When is AMD ever a good value?

[frozentundra123456]

The i5 is $100+ more than the 6300, and the i7 is $100+ more than 8350. (Haswell/Ivy i5 and i7) You shouldn't be comparing the 8350 to the i7. The 8350 is an equal price to the i5, and your statement proves that you agree that the 8350 is better $200 CPU!

6. AMD's $200 CPU, the FX-8350, beats Intel's $200 CPU, the i5. At the same price of $200, the FX-8350 > i5. So, if you have a $200 CPU budget, you should buy a 8350.

You are kidding, right. Such a blanket statement is totally inaccurate.

It totally depends on the workload which is better at the 200.00 price point. For gaming and general use, I would definitely go with the i5. For heavy multi-threaded productivity, the FX is a better choice at this price point.

 

[DominionSeraph]

It's beyond stupid to build a new rig today and go with low end intel pentiums without HT, with the hope that newer games coming out are not crippled on anything less than quad core.

Games have been crippled for years by 5570 level graphics, so why are you suggesting an APU?

The G2020 has far more CPU grunt with respect to modern games than the A10 has GPU grunt.

 

[NTMBK]

Games have been crippled for years by 5570 level graphics, so why are you suggesting an APU?

The G2020 has far more CPU grunt with respect to modern games than the A10 has GPU grunt.

http://techreport.com/review/23662/amd-a10-5800k-and-a8-5600k-trinity-apus-reviewed/10

Modern game engines want more than 2 hardware threads, and are a stuttery mess without it. (And EA are building a very, very large number of games on their next-gen Frostbite engine, so this will get more and more common.) An i3 or AMD quad-core would be my baseline for a modern gaming rig.

EDIT: Oh, and another nice one:

You can see pretty clearly that the i3 is far more consistent than the Pentium, just through hyperthreading. And the APU chart looks like this:

 

[Vesku]

Pentium G2020 is just a little behind a 4GHz e8400.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ivy-bridge-wolfdale-yorkfield-comparison,3487-20.html

For regular home use any modern CPU and iGP for that matter will be fine for most. The modern Pentium line is certainly decent performance for the money. However, for gaming recommending a dual core should have died 2 years ago.

Now that AMD has a cheap 4 thread processor once again with the 750K, that would be where I'd start.

Gaming CPU from cheapest: Athlon x4 750K-> Phenom II x4 965 -> FX 6300 -> i5 -> i7

The i3 might make sense over the 6300 if a particular game dictates, SC2 for instance.

Now if saving that $20 is the hurdle needed to get a Radeon 7770 or GeForce GTX 650 and all other PC components have been price vetted, then I'd pick a Pentium over a single module AMD CPU.

 

[NTMBK]

Also, don't forget that the AMD X4 is overclockable... and with the iGPU disabled, it should overclock easier than the A10.

 

[Mallibu]

I'll just leave this here for the people that starting to get delusional about FX8350 beating the i5.

 

[SPBHM]

I'll just leave this here for the people that starting to get delusional about FX8350 beating the i5.

that's the big problem for the FX, it's inconsistent, because of the lower ST performance it can be quite bad for a few things, but because it have 8 cores it can be great for others (compared to the i5)...
considering i5 is priced at around $200, it's hard not recommend one for a gaming PC when your budget is not extremely limited.

on the worst cases for the i5 it stays close to the FX, but on the worst cases for the FX it's far slower than the i5 (and overclocking works even more in favor of the i5)

 

[Erenhardt]

I'll just leave this here for the people that starting to get delusional about FX8350 beating the i5.

Strange you didn't post this:

i3 all the way! 50% faster than 8350!
AMD sucks!

How about that?

 

[SPBHM]

How about that?

I don't play crysis 3 but,
this graphic you posted is not a good representation,
on other scenes the FX is slower, and with the latest patch the game is making good use of HT, which makes the i7 much faster, and it should also help the i3 I think.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2302954&page=5

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Crysis-3-PC-235317/Tests/Crysis-3-CPU-Test-1068140/

anyway, it helps to support my point on the previous post.

 

[2is]

The i5 is $100+ more than the 6300, and the i7 is $100+ more than 8350. (Haswell/Ivy i5 and i7) You shouldn't be comparing the 8350 to the i7. The 8350 is an equal price to the i5, and your statement proves that you agree that the 8350 is better $200 CPU!

6. AMD's $200 CPU, the FX-8350, beats Intel's $200 CPU, the i5. At the same price of $200, the FX-8350 > i5. So, if you have a $200 CPU budget, you should buy a 8350.

