its not that they get a bad rep, its just they use more power and have lower gaming performance/ single thread performance compared to their Intel counter parts. It doesn't mean they lack the performance to run things adequately.
I've been quite happy with my 8320. For me it all started when I had a thuban 1055T@4ghz and a older 790gx board at the time. New AM3+ boards launched before Bulldozer was released. I figured I would upgrade my motherboard to take advantage of sata 6gbps, ddr3 etc. With the notion I would be able to "upgrade to the bulldozer chip". Well Bulldozer came out wasn't very impressed with the performance but I did end up replacing my 1055T with a 8120 and managed to clock it to 4.9ghz. Most areas performance went up by a good bit, but only because I managed a good overclock. The Pile driver cpus were released, so I sold my 8120 and upgraded to the 8320. Much better overall and again I got lucky and was able to 5ghz. I'm happy with its performance right now, and there hasn't really been any let downs on that front.
If I didn't buy the new motherboard before bulldozer was released I would be rocking a I7-2600k right now. Such is life. I'm not looking to upgrade at the moment. Will probably wait to see what Intel and AMD come out with in 2016. I'm not gonna get suckered by hypes or early release motherboards I will always go for best performance for the price.
I've been quite happy with my 8320. For me it all started when I had a thuban 1055T@4ghz and a older 790gx board at the time. New AM3+ boards launched before Bulldozer was released. I figured I would upgrade my motherboard to take advantage of sata 6gbps, ddr3 etc. With the notion I would be able to "upgrade to the bulldozer chip". Well Bulldozer came out wasn't very impressed with the performance but I did end up replacing my 1055T with a 8120 and managed to clock it to 4.9ghz. Most areas performance went up by a good bit, but only because I managed a good overclock. The Pile driver cpus were released, so I sold my 8120 and upgraded to the 8320. Much better overall and again I got lucky and was able to 5ghz. I'm happy with its performance right now, and there hasn't really been any let downs on that front.
If I didn't buy the new motherboard before bulldozer was released I would be rocking a I7-2600k right now. Such is life. I'm not looking to upgrade at the moment. Will probably wait to see what Intel and AMD come out with in 2016. I'm not gonna get suckered by hypes or early release motherboards I will always go for best performance for the price.