Torn between getting Intel or AMD

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Z

zigar01

Reputable
Mar 6, 2014
11
0
4,510
Howdy Folks,

So I have an aging 1035t Phenom X6 processor. I got it to OC stable at about 3.4ghz and it's served me well that way for the past couple of years, but I recently decided to get myself a GTX 780 (haven't purchased it yet) and know that that processor is probably going to bottleneck that GPU.

The motherboard I currently have is socketed AM3+ so I can easily upgrade to an FX-8320 or 8350, but I seem to be reading everywhere that the intel Core i5-4670k or the i7-4770k beats the pants off of the FX-83XX chips.

I guess the bottom line is whether or not it's worth it for me to spend an extra $200-300 to get a new motherboard/intel CPU or just save that cash and get the FX-8320/8350.

Also, as a side note is anyone expecting a price drop of the GTX 700 series soon? Just wondering if I should pull the trigger sooner or later for the GPU :).

Thanks!

TL;DR - Worth it to spend an extra $200-300 to go with the newer Haswell Intel processors or save my cash and get an FX-8320/8350?
 
Solution
Memhorder
Sort by date Sort by votes
Let me put it this way. An FX-8350 overclocked to about 1 GHz higher than the 3770K/4770K will perform about just as well in gaming applications. However, overclock the Intel processors, and they really start to pull away. I would say that since you already have a decent AM3+ Board, you might as well stick with AMD, I know a few people who made the switch from an OC'd 8350 to a 4770K and 3770K and say that they really didn't see much difference, maybe a little once the chips were overclocked, but they said it was a huge waste of money.

Basically, you're paying a more for a lower performance per dollar ratio, but you will be getting some better performance.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Prices are not going to drop soon, because AMD video cards are bought like hot bread by the bitecoin/litecoin miners. On your other question, if you are going to sink that much money in a 780, it is worth it to go with an I7. Depending on the case, I7 4770 and a GTX 780 can sometimes provide even more FPS than a X6/8320 + 780 TI (specially in multiplayer). Not to mention the heat, power and extra cost for running an FX (depends on the country, where I live electricity is pretty expensive). Cheers and good luck.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
It doesn't beat the pants off the 8350. People see these graphs and charts but in the real world wouldn't notice difference if they were side by side. the difference is like thousandths of a second and a few frames. I would just go for an 8350 as it is a completely capable and fast chip when overclocked or even factory set. Save you money for the 780 which is an awesome card by the way.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Right now amazon has a deal on the 8320 (same as the 8350 just underclocked) for 140$ that saves you 100$ to the i5-4370k plus another 100-150$ for the mother board that's alot of money and you can easily overclock this to perform pretty close and up there with intel and remember games are starting to use more and more cores and i was also torn between these two last whether or not to go intel or amd i went with the 8320 and got a anther 660ti
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
8350 overclocks like a beast, but unless you have that thing in a full custom loop, you will never get it fast enough to outperform a 4770K. Plus, you might not be into heavy overclocking (people have gotten it to 5GHz on high end air, 6GHz on two 480 rads in a water loop)

Bottom line: The 8350K is a good CPU if you have an overclocking hobby, but for actual use nothing in the mainstream market beats a 4770K, and even a 4670K would be better than the AMD option.

Side note: I'd wait until the next maxwell card drops, that will likely push the 700 series downward in price. You know that the new high end (880?) will probably be out in time for the holiday shopping.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Here is a simple math, so see what is more worth it

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor ($139.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 770 2GB Video Card ($327.36 @ B&H)
Total: $467.35
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-03-16 13:00 EDT-0400)

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($219.00 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 760 2GB Video Card ($249.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $468.99
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-03-16 12:57 EDT-0400)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
If I were you, I would upgrade to the FX8320, but NO amount of overclocking will make it as good as the i7 4770k, and the i5 4670k will still beat it in gaming 90% of the time. But that is not to say it is a bad chip because it's not.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


He'll need a Motherboard with the Intel
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Bottom line you can get a Better Graphics card with an AMD 8320 which everyone know that is what mostly counts when it comes to Gaming yes the Processor does matter but where you really want to spend your money is on the GPU
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


I know, i excluded the motherboard, and yet again the AMD option is more budget friendly.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Few things to consider:

Now lets think for a bit. (Look at the single GPU configurations) The FX is OCed to 4.4 GHz as well as the I7 3770k. The I7 will pull around 95W/100W out of the motherboard (depending on temperature) at stock, 75W at full load. The FX will pull over 160W out of the motherboard (depending on temperature) and 130W? at stock(not entirely sure here). Also, OC limits power saving features and at lower clocks, Intel is even more efficient. Depending on where you live, in 2/3 years, the added cost of running the FX is going to cost the same as going with an I7.