The sad thing... It doesn't beat it. It trades blows with it (and loses more often than not while consuming 2x the power) then gets handly beat by the i7.

Sorry but your post was riddled with inaccuracies. Not just one or two but quite literally every single point you tried to make was inaccurate. This post of yours is no exception.

 

[cbk]

The sad thing... It doesn't beat it. It trades blows with it (and loses more often than not while consuming 2x the power) then gets handly beat by the i7.

Sorry but your post was riddled with inaccuracies. Not just one or two but quite literally every single point you tried to make was inaccurate. This post of yours is no exception.

Forget about everything I said.

1 Reason:

1. AMD's low cost APUs, such as the A4 and A6, are great for small -$400 builds. For example, this HTPC by mfenn:

AMD A6-5400K $70
MSI FM2-A75IA-E53 $90
DDR3 1600 4GB $24
Sandisk 64GB SSD $65
Antec ISK 300-150 $80
Total: $329

And this build:

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/computersbykrishna/saved/1MuO

 

[Phynaz]

Forget about everything I said.

1 Reason:

1. AMD's low cost APUs, such as the A4 and A6, are great for small -$400 builds. For example, this HTPC by mfenn:

AMD A6-5400K $70
MSI FM2-A75IA-E53 $90
DDR3 1600 4GB $24
Sandisk 64GB SSD $65
Antec ISK 300-150 $80
Total: $329

And this build:

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/computersbykrishna/saved/1MuO

Case...
Power supply...
OS...
Keyboard...
Mouse...

You're not at $400 anymore. Then the price uplift to core i3 is so small, and the performance difference is so great that it's senseless to go the AMD route.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I'll just leave this here for the people that starting to get delusional about FX8350 beating the i5.

When I see posts like this in these threads, I often think they do the opposite of what was intended, at least for me they do. I think a better question to ask would be why anyone would spend a penny over what an FX6300 costs to game? Even in this very bad case, the FX6300 still managers to come very close to 50FPS as a min. Why pay more for performance that you won't see?

Unless you're building a balls out gaming system or are very sensitive to FPS/want 120Hz, pretty much any CPU in the FX6300 price range or higher (by either comany) should do the job.

 

[Sheep221]

that's the big problem for the FX, it's inconsistent, because of the lower ST performance it can be quite bad for a few things, but because it have 8 cores it can be great for others (compared to the i5)...
considering i5 is priced at around $200, it's hard not recommend one for a gaming PC when your budget is not extremely limited.

on the worst cases for the i5 it stays close to the FX, but on the worst cases for the FX it's far slower than the i5 (and overclocking works even more in favor of the i5)

There are maybe some heavy MT scenarios where FX will be faster than i5, but still the difference will be very small, compared to ST performance where i5 still beat the FX despite the oldest sandy i5, the 2500K has been released 2 years earlier.
For gaming it doesn't matter much, as the most of rendering is done by video card and communication by ethernet card. So the FX-8350 should be enough for high end gaming system.

 

[2is]

Forget about everything I said.

1 Reason:

1. AMD's low cost APUs, such as the A4 and A6, are great for small -$400 builds. For example, this HTPC by mfenn:

AMD A6-5400K $70
MSI FM2-A75IA-E53 $90
DDR3 1600 4GB $24
Sandisk 64GB SSD $65
Antec ISK 300-150 $80
Total: $329

And this build:

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/computersbykrishna/saved/1MuO

For HTPC's they're fine. If I were to build a new HTPC, I would likely go with an APU. That said, an HTPC isn't very demanding (unless it's being used as a media server and transcoding streams on the fly) my current HTPC is one I made out of spare parts using a Core 2 Duo e7300, 4GB of ram and a HD 5450 video card. Only thing I had to buy was a $10 HDMI cable since it was the only thing I didn't have.

But yes, if you're going to build an efficient, cheap and capable HTPC, you could make a case for AMD. I wouldn't say it's a slam dunk win, but certainly a compelling option.

 

[Sheep221]

For HTPC's they're fine. If I were to build a new HTPC, I would likely go with an APU. That said, an HTPC isn't very demanding (unless it's being used as a media server and transcoding streams on the fly) my current HTPC is one I made out of spare parts using a Core 2 Duo e7300, 4GB of ram and a HD 5450 video card. Only thing I had to buy was a $10 HDMI cable since it was the only thing I didn't have.

But yes, if you're going to build an efficient, cheap and capable HTPC, you could make a case for AMD.

They are fine for a lot of applications, but most of the discussions here are based on competing for the high end market.

