AMD 8350 & 7970 Gaming Rig Review

with Haswell looking like a dog, on top of the whole console programing advantage, this could be a HUGE opportunity for AMD...

Lets collectively hope for a home-run here....not another bulldozer-esque failure
 
seumasbeathan said:
Huh? Its a set of cpu's coming in at more a less the same prices as the Ivy chips when they were first released, It offer's 10-20% more performance and looks to overclock like a beast. How is it gonna be a dog?
Click to expand...

10-20%? Everywhere i have seen has stated around 5% Cpu performance increase but about 10-20% for iGPU...
 
We always seem to come to minimal performance increases when we get in the 3.5ghz clock range anyhow. More cores or nothing at this point, Information is being bottle necked by circuitry. Make everything a shorter distance apart (which isn't doing much now since everything is already pretty much rammed on to each other..) or add more cores. We won't see better single threaded performance until we get light technology.

btw Good review, gave you shyt not long ago for not giving it the gamers choice. Show's you have character and are honest, While most would have swept it under the rug and ignored it, You had the gonads to give us the real scoop.
 
Last edited:
NeverBackDown said:
10-20%? Everywhere i have seen has stated around 5% Cpu performance increase but about 10-20% for iGPU...
Click to expand...

I guess it depends on what they mean when they say 5%.

Do they mean 5% faster at the same clocks as Ivybridge?

If so then that leaves one thing - oc headroom. 22nm is obviously going to run a lot cooler so you may start to see daily safe overclocks of 5.5ghz or more.

Even if they 'only' clock to 5ghz safe then that's still a fair jump in performance given that most run their 2500/3570ks at 4.5ghz.
 
Well the only Haswell performance benchmarks that has been seen so far are from the performance preview Techpowerup published, which showed Haswell being around 8-10% faster than Ivy.

That's the same difference between Sandy and Ivy, so if you are still on sandy that's around a 16-20% increase before overclocking.

Don't know how legit that preview is, but we had previews for Sandy and Ivy a month or two before release and the figures turned out to be legit. Engineering samples have been floating around for months as well so there is a good chance the preview is legit, a large pinch of salt has to be taken though.
 
SieB said:
Well the only Haswell performance benchmarks that has been seen so far are from the performance preview Techpowerup published, which showed Haswell being around 8-10% faster than Ivy.

That's the same difference between Sandy and Ivy, so if you are still on sandy that's around a 16-20% increase before overclocking.

Don't know how legit that preview is, but we had previews for Sandy and Ivy a month or two before release and the figures turned out to be legit. Engineering samples have been floating around for months as well so there is a good chance the preview is legit, a large pinch of salt has to be taken though.
Click to expand...

Most pre launch rumours turn out to be true tbh. Apart from the quite obviously poorly scribbled GPU graphs that we often get before a launch.
 
Haswell isn't going to be all that much faster because Intel isn't worried about being that much faster. Theyre already the fastest game in town and way more than fast enough for 99% of CPU consumers. I think Haswell is going to concentrate on low energy, battery life and all that kind of thing that appeals to the vast majority of consumers out there that want tablets and laptops. We enthusiasts may be much cooler but we're also in the vast minority. The market is going mobile and so Intel and AMD both are concentrating on that a lot more than they are on having the fastest IPC.
 
TTL - if you get the chance could you run this test again but on an i5 3570K platform instead? I'm sure that's what most people would be interested in comparing.

The jaguar cores that will be powering consoles later this year will have to rely on multi-threading to achieve any kind of interesting game mechanics. From what I've seen 2 cores will be used for managing background services, downloads and hardware like kinetic which leaves just 6 cores running at 1.5ghz to play the game on. That is not a whole load of IPC.

At the moment it is still very much dependent on the games that you play. With the IPC which intel provides you really need to be running games which support all 8 threads for AMD to be worth investing in - and then it is a great choice.

But there is also a misconception that throwing more cores at it is better. Most DirectX titles rely on one or a few primary thread(s) more than others and therefore if the primary thread(s) is saturated by its workload it doesn't matter how many other cores you throw at it and the result is that IPC is generally still king.

It's great to see titles like Crysis 3 making better use of multi-threading but I do not expect this to be a universal thrend just yet. One of the biggest releases of this year will be Rome Total War 2 and I highly doubt that it will be spreading the vast majority of its workload across more than 2-4 cores (Shogun 2 was highly reliant on a single core although it made use of others). For that reason I would not consider swapping to AMD at the moment.

If I were advising someone who is considering a new build I would say this:
In games which are highly threaded an FX-8xxx will probably produce better frame rates than an Intel i5 but both CPUs will run these games exceptionally well and will almost certainly be GPU limited.
However
When games are not so well threaded an i5 system may be noticeably more powerful than an AMD based system and games are more likely to be CPU limited.
Therefore Intel i5 seems to me the more sensible choice.
 
