Switching over to the darkside

[Bulooka]

My current rig:

***i-3 540 Clarksdale
***Biostar TX5E CFX-SLI
2 x 2gb Corsair Memory
HIS 4670 Radeon HD
2tb Samsung HDD

What I would like to upgrade to:

***AMD 8120 FX Eight Core
***GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3 AM3+
(Ram stays the same)
(GFX card stays the same)
(HDD stays the same)

What I'm wondering:
-Will I have to reinstall windows because I'm changing chipsets?
-Will this specific CPU and Mobo upgrade yield a "night/day" performance increase?

 

[nikorr]

[fixed]What I'm wondering:
-Will I have to reinstall windows because I'm changing chipsets?[/fixed]
Yes, even if it may run, don't u want to have the top performance?

In many cases it will not even boot, so back up your stuff first : ))

 

[Bulooka]

What will prevent it from booting? Just the fact that I'm changing the chipsets?

 

[nikorr]

What will prevent it from booting? Just the fact that I'm changing the chipsets?

Different MOBO and CPU - all the drivers ...

 

[Bulooka]

Excellent, thanks for the info. Makes sense.

 

[nikorr]

If it is the same CPU and the different board - it will boot mostly, but performance suffer : )

 

[Onus]

Before building an AMD system, please read this: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-fx-pentium-apu-benchmark,3120.html
I mostly lurk in the budget segment, and articles and benchmarks like that one (there are many more, all over) make clear the sad truth. Except possibly for some server workloads, Intel is the way to go at ANY price point, even in the budget range that AMD used to own. I've built mostly AMD systems over the last few years, but right now I don't see doing another one.

Edit: Whew; when I first read the thread title, I though it would be about someone thinking of buying a Mac.

 

[Bulooka]

Haha no, theres a difference between the "dark side" and a "black hole" 😉

see what I did there?

 

[Deleted member 217926]

Not going to be much of an "upgrade". The i3 actually does pretty well vs an FX 8150.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/143?vs=434

For almost the same price as the FX chip a 2500K is a much better choice.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/143?vs=288

 

[Bulooka]

All 3 are great processors.

I'm not looking for the biggest upgrade in the processor itself, rather I'm looking to upgrade my chipset. 2007 called, they wanted they're motherboard back.