Cpu fx-8350 , or Intel i5 3570k

[Soylent_Merchant]

Im building a computer for a friend,and was not sure exactly which cpu he would need.He does game, however he doesnt care about running games on ultra, so i got him the 7770, which should do more decently.He is however going into indie game development, and i was wondering which processor to get since im not sure exactly how many threads or cores are needed for that kind of thing.And he also has 16gb. of ram so he probably wont need to upgrade that for a while. Thanks

[Beowulf]

Get the FX-8350. I have one and it does the job.

[Rove]

I've got a FX-8150 and in spite of all the bad press it got on launch it does a good job. My 8150 still benchmarks higher than a i5 3570K on Passmark and the 8350 is even better vs Intel.

The 8350 benchmarks almost as well as the i7 3770K on passmark benchmarks take a look here[www.cpubenchmark.net] and it's much better value/$.

Also since both the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One next-gen consoles will be using a AMD 8 core it's a good idea because of that, specially if he wants his games on Console.

About the HD 7770 though, if it's not too late I'd recommend changing your order to the HD 7790 because that one at 1.79 TerraFLOPS is more in line with PS4's new 1.84 TerraFLOPS GPU and can overclock to be better than it, in fact the 1075Mhz Factory Overclock model should already be better.

[Soylent_Merchant]

Allright, how would the amd cpu function down the road, since he doesnt know much about computer building and doesnt want to have to upgrade the cpu for a while

[Soylent_Merchant]

Oh and thanks for responding so quickly

[Soylent_Merchant]

Originally posted by Rove:

I've got a FX-8150 and in spite of all the bad press it got on launch it does a good job. My 8150 still benchmarks higher than a i5 3570K on Passmark and the 8350 is even better vs Intel.

The 8350 benchmarks almost as well as the i7 3770K on passmark benchmarks take a look here[www.cpubenchmark.net] and it's much better value/$.

Also since both the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One next-gen consoles will be using a AMD 8 core it's a good idea because of that, specially if he wants his games on Console.

About the HD 7770 though, if it's not too late I'd recommend changing your order to the HD 7790 because that one at 1.79 TerraFLOPS is more in line with PS4's new 1.84 TerraFLOPS GPU and can overclock to be better than it, in fact the 1075Mhz Factory Overclock model should already be better.

Thanks for the suggestion, since the 7790 comes with 3 free games, im sure he would want it, and there isnt much of a price difference

[Rove]

I'm biased for AMD because I use one at home. I'm only a hardware hobbyist, that said...

The AMD FX 8350 should (I hope) function near as well or better than the i7 3770K for games because of next-gen consoles having a AMD 8 core.

I'm pretty sure it will function better than the i5 3570K for anything except really old programs that demand a great deal of single threaded performance.

Intel is really great for many government and business deployments, specially with it's IGP that's "not quite good enough" for employees to play serious games (better than they could at home) on your company computers but will still work excellant as a solution for your business programs. Legacy programs that a library or business like a airline or a office might still be using, like a database from 1990 or something may run better on Intel. Often old software is still suitable for the job but has outgrown your companies old computers, specially something like a database. For that reason I think Intel's CPUs are maybe better for the average business because of the lower power use (a major concern for commercial office deployments where the savings on many machines on regularly can add up substantially) and higher single-core performance, they will improve not just your future programs but also improve your legacy ones more significantly than AMD. Intel is also fine for general home use, gaming and competative to AMD in that field in terms of raw performance.

AMD on the other hand I think is better geared for the future and for the average gamer and in some cases "home-user" with it's higher core counts (thus more real threads), ability to run more small apps at once like you might do at home (I have a triple high taskbar and it's usually 1/2 full cause I just leave stuff open), cheaper prices, higher TDP and overall performance on modern software that exceeds Intel's performance per dollar significantly.

Additionally, Intel has a past history of facing legal charges for abusing their market dominance to advertise their products as being better than they are and of anti-competative practices vs the competition who on the claim I read was listed as AMD, Nvidia and Via.

I really can't predict the future of either chip though.

Either the i5 3570K, i7 3770K or FX 8350 should have a pretty good life-expectancy.

Try and get the HD 7790 with dual fans and 1075Mhz factory overclock if you can, cheapest I saw on newegg was the Saphire model at $145~.

