# FX-8350 switch to Intel?



## sumamed (Jan 20, 2015)

Hello guys from a long time lurker, i have dilema that made me register and ask for advice.

My current system is fx 8350 at some 4,5 Ghz, 8gb crappy ram,  850w corsair ax ,780ti with some ssds and some hdds. 

I feel it is time to switch to intel, i am going to  buy cpu, mobo, cpu air cooler and some decent 16GB RAM. 
What do you recommend?

I'ts gonna be strictly gaming pc, so which way to go? Is 4790K worth it over 4690k? where i live its 140$ more..


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## Silas Woodruff (Jan 20, 2015)

Might as well wait for Skylake to launch, otherwise I think your PC is fine now.


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## stevorob (Jan 20, 2015)

For gaming, a 4690k would be more than enough.

What kind of budget do you have to put together the upgrade?


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## BarbaricSoul (Jan 20, 2015)

Personally, I would keep the 8350. I don't think you would see much benefit going to Intel from a 8350 for gaming. If I was to upgrade from a 8350 based system, it would be to socket 2011-3. Socket 1150 is a waste of money if you already have a 8350 based system.


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## rooivalk (Jan 20, 2015)

4790k will be marginally faster especially in HyperThreading supported games (which is seldom). If you don't mind the money, it's a better choice, otherwise just buy 4690k.

Isn't Skylake launch date in H2 2015? which means max 11 months from now on, quite a long time for me.
I also believe Skylake won't be a quantum leap in performance since AMD CPU (still) isn't threatening for Intel nowadays.

EDIT: I'm not very sure, but as far as I know old 2500k (stock) is ~15-20% better in some games against fx-8350 (stock). 4690k surely will be better.


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## 64K (Jan 20, 2015)

I would wait for Skylake to launch. Yeah, it should be 3rd or 4th quarter this year.


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## Dent1 (Jan 20, 2015)

sumamed said:


> Hello guys from a long time lurker, i have dilema that made me register and ask for advice.
> 
> My current system is fx 8350 at some 4,5 Ghz, 8gb crappy ram,  850w corsair ax ,780ti with some ssds and some hdds.
> 
> ...





What cant a FX 8350 @ 4.5GHz play?

To my knowledge there isn't a single game it cant destroy. If you can't name a single game or activity your CPU cannot competently handle then save your money. Don't just spend money and jump ship because its cool.


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## sumamed (Jan 20, 2015)

I have 1000 $ for upgrade. 

Skylake wait seems a bit too long for me, but if it is worth the wait i could wait.... 

8350 is okish, nothing stellar, except for total war Rome 2 that is barely playable, and that is my favorite game now. I play some WOT and few usual shooters, and its more or less smooth, but rtw 2 is just torture..


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## BarbaricSoul (Jan 20, 2015)

you in the States?


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## rtwjunkie (Jan 20, 2015)

sumamed said:


> I have 1000 $ for upgrade.
> 
> Skylake wait seems a bit too long for me, but if it is worth the wait i could wait....
> 
> 8350 is okish, nothing stellar, except for total war Rome 2 that is barely playable, and that is my favorite game now. I play some WOT and few usual shooters, and its more or less smooth, but rtw 2 is just torture..


 
There is not a intel cpu around from socket 1155 to 1150 that Rome 2 doesn't torture.  It's very cpu-intensive.  You're at 4.5Ghz already.  You'd have to do 6.0Ghz to make a real dent in it's single-core overload.

Save your money, no need to jump ship if everything else plays fine.


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## XSI (Jan 20, 2015)

maybe you can lower some settings in RTW 2, which will improve your experience for more fps.


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## BarbaricSoul (Jan 20, 2015)

still think it's a waste of money upgrading from an 8350 for gaming, but here you go- http://pcpartpicker.com/p/LwGtsY


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## xfia (Jan 20, 2015)

its not rare for games to use hyperthreading and scale beyond 4 cores/threads anymore..  every newer aaa game does and will continue to. 

you can say a game is cpu intensive and leave it there but really it goes beyond that and if it can go as far as saying a game will torture a cpu with the highest ipc per core on the market then it has crap optimization.


