Upgrading To FX-8350, Someone Please Help Me Make A Decision.

[Dean98]

Hello,

For the past week I've been draining my soul sifting through all the crazy amounts of threads on this, but in the end I feel I'm not really any further forward.

Current Setup:
Phenom II x4 840 (stock speed)
460 GTX
8gb DDR3 1.3ghz ram
An SSD with a decent read/write, can't remember exactly the amount.

My dilemma is what CPU to get, I've had the x4 840 for roughly the past 3, or maybe 4, years. My choices in the end for what I'm willing to spend is between the FX-8350 and an i5 3570k or similar. Now, I know the i5 will give better gaming performance 80+ percent of the time, but I don't concentrate my time into gaming when at my PC; my general usage is as follows:

- Browsing the web; usually with 40+ tabs open and generally half of them being Youtube videos.

- Playing games; newly released and those a few years old.

- Watching videos; TV shows, movies etc.

- Running a Virtual PC every now and then.

And that's really all I'm using my computer for these days, and I don't expect it to change anytime in the distant future. So, what I'd really love to know - which I haven't been able to get a clear answer to yet - is will the FX-8350 be worth the Mobo+CPU upgrade? I've priced them out and to get the 8350 with a decent motherboard (Sabertooth 990fx/Asus M5A99X Evo) - since I will probably overclock it a bit - will cost me £229, or £250 if I go with the slightly better board; whereas the i5 3570k will cost me £230-£240 roughly since i5 motherboards seem to be cheaper as a whole.

So my main questions are as follows:

1) Is upgrading my motherboard and CPU from the x4 840 to the FX-8350 worth it in general?

2) Will I notice a difference in single threaded gaming performance by upgrading to the FX-8350? The main reasons I'm leaning towards it over the i5 is multi-tasking, and betting that more games will utilize 8-cores and multi-threading now that next gen consoles sport octo cores, and they're AMD. I don't render video, stream, or photo edit, but I'm pretty much guessing I'll be able to do a lot on the desktop without it slowing down at all, would that assumption be correct?

3) Will I notice a real world difference between the 3570k and the FX-8350 in gaming?

If you got this far, thanks for your time; any help would be greatly appreciated as I'm so burnt out from reading forums and watching videos on the subject.

Thanks,
Dean.

 

[rolli59]

1 I did this from Phenom 955BE and it was worth it. My board was already supporting the 8350 though.
2 Not much but more in modern games. I5 would give more effect overall. (I have both)
3 All the same games are playable and there will not be a massive difference most of the time I get more FPS out of the I5 both with HD7950 but it is all at same settings.

 

[Dean98]

Thanks for the reply.

I suppose I'm wanting an increase in gaming performance going up from the x4 840, but also have more multi-tasking capabilities, and I can't decide if the multi-tasking would really be that much better than the i5; on paper it's obviously better, but I know all too well that real world use is where it's important.

2 Not much but more in modern games. I5 would give more effect overall. (I have both)

Would multi-tasking around the desktop be noticeable compared? Because currently if I go to play a game I end Firefox because I feel there's a noticeable slight decrease in fps if I don't; would the 8350 allow me to just leave Firefox and other applications open because of the 8-cores?

 

[4745454b]

If your current board supports the 8320/50 then get that. If you have to buy a new board and the difference is that close, get the 3570/4670. 80% might be ok, but if the money is that close where you are why risk running into that 20% when you didn't need to? That's why I bought the 3570K when I did. I could have saved a bit, but I didn't want to run into a workload where the 8320 was going to cost me.

 

[rolli59]

You will have the same effect on the FX doing other things while gaming.

 

[Calculatron]

If you current motherboard supports the latest in AMD+ socket processors, I say go for it. I recently upgraded from my FX-4170 to an FX-8320, and while my gaming performance didn't improve, I noticed a far faster boot time, and a general increase in snappiness. I can also play same while streaming video without much of a hit to frame rates. This is just at stock settings (3.5 ghz.) Sadly, my current motherboard, ASUS M5A97 EVO, doesn't allow for serious overclocking, but I am still happy for the upgrade.

If you need to upgrade your motherboard, though, I think you should perhaps lean towards the Intel platform.

 

[Dean98]

If you current motherboard supports the latest in AMD+ socket processors, I say go for it. I recently upgraded from my FX-4170 to an FX-8320, and while my gaming performance didn't improve, I noticed a far faster boot time, and a general increase in snappiness. I can also play same while streaming video without much of a hit to frame rates. This is just at stock settings (3.5 ghz.) Sadly, my current motherboard, ASUS M5A97 EVO, doesn't allow for serious overclocking, but I am still happy for the upgrade.

If you need to upgrade your motherboard, though, I think you should perhaps lean towards the Intel platform.

My current one - A76ML-K 3.0 - doesn't support it no; actually, I can't find my own x4 840 anywhere in its supported CPU list for whatever reason.

I have decided to go with the Intel 4670k much to my reluctance, but after mulling over all the articles, forum threads, and Youtube videos over the past week I've realised something that I hadn't really heard mentioned in my travels, and then I found someone who commented about it in a video; and that is that the i5 will launch applications faster, will have less loading times, will boot faster, on top of performing well in games - and I decided that since I don't render video, photo edit, or anything like that, that I probably wouldn't get the most out of the FX-8350. I'm almost considering waiting for Watchdogs to come out to see how the 8-cores will do, but screw it, from what I've heard I should be able to overclock the 4670k a fair bit.

If anyone's wondering what board etc I went for, it's a Gigabyte Z87-HD3 with the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo, and a PWM Spectre Pro 120mm fan to replace the Coolermaster CPU fan to keep it as silent as possible.

Thanks for all the posts by everyone, finally feel satisfied with the decision.