I got as a secondary (non crossfire, non display, not being used by games and stuff cause I have a HD 6950 for that, only being used for GPGPU computing) GPU the HD 7790 ASUS Direct CU II OC 1075Mhz that I have overclocked to 1200Mhz and am mining bitcoins on 100%. It's been on 24/7 at 100% GPU use and 1200Mhz OC for almost a month now, it's going stable right now and I don't expect that will ever change. It's common (but not always true) that manufacturers clock their products slower than they are actually capable of steadily and reliably going because they want to be safe in providing the warranty and it would be a really big deal if they clocked them too high and had to do a recall. So instead they usually clock (desktop) parts too low because they don't have the time (in the computer industry) to test them for stability for 10 years prior to releasing a product. They are even throttleing my 7790 to "only" 1200Mhz with the overclocking programs, just so I don't burn myself or break it. Even if it could do more. I think standard practice is to provide a TDP a good margin higher than actual power use. I'm actually running my 1200Mhz OC at -20% lower power than standard maximum.

[_I_]

i5 has about double the per-core performance of the fx 8000
with programs that use 4 cores, i5 will be alot better
with programs that use 8 cores they will be close

the fx has no chance vs the i7 with multithreaded tasks

[Velmarshal]

Gaming wise, 3770K and 3570K are identical. But 3770K blows everything out of the water in video processing, or any multithreaded aplication or anything that requires sheer CPU power.

FX 8350 is comparable to 3570K, but as the poster above said, i5 will be more efficient because there aren't a lot of games that use 8 cores.

Comparing 3770K to FX8350 is silly:
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-3770K-vs-AMD-FX-8350#differences

And 3570K vs 8350 comparison:
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-3570K-vs-AMD-FX-8350#differences

While 7790 is a tempting choice due to the free games promo, I'd suggest 7850 or 7870.
Here's a comparison: http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-HD-7850-vs-Radeon-HD-7790
For a few bucks more, you get an excellent card.

[Rove]

All my newer games run more than 20 threads, some significantly more. I just tested Morrowind and even it is running 22 threads only on the start screen where you get option to load or start new game and stuff, this is as stated by Windows 8 Task Manager, Performance Monitor, CPU Tab.

Saying a i5/i7 is better than a AMD FX 8000 series because "there aren't a lot of games that use 8 cores" is just plain wrong.

I currently have no games that stress my FX 8150 even 50% at 1920*1080, 60FPS on my 60Hz Monitor and the highest settings. I can get to maybe 50% stress if I open more than 10 at once which are 2010 or better games that also run on PS3 and Xbox 360.

Sometimes I do get lower FPS than 60 but that is due to lag on a multiplayer server or buggy code, it's never even using 1 single core of my CPU 100% at that time. Single core performance has not been a issue for me because it's always able to spread any workload I've given it.

It gets 7.8 on my WEI at stock clocks, same as i7 and maybe i5 3rd gen CPUs.

Whatever differences it has with them are pretty trivial and either i5/i7 3rd gen or FX 8000 series is a very nice and high performing part.

Technological progress will make fools of all of them.

For now they are all more than enough.

[Velmarshal]

Morrowind? Seriously?

[_I_]

Originally posted by Rove:

I currently have no games that stress my FX 8150 even 50%

thats because you have no games that use more than 4 cores

[Rove]

Originally posted by _I_:

Originally posted by Rove:

I currently have no games that stress my FX 8150 even 50%

thats because you have no games that use more than 4 cores

I don't think you read the full post. I just said all my newer games were (far) over 20 threads and even a old 2002 game like Morrowind was running 22 threads.

I also said "none of my games stress a core 100%", I can view core usage in task manager.

I also said that to get to 50% stress I had to open 10 or more relatively demanding games and still individual cores were not used at 100%.


IF you somehow got the picture that I was sitting there playing 1 game and had 4 cores running at 100% usage and 50% total CPU usage you are totally 100% wrong.

[_I_]

no they dont

you dont know how windows assigns programs to cores
a single thread can run across multiple cores, but not at the same time

[Rove]

Originally posted by _I_:

no they dont

you dont know how windows assigns programs to cores
a single thread can run across multiple cores, but not at the same time

Wanna start a new thread with me? I think we are kinda derailing this one...

Use your task manager to test thread count for a game. Do you need a guide how-to?

[Soylent_Merchant]

When we build the computer, we dont really care about gaming( Honestley hes never really cared about running games on high or ultra) Mostly we where wondering which cpu was better for long term game development. Im aware of the differences between the i5 and fx8350 on a gaming benchmark since i recentley built my own computer, however i have no idea about long term graphics development andwhat that entails cpu wise. Currentley we are leaning towards amd, since its cheaper and with the money saved he can upgrade to an ssd.