Worth upgrade to 4770K from FX-8320?

[popobearr]

Hello,

Currently sporting a AMD FX8320. It has been a great performer since I bought it about 3 months ago. With the release of Haswell, I am considering if the move to the 4770K will be worth the $400 spending. I mainly use my rig for light gaming, watching videos, homework, folding on the weekends on BOINC, and general use.

I am intrigued by the low power consumption of Intel's offering so I guess technically it should be saving me money in the long run compared to the FX.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Shephard]

For what you do you should have bought a cheap i3 or even Pentium.

Money to throw away I guess.

 

[SiliconWars]

For what you do you should have bought a cheap i3 or even Pentium.

Money to throw away I guess.

Light gamers can just be time constrained but still want the best experience they can while doing so. If so, any i5 would be the best recommendation.

For the rest of his usage (not sure about folding), then any cpu of the past 5 years would be good enough.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I don't know how the 4770k would compare in BOINC, I'm not sure how CPU intensive that is. But for the rest of what you do, I doubt you'd notice any difference bettween your 8320 and pretty much anything current over $120. Unless you just want to mess around with the new technology, I'd sit tight. Especially with the faster AMD CPU's coming, you already have the motherboard.

Also, the FX chips are only really power hungry when the cores are loaded, for light use they're pretty tame with power, according to the reviews I've seen. In your case I doubt you're loading more than half the cores up most of the time... often less than that.

 

[Durvelle27]

Would be a waist of money

 

[frozentundra123456]

Agreed with the other posters. If starting from scratch, an i5 would be a very serious contender, but since you have the 8320, I see no reason to go to a 4770, especially since your useage does not appear that heavy.

 

[daveybrat]

It's not worth upgrading to Haswell if you already own a Sandybridge, IvyBridge, or AMD FX 8-Core cpu in my opinion.

Your cpu is more than enough for what you already do and then some.

 

[tweakboy]

davey dont forget Ivy Bridge E coming Sept 24th 3 cpus all 6core12threads.

Im gonna slap on a 4930k on my board. Already did the BIOS upgrade to accept the Ivy E cpu. Im gonna have 12 threads working for me,, its already crazy powerful in my Sonar X2 Producer,,,,, a piano sound would take cpu to 100 percent, on my Q6 ,, but on new system it takes 0 percent or maybe 1 or 2 percent LOL thats how much more powerful this CPU is then my old Q6. I see my cores in the app and their usage is all mostly 0 when Im using the piano, then I dropped 3 more piano tracks and still percent used is 5 percent maybe. Its amazing. The same piano would crash system as you play more keys. I could barely run 1 piano... now I can run 10 piano tracks at probably 15 to 20 percent. Also plugins and all that,, this CPU is amazing. Also its fun to see Ivy E come out,,,,, and give me a better OC. Currently Im 58c idle 90's c I think the TIM was used improperly.. Im gonna take it out when its time, clean both hsf and cpu,, ad a very little tim in the middle is good ? I should be 45c not 58c on idle,, hmmmmm

The new Ivy E will be soldered no tim. from what I hear.

 

[Concillian]

I am intrigued by the low power consumption of Intel's offering so I guess technically it should be saving me money in the long run compared to the FX.

I doubt this unless you plan on using the system for a really long time and live somewhere power is above normal pricing (California tiered pricing and you're in the higher tiers).

Lets say you leave it on 24x7 and consume an average of 50 watts less (a very significant amount)... 1 year is .050 kW * 24 hours * 365 days * $0.14 per kWh = $61 a year. So you'd need to be running a super high idle power for over 6.5 years to make up $400.

If you care about the cost of electricity, you're likely already turning off your PC often and probably will have less than 50Watts savings moving to the 4770k, so like triple your time to return and you are at like 20 years to make up the price difference. Not likely to be in service that long.

 

[Pheesh]

Not a worthwhile upgrade, especially when you have a whole 3 months on your existing system.

Do you currently have sufficient SSD space for your main apps/OS/games? If not, get another SSD. That's probably the biggest performance upgrade for your buck that you could achieve with the system you have.

 

[Dadofamunky]

It's not worth upgrading to Haswell if you already own a Sandybridge, IvyBridge, or AMD FX 8-Core cpu in my opinion.

Your cpu is more than enough for what you already do and then some.

This.

 

[toyota]

Would be a waist of money

money belt?

 

[Durvelle27]

money belt?

XD

 

[KingFatty]

I say go for it.

Just think about it a second, you can run both machines simultaneously 24x7. The reasoning is that because Haswell is so good at conserving power, you can justify taking the power savings and using them to power the AMD system. It's like free power.

Also, you will completely eliminate any possibility of buyer's remorse, because you'll have both systems! It's like having a wife and a mistress, best of both worlds.

 

[BenchPress]

I am intrigued by the low power consumption of Intel's offering so I guess technically it should be saving me money in the long run compared to the FX.

Since overclocking would destroy the low power consumption, you really want the i7-4770 instead of the i7-4770K. The non-K model is cheaper and comes with TSX technology for better multi-threading efficiency.

