[SOLVED] May I switch the CPU?

[Vox]

Hi there,
I'd like to speed up my daughter's PC. I have 2 CPUs with motherboards and I'm unsure if it's worth replacing the CPU:

from the AMD A10-5800K to an Intel Pentium G4560.

The current "rig" is an FM2 mobo with the mentioned A10-5800K, we use the integrated GPU. It has an SSD, a HDD and 4GB of DD3 RAM.

I’m not sure if replacing the processor to the Intel one would make the computer slower or faster, given my daughter’s user habits: She's using the machine 99% of time watching medium-quality (480p / 720p) anime videos on the monitor. Within this 99% she's also doing a lot of torrenting and copying these movies from folders to folders around the drive to categorize. Most of times she's doing this multiplied so copying more than one movie at a time, and many times she's watching 2 videos at once windowed while sometimes other videos are also opened and paused in the background. 1% of her time she uses Microsoft Teams for school and rarely she's browsing the internet with Chrome (dozens of opened tabs). No games playing outside of some browser-type flash games, like Fireboy-Watergirl, etc. However the resources of the PC are usually drained to dust and everything is very slow because of these multitasks.

Would a change to G4560 provide faster performance in these tasks? I've read through many comparison site over the internet, cpu-world.com, cpu.userbechmark.com, technical.city, cpubenchmark.net, cpu-monkey, etc, etc, and while most of them are rating the G4560 faster in the usual benchmark apps, I'm still not convinced if it would be faster for my daughter's habit specifically, because

• The AMD has 4 cores while the G4560 has only 2 cores,
• The base clock speed is also much higher on AMD,
• The Intel has Hyperthreading while AMD has not,
• The AMD is unlocked but I wouldn't overclock it if it's not really necessary,
• The Intel is missing many instruction sets that the AMD has,
• The AMD's GPU (Radeon HD7660D) is a lot faster than G4560's GPU (HD 610). 0.80 vs 0.35 Ghz. – I'm not sure if this has any impact on playing medium quality movies.

So what do you think about this CPU change? Would it be a speed gain or a speed loss for what she's using the PC?

 

[coolraveen]

Definitely a new CPU will help, Point is even if you want to get an RYZEN 5 2600 you will new a new motherboard, i think for your daughters usage for a budget build you can get an R3 with an inbuilt GPU.

 

[Vox]

Definitely a new CPU will help, Point is even if you want to get an RYZEN 5 2600 you will new a new motherboard, i think for your daughters usage for a budget build you can get an R3 with an inbuilt GPU.

I won't buy any new CPU.
I already have these two, an AMD A10-5800K and an Intel Pentium G4560 (with mobos).

The topic is about which processor would be better for these kinds of multitasking processes.

 

[coolraveen]

I won't buy any new CPU.
I already have these two, an AMD A10-5800K and an Intel Pentium G4560 (with mobos).

The topic is about which processor would be better for these kinds of multitasking processes.

Architecture wise Intel seems better, both processors are neck and neck. but AMD seems better with better speed and Cache.

 

[Mr.Spock]

performance-wise the Pentium would be a sidegrade at best, it's more efficient but for most multi-media processing the edge goes to the A10
you may want to compare your use case to the benchmarks to see what fits

https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2660?vs=2860

I won't buy any new CPU.
I already have these two, an AMD A10-5800K and an Intel Pentium G4560 (with mobos).

The topic is about which processor would be better for these kinds of multitasking processes.

 

[Vox]

performance-wise the Pentium would be a sidegrade at best, it's more efficient but for most multi-media processing the edge goes to the A10
you may want to compare your use case to the benchmarks to see what fits

https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2660?vs=2860

The linked CPU is a Skylake G4520 which has no Hyper-threading support and only has 2 threads while the Kaby Lake G4560 has 4. The G4520 also has a worse int. GPU and slower memory bandwith. Am I right that these have a lot of impact on multitasking?
Too bad, the Anandtech website doesn't know the G4560.

 

[coolraveen]

The linked CPU is a Skylake G4520 which has no Hyper-threading support and only has 2 threads while the Kaby Lake G4560 has 4. The G4520 also has a worse int. GPU and slower memory bandwith. Am I right that these have a lot of impact on multitasking?
Too bad, the Anandtech website doesn't know the G4560.

