Upgrade from PhenomII X6 1045 to ?

boostdemon

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 12, 2004
Messages
147
The last piece of the puzzle here, my CPU needs a bit of an upgrade. I'm currently running an old Phenom II X6 1045T 2.7ghz 6 core... in a Sabertooth 990FX board. What is the best option - FX-9590 8core 4.7ghz? I plan on installing a 240mm contained radiator/waterblock, probably the corsair unless someone has a suggestion.
 
The last piece of the puzzle here, my CPU needs a bit of an upgrade. I'm currently running an old Phenom II X6 1045T 2.7ghz 6 core... in a Sabertooth 990FX board. What is the best option - FX-9590 8core 4.7ghz? I plan on installing a 240mm contained radiator/waterblock, probably the corsair unless someone has a suggestion.

If your system can handle the heat (and with a 240mm rad, it should) of a 250W CPU, I'd say jump. You will often get SB/IB class performance out of it, giving nice gains over what you have now. Check out the "9590 facts, I have one" thread below this one.
 
yeah i saw that thread... extensive read. I would hope i should be able to keep it cool with the 2x bigger rad than OEM... I'm filling out the rest of the fan slots in my full tower as well to help front to back airflow.

I was reading through the comparisons of the FX9590 to the older X4 945 and the big increases seem to be physics... and cost to operate in a 24/7 environment. estimated $22/yr for the 95w vs. $53/yr for the 220w isn't anything to be concerned with though.
 
So get a 8350 and OC it. I have a 95W 8310 at 4.4Ghz on air without a big voltage bump. I can't imagine it draws more than 130-150W when it runs full load.
 
yeah thats basically my alternative and ultimately what i've been mulling over. 8370, 8370e, or full on 9590.
 
Personally, I wouldn't spend the money on the 9590. If you're going to dump that kind of money, you might as well go Intel. At the end of the day, I got the board/CPU I'm using for ~$190...that's less than a decent LGA1155 setup goes for.

TigerDirect has sales on the 8310 for $89 or so AR. 8 core 95W vishera for less than $90? Pretty good deal to me IMO. I could probably get 4.8Ghz or so out of it if I had better cooling. I'm just on a 212+.
 
yeah i hear ya on price points. I seem to flip flop builds every 3-5 years going from AMD to Intel. This ones AMD with pretty much no expense spared (built over a year ago) for gaming and graphics work.. accept the CPU was a recycle from an older HP desktop i had. I figured it was good enough, until it became the bottleneck for physics processing to the crossfire sapphire 7950 OC video cards.

Since the CPU is the last thing i want to buy for this box for many years, i don't mind the $215 for the 9590 and $100 for the H100i cooling system.

This is whats in it right now:

Phenom II x6 1045t
Asus Sabertooth 990 FX mobo
Kingston HyperX 120gig SSD (primary)
4x 2TB WD Red in RAID1+0 (data/game/storage)
2x Sapphire HD 7950 OC 950mhz edition
G.SKILL Sniper Gaming Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900)
RAIDMAX RX-1200AE 1200W 80 PLUS GOLD power supply


need more CPU!
 
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yeah i hear ya on price points. I seem to flip flop builds every 3-5 years going from AMD to Intel. This ones AMD with pretty much no expense spared (built over a year ago) for gaming and graphics work.. accept the CPU was a recycle from an older HP desktop i had. I figured it was good enough, until it became the bottleneck for physics processing to the crossfire sapphire 7950 OC video cards.

Since the CPU is the last thing i want to buy for this box for many years, i don't mind the $215 for the 9590 and $100 for the H100i cooling system.

This is whats in it right now:

Phenom II x6 1045t
Asus Sabertooth 990 FX mobo
Kingston HyperX 120gig SSD (primary)
4x 2TB WD Red in RAID1+0 (data/game/storage)
2x Sapphire HD 7950 OC 950mhz edition
G.SKILL Sniper Gaming Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900)
RAIDMAX RX-1200AE 1200W 80 PLUS GOLD power supply


need more CPU!