 

[baydude]

AMD has made it too confusing to follow their chip line. Why can't they have three simple tiers w/ easy to remember model names?

Instead of model names like FX-1234 I'd imagine it would be a lot easier for consumers to choose and remember if they just do something along the lines of:

budget CPU - Model A1
medium CPU - Model A2
High end CPU - Model A3

 

[BallaTheFeared]

When I see posts like this in these threads, I often think they do the opposite of what was intended, at least for me they do. I think a better question to ask would be why anyone would spend a penny over what an FX6300 costs to game? Even in this very bad case, the FX6300 still managers to come very close to 50FPS as a min. Why pay more for performance that you won't see?

Unless you're building a balls out gaming system or are very sensitive to FPS/want 120Hz, pretty much any CPU in the FX6300 price range or higher (by either comany) should do the job.

Because reviews often don't highlight the more problematic areas.

That 79 fps of the i5 could easily drop to 50 or lower in intense battles, or with more actual players.

If you're building a gaming rig, where the cpu represents just a fraction of your overall costs, why would you go with such an inferior product?

AMD has a place in some select extreme low budget builds, but after that there is really no justification for them. Even the i5 can handle most threaded workloads, as good or better than the 8350, while using considerably less power.

 

[2is]

When I see posts like this in these threads, I often think they do the opposite of what was intended, at least for me they do. I think a better question to ask would be why anyone would spend a penny over what an FX6300 costs to game? Even in this very bad case, the FX6300 still managers to come very close to 50FPS as a min. Why pay more for performance that you won't see?

Unless you're building a balls out gaming system or are very sensitive to FPS/want 120Hz, pretty much any CPU in the FX6300 price range or higher (by either comany) should do the job.

Why? Better question is why would anyone chose a processor that only manages to get 50fps in todays games only to screw themselves when a more demanding game gets released? Not to mention, this is just a single game. I'd rather spend the extra money and get an i5/i7 than save $100 during the time of my build only to have to spend more than that on processor upgrades down the road, because that's all you're doing. They're cheaper because they don't perform as good and will need to be replaced sooner.

Not a difficult concept. For me, going with Intel will give me better performance than you going AMD and a few years down the line, you'll have spent more on upgrades while only being able to match what my processor that's a few generations older than yours. All the while, in years past I enjoyed higher performance and lower power consumption.

Moral of the story? Intel saves you money and performs better.

 

[tential]

When I see posts like this in these threads, I often think they do the opposite of what was intended, at least for me they do. I think a better question to ask would be why anyone would spend a penny over what an FX6300 costs to game? Even in this very bad case, the FX6300 still managers to come very close to 50FPS as a min. Why pay more for performance that you won't see?

Unless you're building a balls out gaming system or are very sensitive to FPS/want 120Hz, pretty much any CPU in the FX6300 price range or higher (by either comany) should do the job.

IMO, I think a lot of people put way too much emphasis on FPS above 60 FPS. Games which don't have large frame rate drops, running at even 45 or lower FPS I rarely notice ever.

It is a good measure of what the CPU will do moving forward though. Buying a CPU that can just about run games today is great. But what about tomorrow?

 

[SlowSpyder]

Because reviews often don't highlight the more problematic areas.

That 79 fps of the i5 could easily drop to 50 or lower in intense battles, or with more actual players.

If you're building a gaming rig, where the cpu represents just a fraction of your overall costs, why would you go with such an inferior product?

AMD has a place in some select extreme low budget builds, but after that there is really no justification for them. Even the i5 can handle most threaded workloads, as good or better than the 8350, while using considerably less power.

That is a good point that I didn't think of. I suppose if the area benchmarked isn't very representative of the rest of the game or is too light, then that could mean trouble for the slower processors in other areas of the game.

Why? Better question is why would anyone chose a processor that only manages to get 50fps in todays games only to screw themselves when a more demanding game gets released? Not to mention, this is just a single game. I'd rather spend the extra money and get an i5/i7 than save $100 during the time of my build only to have to spend more than that on processor upgrades down the road, because that's all you're doing. They're cheaper because they don't perform as good and will need to be replaced sooner.

Not a difficult concept. For me, going with Intel will give me better performance than you going AMD and a few years down the line, you'll have spent more on upgrades while only being able to match what my processor that's a few generations older than yours. All the while, in years past I enjoyed higher performance and lower power consumption.

Moral of the story? Intel saves you money and performs better.

