Building a new pc! FM2+ Vs. AM3+ Which is better for gaming? or should I stick with intel?

[Shogo]

Good afternoon everybody, I don't think this is my first post here in the forum, but I just want to introduce myself briefly, I'm Eric. I've been on steam with this name/account since, (you guessed it) 2007, and I've been in and out of the forums maybe once or twice a year or so. I started using steam back in 2001 actually with a different name all together, but I digress.

The name of this topic is quite self explanatory, I'm not new when it comes to building pc's, I've been doing this for a while now, but admittedly, it's been a "few" years now, to say the least..

I'm in the process of buying all the parts I need for a new gaming rig, My current reference point is an Intel based (775) Core2 Quad Extreme 6700, Asus PQ5 Motherboard, Nvidia GTX470 (1GB Ram) And 6gb of DDR2, and 1.5TB storage... A Thermaltake PSU and that's it.

As you could imagine, it's still an impressive machine- Being able to run most the current gen games; at 1080p with medium to high settings isn't half bad. However, The limitations of my 6 or 7 year old cpu are becoming much more apparent. Frame rate hiccups and dips are more frequent and obvious in the new games but surprisingly enough to me, all the current games are playable, averaging around 30fps, which is apparently the cap for some of the newer games...

Anyway, moving onto the meat of this subject, I'd like to build a new machine, Not looking to break the bank, but I'm not going for a budget build either. And my question is, what's better for the money? I'm finding all kinds of 8 core AMD FX chips within the sweet 150-200 dollar price bracket with really descent numbers on cpubenchmarks.com, and unfortunately, I'm not seeing allot of comparable intel offerings within that range. FX-8350 (Avg price $169) and on the cpu benchmark site, it scores around 9k, every other Intel chip in that performance bracket is at least 100 dollars more, admittedly they do score slightly higher than the AMD counterparts however, in most cases, this translates into half an extra frame per second.. A miniscule amount, hardly worth another 100 dollars.


So I think I've made my overall decision, I just need some other opinions on this. Also, how about graphics card suggestions? I'm sure the day I buy the graphics card a newer model will come out, I'm thinking about going with either an NVidia 760 or 770.. or maybe a 670 or 680 but I don't want to get something that's going to be basically obsolete on the day I get it. I know most cards are at least competent for a good 5 years or so, but that's what I'm looking for; something I don't have to replace after my first couple years of use because it was top notch a couple years before I bought it.

Also.. RAM?? I understand that the industry standard is currently ddr3, how much is a decent amount to have now? My 6gb has been fine up to now, I'd imagine 12-16gb should be good for anything in the future but I have a couple friends who think they're hot shizzle because they got 32gigs.. And I'm not crazy about putting tons of ram into my rig, Again, there's a point where it becomes an "Enthusiasts" rig because it's not really practical to have an insane amount of ram when most games don't even utilize more than 8-12

Anyway, what should I do here? Should I look for an FM2 chip? Or should I go with an AM3 chip? is 16gb a good bit of memory? And what about all this solid state business? Installing the OS on a SSD, and using a standard HDD for all the files and games? How's that working out for most people?

[SilentHorizon]

Nice to have another pc builder back.

Ditch Am3+ it's a dead socket, and also FM2+. fm2+ is a budget mobo only for apus.

another reason not to get APUs is because their cpu performance is pretty much equal to core 2 quad/extremes. So it would be a pointless upgrade.

Get a intel core i5 4430 and a h97 or z97 motherboard. It will have future cpu support for next gen broadwell cpus in 2015 aswell.

8GB for gaming is enough RAM. 16GB is for things like photoshop or RAM disks.

GTX 770 and 760 would be better because they support newer technologies in conjuntion with geforce expereince. Plus they are clocked faster.

