Can someone explain why I shouldn't get an AMD FX CPU?

[Detection]

No, what I'm doing is advising the guy to buy the product that fits his needs better in his price range. The 2500k is a better gaming CPU than the 8350 and it's the same price, which makes it a better choice for him. I've owned AMD and Intel products in the past so I am actually pretty objective here.

If there are 2 products in a price range and one performs better than another for a user's needs then it's not bloody rocket science, you advise the user to buy what suits their needs.

What you are doing is trying to scare OP away from AMD and convince him into Intel,

What we are doing is giving stats and experiences of alternatives.

[Noir Angel]

What you are doing is trying to scare OP away from AMD and convince him into Intel,

What we are doing is giving stats and experiences of alternatives.

http://www.bit-tech....x-8350-review/6

Gaming:

2500k: Skyrim at 1080p 127 fps average, minimum 71

8350: minimum 50, average 103

Shogun 2 1080p

2500k: Min 18, average 26

8350: Min 17, average 22

I'm not being dishonest in any way. He asked why he shouldn't get an FX processor, I'm giving an answer.

[Luc2k]

I'd advise learning to read. The OP said he doesn't like to overclock which makes that completely irrelevant.

Why buy the K then?

Problem is you're presenting a lot of bad info like power usage, mobo performance etc.

[Detection]

http://www.bit-tech....x-8350-review/6

Gaming:

2500k: Skyrim at 1080p 127 fps average, minimum 71

8350: minimum 50, average 103

Shogun 2 1080p

2500k: Min 18, average 26

8350: Min 17, average 22

I'm not being dishonest in any way. He asked why he shouldn't get an FX processor, I'm giving an answer.

And that is fine, that is what he is looking for, stats, not bad mouthing the competition

All anyone was trying to do here was give their opinion of hardware they have experience with, not shoot the other guy down

[Arceles]

http://www.bit-tech....x-8350-review/6

Gaming:

2500k: Skyrim at 1080p 127 fps average, minimum 71

8350: minimum 50, average 103

Shogun 2 1080p

2500k: Min 18, average 26

8350: Min 17, average 22

I'm not being dishonest in any way. He asked why he shouldn't get an FX processor, I'm giving an answer.

You are being dishonest because while you are mentioning such benchmarks, you don't mention that he has 4 cores more to do anything he wishes for, multitasking is becoming mainstream in gaming (and it will be more with the nextgen consoles), programs are also taking advantage of this.

Selective information is just as bad as lying.

[Noir Angel]

And that is fine, that is what he is looking for, stats, not bad mouthing the competition

All anyone was trying to do here was give their opinion of hardware they have experience with, not shoot the other guy down

Oh please cut the crap. I'm trying to tell him that one product works better than another in his price range and you're essentially accusing me of being an Intel fantard because I'm trying to give him good advice. Stop being such a damn hypocrite. In fact given that I said i'd be advising him to use the AMD processor if he'd been programming or rendering i'd suggest practicising what you preach and being actually objective.

You are being dishonest because while you are mentioning such benchmarks, you don't mention that he has 4 cores more to do anything he wishes for, multitasking is becoming mainstream in gaming (and it will be more with the nextgen consoles), programs are also taking advantage of this.

Selective information is just as bad as lying.

It's not selective information, nobody who actually understood how hardware works would make an argument like yours. AMD pack more cores onto their processors for a reason: Because they're inefficient and do not do as much work per clock cycle as Intel's processors do. Have you never actually stopped to ask yourself why, despite having twice as many cores and operating at a higher clock speed they barely manage to break even with their Intel counterparts in most performance tests? It's you that is being selectively dishonest because when a person is gaming having 4 cores sitting idle wouldn't exactly be a great deal of use to him anyway, being that very few sane gamers run intensive background tasks and game at the same time.

[Arceles]

Oh please cut the crap. I'm trying to tell him that one product works better than another in his price range and you're essentially accusing me of being an Intel fantard because I'm trying to give him good advice. Stop being such a damn hypocrite. In fact given that I said i'd be advising him to use the AMD processor if he'd been programming or rendering i'd suggest practicising what you preach and being actually objective.

It's not selective information, nobody who actually understood how hardware works would make an argument like yours. AMD pack more cores onto their processors for a reason: Because they're inefficient and do not do as much work per clock cycle as Intel's processors do. Have you never actually stopped to ask yourself why, despite having twice as many cores they barely manage to break even with their Intel counterparts in most performance tests? It's you that is being selectively dishonest because when a person is gaming having 4 cores sitting idle wouldn't exactly be a great deal of use to him anyway, being that very few sane gamers run intensive background tasks and game at the same time.

I actually program on OpenCL and I can tell you, I love my AMD platform for something.

