New CPU

killanena

I'm looking to buy a new CPU. I'm currently running a fx-8350 black edition with a gigabyte RX 480 4gb and I feel my CPU is bottle necking my GPU as I'm not getting the performances I was expecting out of the card after watching and reading several reviews of it. Would I be right here? Any suggestions on an upgrade? Budget is around the €200 mark.

Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-990XA-UD3 and I mainly use my PC to game all generations of games

BloodBath

Some games just aren't optimised to make use of all those cores. Their single thread performance even overclocked is poor compared to modern cpu's and it's really just a quad core with multi threading. It will definitely be a bottleneck in a lot of games.

A Ryzen 1600 + B350 board and 16GB DDR4 would be a good upgrade for around €400. 2 extra cores, 4 extra threads and 50% better single thread performance. You could sell your old board, ram and cpu for around €150-200.

killanena

I have over clocked to 4.5ghz before and of caused bluescreen even tho temps never went above 60 degrees. It's turbo mode automatically pushes it to 4.2ghz when under load. I find performance even on low on some newer games unplayable, jumps up and down on frame rate constantly. All GPU drivers updated to latest version. I even use a program called CPU cores which has helped a bit but not enough.

TerrorFirmer

sugarman wrote: »

Theres absolutely no way that CPU is bottle necking that card, its still a fairly decent CPU. Is it overclocked? If not, id look into that first.

There absolutely is unfortunately - the FX CPU's are dire in a lot of the latest more intensive games and will badly bottleneck an RX480.

Buying a H81M board new, get a 2nd hand Haswell i5 for around €100 and re-use your old ram and that would leave you at about €150 with massive improvement in performance.

Even an i3-4150 for about €50 would be an upgrade on the FX-8350.

killanena

TerrorFirmer wrote:

There absolutely is unfortunately - the FX CPU's are dire in a lot of the latest more intensive games and will badly bottleneck an RX480.

Thanks for all replies. What sites these days are best value? Hardwareversand or whatever it was called is what I used to use but heard they don't ship to Ireland anymore. I used Amazon for my newish GPU so would that be my best bet?

Yeah when I first bought the FX8350 I thought "8 cores, that's unreal!" Not so much for gaming :P

K.O.Kiki

As TerrorFirmer says, you need at least an i5-4xxx to see good gains.

Buy from Amazon, Overclockers or Scan (all UK) imho.

killanena

I guess i need to get a new board and CPU, Might as well go intel this time around. I'll be very sorry to see my old board go as I seem to have a curse when it comes to motherboards. I've had to send back 3 of 5 I have ever bought because they were faulty and this one has never given me a single issue. I had heard about the new AMD Ryzen CPU's but looks like they use a new AM4 socket >.<

Edit: How much do ye reckon I could sell the FX8350 and my mobo for? I'll keep my ram as mentioned I have no problems with it (Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz 4gb x2) and also my cooler (Cooler Master Hyper 212)

Second Edit: I'm liking the look of the i5-7500, Any suggestions better then this for around more of less the same price tag? And a nice budget mobo to go with it?

BloodBath

I already gave you good advice and the price to sell your stuff at.

A Ryzen 1600 would be a far better buy than that i5. It might be a bit more than you want to spend but worth it imo.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/dNK4vV

K.O.Kiki

Modern CPUs are using DDR4 now; you can't use DDR3 (and it's only recommended to use special, low-voltage DDR3-L on Intel 6th-gen).

Your choices therefore are either:
Intel i5-7500 (£170) + any B250 motherboard (£65) + 2x4Gb DDR4-2400 (£60) = ~£295 (€320)
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/9WbkzM

OR
AMD Ryzen 5-1600 (£183) + decent B350 motherboard (£73) + 2x4Gb DDR4-3000 (£73) = ~£329 (€356)
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/X7vzd6

Note that 2x8Gb (or even 4x4Gb RAM) is cheaper/Gb than 2x4Gb.

BloodBath

That's not even a choice really.

The 1600 is simply superior in every way to that i5. I5's are dead. Even the quad core Ryzen cpu's with or without multi threading are a better option.

Redfox25

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Your choices therefore are either:
Intel i5-7500 (£170) + any B250 motherboard (£65) + 2x4Gb DDR4-2400 (£60) = ~£295 (€320)
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/9WbkzM

OR
AMD Ryzen 5-1600 (£183) + decent B350 motherboard (£73) + 2x4Gb DDR4-3000 (£73) = ~£329 (€356)
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/X7vzd6

Note that 2x8Gb (or even 4x4Gb RAM) is cheaper/Gb than 2x4Gb.

For the sake of 30 quid more, go Ryzen, get a new platform, have a mobo and ram that you can buy a new Ryzen XX in 4 years time when they finish with that mobo and still be able to use it. Its a sound investment if you think of it that way.

Ryzen XX is to signify whatever they are calling the Ryzen chip in 4 years time.

killanena

Ok thank you all. I guess Im better of saving a little bit more for awhile to go for the ryzen and ddr4. I didn't even know that about ddr4 just shows how long Im out of the loop xD

CruelCoin

killanena wrote: »

Ok thank you all. I guess Im better of saving a little bit more for awhile to go for the ryzen and ddr4. I didn't even know that about ddr4 just shows how long Im out of the loop xD

I'd stick with the Intel.

Some brief reading and came across this:

"For gaming, our DX12 titles show a plus for AMD in any CPU limited scenario, such as Civilization or Rise of the Tomb Raider in certain scenes. For e-Sports, and most games based on DX9 or DX11, the Intel CPU is still a win here. "

Vast majority of current games are in DX11, and Ryzen tends to not play too nice with older games. Will take some time for those issues to be weeded out in newer versions.