I hear you about MOAR POWAH but before you drop a lot of dosh on a 3+ year old platform that Zen CPUs are coming by the end of 2016. Perhaps the 8370 (as kirbyjr suggested) + 120mm tower heatsink option is the best stopgap utilizing the motherboard you do have. For $300 you can get a used Haswell i5 and a decent Z8x board that will run rings around the FX series in all but the most threaded applications. Or alternatively a IB or SB i7 + Z7x that will be toe to toe with the FX in 8 thread apps and stomping it in 4 thread or less performance. Keep that in mind.
 
You did not say what you do with your system.
I do a lot of BOINC and I too have the 1045T it is oc to 3.4ghz and my ram is at 1333 7-7-7-21
I am looking at the 8320 or 8350. But come to find out, my system does the same amount of work units in a 24 hour time frame at the new FX8320 clocked faster. I do 6 at a time they can do 8, but over time I do as many so for me not worth the money.

Playing games would you be better off just getting a better GPU? Or if you do not overclock maybe just bump up the mhz. I run at 3.4ghz and it runs at 40c 100% load primegrid under 1.4v H80i AIO cooler.

Just some food for thought.
 
I looked at the 8350 and the 9590 as well as a few others. I could not justify the cost to operate, heat and wattage with the small performance gains vs what I already had (1090T @ 3.6 half the year stock the rest. Had to balance the heat on air O_O) In the end the price, performance and expected life span of the part (how long can I squeeze great performance out of it) made me switch back to Intel for the first time since the Pentium 3.

I do a mixed bag of rendering, photo's, audio, gaming etc. I am on water again with this build and a measly 3.6 OC on my current parts (I'm sure I could get this past 4 without an issue but am loving the heat (or lack there of) and it runs circles around my old 1090T.

My worst render took about 1 hour per minute of video totaling 14 hours on the old rig. I recently rendered an 8 minute video which finished in about 40 minutes (same output and settings). Temps ranged between 45 to 50c.

Look into what you stand to gain from either camp and what your primary usage is. My main issue with the AMD offerings this time around was the old architecture meaning it wouldn't last me as long and really the jump in performance (for MY usage) wasn't all that great.
 
But the question is did you ever use a 8350/9590? I find most have no Idea how they run. And sorry most reviewers are terrible at their job and do little to investigate AMD processors and their performance. The heat aspect is bull. At stock my 8350 (an early version) is lucky to go over 40C during prime using a meager 120mm rad. The heat debate only comes in at higher clocks and even then usually a simple 240 rad keeps the processor in check. Now heat output could be an issue for some, but thus far it has never been an issue for me (for the last 2 years using an air conditioned case, expelling heat out of the room not in it so not referencing that time frame) even in a 6ft by 10 foot room. Most of this is exaggeration. Not to mention drivers and updates to software have been great for the FX series getting great performance that wasn't their upon release. Look up others that have used Linux and see how well the FX performs when it actual get decent use of its libraries.

This has been a debate going on for a while: IS IT THE CPUs or THE SOFTWARE. Now this is in no way an attempt to make AMD seem equal to Intel but rather a speaking to the overblown rationale some use for fodder. Even to this day too many use Cinebench 11.5 as their marker of performance. These same ignorant or intentionally misleading individuals never mention that Cinebench 11.5 is the worst indicator of performance across manufactures. It uses different instruction sets depending on which manufacturer you use. You use Intel you get a higher/faster instruction set than if you use AMD, where these different Instruction sets can double the speed of the test. EVEN the above posters fails to mention that he is likely using AVX1/2 whereas the phenom is likely using a version of SSE. Such oversight and omission of information is not as conclusive as some attempt to show.

