[SOLVED] Is an FX8350 upgrade worth it in my case?

[uria702]

My system specs are listed below. I'm possibly interested in buying an FX8350 to replace my aging FX4130. the upgrade will cost me roughly $50. My question is whether it is worth upgrading to the 8350 and keeping my AM3+ motherboard for another 2-3 years or if I'd be better off selling my cpu/mobo/ram and upgrading to a ryzen 7. Obviously, the ryzen is faster but is the performance going to be that much more noticeable for someone playing some casual games like Counter Strike? I mostly use the PC for productivity. A lot of word processing, excel, some photoshop, a lot of wordpress backend work and web browsing in general, etc. My system isn't necessarily slow, but the upgrade is inexpensive and if it'll improve my performance and put off a more expensive upgrade for another 2 years, I'd like to sink the $50 in now.

I've been having an issue with freezing and after weeks of diagnostics and part swapping, I've narrowed it down to the PSU. I'll be sending it out for an RMA replacement, so I was wondering if, at the same time, it makes sense to just upgrade to the most powerful processor my mobo can handle which is the 8350. Any advice is appreciated. Thank you.

System Specs:
Cooler Master HAF912 Case with 200mm Top fan and 140mm side fan. Additional 120mm fans at front and back.
KINGWIN Lazer LZ-1000 1000W Modular 80 PLUS BRONZE Power Supply
ECS A990FXM-A Motherboard
AMD FX4130 Quad Core 3.7GHZ Processor
16GB PNY XLR8 DDR3-12800 RAM
2x Sapphire R9 280X Video Card in Crossfire
ASUS 802.11ac USB Adapter
256GB Crucial MX100 SATA DRIVE
Clean Install of Windows 10 Professional

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

It's time to get off the FX platform , move onto RYZEN. FX is really starting to show it's age now in gaming and overall performance.

 

[uria702]

It's time to get off the FX platform , move onto RYZEN. FX is really starting to show it's age now in gaming and overall performance.

I understand that Ryzen is newer and faster, but I'd like to put off spending $300-$400 on a new motherboard, ram and cpu if possible as that's quite an expensive upgrade.

I guess a better way to ask is would I notice a performance boost with the 8350 or should I stick to my 4130 for another year or two until I upgrade to Ryzen?

 

[CountMike]

Your MB can certainly take it and 8350 would be good upgrade specially over 1st gen FX 41xx (Bulldozer). For what you said would be used for I think 50 bucks would be worthwhile just make sure it comes with appropriate cooler because the one from old one wouldn't cut it and you may have to invest in aftermarket one.
On the other hand, when I made my first Ryzen setup with 1600x it had more than twice the performance of my 8350 OC-ed to 4.9GHz. Just something to think about.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Very very little improvment. FX is just too weak now. Some intel dual cores can outperform the 8350.

 

[CountMike]

Very very little improvment. FX is just too weak now. Some intel dual cores can outperform the 8350.

It's still double the performance of old one and for 50 bucks can't even start thinking about new system, specially not Intel.

 

[richk1853]

If you are short on money, yes the FX 8350 will be a massive upgrade over the fx 4130. But the FX 8350 maybe has one to two years of OKish gaming left (don't know how you're still rocking the 4130) before it will really need to be replaced.

 

[Achaios]

I agree with @Dark Lord of Tech.

You are doing the OP a disservice to recommend an "upgrade" to yet another Faildozer.

OP had the 4130 Faildozer=1249 CPU marks @PassMark (Pentium 4 levels of performance)

and now he is gettin' a 8350 Faildozer=1510 CPU Marks (Intel Core 2 levels of of perormance)

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

It's 2019, and the OP is goin' from a Pentium 4 to a Core 2, i.e. from a year 2005 performance CPU to a year 2008 performance CPU.

Although it is known that the 8350 Faildozer can cook eggs and bacon, you are suggesting the OP to buy a 250W TDP aftermarket cooler to cool that thing. The 212 Evo and similar priced coolers won't cut it.

Then, you are telling the OP to overclock it, altho you know that without a top-of-the-line cooler he won't ever reach max overclocks and you also know that this used CPU off ebay that he is gonna get will have been ran to the ground voltage-degradation wise because it ran overclocked continuously at most probably ridiculous voltages for the past 12 years or so.

So you are doing the OP a disservice and caused him to disregard the Mods sound advice.

Whatever man, if you perform a search at the forums, 6/10 of the posts here are cheapskates with Faildozers askin' why their CPUs underperform.