I don't think this was meant to be a comparison between Intel and AMD. We all know Intel is faster. I think this write up was simple meant to dispel all the crap you see on the internets about FX being a huge bottleneck and you probably wont even be able to boot into Windows with one.

As a long time AMD fanboy, Ive always maintained that while Intel is faster, you can still have a perfectly capable gaming rig with an AMD chip at the helm. And in single card setups running 1920x1080, the performance will be pretty much the same. Its not until you get into the multi GPU and multi monitor systems that the extra horsepower of the Intels will start to come into play.
 
MacLeod said:
I don't think this was meant to be a comparison between Intel and AMD. We all know Intel is faster. I think this write up was simple meant to dispel all the crap you see on the internets about FX being a huge bottleneck and you probably wont even be able to boot into Windows with one.

As a long time AMD fanboy, Ive always maintained that while Intel is faster, you can still have a perfectly capable gaming rig with an AMD chip at the helm. And in single card setups running 1920x1080, the performance will be pretty much the same. Its not until you get into the multi GPU and multi monitor systems that the extra horsepower of the Intels will start to come into play.
Click to expand...
The FX's are perfectly capable CPUs for their price. They're a little lacking in single threaded performance compared to Intel and they pull more power (which is of no consequence in terms of cost unless you're stressing the CPU 100% 24/7).

Games care far more about the GPU than they do the CPU. Here's a video with i7 3770k side by side the FX 8350 in gaming, the difference is completely neglible, except for the price that is. :p

(Skip to 7m 30secs)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewrPDqFuT3Y

It's also worth mentioning the fact that a company the size of AMD (Market Cap ~$2bn) can produce a chip like the FX-8350 that's able to compete with Intels offerings (Market Cap ~ $108bn) given Intels massive R&D budget and their massive advantage in Fabrication is quite an achievement.
 
Last edited:
Very interesting video that ^^^^

Considering the price difference, there is hardly anything in it between the 3770k and 8350.

Cheapest 8350 I have seen is £150, cheapest 3770k I have seen is £245. That £95 difference is quite big considering the not so big difference in performance.
 
If only they made a budget CPU that could compete with the i3 at the same (or preferably a lower) pricepoint. So not the FX4300, the i3 destroys it when it comes to higher end GPUs (such as the 7950, the 7870 XT or the GTX 660 (Ti)).
 
Master&Puppet said:
TTL - if you get the chance could you run this test again but on an i5 3570K platform instead? I'm sure that's what most people would be interested in comparing.

The jaguar cores that will be powering consoles later this year will have to rely on multi-threading to achieve any kind of interesting game mechanics. From what I've seen 2 cores will be used for managing background services, downloads and hardware like kinetic which leaves just 6 cores running at 1.5ghz to play the game on. That is not a whole load of IPC.

At the moment it is still very much dependent on the games that you play. With the IPC which intel provides you really need to be running games which support all 8 threads for AMD to be worth investing in - and then it is a great choice.
Click to expand...

Do not forget it depends on the final specs and whether or not devs actually will take the time to learn the architecture and find the best possible way for them to run at the least amount of cpu usage possible.

I agree with most of what you stated but assuming 2 cores will be used for this and the 6 others used for that is kind of pushing it to far. Know one knows really. Sony do and maybe some 1st/3rd party devs do but other than that know one.

If all console games move directly into multi threaded programming then the effect on Amd for Pc will be noticable. It's really not bad and i am sure intel can easily change that within a year.
 
Thanks for this review TTL. Honestly makes me feel a bit better about the purchase decision I made for my girlfriend's rig x-). Honestly tho watching my friends play on their 2500K/3570 powered machines, then going over and watching her play on her 8320 powered machine (clocked @ 4.2 Ghz, 1.36V), there really isn't a noticeable difference between them (my friend's GF, however, with her 8150, DOES get noticeably lower framerates than everyone else and she uses their same card). I am very anxious to see how things bode for the future of AMD, and am very pleased that their machines are performing as well as they are now. Better for the market, too, but I guess this comes in phases for all the parts manufacturers. Some go through a period of time in which they're top dog, then they get poo'd on for a while.
 
SieB said:
Very interesting video that ^^^^

Considering the price difference, there is hardly anything in it between the 3770k and 8350.

Cheapest 8350 I have seen is £150, cheapest 3770k I have seen is £245. That £95 difference is quite big considering the not so big difference in performance.
Click to expand...

and that is not taking into account AMD has cheaper boards ;) no PCI-E 3 though except the asus sabertooth, which is only £130 anyway.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

R
Backup Rig
Replies
0
Views
473
robbiec
R
WYP
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D nips on the heels of the 7800X3D in early gaming review
Replies
7
Views
2K
Deadtroopers
Deadtroopers
K
9070XT auto overclock
Replies
3
Views
680
KingNosser
K
Dicehunter
Rig Update
Replies
8
Views
8K
Dawelio
Dawelio
tinytomlogan
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D and 7900X3D Review
Replies
3
Views
2K
WYP
WYP
Back
Top