So I can tell you that NO phenom is going to surpass an FX when either is OCed. The FX can get well into the high 4Ghz to low 5Ghz range. The phenoms generally saw 4Ghz with only a few hitting 4.2Ghz and far less 4.4Ghz. Couple that with FX having AVX capability and Phenom not, then today there is no point in claiming Phenom is in any way still better, other than meters that don't take max clock potential into account. Intel still has the advantage with the newer CPUs having AVX2 and they actually are better in direct fair comparisons but not to the degree some wish to convey.

Basically I tell you the same I tell anyone: ASK A USER. Don't trust someone that has never owned one.
 
I run my 8320 at 4.5 all day with the kraken x61 280mm cooler. Barely bumped the voltage at all to keep it stable. I game mainly and the o/c just doesn't really seem to do as much for gaming as you'd expect. Also set my machine to encode movies all night on the weekends.

At this speed my cpu runs 54-55C and the socket another 10 degrees. The 990 boards are also terrible heat producers from the power system. Had to add a fan to 3 different boards to keep it stable once I disable thermal throttling. The encoding speed is decent, about 2 hours for a 90 minute blueray typically in handbrake. BIG issue though is this rig heats up the whole office. Ambient temps in the office will climb to 78-80F which is uncomfortable to say the least (will do this when gaming on very taxing games aswell).

Currently looking to actually gut this build and drop in a xeon e3 1231. From reviews, this chip and a board for a total of $400 or less will stomp a hole in my o/c 8320 in both encoding and gaming while using a ton less energy and far less heat generated (obviously). If you're interested in that route, the 1231 is roughly the same in reviews as a stock speed i7 4770.

The more I keep looking at my upgrade options, the further I get from wanting to stick with AMD. I've basically run out of positive points (beyond strictly looking at $$) to stick with AMD outside of the apu world.
 
Please don't upgrade. Just keep your current system until you're ready for a FULL upgrade. I'd honestly recommend waiting till the newer tech (DDR4 memory and so on) starts dropping down in price; January 2016 post-holidays is a great time to pick up the post-Xmas deals.

I'm personally on a 10-year setup between computers. That way when I blow $1k+ on a new PC I know I have to make it last a decade to get the most out of it. My last computer lasted ~11 years before the GPU popped a capacitor and fried the entire system & motherboard (cheap Chinese parts, I was a derp but have learned since then). Spent $1500 on it (yeah I know) but it lasted more than 10 years so I got the most out of it.

The comp I'm using is one I paid around $1k for and I plan to keep using it till 2021 (or 2020 maybe).

Tech moves so fast that you are better off replacing the whole system when something dies rather than just replacing that one part.

I also didn't see anyone mention this, but anything more than 4 cores is wasted on gaming. Seriously even dual-cores are barely used by most games. They're stubbornly single-threaded for the most part although Unreal Engine 4 going 'free'-ish and Unity doing the same should help with these issues. Having the underlying engine natively support and handle all the multithreading so the lazy stupid devs don't waste our time & money on hardware we can't fully utilize. Hell, as buggy as 'triple A' PC games have been, I'm surprised people still eat the bullshit that gets spewed out like '30 fps is more cinematic'.

So keep your setup. Use it till it burns out or sell it for a tidy sum and get a completely new setup. That is your best bet. Or you can keep the older system and stick a Linux server distro on it and use it as a file server. Maybe sell off the GPU seperately since you won't be needing it for a file server setup.
 
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It's funny how AMD CPUs get dogged just cause programmers are too lazy to spend time multithreading their applications. Hardware has far outpaced software at this point. For now, after the compiler crippling, exclusionary OEM deals, and supporting zionism, I simply don't see myself buying Intel even if the cores have higher IPC.. Zen can't happen fast enough.
 
yeah the CPU thats in there is pretty old 4-5 years? , the rest of the hardware is a a year old and i'll probably use it for another 5 years. I'm not a huge hardware junkie.

I use it primarily for gaming now with the occasional photoshop/illustrator projects and photos editing jobs.

So pretty much everyone in agreement that I should pick up an inexpensive 8370, use the oversized air cooling with a minor overclock and let this hardware run its course... and do a full system upgrade once the next round of stuff comes out?
 
