What is the value of the AMD 8370 (if any)?

[guachi]

I am thinking of completely upgrading my 2010 era PC. And by upgrading I mean completely buying new everything and relegating the old machine to a dedicated Win 7 HTPC.

I plan on buying an 8370 because 1. I'm partial to AMD and 2. it's a good deal with a free game that I'd buy anyway (TW:Warhammer) and a decent stock cooler. That's like $80 saved. I rarely buy games new, but I do with Total War and I was about to pull the trigger at Steam for the latest version when I noticed I can get the 8370 with TW:Warhammer for free.

So, for me, the $200 COU price is really something like $200 - $60 (game) - $20 (cooler I don't have to buy) = $120.

I assume $120 makes even this AMD chip decent. But what equivalent Intel chip is the 8370 similar to. I've been out of the loop so long I can't really tell. Or, what percentage of performance will the AMD chip give me compared to whatever Intel chip is the one all the cool kids are buying for their gaming machines?

Also, does the AMD chip have a comparative advantage in anything? I plan on encoding a lot and that uses multiple threads. Is the AMD going to be decent with that?

Oh, my current CPU is Phenom II X4 965 and, as I said, it'll stay with my old machine.

Thanks for any assistance.

 

[Nhirlathothep]

may i say no?

 

[Ken g6]

may i say no?

This. But let me elaborate on it a bit.

Here's a benchmark comparing the 8370 to a similarly-priced Intel i5. The i5 wins at most things.

Also, does the AMD chip have a comparative advantage in anything? I plan on encoding a lot and that uses multiple threads. Is the AMD going to be decent with that?

That's one thing AMD wins at, slightly. Another thing is overclocking. Which is why if you insist on going AMD you should get a cheaper chip like an 8320E and overclock it.

BTW, how much do you plan to spend on a motherboard for that AMD chip? Any Intel LGA1151 mobo can handle that i5 I pointed out.

 

[Leyawiin]

may i say no?

Yes, you may. There have been innumerable threads posted over dozens of forums for several years explaining over and over again why Intel is much better when you hit a price point like that. A simple "no" is sufficient at this point. If you're an AMD supporter who wishes to make a donation to their continued survival, well, I suppose that's a valid enough reason.

Otherwise, if you are building a system from scratch there is zero reason to go with AMD. A $200 i5-6500 is going to perform better in almost any productivity app and in any gaming situation. Plus use much less power if the process. Oh, and the stock cooler is fine with it.

 

[maddogmcgee]

If you were buying a CPU for the home theatre PC, sure an AMD might be ok (I have two and am happy with both).

Just don't do it.
-much much more power
-much slower performance in single thread
-old socket
-new AMD stuff coming out late this year/early next.
-your buying what it essentially a 4 year old CPU and are going to be spending a bunch of money on it for little gain (ram, mobo, CPU, case etc, gets expensive fast).

 

[Justinbaileyman]

I say go for it. The AMD FX8370 kicks butt and even more if you overclock it.
Most "FX" Cpu's do 4.8GHz easy peasy on air and if you are getting the version with the wraith cooler you are set.
I personally have 2 fx8300's and they are awesome and run every game I have at max settings.
Most people around here claim AMD FX sucks,but can't prove it by me.
Also no i5 is going to keep up in multi-threaded programs specially with an 8 core fx overclocked to 4.8GHz.
All though intel does demolish AMD fx at single thread performance.
SO if you are running multi threaded games and are doing media encoding then by all means go FX you wont be sorry for the price you said you are getting it at.

 

[Ken g6]

If you "go for it", at the very least get an 8350 instead. 100MHz isn't worth $10 - $40.

 

[Sheep221]

Get the i3 and H110 board, dirt cheap and performance is awesome

 

[SlowSpyder]

I think AMD CPU's are still serviceable in exactly your spot, where you already have an AM3+ motherboard and if you'd like to save a few bucks over a total system overhaul and / or don't want to go through the hassle of a complete build at that time. In your case you also do some work that is suited to the strengths of the FX. I think the FX punches about it's weight, at least I do when compared to its reputation on tech forums, but your call on if you want to sink more money into an old platform or spend more for a more sizable upgrade.

 

[guachi]

Checking the Anandtech CPU comparison charts and extracting just the comparisons that actually matter to me, i.e., encoding and games I get this:

Handbrake (combined) 78.8% as fast as the 6600
x264 (combined) 93.8% as fast as the 6600

Games -
There are five video cards listed and if you normalize the performance by card and then average all five cards you get....
the 8370 being 92.9% as fast as the 6600 overall
111.2% as fast at 720 (largely because of one anomalous result)
89.0% as fast at 1080
91.8% as fast at 2160

So basically I can get AMD + MB + game for $290 (picked an MSI board for comp.)
or
Intel + MB + game for $420 (closest MSI board to AMD choice)

So that's 70% of the price for about 90% of the performance.

The only productivity stuff I use otherwise is photo editing, for which the CPU is of minimal importance and Excel for which the CPU is of zero importance.

Again, I wouldn't have considered purchasing the CPU if I weren't getting a $60 game for free so my initial question basically boiled down to "would you buy the 8370 if it were $60 cheaper and all you did was game and encode on it?"

I understand the general question about the AMD CPU architecture was basically asked and answered the day it came out, which is why I still have my Phenom chip. But I take it "not even if it were $60 cheaper" is basically the answer.

[Edit] Also, for some reason I thought Zen was being delayed well into 2017 and figured I'd decide now on a CPU as I'm deciding soon on a new GPU (480 or 1060?). If zen is really coming in October, I can wait until then.

 

[2is]

Yes, you may. There have been innumerable threads posted over dozens of forums for several years explaining over and over again why Intel is much better when you hit a price point like that. A simple "no" is sufficient at this point. If you're an AMD supporter who wishes to make a donation to their continued survival, well, I suppose that's a valid enough reason.

Otherwise, if you are building a system from scratch there is zero reason to go with AMD. A $200 i5-6500 is going to perform better in almost any productivity app and in any gaming situation. Plus use much less power if the process. Oh, and the stock cooler is fine with it.

Add to that, a far more modern chipset.

 

[Azuma Hazuki]

There is one very, very, very situational use case where your 8370 (please get the E if you can...) will show power all out of proportion to its price: if you're going to do this on Linux, specifically on Gentoo where you can tune your binaries to the specific CPU you get. Its a lot of extra work, and as you're gaming this may not be ideal, but it's the best way to wring out every last bit of performance from your CPU.

Also, IIRC all FX-series chips support AMD-vi, which is their equivalent of Intel'd VT-d or directed I/O via IOMMU. If you're willing to spend a little extra, get two video cards: a crappy one for primary display and something nice as an extra, then enable AMD-vi and install Windows in a virtual machine monitor and dedicate the good card to it explicitly. That, if I understand the process right, SHOULD give direct access to that card in all its 3D-accelerated glory to the Windows VM and allow you to game in it

 

[Justinbaileyman]

Checking the Anandtech CPU comparison charts and extracting just the comparisons that actually matter to me, i.e., encoding and games I get this:

Handbrake (combined) 78.8% as fast as the 6600
x264 (combined) 93.8% as fast as the 6600

Games -
There are five video cards listed and if you normalize the performance by card and then average all five cards you get....
the 8370 being 92.9% as fast as the 6600 overall
111.2% as fast at 720 (largely because of one anomalous result)
89.0% as fast at 1080
91.8% as fast at 2160

So basically I can get AMD + MB + game for $290 (picked an MSI board for comp.)
or
Intel + MB + game for $420 (closest MSI board to AMD choice)

So that's 70% of the price for about 90% of the performance.

The only productivity stuff I use otherwise is photo editing, for which the CPU is of minimal importance and Excel for which the CPU is of zero importance.

Again, I wouldn't have considered purchasing the CPU if I weren't getting a $60 game for free so my initial question basically boiled down to "would you buy the 8370 if it were $60 cheaper and all you did was game and encode on it?"

I understand the general question about the AMD CPU architecture was basically asked and answered the day it came out, which is why I still have my Phenom chip. But I take it "not even if it were $60 cheaper" is basically the answer.

[Edit] Also, for some reason I thought Zen was being delayed well into 2017 and figured I'd decide now on a CPU as I'm deciding soon on a new GPU (480 or 1060?). If zen is really coming in October, I can wait until then.