Get an SSD, my boot times went from 30 sec to 8 seconds when I switched from a HDD to SSD. Get the samsung Pro SSDs, they are really good.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Stick with Intel. AMD CPU's are dead end when it comes to upgrades and performance.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/HgCVGX

[SilentHorizon]

Originally posted by Rumpelcrutchskin:

Stick with Intel. AMD CPU's are dead end when it comes to upgrades and performance.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/HgCVGX

What is your budget shogo? This build fits it if you can afford it.

[_I_]

if you want to use a dedicated gpu,go with an i3 or i5 build
i3 for budget, and can be upgraded to i5/i7 if/when needed

amd is dead for cpu sockets
their apus are good, but nowhere near a dedicated gpu
and their cpus are junk, still at intel 775 c2q levels

[Ｐ Ｅ Ｒ Ｕ = ＳＨＩＴ]

Yeah, like everyone has said, go with Intel. Intel chips will perform better.

[Joker]

Intel would be best for a gaming rig. Games benefit more from single-threaded performance not multi-threaded. I built a new system a couple weeks ago and am still amazed at how fast it is (i5-4670K, 8GB 1866). You don't need more than 8GB RAM for gaming. Your friends with 32GB RAM are only using a small fraction of it 99% of the time unless they make videos all day. Games only use around 2-5GB RAM and Windows uses around 2GB (including the average amount of background programs).

I recommend the i5-4690K with a Z97 mobo if you overclock or get the non-K version and a cheaper mobo like the MSI H97 PC MATE. The i5-4460 is closer in price to the FX 8350.

To answer your original question, get AM3+ if you stick to AMD. The FX 8350 is a pretty popular AMD CPU for gaming. It's best to put Windows on an SSD and some of your favorite games that are played frequently. They don't improve gaming performance, just loading times. Using an SSD is also good for video creation projects.

You should wait until the NVIDIA 800 series is released. The prices of the 700 series will drop etc. The 700 series is a rebadge of the 600 series. If you want a good card that lasts then get the 770 or higher.

[Shogo]

Well, I suppose this answers the question. But let me ask you this, what happened to AMD? They used to be the ♥♥♥♥.. It seems they've lost direction. I was pretty happy with my qx6700.. the only problem is, I paid 800 or so for it (And that was with an accommodation) when (If memory serves correctly) I could have got a comparable Phenom for around 250-300.. I guess they aren't what they used to be. Especially if all they make is cheap stuff now..

But I disagree with AMD's cpu's being "Junk" most their fx-8 and 9 series cpu's are pretty badass, and at half the price of any intel cpu. But if there's no upgrade path, I see no point sinking money into AM3..

I appreciate this help, this gives me a clear direction.. I think I'm probably going to go with an i7 to complete the system... HBZK100, My budget is.. ehh, I don't know. I expect to drop about 1000 to 1200 on this project by the time it's all said and done. I'm using liquid cooling for my current pc, because my cpu runs a bit warm with air cooling even with a nice aftermarket one too.. How is the efficiency on the new Intel cpus?

And that pcpartspicker list looks pretty good. Only I usually prefer corsair ram.. however, what about windows 8? I have to ask, I beta tested it, I bought a retail version of 8 ultimate and used it for about 1 year, in my experience, some games ran better and some games didn't.. Is there any technical advantage over windows 7?? I really started to get tired of 8 after a while.. I still use it on my Asus laptop but on my desktop, no... It frustrated me allot by locking me out of my own hard drive, I couldn't delete, drag or drop from my hard drive root. And I spent hours researching and trying to disable the lockout to no avail, This presents a problem when you want to run mods or make mods for certain games because windows 8 wont let you make changes to files in the root of your HDD.. pretty effing stupid in my opinion.... I had to go back to 7, it just made more sense.

In any case, does windows 8.1 at least fix those problems?

[SilentHorizon]

Unfortunately, the day that AMD released the Buldozer aritecture was the begining of a big spiral downwards for the cpu part of their company. The buldozer aritecture is not as efficient, powerful as intels ivy bridge and haswell cpus (same goes for piledriver). For now, until 2015 amd is stopping FX (except for mobile fx apus) series cpus. But fortunately FX for 2015 will have the new excavator cores, so hopefully there will be life into the new fx cpus.