The 8350 with a soild overclock would be a great upgrade especially considering it would be a simple drop in install along with a BIOS update possibly. Get it up to 4.5 or better and itll be a very good performing system. Mine is still running very strong and with my 290x Im able to play anything on the market so far at max settings with 60+ fps at 1080 so Im pretty happy. I am getting the itch to do a new build using Intel since AMD has abandoned the PC market but with mine doing all I need, Im having a hard time justifying it at the moment.
 
The 8350 with a soild overclock would be a great upgrade especially considering it would be a simple drop in install along with a BIOS update possibly. Get it up to 4.5 or better and itll be a very good performing system. Mine is still running very strong and with my 290x Im able to play anything on the market so far at max settings with 60+ fps at 1080 so Im pretty happy. I am getting the itch to do a new build using Intel since AMD has abandoned the PC market but with mine doing all I need, Im having a hard time justifying it at the moment.

What's your temps at running 1.41 w/ the h100? Starting to feel like I just got a TERRIBLE cheap as far as how much heat this thing is putting out at lower volts.
 
yeah i am also with the others saying that you should just wait if amd doesn't pull their heads out of their ass and do something to compete with the i7 using the zen platform then jump to intel at this point if you absolutely cant wait get the 8350 for about 150-180 or the 8370 for about 200 or the 9590 for 300 with a cooler master closed loop cooler...
 
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What's your temps at running 1.41 w/ the h100? Starting to feel like I just got a TERRIBLE cheap as far as how much heat this thing is putting out at lower volts.

I can run OCCT on the Medium fan speed setting and keep my temps under 63C. Max setting keeps it around 57C. For 24/7 use I keep it on the Low speed setting because its so quiet. It doesnt cool quite as well but still cools very good. During some gaming I can get into the low 50's but generally it stays in the mid 40's. Medium shaves a few degrees off that but low 50's is still acceptable temps under load with a near silent fan.

My last chip was a 8150 that wouldnt budge passed 4.5 and I was able to keep the Low speed setting on all the time with no problem and temps never got out of the 40's while gaming.

So yeah, Im pretty happy with my H100. Granted I have mine set up a little different than others. My fans are under the rad drawing air in. I tried it a bunch of different ways and that was the way that gave the best results by several degrees. That could be helping too.
 

10 years?! The most I could go is 3 or 4 years without upgrading. Do you have multiple machines in rotation? Or do you just not care about high detail/mostly play casual/mmo stuff that is not CPU/GPU intensive?

Not criticizing, just curious.
 
@Mr.Bluntman:
I have self-control and I purposefully set aside chunks of my paycheck for things more important than gaming. 10% to charity (yes, each month); 30% for savings (and tax benefits from the IRA stuff); 10% for anything I want, and the remaining 50% goes to bills and expenses only.

I would rather drop $1k on the best hotness and run it into the ground after 10 years than flail around every 3-4 years trying to play catch-up to the latest tech.

The fact is that the Mhz/Ghz war is over. If you got an i5 or i7 (or AMD equivalent) today, you would be good for at least 10 years. Hell we've been on DDR3 memory for HOW long before we finally got DDR4? And where is SATA5? We aren't even on SATA4 yet (at least not that I've heard). (Slight edit because I'm an idiot; apparently we are on SATA 6GB/s aka SATA6 now...I feel derpy)

For me, technological progress is slowing down substantially and generally takes ~10 years to have cheap hardware at a mature stability point. Once the stupid 4K and VR fads die down, we might even see some price drops across the board as they have to unload all the tech they don't want to use anymore.

Outside of this GPU fan issue, my computer has given me absolutely zero troubles. I built it using these H-forums about 3-4 years ago and I'm happy with how it performs even today. Once I get my GPU fans going, I may end up just overclocking my CPU and perhaps even the GPU itself. Funny that the GPU fans just so happened to die out almost exactly 4 years later (since I bought my parts in March 2011).
On a quick tangent regarding my GPU fans, it turns out that running them at "100%" spins it fast enough to burn out the motor. Who'd have thought? ^_^; It seems the max 'safe speed' to keep it is about 60% or ~3.5k RPM. Going to 100% put it in excess of 4.5k RPM and messes it up much faster.