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## xfia (Jan 20, 2015)

BarbaricSoul said:


> still think it's a waste of money upgrading from an 8350 for gaming, but here you go- http://pcpartpicker.com/p/LwGtsY



if a upgrade is really in order then a cpu with 12 threads over a higher clock with 8 threads makes no since.. 4790k fastest stock gaming cpu for less money


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## rtwjunkie (Jan 20, 2015)

xfia said:


> then it has crap optimization.


 
Bingo! yes, you win the prize, because the Total War games have ALWAYS had crap optimization that has THOUSANDS upon thousands of calculations per second going through one thread.  Think of a superhighway with 20 million cars trying to get on that one highway at the same point.  imagine the backup. 

That's why I told the OP that an upgrade is pointless if he thinks he is going to fix that going to Intel.


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## GhostRyder (Jan 20, 2015)

sumamed said:


> Hello guys from a long time lurker, i have dilema that made me register and ask for advice.
> 
> My current system is fx 8350 at some 4,5 Ghz, 8gb crappy ram,  850w corsair ax ,780ti with some ssds and some hdds.
> 
> ...





sumamed said:


> I have 1000 $ for upgrade.
> 
> Skylake wait seems a bit too long for me, but if it is worth the wait i could wait....
> 
> 8350 is okish, nothing stellar, except for total war Rome 2 that is barely playable, and that is my favorite game now. I play some WOT and few usual shooters, and its more or less smooth, but rtw 2 is just torture..


Well as others have stated the upgrade may not be to worthwhile for you mostly because the differences would not be night and day.  When it comes to gaming single threaded performance is key and Intel does have that area but the truth is its not like the 8350 struggles to maintain keeping good frame rate.  I had an FX 9590 and 8350 both overclock to 4.8-5.1 respectively and honestly the gaming experience was very good with my multi-card setup.  With the i7 5930K which is the 6 core 12 thread  CPU overclocked to 4.5ghz I can say I see some differences but nothing night and day and most of the differences are in the very intensive games.  Rome II is CPU intensive but it struggles all machines and honestly even updating to an i5/i7 overclocked to 4.5ghz its not going to run amazingly well as its not a very well optimized game and very CPU intensive.  You might gain a few FPS average going to one but I do not think its going to be worthwhile for you in the end.

That being said, if your mind is made up I will give you a suggestion on parts:

i5 4690K
MSI Gaming 5 Z97
DDR3 2133 8gb Gskill

Should at least get you started since I would assume the rest your willing to use again (Maybe a cooler as well depending).  The problem really is going to be I do not see this making a huge difference in your gaming performance.  Also for the record the reason I do not suggest the i7 on the Z platform is because the Hyperthreading is not really helpful to games.  Very few really try to use more than 4 threads and when they do Hyperthreading can cause issues and sometimes just make no difference at all or harm the performance (Like BF4).

Just my opinion and hope it helps.


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## sumamed (Jan 20, 2015)

I'm in Croatia, microscopic European country.  That build BarbaricSoul compiled would cost me roughly 100-150$ more here, but that won't be a problem if it will be considerable improvement over current cpu..

So, general consensus is i should just soldier it out and wait about a year and get a Skylake?


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## BarbaricSoul (Jan 20, 2015)

sumamed said:


> but that won't be a problem if it will be considerable improvement over current cpu..



Honestly, I don't think there will be a considerable improvement over an 8350 for quite some time, that's why I said I thought this was a waste of money when I posted that build. If you want to upgrade just for the purpose of upgrading, then by all means, upgrade the hell out of it. But don't expect any miraculous improvement in gaming performance.


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## 64K (Jan 20, 2015)

sumamed said:


> I'm in Croatia, microscopic European country.  That build BarbaricSoul compiled would cost me roughly 100-150$ more here, but that won't be a problem if it will be considerable improvement over current cpu..
> 
> So, general consensus is i should just soldier it out and wait about a year and get a Skylake?



At the very least wait for Broadwell which will be a die shrink of Haswell so it should be more efficient and perhaps offer greater headroom for overclocking. From some of the comments I'm seeing about Rome 2 you probably should look at an i5 and a nice CPU cooler to overclock.


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## sumamed (Jan 20, 2015)

Thank you all guys! I wasn't looking for upgrade just for sake of upgrading i was hoping to get improved performance mainly in Rome 2. Well i guess i'll wait and try to cut settings down a lot  while waiting..