Windows 8.1 will give you higher fps than windows 7 so that is a no brainer.

Just to let you know, I'm in no way saying that amd FX is a bad processor, I'm just saying that the FX cpus compared to intels is bad.

[_I_]

amd gave up
they could not compete with intel anymore after their i series cpus

their core speed is slow, but they have many cores
for servers or programs that can multiple cores/threads they are cheap alts vs i7s, but they are higher wattage 125w vs 77-80w for i5/7
and require better cooling

[ViWaHe]

Well I full-heartedly support AMD. Just to throw in my two cents: I can reccomend a FX990-based motherboard, paired with the AM3+-socket FX-8350, which has excellent performance per dollar-spent. It may not fare that well in the most CPU-heavy games out there, but for a budget build, or a PC that has focus on multitasking besides gaming aswell, it's a sure-buy. Couple the 8350 with a higher-end GPU like the R9 280x or 290 and up series, and you have a gaming rig, that is both affordable and can run modern games at high/ultra settings. Although the 8350 is not specifically ment for gaming, it performs very well for the price-range. The 8-core structure and 4,0GHz base and 4,2 turbo clocks are insane! The rest of the FX-line up, although even more "powerful" than the 8350, are also much much more power hungry. And let's admit it, a bit overkill as well...

My build (which I threw together this June):
AsRock 990FX eXtreme 3
AMD FX-8350 @ 4,0GHz w/ CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo for additional cooling
XFX R9 280x Black Edition 3GB GDDR5 @ 6200MHZ
16GB of DDR3 RAM @ 1600MHz (Ballistix Sport 4 x 4GB)
Corsair RM1000W PSU
Antec 302 for the casing
3TB of HDD
120GB of SDD (which is dedicaded for Windows 7 Home Pr. Ed. 64-Bit and the other essential programs)

This rig doesn't heat up over 40 degree celcius, not even during strain or heavy processing.

Anyway, this is just my opinnion. I am a serious AMD-nut, but I can also see how some people might perfer the Intel's solutions and Nvidia's GPUs. Which is all fine by me. Each of us are entitled to our opinnions.

[Shogo]

Yes but we're seeing newer games that actually utilize more cores aren't we? I mean outside of 4 cores there probably isn't much utilization but that remains to be seen as far as the future is concerned... As far as I'm concerned, AMD's FX8-9 cpu's will probably remain valid/strong enough for gaming for at least another 5 years. I don't same games pushing the boundaries of an fx-8350 or 9590 within the next 5 years... However, that's just my opinion.. I got my Intel Qx6700 back in 2008 I think.. and now in 2014 I've finally reached the limit of it's capabilities with games like watch dogs and such.. I'd say I got my money's worth out of it..

With that in mind, let's say I buy the amd cpu, compared to my cpu's test score which is around 4050 the fx-8350 is over 9000. I'd imagine I'd get at least 5 years of solid use in gaming with mostly maxed settings.

But I'm currently looking into Intel to see how close I can get to that, performance/dollar wize...

[Erebus]

One thing worth thinking about is pretty much anything AMD is going to use a hell of a lot more power and produce a hell of a lot more heat over a comparable Intel product.

Also, afaik AMD cpus also share resources on the die so many of their cpus are somewhat gimped despite the high number of cores and higher frequency. They've basically been screwing themselves out of the market with inefficient products as of late.

[Shogo]

Here's another thing. What about product pairing? Does it matter if I use an Nvidia with an amd vs. Using an ati card?

[Joker]

It doesn't matter if you use an AMD or NVIDIA GPU. Decide if you want things like Mantle, 3D Vision, PhysX and G-Sync.

[Erebus]

Originally posted by Dead Pixel:

It doesn't matter if you use an AMD or NVIDIA GPU. Decide if you want things like Mantle, 3D Vision, PhysX and G-Sync.

This. Also OP be aware that AMD gpu's have generally terrible driver support.