Run it into the ground for the next 3-4 years; because nearly nobody is gonna buy your old tech when newer stuff is cheap as dirt online. And non-gamers are just gonna grab their cheap deals from Best Buy, Walmart, Target, and other big-box retailers in the form of tablets and laptops (then their stupid kids will flood gaming forums on why X-name 3D game isn't working on their cheap integrated shit graphics).

Maybe it is because I'm playing more indie titles and I'm not dropping as much on buggy shitty console-ported so-called 'AAA' trash. The quality of big-budget PC games has been embarassingly bad for the past several years. Far better to just wait until it is fully patched ~6+ months later to the way it should've been at launch.

How embarassing must it be for Nvidia that it takes them more than 2 entire generations of video cards to beat a 560Ti in performance per dollar?
 
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Performance per dollar is essentially what everyone has to justify for time, right? Case in point, would i pay $400 for an upgrade that yielded me 30% improvement? probably not. But if i wait a year, would i pay $100 for that same upgrade? yeah sure. But like jcdenton2k, i'm doing full system upgrades every 5+ years simply because my needs don't require more than that.

I have stricken the FX9590 from the running as 1. its power consumption is way too high 2. i think i can push the 8350 or 8370e around enough with clock speeds that i should be more than sufficient with gaming "boost" settings.
 
To be blunt most of the 8xxx chips clock a lot the same. It's still luck in the lottery. I recently had an 8320 that ran at 5.0 with 1.45v. These newer FX all seem to get into the 4.8 range without too much difficulty . So what I am saying you could "likely" get an 8300 or 8320 on the cheap and still have about the same results. It mostly depends on your cooling and airflow.
 
To be blunt most of the 8xxx chips clock a lot the same. It's still luck in the lottery. I recently had an 8320 that ran at 5.0 with 1.45v. These newer FX all seem to get into the 4.8 range without too much difficulty . So what I am saying you could "likely" get an 8300 or 8320 on the cheap and still have about the same results. It mostly depends on your cooling and airflow.

Watch TigerDirect. I've seen the 8310 go for $89+shipping. I have mine clocked to 4.4 on a 212+ and 1.3V.
 
@Mr.Bluntman:
I have self-control and I purposefully set aside chunks of my paycheck for things more important than gaming. 10% to charity (yes, each month); 30% for savings (and tax benefits from the IRA stuff); 10% for anything I want, and the remaining 50% goes to bills and expenses only.

I would rather drop $1k on the best hotness and run it into the ground after 10 years than flail around every 3-4 years trying to play catch-up to the latest tech.

The fact is that the Mhz/Ghz war is over. If you got an i5 or i7 (or AMD equivalent) today, you would be good for at least 10 years. Hell we've been on DDR3 memory for HOW long before we finally got DDR4? And where is SATA5? We aren't even on SATA4 yet (at least not that I've heard).

For me, technological progress is slowing down substantially and generally takes ~10 years to have cheap hardware at a mature stability point. Once the stupid 4K and VR fads die down, we might even see some price drops across the board as they have to unload all the tech they don't want to use anymore.

Outside of this GPU fan issue, my computer has given me absolutely zero troubles. I built it using these H-forums about 3-4 years ago and I'm happy with how it performs even today. Once I get my GPU fans going, I may end up just overclocking my CPU and perhaps even the GPU itself. Funny that the GPU fans just so happened to die out almost exactly 4 years later (since I bought my parts in March 2011).
On a quick tangent regarding my GPU fans, it turns out that running them at "100%" spins it fast enough to burn out the motor. Who'd have thought? ^_^; It seems the max 'safe speed' to keep it is about 60% or ~3.5k RPM. Going to 100% put it in excess of 4.5k RPM and messes it up much faster.