For heavy and Multi task AMD is better of the two,

 

[USAFRet]

So what do you think about this CPU change?

Well, you can't change just the CPU.
Those are not compatible with each others motherboards.

 

[Nighthawk117]

Hi there,
I'd like to speed up my daughter's PC. I have 2 CPUs with motherboards and I'm unsure if it's worth replacing the CPU:

from the AMD A10-5800K to an Intel Pentium G4560.

The current "rig" is an FM2 mobo with the mentioned A10-5800K, we use the integrated GPU. It has an SSD, a HDD and 4GB of DD3 RAM.

I’m not sure if replacing the processor to the Intel one would make the computer slower or faster, given my daughter’s user habits: She's using the machine 99% of time watching medium-quality (480p / 720p) anime videos on the monitor. Within this 99% she's also doing a lot of torrenting and copying these movies from folders to folders around the drive to categorize. Most of times she's doing this multiplied so copying more than one movie at a time, and many times she's watching 2 videos at once windowed while sometimes other videos are also opened and paused in the background. 1% of her time she uses Microsoft Teams for school and rarely she's browsing the internet with Chrome (dozens of opened tabs). No games playing outside of some browser-type flash games, like Fireboy-Watergirl, etc. However the resources of the PC are usually drained to dust and everything is very slow because of these multitasks.

Would a change to G4560 provide faster performance in these tasks? I've read through many comparison site over the internet, cpu-world.com, cpu.userbechmark.com, technical.city, cpubenchmark.net, cpu-monkey, etc, etc, and while most of them are rating the G4560 faster in the usual benchmark apps, I'm still not convinced if it would be faster for my daughter's habit specifically, because

• The AMD has 4 cores while the G4560 has only 2 cores,
• The base clock speed is also much higher on AMD,
• The Intel has Hyperthreading while AMD has not,
• The AMD is unlocked but I wouldn't overclock it if it's not really necessary,
• The Intel is missing many instruction sets that the AMD has,
• The AMD's GPU (Radeon HD7660D) is a lot faster than G4560's GPU (HD 610). 0.80 vs 0.35 Ghz. – I'm not sure if this has any impact on playing medium quality movies.

So what do you think about this CPU change? Would it be a speed gain or a speed loss for what she's using the PC?

The Kaby Lake G4560 will provide a better overall experience. It is up to 65% faster in single threaded performance over the A10-5800K and 21% faster in multi-core performance.

 

[Nighthawk117]

The Intel iGPU is more than capable of video playback. Also it's the Intel chip that has the advantage in terms of instruction set not the AMD so don't worry about that. Kaby Lake is a superior architecture it's just it's only a dual core CPU. However if you were to hand me the two systems and ask me to pick one then I would go with the Intel, that's my two cents.

 

[Vox]

Well, you can't change just the CPU.
Those are not compatible with each others motherboards.

Switching CPU with mobo of course... The post started with that. I have 2 sets of CPU+mobo, which one I should choose for the described purpose.

 

[Vox]

It is up to 65% faster in single threaded performance over the A10-5800K and 21% faster in multi-core performance.

Could you link the source please.

 

[USAFRet]

Switching CPU with mobo of course... The post started with that. I have 2 sets of CPU+mobo, which one I should choose for the described purpose.

Ah, OK.

What parts would you be switching?

For that use, I'm not seeing a huge difference either way.
And this would entail a whole OS reinsatll.

 

[Vox]

For heavy and Multi task AMD is better of the two,

I'm not 100% sure if the described tasks are actually count Multitasking. It's only 3 applications at the same time: multiple windows copy (explorer.exe?), media player instances and lots of Chrome pages opened / browsed.

 

[Vox]

Ah, OK.

What parts would you be switching?

For that use, I'm not seeing a huge difference either way.
And this would entail a whole OS reinsatll.

Just the CPU (with mobo). The question is about about which CPU could handle the described purpose better/faster.

 

[Nighthawk117]

Could you link the source please.

This is based on the Cinebench R15 scores:
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-amd_a10_5800k-114-vs-intel_pentium_g4560-697

I prefer to use Cinebench rather than userbenchmark. It's a very well respected CPU benchmark used by most hardware reviewers and I've found it to be fairly accurate of what you can expect in the real world.

 

[USAFRet]

Just the CPU (with mobo). The question is about about which CPU could handle the described purpose better/faster.

And I'm not getting a warm fuzzy about the difference being enough to warrant the hassle of changing.

 

[TerryLaze]

The Intel igpu has quicksync which will reduce the resource cost of playing videos by a whole bunch if those anime are in H264 format.

But copying multiple large files will always slow down a lower end machine because the I/O is just so much lower, it will interfere with anything else that needs to read or write from disk, like watching videos.

Browsing with multiple tabs on 4Gb is also asking much no matter which CPU you have.

So yeah unless the problem is coming from the video playback I doubt there is going to be a noticeable difference.

 

[TerryLaze]

Just the CPU (with mobo). The question is about about which CPU could handle the described purpose better/faster.

Also keep in mind that you would have to do a clean new install for the switch and I would recommend to not do that on the drive your daughters OS is on right now, keep that untouched for safety.

 

[Nighthawk117]

You say you already have the board and CPU. Do you have DDR4 memory for the Kaby Lake part? If not Kaby Lake only support's DDR3L, you would need to check your board supports it. Whatever you do do not put standard DDR3 with the intel system.

 

[Vox]

The Intel igpu has quicksync which will reduce the resource cost of playing videos by a whole bunch if those anime are in H264 format.

But copying multiple large files will always slow down a lower end machine because the I/O is just so much lower, it will interfere with anything else that needs to read or write from disk, like watching videos.

Browsing with multiple tabs on 4Gb is also asking much no matter which CPU you have.

So yeah unless the problem is coming from the video playback I doubt there is going to be a noticeable difference.

First first, thanks for reading my post through. I think only a marginal part of the slowing come from the video playbacks. You mentioned the RAM, is it possible to get more speed gain by upgrade to 8GB or 16GB than switching the CPU over?

 

[Vox]

You say you already have the board and CPU. Do you have DDR4 memory for the Kaby Lake part? If not Kaby Lake only support's DDR3L, you would need to check your board supports it. Whatever you do do not put standard DDR3 with the intel system.

Hmm, I thought it works with the current 2x2GB DDR3 modules but I have a 4GB DDR4 module too just in case. Does that change (DDR3 to DDR4) make any significant difference on the topic question?

 

[taeioum]

Sheesh, so many hyptothetical. The differences between these CPUs is nothing. The only way you'll know if it matters at all is by testing it all, which makes me side by @USAFRet. Effort is everything.

In the end spent so much time thinking this out and you'll get 0 accurate answer as there is no one here who has both CPUs and has tested them both in your usecase.

My two cents are that you're probably going to notice a tiny performance bump, if there's any bump at all. Don't bring DDR4 into this mix as well.. If so, replace your entire Mobo/CPU/RAM combo for a i5-6600K or better or any Ryzen series.

 

[USAFRet]

Further....if you do this swap, and it 'feels' faster, that will almost certainly be due to having a bare, pristine, brand new OS install.
You're not operating with several years worth of old gunk in the system.

 

[Nighthawk117]

Hmm, I thought it works with the current 2x2GB DDR3 modules but I have a 4GB DDR4 module too just in case. Does that change (DDR3 to DDR4) make any significant difference on the topic question?

DDR3 is 1.5v, DDR3L is 1.35v, you do not want to pump 1.5v through the IMC of a Kaby Lake part that could destroy it. DDR4 doesn't change the performance equation, I believe the stats I quote you were with DDR4 anyway. The single core performance uplift from Kaby Lake is so great that certainly under light loads, it's going to feel like a much snappier much more responsive system than the AMD. In terms of it's multi-threaded performance it is still notably faster, however what difference you are going to notice in the way you use this machine is difficult to say without trying it.

If you have another 4GB of DDR3 lying around to increase the current system to 8GB then I would try that first as that's the easiest. Otherwise if it were me, I would try the Kaby Lake part as you are clearly not happy with the current performance anyway. Again another 4GB ram doubling to 8GB would make a noticeable difference.