Also individual core speeds are higher on the i5 chips with a lower power draw. Some games, HOI4 for example only use one or two cores, and the game will start chugging late game as it bottlenecks. The only cure for that is modding the game or running a higher core speed. Extra cores does nothing for the vast majority of games that do not use more than 2 cores...

PC Gamer ran an article with the Ryzen chip having this negative mark: "Runs many games slower than Core i5"
They have gaming benchmarks with every one of the i5's and i7's outperforming all of the Ryzen chips.
http://www.pcgamer.com/the-best-pc-gaming-cpus-processors/

If you're video editing, gaming and doing various stuff then yeah Ryzen wins thanks to core count.
But if Gaming is exclusively your thing, and if you want older games, not just new ones to run well, then i5 should be where you're looking.

I'd ignore the people telling you to go with Ryzen because its new and shiny. You should go with what is better.

Lu Tze

CruelCoin wrote: »

I'd stick with the Intel.

Some brief reading and came across this:

"For gaming, our DX12 titles show a plus for AMD in any CPU limited scenario, such as Civilization or Rise of the Tomb Raider in certain scenes. For e-Sports, and most games based on DX9 or DX11, the Intel CPU is still a win here. "

Vast majority of current games are in DX11, and Ryzen tends to not play too nice with older games. Will take some time for those issues to be weeded out in newer versions.

Also individual core speeds are higher on the i5 chips with a lower power draw. Some games, HOI4 for example only use one or two cores, and the game will start chugging late game as it bottlenecks. The only cure for that is modding the game or running a higher core speed. Extra cores does nothing for the vast majority of games that do not use more than 2 cores...

PC Gamer ran an article with the Ryzen chip having this negative mark: "Runs many games slower than Core i5"
They have gaming benchmarks with every one of the i5's and i7's outperforming all of the Ryzen chips.
http://www.pcgamer.com/the-best-pc-gaming-cpus-processors/

If you're video editing, gaming and doing various stuff then yeah Ryzen wins thanks to core count.
But if Gaming is exclusively your thing, and if you want older games, not just new ones to run well, then i5 should be where you're looking.

I'd ignore the people telling you to go with Ryzen because its new and shiny. You should go with what is better.

Yeah if you are doing nothing but gaming Intel is the best option, but realistically, even then you need a high hertz monitor to see any advantage. If you are sitting on 60 hz, there is no real benefit.

wotzgoingon

It's only the i7's that are better the i5's are much the same as the Ryzen. Better minimums with Ryzen as well.

BloodBath

CruelCoin wrote: »

I'd stick with the Intel.

Some brief reading and came across this:

"For gaming, our DX12 titles show a plus for AMD in any CPU limited scenario, such as Civilization or Rise of the Tomb Raider in certain scenes. For e-Sports, and most games based on DX9 or DX11, the Intel CPU is still a win here. "

Vast majority of current games are in DX11, and Ryzen tends to not play too nice with older games. Will take some time for those issues to be weeded out in newer versions.

Also individual core speeds are higher on the i5 chips with a lower power draw. Some games, HOI4 for example only use one or two cores, and the game will start chugging late game as it bottlenecks. The only cure for that is modding the game or running a higher core speed. Extra cores does nothing for the vast majority of games that do not use more than 2 cores...

PC Gamer ran an article with the Ryzen chip having this negative mark: "Runs many games slower than Core i5"
They have gaming benchmarks with every one of the i5's and i7's outperforming all of the Ryzen chips.
http://www.pcgamer.com/the-best-pc-gaming-cpus-processors/

If you're video editing, gaming and doing various stuff then yeah Ryzen wins thanks to core count.
But if Gaming is exclusively your thing, and if you want older games, not just new ones to run well, then i5 should be where you're looking.

I'd ignore the people telling you to go with Ryzen because its new and shiny. You should go with what is better.

Sorry but you are misinformed. Non overclockable i5's are dead. A terrible buy for any system. I'd argue even the overclockable versions are dead. Buying a quad core now is a bad idea. A lot of newer games are using more than 4 and i5's are already the bottleneck in a lot of newer games.

The only intel processor that is hands down better for gaming is an i7 7700k overclocked to 5Ghz which will cost even more again.

Even then you want a 144Hz monitor and a graphics card that can maintain that frame rate to see the benefits.

Ryzen is close to the performance of the 7700k in most titles and a lot better in others than i5's. Most new titles are using at least 4+ and the Ryzen beats i5's in those titles. Buying new hardware based on how many cores 10 year old games use is not a good idea.

You are just linking quotes from old bad reviews. Ryzen needs a little tweaking to get the most out of it. Overclock it to 4Ghz on all cores and use high speed ram + update the board bios and you have a beast of a cpu that will last you at least 4-5 years with a good upgrade path as AMD are releasing 2 more generations of Ryzen on this socket and you can upgrade to an 8 core / 16 thread gen 3 Ryzen cpu 4-5 years down the line.

A non overclockable i5 will already cause frame rate drops in some new titles especially if you have some background programs running. It just does not have the core count.

Why buy a quad core with no multi threading when you could have a 6 core, 12 thread cpu with similar single thread performance.

Even if price was an issue the quad core Ryzens are a lot cheaper than the cheaper i5's and are overclockable to give them better performance. The cheapest i5 is €160-170 and boosts to 3.5Ghz. The chepeast quad core Ryzen is €100-110 and overclocks to 3.8 - 4.0Ghz and has a far superior upgrade path.

killanena

Yeah I'm liking the look of the new ryzens so I'll go with one plus get me some ddr4 memory. Thanks all again