Even if you don't believe the Mod or me, there has to be a reason why 6/10 of the posts we get here are from Faildozer owners.

 

[InvalidError]

Generally, I'd recommend ditching AM3 but for light everyday use and gaming, a $50 FX8350 to get an extra year or two of useful life out of your current system doesn't sound too bad for your modest intended use when the minimum viable platform upgrade would cost around $300, ~$450 if you were considering a Ryzen 2700.

 

[richk1853]

I agree with @Dark Lord of Tech.

You are doing the OP a disservice to recommend an "upgrade" to yet another Faildozer.

OP had the 4130 Faildozer=1249 CPU marks @PassMark (Pentium 4 levels of performance)

and now he is gettin' a 8350 Faildozer=1510 CPU Marks (Intel Core 2 levels of of perormance)

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

It's 2019, and the OP is goin' from a Pentium 4 to a Core 2, i.e. from a year 2005 performance CPU to a year 2008 performance CPU.

Although it is known that the 8350 Faildozer can cook eggs and bacon, you are suggesting the OP to buy a 250W TDP aftermarket cooler to cool that thing. The 212 Evo and similar priced coolers won't cut it.

Then, you are telling the OP to overclock it, altho you know that without a top-of-the-line cooler he won't ever reach max overclocks and you also know that this used CPU off ebay that he is gonna get will have been ran to the ground voltage-degradation wise because it ran overclocked continuously at most probably ridiculous voltages for the past 12 years or so.

So you are doing the OP a disservice and caused him to disregard the Mods sound advice.

Whatever man, if you perform a search at the forums, 6/10 of the posts here are cheapskates with Faildozers askin' why their CPUs underperform.

Even if you don't believe the Mod or me, there has to be a reason why 6/10 of the posts we get here are from Faildozer owners.

Yes, but the upgrade is $50 for basically up to double the CPU performance. The FX 8350 can still do respectable console quality gaming if you're OK with drops to the 30's fps. The OP has old graphic's cards which are around gtx 1050 performance (two of them used in Crossfire would probably return around GTX 1060/RX 580 performance at best) so basically the OP would new an entirely new system anyway down the road so the FX 8350 would do for the next 1-2 years if you're not picky about constant 60fps no matter what.

Personally OP I would go for it so long as you keep your expectations in check. For $50 you would get at least one more year, possibly two before you have really have to upgrade, and new games are finally allowing the FX 8350 to make use of all 8 threads. I would've been happy to upgrade for $50 from my FX 6300 two years ago but prices were still high so I went with a whole platform upgrade to the i5 6600k which promptly became obsolete with the release of Ryzen 6 months later.

 

[Achaios]

Yes, but the upgrade is $50 for basically up to double the CPU performance. The FX 8350 can still do respectable console quality gaming if you're OK with drops to the 30's fps. The OP has old graphic's cards which are around gtx 1050 performance (two of them used in Crossfire would probably return around GTX 1060/RX 580 performance at best) so basically the OP would new an entirely new system anyway down the road so the FX 8350 would do for the next 1-2 years if you're not picky about constant 60fps no matter what.

Personally OP I would go for it so long as you keep your expectations in check. For $50 you would get at least one more year, possibly two before you have really have to upgrade, and new games are finally allowing the FX 8350 to make use of all 8 threads. I would've been happy to upgrade for $50 from my FX 6300 two years ago but prices were still high so I went with a whole platform upgrade to the i5 6600k which promptly became obsolete with the release of Ryzen 6 months later.

1. PC games are based on IPC performance, not multi core performance.

2. A Faildozer can't even hit 60 FPS in World of Warcraft Vanilla, a 2005 game. Idk what games you are talking about that the Faildozer produces 60 FPS. I think that you confuse Console gaming with PC gaming.

The only chance you'll see 60 FPS in any modern game with a Faildozer, is if you turn your toon to face a wall and all you see in your screen are the bricks in the said wall.

3. Some games that heavily depend on IPC performance, such as the Total War games post 2013, are completely unplayable with a Faildozer.

4. As posted above, and I am going to repost:

OP had the 4130 Faildozer=1249 CPU marks @PassMark (Pentium 4 levels of performance)

and now he is gettin' a 8350 Faildozer=1510 CPU Marks (Intel Core 2 levels of of performance)

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

OP is going from a 1249 IPC performance to a 1510 IPC performance. That means around 18% ish percent increase in IPC. That increase is so small it is almost insignificant.