Run it into the ground for the next 3-4 years; because nearly nobody is gonna buy your old tech when newer stuff is cheap as dirt online. And non-gamers are just gonna grab their cheap deals from Best Buy, Walmart, Target, and other big-box retailers in the form of tablets and laptops (then their stupid kids will flood gaming forums on why X-name 3D game isn't working on their cheap integrated shit graphics).

Maybe it is because I'm playing more indie titles and I'm not dropping as much on buggy shitty console-ported so-called 'AAA' trash. The quality of big-budget PC games has been embarassingly bad for the past several years. Far better to just wait until it is fully patched ~6+ months later to the way it should've been at launch.

How embarassing must it be for Nvidia that it takes them more than 2 entire generations of video cards to beat a 560Ti in performance per dollar?

I guess our priorities are different, then.

I will agree about the stupid kids and their low cost trash, how hardware stays relevant longer (how long was it before IBM stopped selling ATs and XTs? 7-8 years? With Moore's law coming to an end as we've known it in 5, 10 years I can see a return to computers lasting like appliances), and the definite decline in AAA game quality over the last decade has been huge.

I still do manage to find a few games every year or so worth playing, though. I can see my system lasting another year or two thanks to buying a used i7 and a RAM upgrade for about half the cost than what they were new.

All together it will make it 4-5 years that I've been on Z77 all together. Much less often than many around here update their whole platform. I was on Core 2 for 4 years before that, and Athlon 64 about another 5, so I guess 4y6mo is the average for me. I do agree eating well and paying your rent is more important than a cutting edge system, for sure, but a decade is just too long for me. I see we will agree to disagree on that. No worries, though. Everyone is different.
 
The last piece of the puzzle here, my CPU needs a bit of an upgrade. I'm currently running an old Phenom II X6 1045T 2.7ghz 6 core... in a Sabertooth 990FX board. What is the best option - FX-9590 8core 4.7ghz? I plan on installing a 240mm contained radiator/waterblock, probably the corsair unless someone has a suggestion.

I see no problem with the 9590, and own one which was an upgrade from a 1045t.

Admittedly it's single threaded performance is weakish. But if you are a user who keeps many open application running, doing many things, work with multimedia, do virtualization, and/or write code/compile- the 9590 is a great price performance point. Also a big upgrade.

Intel processors hold the crown. But I don't need the crown. I need hardware threads :)

If all you do is game... get Intel. If you don't want to pay top dollar but want threads- go AMD.
 
Piling on the 8310/8320 since you gonna be overclocking. Most will do 4.4-4.6 easy.

9590 has that nice base clock, but i don't see very many go for stable 5.0+ so it kind of eliminates the overclocking angle.
 

Im kinda with you on this. I have never bought the newest stuff. Im always several months to a year late when I buy major components. I just bought my 290x back in December for $350 instead of last April when it was $700 and I bought my GTX670 before that a couple months before the GTX700's rolled out. I bought my 8350 early last year too for $160 instead of when it came out at $250 or whatever it was. I had a 8150 before that also bought several months after its release. Hell I just bought my first SSD less than 6 months ago.

Now the reason I do it this way is strictly because of money. If I had plenty of it Id be rolling a Haswell-E rig with all the trimmings. While technology has slowed down and you can do more with less especially in gaming, I still like having new stuff to play with. This is a hobby most of us do for fun and these are basically all toys for us and when youre talking about toys, youre rarely talking about value and logical purchases. Youre wanting to buy new and cool shit to play with because its fun.

So while Im kind of in the same boat as you, I do see why somebody would upgrade often and frequently and see nothing wrong with it.
 
Yeah, I like to do piecemeal upgrades myself. I have had my 8350 and 8320 about 2 years each. (One at home and one at work.) I bought my 290 back in November 2013 and will probably have that for at least 2 more years. (VSR works great which saves me from getting a higher res monitor for the time being.)