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## commission3r (Jan 20, 2015)

sumamed said:


> Hello guys from a long time lurker, i have dilema that made me register and ask for advice.
> 
> My current system is fx 8350 at some 4,5 Ghz, 8gb crappy ram,  850w corsair ax ,780ti with some ssds and some hdds.
> 
> ...



i went from crosshair fx8350 7950 xfire 8gb dominator gt 2133 to x79 rampage gene 3820
its not much of a difference even gaming
you will save some on electricity but it wont be the difference youre expecting from all the reviews out there

if you must spend your money then x79 or x99 would be a good change of scenery


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## xfia (Jan 20, 2015)

may seem strange but you might actually see improvement by increasing settings


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## peche (Jan 20, 2015)

you are Wasting $1000…. there is no other explanation,

what you exactly have?  SSD/HDD,  Cooler… Air o Watercooler, Case, monitor and also GPU ?
could be another thing to upgrade ofyou rig that can help you out to get a little or big deference / improvement on our gaming time, fill out your specs here: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/account/specs   could be better…


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## GhostRyder (Jan 20, 2015)

sumamed said:


> Thank you all guys! I wasn't looking for upgrade just for sake of upgrading i was hoping to get improved performance mainly in Rome 2. Well i guess i'll wait and try to cut settings down a lot  while waiting..


Here is an example of what to expect with different CPU's, note that only severe overclocks really bump the game very much farther as even the 2600K at 4.8ghz offers a ~15% performance difference over the 8350 at 4.5ghz.  That to me is not enough to warrant an upgrade in my book but maybe you will think otherwise so I thought I would show it though this is just 1 site and cannot be used as the end all for what to expect.  Its more of a guideline just to see a rough estimate...

http://www.overclock.net/t/1426315/gamegpu-total-war-rome-ii-benchmarked

For the record, I play Rome 2 at 4K on 3 290X cards and an i7 5930K at 4.5ghz.  I can say that even going down to 1080p on my other screen the games performance does not change really as its just the CPU holding it back and only dialing back some of the settings in the game really adjust the performance at all.


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## Jborg (Jan 20, 2015)

Imo, coming from somebody with an 8350, I havent had one issue running any game except Crysis maxed out.

Im all for swapping to intel, I most likely will whenever I build another rig in the future.

I would personally buy a 1440p monitor with G-Sync and another 970 before I upgraded from an 8350 to Intel as of right now.

Just my thought.


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## rtwjunkie (Jan 20, 2015)

GhostRyder said:


> note that only severe overclocks really bump the game very much farther


 
Very true!  That's why i used the extreme number of needing at least 6 Ghz to make a real difference.


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## de.das.dude (Jan 20, 2015)

sumamed said:


> Hello guys from a long time lurker, i have dilema that made me register and ask for advice.
> 
> My current system is fx 8350 at some 4,5 Ghz, 8gb crappy ram,  850w corsair ax ,780ti with some ssds and some hdds.
> 
> ...


not much change from 8350 to intel if you only plan on gaming.
"noticeable" change that is.


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## sumamed (Jan 20, 2015)

Thank you all once more, i decided i'll wait and upgrade when it will make considerable difference.


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## hat (Jan 20, 2015)

Late I know but I too say hold on to the FX-8350.


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## peche (Jan 20, 2015)

sumamed said:


> Thank you all once more, i decided i'll wait and upgrade when it will make considerable difference.


keep it, give him a little water... or a high end cooler, overclock it... take advantage of it...


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## bpgt64 (Jan 21, 2015)

Wait for Skylake, or benchmarks that show a significant difference in FPS.  What resolution are you gaming at?  What hz is your monitor?


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## TRWOV (Jan 21, 2015)

If you have a 120 or 144Hz monitor it might be worthwhile to upgrade but if all you have is a 1080p 60Hz monitor I wouldn't bother. An 8350 is enough for 1080p60

I also have an 8350 and I'll wait until Cannondale to upgrade. Or maybe AMD will have something new by then, who knows.


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## The N (Jan 21, 2015)

FX-8350 is seems quite competitive to intel. performance wise, no way behind to equivalent intel cpu.


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## rooivalk (Jan 21, 2015)

depends on the game. AFAIK for Rome II TW it doesn't matter, just losing a bit. For BF3 the gap is wider against sandybridge.