Like I said above, multi-core score doesn't matter because only around 3 or 4 modern games even use 6 cores and none uses 8 cores AFAIK. As for DX 11 games, they all use 4 cores max and IPC is the most important CPU performance metric in every single DX11 game AFAIK.

 

[InvalidError]

Like I said above, multi-core score doesn't matter because only around 3 or 4 modern games even use 6 cores and none uses 8 cores AFAIK.

Game scores aren't particularly relevant here since OP wants to use the PC mainly for everyday productivity and is already mostly satisfied with his 4130. Doubling the core count on a slightly better architecture will help a fair bit with multi-tasking responsiveness, the modest bump for gaming is a bonus.

 

[richk1853]

1. PC games are based on IPC performance, not multi core performance.

2. A Faildozer can't even hit 60 FPS in World of Warcraft Vanilla, a 2005 game. Idk what games you are talking about that the Faildozer produces 60 FPS. I think that you confuse Console gaming with PC gaming.

The only chance you'll see 60 FPS in any modern game with a Faildozer, is if you turn your toon to face a wall and all you see in your screen are the bricks in the said wall.

3. Some games that heavily depend on IPC performance, such as the Total War games post 2013, are completely unplayable with a Faildozer.

4. As posted above, and I am going to repost:

OP had the 4130 Faildozer=1249 CPU marks @PassMark (Pentium 4 levels of performance)

and now he is gettin' a 8350 Faildozer=1510 CPU Marks (Intel Core 2 levels of of performance)

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

OP is going from a 1249 IPC performance to a 1510 IPC performance. That means around 18% ish percent increase in IPC. That increase is so small it is almost insignificant.

Like I said above, multi-core score doesn't matter because only around 3 or 4 modern games even use 6 cores and none uses 8 cores AFAIK. As for DX 11 games, they all use 4 cores max and IPC is the most important CPU performance metric in every single DX11 game AFAIK.

1. Where did you read that I said FX 8350 produces 60fps? I said if you are not concerned with constant no compromise 60fps, than FX 8350 will do fine for another year or two so long as you don't mind drops to 30fps.

2. I gamed on an FX 6300 for two years before getting my 6600k and it was nowhere near as bad as what you are proclaiming. Most Triple A games pre 2016 produced average 60fps though there were lots of drops. Even Battlefield 1 beta was perfectly playable on the FX 6300, if not ideal.
I know most games are based on IPC performance mostly. But because modern games can utilize all eight threads, Bulldozer is not as terrrible in modern titles as one would think. So long as you're OK with jumping between 30-60fps. As I said, console quality.

3. I call BS on your WoW. Bulldozer is at least marginally better than the Phenom series, and the Phenom series were excellent value CPUs, that came a few years later after 2005. If Bulldozer is struggling to meet 60fps in WoW, it must be the upgraded version and not the 2005 release version. Or that benchmark you saw is GPU/RAM limited. I completely laugh at your comparison of Bulldozer to a Pentium 4 and Core 2 duo. I had a mid range Bulldozer and while it was far from the equal of my 6600k or the new Ryzen series, I know for a fact your claims are ridiculous. If PassMark actually claimed that, they should be struck from the record as reliable benchmark sight.

3. And the upgrade is $50. You're honestly saying a $50 upgrade for up to double the CPU performance with what the OP is already satisfied with is such a terrible idea and that he should go with an expensive $400 platform upgrade instead with new CPU, motherboard and DDR4 RAM when he's already OK with his FX 4130?

 

[InvalidError]

1. I call BS on your WoW. Bulldozer is at least marginally better than the Phenom series

WoW is probably among the most lightly threaded non-trivial modern games with ~70% of its CPU usage happening on a single thread. Patch 8.2 or 8.3 is supposed to bring significant threading improvements to help people with quad-core CPUs or better. I don't expect it to help much beyond maybe maxing out view distance while flying without stutters since my i5-3470 is already managing 60fps (vsync) pretty much anywhere else.

 

[richk1853]

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-2300-vs-AMD-FX-8350/m291vs1489
Alright, as you can see FX 8350 single threaded performance @4ghz is about equal to 2.8 ghz Sandy Bridge core. So Sandybridge has about a 40% greater IPC than the latest bulldozer. Not a great result, but the FX 8350 has a much higher frequency to make up for that and can be overclocked to single core i5 2400 levels of performance. Older games depend on single threaded performance, which is a combination of frequency multiplied by IPC, not just IPC. Would a i5 2400 really struggle that much in WoW?