The FX gets around 10% lower score for single GPU. Regardless of how you overclock, those 10% are in 95% there. It is because of the underlying architecture between the platforms. In other words the Intel platform has superior utilization and connection to the PCIe ports and RAM, which is inherited from the architecture itself, not the the speed of the chip. Not to mention that future SLI/XFire is amazingly worse on the AMD platform.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crossfire-sli-scaling-bottleneck,3471-12.html

So:

AMD:
GTX 780 - 525$
FX8350 - 190$
TOTAL: $715
( Asus GTX 780 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121779 )

Intel:
GTX 780 - 525$
I7 4770k - $310
Z87 Motherboard of choice ~ 150$
Total: $985

$ Intel - $ AMD = 250$~270$ or in other words, the AMD is 25% cheaper

For 25% more you get: 10% performance increase right of the bat, better performance in multiplayer (unmeasurable due to the inability to recreate the same conditions each time), better performance for future SLI (if applicable), a lot of minor but convenient thingies comming from the Z87 motherboard compared to the old AMD motherboard (USB 3.0, better PCIe, SATA, etc,etc whatever-depends-on-the-case-mambo-jumbo) and power savings which over the course of 2-3 years might add up to ~100$.

Cheers and good luck.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


Well to start off with you're completely mixed up with the power consumptions. First of all, how do both chips utilize less power under full load versus idling? Second of all, switching the values around and assuming that is what you meant, it's yet again not true. The FX chips consume a max of 125 W on stock speeds. If you overclock, it will go up, but otherwise it will be around 60W idle I believe, and 125W load. The Intel chips is 95W max without overclocking, so it's not as massive as you said it is, so in that respect you're mistaken.

Second, an 8350 is just a stock OC 8320, so you can get that for around $40 cheaper and save even more money for around the same performance, or just alter a few simple BIOS settings and have the same performance.

Finally, AMD motherboard have the same features as Intel ones. They both can support USB 3.0, multiple PCI-E lanes, many SATA ports, etc. It doesn't depend on the CPU brand, it depends on the specific motherboard itself. Budget AMD boards aren't chock full of features, but neither are budget Intel boards.

Also, side-note, in a lot of applications, including gaming, the 8320 comes very close the the 3770K. In fact, I got very nearly the same framerate of someone playing BF4 with the same GPU and they had a 3770K vs my 6350. It's not as big of a difference as you may believe.

Then again, you are spending a lot of money on the 780, it may be worth it for you to get as small a bottleneck as possible.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


Like I said people look at the graphs and charts and see one bar higher than the other and immediately think it's wayy better but in the real world nobody would notice the difference in two rooms. The difference is like milliseconds apart. An overclocked 8320 or 8350 would keep up.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Okay people time to realize something.

An haswell core will perform better than a piledriver module.

Great example on when you will notice.

You use windows?
Windows scheduler is trying to use the less cores as possible.
What does that mean? Well, open 2 application and they will most likely run on 1 core.
Is windows scheduling bad and holding back true multi-coring performance?
No, there are more pros than there is cons, windows batterylife is terrible now, imagine if it scheduled to all cores for no reason.

A program needs to be specially programmed to utilize 8 cores. Games rarely use that many core, and if they do they use what could be called "sub-threads".
BF4 is an excellent example of this. Using 3-4 "main-threads" and can scale up with "sub-threads".

So for the general computing an Intel core would be better to have than an AMD module.

Would I recommend buying a new MOBO just to get an Intel processor?
No, not unless you have a ton of $$ to throw away.

My recommendations: Get the fx 8320 and a decent cooler, get a stable overclock and enjoy your performance.

To be perfectly clear, I'm not saying piledriver is shit, because it is NOT. This was simple an example why a stronger core could be prefered.

@Memhorder you will most likely feel the difference in most applications, and no an 8320 or 8350 wont keep up.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


So your saying an 8320/8350 will bottleneck the 780? Not likely. Sure the Haswell is faster, cooler. But in this case the 8350 is the best option. Period
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution

No, I'm not saying that a fx 8320/50 will bottleneck the 780. Please qoute the exact sentence I did say that.

What was my recommendation? Read my entire post and you should understand. Period.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


I'm still here, I had a kid's birthday party to attend and wasn't able to reply for the last couple hours :).
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I should bear to mention that I have a 750 watt PSU that's about 2 years old now. Would I need to grab myself a new PSU in order to run the new processor/video card. I know that the GPU is going to use about 20 more watts than my current one (GTX 570), but I'm not sure if the CPU is going to use more or less than my current one. Any tips there folks?

