Should I upgrade from an FX 8350 to an i7 7700k?

[semichaud1]

Hi,

I currently have an FX 8350 and GTX 1070 (and 16 GB of system RAM).

Based on my research online an i7 7700k has 75% higher performance than the FX 8350.

What do you think? Do you have a better suggestion that an i7 7700k?

In some games like Mass Effect Andromeda and Deus Ex Mankind Divided I get large frame rate dips (from 60 down to 10 fps) and microfreezing in Arkham Knight when moving around in the game world, despite running the games at default graphics settings and 1440p (or lower), and Windows power options on High Performance. So, I installed ParkControl on my PC two days ago and ran it as admin and maxed out all cpus at 100% and disabled the scaling frequencies etc. Andromeda and Mankind Divided run without fps drops now. Haven't tested Arkham Knight yet. The thing is my system meets the RECOMMENDED system requirements for these games so why the fps drops? It looks like windows or the bios is downscaling the cpu performance for some reason. Task manager performance shows all cores active at 50 to 60% when running those games. My PC is also dust free. I clean it every month.

Will buying a better cpu and an intel cpu instead of amd fix those fps drops in games for which my system meets the recommended requirements?

Thanks.

 

[madmatt30]

Yeah , the spire is a blinding stock cooler.

It took em a few years but amd went from the noisiest stock cooler on the planet to what's easily the quietest cooler for it's size that ive ever used.

How you finding the system itself ?? Assuming you're up & running of course.

 

[semichaud1]

Yeah , the spire is a blinding stock cooler.

It took em a few years but amd went from the noisiest stock cooler on the planet to what's easily the quietest cooler for it's size that ive ever used.

How you finding the system itself ?? Assuming you're up & running of course.

The system is really good. However, The Evil Within 2 still has microfreezing and Mass Effect Andromeda still has some fps drops but less than before. That's after moving to an SSD and from an FX 8350 to a Ryzen 5 1600 with a new motherboard, and 2 x 8 gb 2400 mhz DDR4 ram sticks in dual channel, a clean install of Windows 10 64 bit Pro and updating all drivers. Some games I guess are just programmed badly, hence the microfreezing. The 30 fps cap on consoles help hide those but on pc it's apparent until in 20 years time when you have a system that can run the darn thing fast enough without microfreezing. Overall, I'm very pleased with my new system but sad at the same time because some games still run poorly (but better than with the fx8350), and also knowing that in a few years time I will again experience the same level of bad performance like with the fx8350 as games get more demanding even at lower settings. So I am training myself to forcefully forget about those issues in games and just enjoy them however, I can. Lol I am making myself blind to performance issues in games.

 

[Spank1]

The 1600 is bottlenecking your GTX 1070, you may either need to OC the CPU or underclock the card a bit to smooth games out. My 1600 bottlenecks my R9 390 if I overclock the card and that's with the CPU at close to 4ghz.
If you get your rig setup properly all games should be buttery smooth regardless of the average frame rate.
Load up 3Dmark Vantage https://www.futuremark.com/benchmarks/legacy and play with the settings from there. Your Ram timing will make a difference, loosening the timings might drop you average FPS a fraction but gameplay might be a lot smoother. At least it is on my Ryzen.
I think for gaming I settled on 2933mhz with 16-18-18-39 timings, it would run tighter but was more prone to crashes and stutters. I have Samsung B die memory so it's quite flexible timing wise but for general use I like to run the rated voltage.
At 2400mhz probably something like 15-17-17-36 should go well for gaming if your memory, board & CPU can run it.

 

[13thmonkey]

The 1600 is bottlenecking your GTX 1070, you may either need to ... underclock the card a bit to smooth games out.

Really? I'm sure if you underclock the card enough it'll only perform at the lowest level, but that's not really the point is it?

 

[madmatt30]

Oc the cpu maybe , but underclock the gpu ?? No, that makes no sense at all.The 1070 isn't 'quite' strong enough for 1440p ultra settings as it is.

Andromeda should never go below 70fps with a ryzen 1600 even at stock.

 

[ohiou_grad_2006]

From what I was just reading, you may find this that interesting.

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/815648-ryzen-5-1600-and-gtx-1070/

Some of the guys there were saying basically at like 100hz refresh rate you are fine, but at higher refresh rate you may see some stutter.

I have the ryzen 1600 and game at 1080p 60hz, personally no issues with my setup. I am running it at 3.7ghz. I would suggest you overclock it a bit. Even the stock cooler will allow you to have a little extra boost. The good thing with ryzen is that they are supposed to support the socket until 2020, so say when ryzen 2 or ryzen 3 comes out, you could always drop in a new CPU. As far as single core performance they are on par with Intel's haswell architecture. But that is actually pretty good when you consider that compared to the FX chips that is something like a 40% boost in single core performance. You figure if ryzen 1 is just the first generation of ryzen and is as good as it is, what will ryzen 2 or 3 look like.

 

[13thmonkey]

From what I was just reading, you may find this that interesting.

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/815648-ryzen-5-1600-and-gtx-1070/

Some of the guys there were saying basically at like 100hz refresh rate you are fine, but at higher refresh rate you may see some stutter.

I have the ryzen 1600 and game at 1080p 60hz, personally no issues with my setup. I am running it at 3.7ghz. I would suggest you overclock it a bit. Even the stock cooler will allow you to have a little extra boost. The good thing with ryzen is that they are supposed to support the socket until 2020, so say when ryzen 2 or ryzen 3 comes out, you could always drop in a new CPU. As far as single core performance they are on par with Intel's haswell architecture. But that is actually pretty good when you consider that compared to the FX chips that is something like a 40% boost in single core performance. You figure if ryzen 1 is just the first generation of ryzen and is as good as it is, what will ryzen 2 or 3 look like.

That's what most are saying, intel for very high FPS because of the single core perf, Ryzen however can do perfectly acceptable sub 100/120 FPS.

 

[waveriderj]

I just built a new computer. Had the FX-8350 before and really liked it - mostly for gaming. My new CPU is the Ryzen 5 1600X and I separately bought the Wraith Spire RGB cooler to go with it. People will tell you that it's not effective for the 1600X, but I have an OC to 3.9GHz and it has a resting temp of 30-33 degrees C. Get's to about 50*C when gaming. It's way faster and more efficient than the FX-8350. In Rainbow Six Siege I would get 70-80FPS and now I get about 125 on my 144Hz monitor. It helps too that I went from 1888 RAM to 3000Mhz, but it costed a lot for 16GB of that RAM.

 

[semichaud1]

From what I was just reading, you may find this that interesting.

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/815648-ryzen-5-1600-and-gtx-1070/

Some of the guys there were saying basically at like 100hz refresh rate you are fine, but at higher refresh rate you may see some stutter.

I have the ryzen 1600 and game at 1080p 60hz, personally no issues with my setup. I am running it at 3.7ghz. I would suggest you overclock it a bit. Even the stock cooler will allow you to have a little extra boost. The good thing with ryzen is that they are supposed to support the socket until 2020, so say when ryzen 2 or ryzen 3 comes out, you could always drop in a new CPU. As far as single core performance they are on par with Intel's haswell architecture. But that is actually pretty good when you consider that compared to the FX chips that is something like a 40% boost in single core performance. You figure if ryzen 1 is just the first generation of ryzen and is as good as it is, what will ryzen 2 or 3 look like.

I think I just have to accept that there are no games that can run 100% smoothly. I'm very happy with the bundle I bought as the performance in games is much better than with my fx 8350. I was thinking of switching to intel before making a decision to buy this bundle but I think that will still not allow for games that run without microfreezing and fps dips in some form. The way I see it is that all the games I play (Evil Within 2, Andromeda, Arkham Knight, AC Origins, Mankind Divided, etc.) are programmed with console gaming standards in mind. Meaning they don't care as much if it has microfreezing and fps dips on consoles. For one they are capping the fps at 30 on consoles and second they are assessing the game as played with a controller, so slow camera movements. That will force me to pay attention to the content of the game rather than the performance of the hardware and software supporting the game. I was so happy before 2009 when I was gaming on my ps3 and thought frame drops were a feature in the game. Ignorance is bliss.

 

[ohiou_grad_2006]

If you overclock the 1600 a little, that may help ease it as well. As if the cpu can run faster, it's less of a bottleneck to the graphics card. Sometimes if you ever have experienced a bad bottleneck on a system, where you basically have a graphics card WAY too powerful for your cpu, you will really get a lot of drops in FPS. With ryzen it's normally not an issue until you use higher refresh rates.

If you aren't using G-Sync, you might try nvidia's fast sync for trying to eliminate screen tearing. May not do anything for you but worth a shot.

https://beebom.com/what-is-nvidia-fast-sync-enable/

 

[semichaud1]

If you overclock the 1600 a little, that may help ease it as well. As if the cpu can run faster, it's less of a bottleneck to the graphics card. Sometimes if you ever have experienced a bad bottleneck on a system, where you basically have a graphics card WAY too powerful for your cpu, you will really get a lot of drops in FPS. With ryzen it's normally not an issue until you use higher refresh rates.

If you aren't using G-Sync, you might try nvidia's fast sync for trying to eliminate screen tearing. May not do anything for you but worth a shot.

https://beebom.com/what-is-nvidia-fast-sync-enable/

Yeah, fast sync makes the game smoother to play. I've been using it for the past few days. The mouse is more responsive and when fps drops occur it's not as bad. But just to clarify I have not had fps drops with my new cpu ryzen 5 1600 so far except on a few occasions which are about 1% of the time when playing. The games run much better compared to my fx 8350. I prefer not to overclock anything. I'd rather live with the bad performance.

 

[ohiou_grad_2006]

Oh it's easy. I run mine at 3.7ghz. It's even fine on stock cooling honestly. But I understand. To each his own.

 

[antishill]

The ryzen's will gimp your GTX1070. I have a GTX1070, and I faced this decision last year around this time when 7700K vs the Ryzen7, and I went with the 7700K. Not only were the Ryzen's massively overpriced, they performed worse for games for sure. I would go for 8700K if there is no money constraints because at this point the 8700K is about the same price as the 7700K.