Zen is not coming in October as far as I know. Last I heard was early 2017 due to samples having memory and pci-e communication issue's. I would say your safe for now with a fx8350 or fx8370.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Checking the Anandtech CPU comparison charts and extracting just the comparisons that actually matter to me, i.e., encoding and games I get this:

Handbrake (combined) 78.8% as fast as the 6600
x264 (combined) 93.8% as fast as the 6600

Games -
There are five video cards listed and if you normalize the performance by card and then average all five cards you get....
the 8370 being 92.9% as fast as the 6600 overall
111.2% as fast at 720 (largely because of one anomalous result)
89.0% as fast at 1080
91.8% as fast at 2160

So basically I can get AMD + MB + game for $290 (picked an MSI board for comp.)
or
Intel + MB + game for $420 (closest MSI board to AMD choice)

So that's 70% of the price for about 90% of the performance.

The only productivity stuff I use otherwise is photo editing, for which the CPU is of minimal importance and Excel for which the CPU is of zero importance.

Again, I wouldn't have considered purchasing the CPU if I weren't getting a $60 game for free so my initial question basically boiled down to "would you buy the 8370 if it were $60 cheaper and all you did was game and encode on it?"

I understand the general question about the AMD CPU architecture was basically asked and answered the day it came out, which is why I still have my Phenom chip. But I take it "not even if it were $60 cheaper" is basically the answer.

[Edit] Also, for some reason I thought Zen was being delayed well into 2017 and figured I'd decide now on a CPU as I'm deciding soon on a new GPU (480 or 1060?). If zen is really coming in October, I can wait until then.

Those Anand cpu gaming tests are really terrible. I would totally ignore them. The best gpu they test is the 290x, a 2 generation old card now. The other cards are even more terrible, a GTX 770, how outdated is that?? An R7 240 is seriously underpowered, 980 2 generations old also, and the 285 was never considered a very good gaming gpu. Edit: as of the last reviews I saw, Anand also uses a very strange combination of resolution and image quality presets that dont really isolate the cpu and gpu performances well.

If you get the 480 it is slightly more powerful than any card anand lists, and a 1060 will be far more powerful. If you are going to use the relatively cheap 480, then an FX might be acceptable, but for sure if you are spending the bucks for a 1060, you should get a 6600k or 6700K.

 

[nenforcer]

Here is the Anandtech Bench comparison

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/102?vs=1709

Yeah Zen should be available and in high demand Q4 this year official launch is suppose to be CES January 2017 going head to head against Intel Kaby Lake.

 

[maddogmcgee]

I say go for it. The AMD FX8370 kicks butt and even more if you overclock it.
Most "FX" Cpu's do 4.8GHz easy peasy on air and if you are getting the version with the wraith cooler you are set.
I personally have 2 fx8300's and they are awesome and run every game I have at max settings.
Most people around here claim AMD FX sucks,but can't prove it by me.
Also no i5 is going to keep up in multi-threaded programs specially with an 8 core fx overclocked to 4.8GHz.
All though intel does demolish AMD fx at single thread performance.
SO if you are running multi threaded games and are doing media encoding then by all means go FX you wont be sorry for the price you said you are getting it at.

except that, as has been proven by about a million posts in this forum, the AMD chips don't dominate in multi threaded games, they don't even keep up. 8 core AMD in games is about the same as a recent i3.

 

[Arachnotronic]

If you are buying a new system, then please don't buy an FX chip. The platform is very dated, the CPUs are inefficient and have weak single-threaded performance, and frankly your money can be better spent on an Intel setup.

I suggest a cheap H110 board and a nice Skylake i5 or better.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Wait for Zen, then make your purchase. The FX chips should take a nosedive in price if there are even any left in the channel by that point.

AMD is abandoning AM3+ and FM2+ this year, so now is a very awkward time to invest in any of their current platforms. That's why you're getting such a good deal on the 8370 as it is (free game + Wraith cooler). Though I will echo the opinion of some others that you should be looking at the 8320e or 8370e if you have the chops to overclock and are dead-set on going FX.

As for what you should look at in the Intel camp as a comparison, maybe the old Haswell i5-4460? You'll win a few benchmarks against that (especially post-OC) and lose the rest, especially gaming stuff. And of course you'll chew up more power doing so. The 4460 is not really a sexy chip, and some would say get the i5-6400 instead, but LGA1150 should be a tad cheaper, and the 4460 has a higher base clockspeed.