One more thing that I wish to clarify is that I'm gaming on a 1080p monitor with a smaller 1280x1024 as a secondary monitor that I use to keep my twitch up on on when I'm streaming. I'm not looking for completely bonkers framerates, but did want to have a bit of futureproofing in the GPU department and enjoy being able to crank up the AA and whatnot currently.

So in short, should I get a new PSU as well and all I'm doing with this rig is playing games, surfing the web, and streaming every now and then.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
apcs13,

Clearly, you are completely mistaken, What you are talking about is TDP. This is Thermal Design Power, this is not real power consumption. It is an indication for cooling solution manufacturers and system integrators, not an indication of actual consumption. Am I making any sense here? Or should I start with basic physics and electronics for dummies? Also, just to check if you know - higher temperature leads to higher resistance which means more power is needed to reach the same levels. P.S Where I live, a kW/h costs me around 25-30 euro cents with all taxes and bull, so that's why I care about electricity.

1:
Is is common knowledge to anybody who deals a bit more in depth with power management, that Intel chips without their IGP draw less power than the TDP and that FX chips draw more then their TDP. Since I did my testing most extensively with Pentium G 840, I7 2700K and I3 4130, I can tell you that none of them draw near their maximum TDP (2700k at stock). The 2700K I have in my box draws 72 W (without IGP) under full load at 52C at the hottest core or 8W (22C/24C) at idle or 12W while browsing/movies/music which sets at 22C/27C (coolest and hottest core). It does draw 81W at 78C (case fans disabled, stock Intel cooler just for testing). The I3 4130 draws around 46W at 60C with CPU and IGP at full load. At 75C it goes at 51W (max TDP at Intel website is 54).

2:
Since I do not own any AMD CPU, I lend my tools and equipment to a friend. He gave me results for his 8350 and said it was going 137W, but I do not remember at what C.

3.
zigar01 never said what motherboard he has. It is paired with a X6 so I was guessing it is few years old. The comparison I was making was at the presumption that his motherboard is few years old (pre FX time) and I had it compared with a Z87. It is a comparison of an old vs new motherboard. Not a comparison of Intel VS AMD motherboards in general.

4.
My reasoning was: If you are willing to give $750, just throw 250 more and get the maximum. Also, FX CPUs are going to get outdated faster. Games are dynamic by nature. They are not sequential and ordered like rendering or computations. A game can have 2 heavy threads this second and 5 heavy threads the next. In this cases, IPC and single core performance gives better results than core count. If you don't fully or at least partially saturate cores - then they are useless and that is just CPU performance. RAM bandwidth, PCIe latency, I/O between components is a ton more to consider.

5.
10% is 10%. 15 is 15 and 20 is 20. If you can't notice it, well some of us can. 30% more money for 15% more performance is awesome at the 1000 mark. Noone was talking about the cheapest way out. It was about is it worth it. And is it worth it means how will it pay in the long run. Lets take a subjective 50W difference between the 4770 and the 8350. 4 hours per day for 360 days (lets take a break for few days) is 1440 or around 86 kW/h. 86 kW/h for 3 years at 30 cents is 77.4 EUR. Here the 4770 is 310 euro while the 8350 is 200. Suddenly the initial difference becomes smaller. Lets say you use the computer for more hours per day or you run closer to full load, or since the 4770 is easier to cool down it will be more efficient W wise. Then the 4770 is cheaper in the long run, and the performance increase comes only at the expense of a motherboard.

Think in perspective, you speak about drawing conclusions from charts and that no one will notice the difference. Well you might not, but some people do. Cheers.


 
Upvote 0 Downvote
750watts is plenty i have a 8320 with a 660ti now and 6 fans 3hdd 1ssd h60 water cooler and optical drive and leds and im using a CX500( upgrading to 750) and i could easily run sli ( if my mother board would let me) 750watts is a decent amount of power so you should be fine make sure though its at least 80 plus bronze
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


For what it's worth I'm currently using an Asus M5A99FX
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
So, the real question is... what mobo does OP have? If its a 970 or 880/760G, I'd scrap the whole thing and go with the intel, cause he won't get that much of an OC from a 880/760G, and even with a 970, won't get a really good OC on the 8320/8350, to make it worth the expenditure. Basically I feel that if OP isn't running a good FX990.. this whole question about value will be a moot point and he'll need a new mobo and cpu.. so go Intel.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom