Is the FX -8350 CPU much better than the FX-4300

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Jamieking86

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Dec 5, 2013
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Hi guys, I've just recently upgraded my motherboard, graphics card and an extra 8GB of memory. I now have the ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R2,0 Motherboard, GTX 760 Graphics card and 16GB RAM. I currently have the FX-4300 CPU but i'm looking at the FX-8350 CPU, is their, and will i notice much difference? I do play games on my PC, but the newer games i get for the Xbox ONE. Is it worth paying £125 for this CPU? Thanks
 


Yeah that kind of power is nice :). I think 4 GHz is a fair increase without too much stress on it. The strain might be from the CPU being pushed beyond what it is originally tested and approved for, but the CPU is pulling its power from, and running instructions/electrical pulses through, the motherboard (which also connects everything else in your system). If the CPU goes ka-blooey your motherboard is right there in the blast range :).

My dad works in IT, and shared much of his knowledge with me when I was young. That is the only reason I know most of this stuff, else I never would have even bothered looking into it heh.

As for cache... In very simple terms, the cache sort of prepares data going through the CPU to help it process faster. You can compare it to streaming a Youtube or Netflix video and it buffering to help keep it going smoothly. The cache memory can process and read/write main memory much faster than the CPU, so it is ready to process BEFORE the instructions are executed, making the process faster. It is very similar to RAM, since cached memory was developed originally because of the gap in speeds between CPU and RAM, only it executes much faster.

As for the difference between L1, L2, L3, etc... Each level just helps increase performance, for simplicity's sake.

There is a lot of extra details in the cache and how it relates to RAM, but there is too much to type up in here... So here are a few good references if you want to get into the nitty-gritty crap lol:

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/188776-how-l1-and-l2-cpu-caches-work-and-why-theyre-an-essential-part-of-modern-chips

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/55662-top-tip-difference-between-l2-and-l3-cache

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_cache
 

Wat this guy said is totally true...
Spend the price gap between 8320 and 8350 for a decent cooler and you are good to go.
If not overclocking, you can always turn on the turbo, which takes it to 3.8ghz. The 8320 is a great overclocker unless you are trying to break some overclocking record!!! Maybe you do, but won't help much in performance... It works best when its under 4.7ghz.

 


It's only logical that the FX-8320 has double the cache size if it has double the amount of cores... It's not going to add anything to the performance if the cache size for each core is the same on both processors.....