[Detection]

Oh please cut the crap. I'm trying to tell him that one product works better than another in his price range and you're essentially accusing me of being an Intel fantard because I'm trying to give him good advice. Stop being such a damn hypocrite. In fact given that I said i'd be advising him to use the AMD processor if he'd been programming or rendering i'd suggest practicising what you preach and being actually objective.

Ok bud, you're doing so well on your own I`ll leave you to it ;)

[Noir Angel]

I actually program on OpenCL and I can tell you, I love my AMD platform for something.

The starter of this thread is building a gaming rig, not a programming rig. If he'd actually been a programmer your advice would be relevant, but as he specifically said he wants it for gaming your advice isn't.

[Blackhearted]

You are being dishonest because while you are mentioning such benchmarks, you don't mention that he has 4 cores more to do anything he wishes for, multitasking is becoming mainstream in gaming (and it will be more with the nextgen consoles), programs are also taking advantage of this.

Selective information is just as bad as lying.

Ya know, contrary to what marketing tells you, the fx cpus like the 8000 line technically aren't octa-core cpus.

[Arceles]

Ya know, contrary to what marketing tells you, the fx cpus like the 8000 line technically aren't octa-core cpus.

They are octacores, 8 integer units and 4 FPUs. (and it's better than having hyperthreading, where two threads whould fight for getting one core)

[Noir Angel]

Actually, having more cores executing at half the efficiency and fighting for memory bandwidth is less efficient than hyperthreading. And there's no fighting anyway, hyperthreading does actually allow 1 core to process 2 threads.

[Arceles]

Actually, having more cores executing at half the efficiency and fighting for memory bandwidth is less efficient than hyperthreading. And there's no fighting anyway, hyperthreading does actually allow 1 core to process 2 threads.

Everytime you speak something technical I would like to see your sources, I really doubt you really know of AMD architecture works.

[Andre S. Veteran]

Passmark is a synthetic benchmark. The Vishera apparently does well in it, but that could mean any number of things. Video games, like most applications, are mostly bounded by single-threaded performance, and this is where the AMD CPUs fall short. The general consensus is that the AMD CPUs are generally a good deal in the 0-120$ segment approximately, and after that they can be a good choice if your main performance-sensitive scenario is encoding video or such inherently parallel task. Outside of that, it's all Intel.

Check out http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106.html

[Noir Angel]

I doubt that you know anything about hardware full stop given that you seem to talk about having half of your CPU cores idling whilst gaming as if it would be a good thing. The AMD CPU's perform at about the same level as their Intel equivalents in price range, yet they have double the cores. Double the cores for the same performance equals half the computing efficiency per core. You don't need to have an advanced understanding of AMD's circuitry to know that, it's basic math.

[Luc2k]

I doubt that you know anything about hardware full stop given that you seem to talk about having half of your CPU cores idling whilst gaming as if it would be a good thing. The AMD CPU's perform at about the same level as their Intel equivalents in price range, yet they have double the cores. Double the cores for the same performance equals half the computing efficiency per core. You don't need to have an advanced understanding of AMD's circuitry to know that, it's basic math.

I call bull****, I'd like a source with a game that uses all available cores (modules) at 75%+.

[Noir Angel]

Pretty much any game that is multithreaded is capable of doing so, but even if it doesn't utilise the cores fully, it's still better to have them utilised than for them to be sitting completely idle. Games ask for resources as they need them so doing heavy CPU stuff in the background would still be a really stupid idea.

[Luc2k]

Pretty much any game that is multithreaded is capable of doing so, but even if it doesn't utilise the cores fully, it's still better to have them utilised than for them to be sitting completely idle. Games ask for resources as they need them so doing heavy CPU stuff in the background would still be a really stupid idea.

Back your statements with proof please. You said that the performance of an AMD core is half of an Intel one. To get a good reading of performance, it has to be something that actually uses all the resources available. So, you either stop making wild claims or offer proof.

[Noir Angel]

I'd wager you actually know nothing about benchmarking either given the rubbish you're spewing. Benchmarking applications like 3D mark are actually specifically designed to use all of the cores at 100% as are most synthetic number crunching benchmarks like CPU queen, so i'd say they're fairly accurate. Also, fact is regardless of how you rationalise it, if a CPU with 8 cores produces the same results as one with 4 cores then logic dictates that it's doing less work per CPU cycle to achieve those results. It's basic logic. Not one test puts the AMD 8 core CPU's above Intel's 4 core CPU's by any significant margin, even in the tests the AMD does win by it's only about 5%. Are all those different numbers really likely to be telling lies?

Over the past decade I have owned the following

Intel Celeron 2.6 GHZ

Intel Pentium 4, 2.8 GHZ

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (Socket 775)

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (Socket 939)

AMD Opteron 165

Intel Pentium dual (Conroe)

Q6600

i7-2700K

And the following graphics cards:

nVidia MX440 64MB

nVidia MX400 64MB

ATI 9200 256 MB

ATI 9600 SE 128MB

nVidia 6800 GT 256 MB

nVidia 8600 GT 256 MB

ATI 4850 512 MB

ATI 5770 1GB

ATI 6950 2GB

Now look at that list, look at all the performance reviews that compare the FX 8350 and Intel equivalents, and ask yourself who is really mindlessly obeying their brand loyalty over facts.

[psionicinversion]

Im pretty sure the OP has given up with this topic now from all the bitching and moaning and petty squabbling... your like a bunch of old women sitting around drinking tea, eating cake arguing over what wool is better to make there tea cosies with!

Want a more budget conscious system where you have a long upgrade path through backwards compatibility and doing rendering and stuff... go AMD. Otherwise go intel, atm intel does quite well with gaming with i5 systems, but main thing to consider is a decent gfx card. i7 is overkill for most part just for gaming, i got an i7 and doesnt even touch the sides with games

Also remember the PS4 is going have 6 core AMD cpu i think and think the xbox is running on AMD to?? not sure, so when the next consoles come out there games will be originally optimised for AMD hardware and could close the gap if not overtake intel especially if the ports are crap. Who knows only time will tell.

[Noir Angel]

lol, I'm not bitching. I gave the OP correct advice and got accused of being an Intel humper because the facts and numbers don't match up with their love and brand loyalty. It seems to be the way on Neowin these days.

[tim_s]

AMD FX are targeted negatively for not performing well but if the goal was to create a low cost high value CPU - they are performing well. I would somewhat agree with the statistics above. The AMD FX sits in the low i5 range but with less cost - can run up to 8 threads where applicable and the potential for over cloaking is decent.

If you can afford an i5 I would say - this is the best choice but for those stuck in the i3 range - it is a nice little bargin.

Remember people are not negatively attacking the AMD FX for what is trying to be - they are attacking it for not comparing to intel products.

[Luc2k]

I'd wager you actually know nothing about benchmarking either given the rubbish you're spewing. Benchmarking applications like 3D mark are actually specifically designed to use all of the cores at 100% as are most synthetic number crunching benchmarks like CPU queen, so i'd say they're fairly accurate. Also, fact is regardless of how you rationalise it, if a CPU with 8 cores produces the same results as one with 4 cores then logic dictates that it's doing less work per CPU cycle to achieve those results. It's basic logic. Not one test puts the AMD 8 core CPU's above Intel's 4 core CPU's by any significant margin, even in the tests the AMD does win by it's only about 5%. Are all those different numbers really likely to be telling lies?

Now look at that list, look at all the performance reviews that compare the FX 8350 and Intel equivalents, and ask yourself who is really mindlessly obeying their brand loyalty over facts.

First, I can't afford brand royalty when it comes to CPUs because when I buy/recommend one, only performance, price and needs are factors. I've made plenty that go both ways from the Core 2 days. As a matter of fact, I do think the i5K is a better purchase when focusing on games (other types of workloads too) in the ~200$ range. I'm just disappointed that you made so many exaggerations or statements that are not backed by actual facts. This is something somewhat surprising after seeing of what you're capable from various other topics around the forum.

To the point: Exactly what is the rubbish that I've been spewing? I don't trust benchmarks like 3DMark, they've only made one or two low tech games with their engines ever. I asked you for real world proof, an actual game (since this was the criteria for the CPU). I also never made the statement that an 8 core produces the same results as an 4 core, you did. For all I know, the FX might even be weaker if the game uses one architecture more efficiently than the other when utilising all cores. It depends on the game really. I just can't think of one at the moment and want to know if you have something to back your statement. But I guess ignorance is bliss.

Im pretty sure the OP has given up with this topic now from all the bitching and moaning and petty squabbling... your like a bunch of old women sitting around drinking tea, eating cake arguing over what wool is better to make there tea cosies with!

I already know the OP chose the Intel platform and I have no problem with that.

For any mod that may be reading this, maybe splitting this topic would be a good idea.

[mrp04]

Hahaha this thread is just hilarious. OP asked what to get for Gaming. Javik recommended the right processor (2500K if OP is looking to pay that much). How did this thread make it to 73 posts?

[spaceelf]

The i5-3570k only costs about ?15 more (?20 more if you go for boxed rather than OEM). It's a faster gaming CPU, and will consume a fraction of the power of an FX-8350, the effect on your electricity bill is something i'd personally advise factoring in. As far as I'm concerned it's simply a far superior choice.

I still find the motherboard costs obscene on Intel boards, the cheaper ones have fewer PCI Express ports and fewer SATA6g ports than most AMD boards. If I was buying today I'd probably go back to AMD even knowing the performance isn't the absolute best.

(holy crap I didn't see all the other pages in here.)