 12. DX 11's days are numbered, in fact they are up as newer games will be developed for DX 12. With the switch to DX 12 the trend of games utilizing more and more threads will only expand and become more prevalent. The era of two, and three threaded gaming is rapidly coming to an end. With DX 12 and the ability of multiple cores being able to communicate directly to the GPU the multithreaded capabilities of future games will be much greater than only 4 cores (4 threads).
 
Which means the Fx 6300 will continue to be relevant for at least a while. It is already impressive that a $90 CPU from 2012 is still running late 2015 AAA titles on ultra at 1080p with 60fps.
 
Some more "food for thought" on the i3 6100 being a great budget gamer front:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2971612/software-games/windows-10s-radical-directx-12-graphics-tech-tested-more-cpu-cores-more-performance.html

Now in that article it clearly states that DX 12 favors more cores (actual physical cores) and hyper threading in DX 12 is a flop compared to actual cores running at high speed. If we go suggesting a processor like the i3 6100 to everyone there are going to be a lot of disappointed gamers out there when they are able to dominate last year's DX 11 games but flop on current and future DX 12 games when compared to the cheaper FX 6300 running six actual cores at up to 5Ghz. The i3 6100 does well for itself in the single thread dominated DX 11 universe, but in a DX 12 universe where actual cores and core speed are what matter the dual core 6100 doesn't look like such a lock anymore.

In fact it could shake up a lot in the CPU world as the i5 lineup only has 4 cores and even the lower level i7s are 4 cores 8 threads (hyper threaded). If DX 12 performs better with high count physical cores at high clock speed (and hyper threading doesn't help out much) that plays right into AMD FX Piledriver's strong suits and you may see only the top tier 6 core 12 thread and 8 core 16 thread Intel processors gaming better.

This really should be no surprise when you look at the development of DX 12. DX 12 was created to give the Microsoft Xbone a boost in performance so it could run games at 1080p instead of a lower (than PS4) 720p that it is stuck on with several games. DX 12 was based off of Mantle and they worked closely with AMD in development as the hardware of the Xbone is AMD Jag cores (8 of them running at a lowly 1.8Ghz, Microsoft needed something to level the playing field). DX 12 was developed focusing on AMD hardware (a first in like .... forever) and thus doesn't favor Intel's arch or hyper threading (the first in like.... yep forever). Its going to be very interesting to run the first benchmarks with DX 12 enabled games.
 


Those are the lowest scores I've ever seen on any site for the FX 8350 running Ashes on DX12. It may be that Ashes is still in beta or that DX 12 drivers are still immature, but doing a search of several sites for benchmarks on Ashes they seem to contradict each other. One site has DX 11 even benchmarking higher than DX 12 while another site has DX 12 destroying DX 11. I've seen sites placing the FX 8350 above i5s and even some i7s and I've seen others place it below the i3, (some sites never list anything about overclocking and as the article I posted says DX 12 performs favorably with many cores running at high clocks... ie overclocking will help the FX a lot). I guess this is another have to wait and see. We will have to wait till Ashes is out of Beta and Nvidia and AMD have had time to perfect their DX 12 drivers. The results are just too all over the place depending on where you go. It does give the older FX Piledriver arch a "ray of hope" for improved gaming performance in the near future though.
 
At least they included the FX-8350; at the older link that you provided, testing was performed on Intel processors only. For a strange reason, people presumed (or hoped) that AMD processors would benefit from DX12 more than Intel processors, but that has no grounds since they don't benefit from Mantle more than Intel processors and DX12 is similar to Mantle (except that it isn't limited to AMD GPUs).
 
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