 

[guskline]

Hello,

Currently sporting a AMD FX8320. It has been a great performer since I bought it about 3 months ago. With the release of Haswell, I am considering if the move to the 4770K will be worth the $400 spending. I mainly use my rig for light gaming, watching videos, homework, folding on the weekends on BOINC, and general use.

I am intrigued by the low power consumption of Intel's offering so I guess technically it should be saving me money in the long run compared to the FX.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks

No. The 8320 is a good overclocker. I have it at 4.3 Ghz stable with a ThermalTake Pro water cooler.

As the others have said, if you didn't have the 8320, the 4770k would be a great choice. However, since you already have that build use the $$ elsewhere. What video card do you have? What HDD?

 

[Idontcare]

Hello,

Currently sporting a AMD FX8320. It has been a great performer since I bought it about 3 months ago. With the release of Haswell, I am considering if the move to the 4770K will be worth the $400 spending. I mainly use my rig for light gaming, watching videos, homework, folding on the weekends on BOINC, and general use.

I am intrigued by the low power consumption of Intel's offering so I guess technically it should be saving me money in the long run compared to the FX.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks

Your $400 is better spent (invested) elsewhere.

Regardless how good Haswell may or may not be, you'd be better off sticking your $400 into a low-risk investment vehicle and wait until 14nm comes out.

From a power-consumption standpoint you could probably underclock and undervolt your 8320 a bit and gain the same power-savings as an upgrade to Haswell would deliver as I'm willing to bet your 8320 is already over-kill for the tasks you listed in your post.

To check, pull open task manager and leave it running in the background, then do the stuff you tend to do with your computer. Then switch over to task manager and see if you ever pegged the utilization rate at 100%. If you aren't pegging it then try underclocking your processor a bit (say 10% or so) and then use it for the same set of tasks and see if you can feel any difference.

If it seems acceptable in terms of performance then go to work optimizing your Vcore for the lowered clockspeed. You'll quickly gain savings in reduced power-consumption so you feel better about the earth (if that is a concern) and better about your electric bill (if that is a concern).

Then in a year or two when CPUs actually stand a chance of offering a materially significant improvement in performance and/or power-consumption you can see what your $400 (plus accrued appreciation if invested) will net you on the DIY market.

In general my advice for any enthusiast or DIYer who is into upgrading their hardware on an annual or semi-annual basis is that you want to avoid paying retail. Get into the "used and slightly abused" markets where you can upgrade your hardware for about 30-50% retail pricing provided you don't mind riding an upgrade wave that is about 6-12 months behind the leading edge.

Get a used 4770k processor next year for $150-$200 instead of paying $400 now (and resell your 8320 at the same time)

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Check eBay and Craigslist for the resale value of that platform. One thing though. You are NOT allowed to price check on this forum anywhere. But if you can get a decent penny for your current platform then I'd say do the swap out. First see what the total sum of the parts you want first, then see what you can possibly get for your rig to get an estimate of what the difference might end up.

I recently sold @ 550$ in used PC parts across 5 or 6 items + a pair of Klien Climbing spurs.

 

[popobearr]

Thanks for the input, guys.
Yeah I think like most of you said, It definitely isnt worth it. I will just wait until prices come down a bit to justify the expenditure.

Thanks!

 

[Matt1970]

I have a customer who in 2009 insisted on a i7-920 and a video card that I forget the model but it was $300 and all he does is surf the net and answer emails. His reasoning was he didn't want it to be outdated in a few years. Last winter he insisted on a backupsystem with i7-3770 but atleast this time I was able to talk him into using the i7's video.

 

[Idontcare]

You are NOT allowed to price check on this forum anywhere.

Silly situation IMO. People obviously need a place where they can talk with like-minded folks so as to get a sense of the value of their hardware, why refuse to offer that venue here? A lot of things make sense to me in these forums, but a few things (like the point you make here) don't make any sense to me

 

[toyota]

Silly situation IMO. People obviously need a place where they can talk with like-minded folks so as to get a sense of the value of their hardware, why refuse to offer that venue here? A lot of things make sense to me in these forums, but a few things (like the point you make here) don't make any sense to me

they should have a sub section in fs forums for price checks. I guess it could turn into a mess though with people arguing back and forth about what they think is fair.

and speaking of things that don't make sense. I think we should be able to sell game codes like on hardforum and even nvidia forums.

 

[Eureka]

Silly situation IMO. People obviously need a place where they can talk with like-minded folks so as to get a sense of the value of their hardware, why refuse to offer that venue here? A lot of things make sense to me in these forums, but a few things (like the point you make here) don't make any sense to me

Aren't you one of the administrators?

 

[Idontcare]

Aren't you one of the administrators?

Yes, but I'm not necessarily a good one though. So...

If its something folks want then they should let their opinions be heard, albeit in the proper venue (Mod Disc subforum). We admins can't read your minds. My comment above was just my personal opinion on the topic, but I can't run the forums based on my personal opinion, it would be truly dreadful (trust me .

We admins and mods need input to make informed decisions. Make your inputs known (not here, take it to the suggestion box subforum).