I purchased a HP Stream 7 cheap and also bought an Insignia 8 inch Windows tablet for $40. I would love to upgrade and often will window shop online but, the money I would spend would be a waste. (I love competitive running so at least 1200 a year go into that with race fees and gear.)
 
With my current motherboard & system, it is PCI Express x16 v2.0 and all the newer cards are x16 v3.0 so even IF I replaced my GTX 560 Ti GPU it wouldn't run at full performance but would be downclocked automatically due to the limitations of x16 v2.0
So yeah :)
 
You wouldn't notice the difference in 2.0 vs 3.0 unless you were running a pair of GTX 980's at 4K or something insane like that.
 
With my current motherboard & system, it is PCI Express x16 v2.0 and all the newer cards are x16 v3.0 so even IF I replaced my GTX 560 Ti GPU it wouldn't run at full performance but would be downclocked automatically due to the limitations of x16 v2.0
So yeah :)

Really? My R9 290 flashed to a 290x is running at full performance, no down clocking at all. I am on a Asrock 990FX Extreme 9 board that runs at 16x PCIe 2.0.
 
With my current motherboard & system, it is PCI Express x16 v2.0 and all the newer cards are x16 v3.0 so even IF I replaced my GTX 560 Ti GPU it wouldn't run at full performance but would be downclocked automatically due to the limitations of x16 v2.0
So yeah :)

Why would that make yoir card downclock?
 
It's funny how AMD CPUs get dogged just cause programmers are too lazy to spend time multithreading their applications. Hardware has far outpaced software at this point. For now, after the compiler crippling, exclusionary OEM deals, and supporting zionism, I simply don't see myself buying Intel even if the cores have higher IPC.. Zen can't happen fast enough.

I understand what you mean. I hate buying intel for all these reasons. I hate rewarding a shitty company.

But the truth is, for most applications you'll have better performance, lower heat and less fan noise with the cheapest core i3 than with the most expensive FX CPU.

True, this depends on workload. Rendering tasks, encoding tasks, stuff that multithreads well will take advantage of all 8 cores, but these workloads are far from universal, and even so, a 4 core i5 will typically perform as well or better.

When it comes to multithreading, calling it lazy on the part of software developers isn't quite fair. Developing good multithreaded software ranges from the very difficult, to the impossible depending on your workload.

Some workloads are highly paralellized (like rendering and encoding) and these do well in multithreading. Others (like game engines, etc.) are notoriously difficult to do without thread locking (getting multiple threads stuck, as they are waiting from outputs from eachother). In many cases, code just can not be written to work well multithreaded. it simply is not a workload that benefits from multiple cores. In these cases it is best to offload what you can to other cores, and just give these processes one core to max out on their own.

There are some cases in which multithreading can improve, but I don't see much improvement across the board no matter how diligent the programmers.

So, as much as I hate to do it, I've been running Intel for the last few years. Can't wait fro AMD to have a competitive CPU again, but I'm not convinced this will ever happen.
 
With my current motherboard & system, it is PCI Express x16 v2.0 and all the newer cards are x16 v3.0 so even IF I replaced my GTX 560 Ti GPU it wouldn't run at full performance but would be downclocked automatically due to the limitations of x16 v2.0
So yeah :)

Wrong.

The PCIe bus will never cause the card to downclock.

Starving a GPU for PCIe bandwidth can cause slowdowns, but it has nothing to do with the clock.

And quite frankly, unless you are buying a Titan X or are running crossfire AMD GPU's (the new ones without a bridge) I doubt you'll even notice the difference in PCIe bandwidth.

16x 2.0 is still - today - fast enough for just about everything.

Now, if you for some reason drop down to 8x, (like using multiple video cards) then having PCIe 3.0 will probably show a difference in performance (but probably not a large one)

Now, granted, this is an older card at this point, but I've even run a Radeon 6850 at PCIe 2.0 1x, with only a minor amount of performance degradation.

(This was on a laptop using an Expresscard to PCIe adapter as a test to see if it would work, it did :p )
 
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