 

[Abwx]

If you are buying a new system, then please don't buy an FX chip. The platform is very dated, the CPUs are inefficient and have weak single-threaded performance, and frankly your money can be better spent on an Intel setup.

I suggest a cheap H110 board and a nice Skylake i5 or better.

But the i5s have low multitasking performance, if you want to use two or more demanding task anything below a FX83xx or a i7 is a waste of money.

https://www.computerbase.de/2016-05/intel-core-i7-6950x-6800k-test/8/

As for games i wouldnt be so sure that the FX is vastly inferior..

http://wccftech.com/intel-skylake-6700k-6600k-amd-fx-8370/

There s even quite some surprises, and for a reason...

 

[HiroThreading]

But the i5s have low multitasking performance, if you want to use two or more demanding task anything below a FX83xx or a i7 is a waste of money.

https://www.computerbase.de/2016-05/intel-core-i7-6950x-6800k-test/8/

As for games i wouldnt be so sure that the FX is vastly inferior..

http://wccftech.com/intel-skylake-6700k-6600k-amd-fx-8370/

There s even quite some surprises, and for a reason...

The FX chips are at the bottom of the first set of benchmarks you posted.

Furthermore, in the usual case where you don't do heavy encoding while gaming, the FX lags behind -- often badly.

There is no reason to invest in the AMD platform now. Zen is launching later this year or early next year, essentially confirming that the current AMD FX platform has one leg in the grave.

Even if you have a preference toward AMD, you may as well buy the Intel system now and sell it once Zen is out. At least Intel platforms retain their value.

 

[Sheep221]

But the i5s have low multitasking performance, if you want to use two or more demanding task anything below a FX83xx or a i7 is a waste of money.

https://www.computerbase.de/2016-05/intel-core-i7-6950x-6800k-test/8/

As for games i wouldnt be so sure that the FX is vastly inferior..

http://wccftech.com/intel-skylake-6700k-6600k-amd-fx-8370/

There s even quite some surprises, and for a reason...

I disagree completely, i5 has so much higher IPC that performs on multitasking(usually) better than AMD with 8 threads.

I mean seriously what's the point of buying AMD CPU with additional cooling and overclocking board, and actually take time to tweak it somewhere when you get much more performance for much less money with Intel platform? i3-6320 or i5-6500 with H110 board would be cheapo deal that perform so much better without zero requirement to overclock anything. I don't recommend buying AMD FX right now for any reason beyond curiosity to what heights it will OC.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

An 8370 wouldn't really be an improvement over the 3570K in my >3-year-old system. I can't imagine "upgrading" to one.

If it were free, I might feel differently, but the immense power draw, heat, and noise would be a hurdle.

 

[Abwx]

The FX chips are at the bottom of the first set of benchmarks you posted.

.

They are not, you just didnt look at the data accurately, there s four numbers and even five if we take account of the multitasking with Cinebench in ST.

https://www.computerbase.de/2016-05...m-multitasking-test-winrar-plus-the-witcher-3

I disagree completely, i5 has so much higher IPC that performs on multitasking(usually) better than AMD with 8 threads.
.

That s an urban legend, i5 had always less throughput than a FX8, besides the nice IPC completely collapse when an Integer + FP loading is tested.

 

[Sweepr]

If you are buying a new system, then please don't buy an FX chip. The platform is very dated, the CPUs are inefficient and have weak single-threaded performance, and frankly your money can be better spent on an Intel setup.

I suggest a cheap H110 board and a nice Skylake i5 or better.

This. Useless WinRAR + Cinebench/The Witcher 3 testes don't change the fact that FX 'Vishera' has always been a turd in per core performance, coupled with subpar efficiency and a dated platform. I'd go as far as saying some used Xeon CPUs would be a better choice for encoding/MT. Pretty sure AMD wants to release Summit Ridge as soon as possible.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I think AMD CPU's are still serviceable in exactly your spot, where you already have an AM3+ motherboard and if you'd like to save a few bucks over a total system overhaul and / or don't want to go through the hassle of a complete build at that time. In your case you also do some work that is suited to the strengths of the FX. I think the FX punches about it's weight, at least I do when compared to its reputation on tech forums, but your call on if you want to sink more money into an old platform or spend more for a more sizable upgrade.

He won't be reusing the old motherboard; the old one + CPU will be moved to a new HTPC.