I wasn't trying to argue AMD vs. Intel, just that singular post because I have seen numerous posts like it in various different threads over the last few months. But since you brought it up (and I purposly didn't since this is just my gut feeling) we can talk a little about more demanding games in the future and AMD/Intel. So what does a future 'more demanding game' release mean once a low IPC/higher core count AMD chip is in both the Playstation 4 and Xbox One? Will a fast dual or quad core perform well enough? Or will APU's become to new gaming performance standard and all this is moot?

To me it isn't a difficult concept either. But I think a lot of the time enthusiasts struggle to realize a practical difference from a difference on paper. To me the benchmark above would not be a pratical real world difference (assuming those scores were representative of the rest of the game, as Balla pointed out) on 60Hz monitors. But obviously it is a clear win for Intel to most here, because their CPU's bench better in this beta game. Seeing how that game doesn't gain much going from a 2500k to a 3970X or from a 4300 to an 8350, I doubt it is very threaded. Now imagine that same game being created for the PS4 and XBOne first and then ported to PC, it'd be easy to see how the situation could change.

 

[Mallibu]

When I see posts like this in these threads, I often think they do the opposite of what was intended, at least for me they do. I think a better question to ask would be why anyone would spend a penny over what an FX6300 costs to game? Even in this very bad case, the FX6300 still managers to come very close to 50FPS as a min. Why pay more for performance that you won't see?

Unless you're building a balls out gaming system or are very sensitive to FPS/want 120Hz, pretty much any CPU in the FX6300 price range or higher (by either comany) should do the job.

I can see your point, however the "good enough" argument has a lot of pitfalls.

First of all, going by that graph, FX4300 compared to FX6300 has only 2 fps difference (45 vs 47 fps). So why not save some more money and buy the FX4300? Then again, Phenom II x4 965 @ 80 $ also provides 'good enough' performance at a much lower cost, since it's also only 2 fps lower than the FX4300. If you keep going down, you'll see no cost justifies the performance difference.

However, when buying a new CPU you don't want 'good enough'. You want something excellent at the moment, so you can play 'good enough' in the following years, like a buffer/security layer. That's why 'good enough' cpus are not a wise purchase for a semi-future proof build. If you get 45 fps now, you'll get 25 (aka unplayable) 2-3 years from now.

So, all around CPUs like the i5 that provide excellent IPC & nice core count (considering 95% of todays software is still transitioning from 2 to 4 threads), are far more future proof than one-trick ponies like the FX.
Computing needs have always scaled tall & wide. Whatever consoles will bring, IPC/per core power needs will not decrease.

 

[BigChickenJim]

If you look at AMD processors as single, compartmentalized units then buying one over an Intel never makes sense. However, computers are made of more than just their CPUs. If you are a gamer on a budget, the less expensive CPU may very well be your ticket to a MUCH better GPU solution, and that will likely make far more of a difference in most games than a spanking hot Intel chip. I've been running AMD chips for a long time just because of that.

Granted, if you play a lot of single-threaded or CPU-bound titles (MMOs, RTS, BF3 multiplayer, etc.) you are likely going to see a little bit of a bottleneck. At that point, you've got to analyze whether you're going to lose more performance to a small CPU bottleneck or a cheaper GPU. I don't have the data in front of me, but I'd be willing to be the better GPU is the best bang-for-buck in the vast majority of cases.

Of course, if you've got unlimited funds you should just get Intel and a great GPU. Wouldn't that be nice?

 

[cbk]

For HTPC's they're fine. If I were to build a new HTPC, I would likely go with an APU. That said, an HTPC isn't very demanding (unless it's being used as a media server and transcoding streams on the fly) my current HTPC is one I made out of spare parts using a Core 2 Duo e7300, 4GB of ram and a HD 5450 video card. Only thing I had to buy was a $10 HDMI cable since it was the only thing I didn't have.

But yes, if you're going to build an efficient, cheap and capable HTPC, you could make a case for AMD. I wouldn't say it's a slam dunk win, but certainly a compelling option.

$10 HDMI CABLE?!?! Have you heard of Monoprice?!

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10240&cs_id=1024008&p_id=3872&seq=1&format=2

Finally someone agrees with me.

 

[cbk]

Case...
Power supply...
OS...
Keyboard...
Mouse...

You're not at $400 anymore. Then the price uplift to core i3 is so small, and the performance difference is so great that it's senseless to go the AMD route.

1. Core i3 Graphics < A6 Graphics. A discreet GPU will be a tight squeeze in case, and it will break the bank in a $350 build.
2. Case? That's in the build! Antec ISK 300-150
3. PSU comes with the case!
4. Linux w/ XBMC.
5. Keyboard and mouse - http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Wirel...itech+keyboard

It's a HTPC, not a hardcore gamer's rig.