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## Mathragh (Jan 21, 2015)

rooivalk said:


> depends on the game. AFAIK for Rome II TW it doesn't matter, just losing a bit. For BF3 the gap is wider against sandybridge.



Look at those minimums.

I think OP might definitely see a big improvement if he switches to intel for just Total War Rome II.
As a long time 8350 user myself I can honestly say that, while it normally just breezes through most stuff, when you are really single thread limited like in a game such as rome the 8350 can still feel quite slow.

If you've got 1000 to spend and are really looking for a better rome experience I'd say that switching to Intel is worth it, It just might also be worth the wait till Skylake.


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## de.das.dude (Jan 21, 2015)

Mathragh said:


> Look at those minimums.
> 
> I think OP might definitely see a big improvement if he switches to intel for just Total War Rome II.
> As a long time 8350 user myself I can honestly say that, while it normally just breezes through most stuff, when you are really single thread limited like in a game such as rome the 8350 can still feel quite slow.
> ...


ahh another one of those aficionados who thing min FPS really makes sense.
well, they dont, if min fps really did occur, we would be seeing quite visible micro stuttering in games.
also, turning off applciation power management and the other million power management features on the fx series does improve the "min" score quite a bit.
either way, doesnt really matter. If you are watching 44fps, but one of the frames comes at 19fps..
the math turns out to be 1/44-1/19 = aprox the time duration of 2ms.
most monitors itself has a delay of 3-5ms....

so you tell me if that really makes a difference.


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## Mathragh (Jan 21, 2015)

de.das.dude said:


> ahh another one of those aficionados who thing min FPS really makes sense.
> well, they dont, if min fps really did occur, we would be seeing quite visible micro stuttering in games.
> also, turning off applciation power management and the other million power management features on the fx series does improve the "min" score quite a bit.
> either way, doesnt really matter. If you are watching 44fps, but one of the frames comes at 19fps..
> ...



Hehe I'm sorry pal, but thats not how it works. Its actually quite the opposite: you can have in the thousands of FPS, but if your FPS every couple of seconds momentarily drops in the low teens you've got stuttery gameplay.
Now you don't have to take my word for it ofc, and almost every modern game is sufficiently multithreaded and optimised to produce decent minimums even with relatively low IPC if you've got sufficient cores. However the fact remains that i'd rather have 40 fps with 30 minimums than 60fps with 15 minimums.

I *REALLY REALLY *recommend you read up on things like minimums and frametimes (link explaining frametimes, and link with some CPU's benchmarked showing these frametimes). 
I'm normally not one to be so forcefull about something like this but it really makes all the difference regarding image fluency and understanding whats actually happening between the game you run, your hardware and what you see on your screen.


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## Dent1 (Jan 21, 2015)

Mathragh said:


> Look at those minimums.
> 
> I think OP might definitely see a big improvement if he switches to intel for just Total War Rome II.



I disagree. The minimum shows only a 6FPS increase.  The most expensive 6 FPS ever.


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## Mathragh (Jan 21, 2015)

Dent1 said:


> I disagree. Get a minimum of 6FPS increase for a $1,000 build. Sounds ludicrous.



6fps is 30% in this case, quite a big increase.


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## Dent1 (Jan 21, 2015)

Mathragh said:


> 6fps is 30% in this case, quite a big increase.



Still only 6 FPS. 19FPS is unplayable and so is 25 FPS and 26FPS.

Why would you spend money for two unplayable parameters?

If one rig gave you 1FPS, and with an upgrade you could get 2FPS.  It's 100% increase but still a bad deal.


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## BiggieShady (Jan 21, 2015)

de.das.dude said:


> most monitors itself has a delay of 3-5ms....
> 
> so you tell me if that really makes a difference.



Hmm, monitor lag means everything that happens on screen just happens 3-5 ms later ... frame time is how long the frame stays on screen. So the stuttering effect is noticeable because you see one frame much longer then the other.


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## Mussels (Jan 21, 2015)

As someone who made a similar switch:

Some situations you will see no gain
Some situations (apps with 1-2 threads) you will see a gain
in almost every situation you will use less power


4690k would be pretty amazeballs. buy me one too?


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## Twinto (Jan 23, 2015)

I think 8350 is good enough
but if you do want to upgrade your pc
you must have to pick i7 5820k up cpu + x99 series, or Skylake cpu + next generation mb!


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