At the beginning of the year, I bought an i7 2600 cpu. Now I'm worried that since the next-gen consoles will be using amd hardware, the intel processors will start to suffer. Also, I live in South Africa and got the intel cpu for R1900 which would equate to $190. The fx8350 is R2800 which equates to $280. So, I actually got the intel cpu for a good price. Did I make the wrong choice?
Should I switch to AMD? (Did I make a mistake choosing intel?)
- Thread starter Jazzy1
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- Oct 30, 2004
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In recent years, you generally buy AMD for value but Intel for performance.
Both companies make very powerful processors. Some models have an edge on one kind of computing task, some on another, but overall, today's machines offer very nice speed.
I wouldn't be overly concerned that AMD was chosen over Intel for a particular console. Gaming PC's are always ahead of consoles in terms of raw speed and power. The only real affect on PC users is that it keeps AMD in the game as a competitor, which his good for everyone, as having competition helps drive innovation while helping keep prices down.
Both companies make very powerful processors. Some models have an edge on one kind of computing task, some on another, but overall, today's machines offer very nice speed.
I wouldn't be overly concerned that AMD was chosen over Intel for a particular console. Gaming PC's are always ahead of consoles in terms of raw speed and power. The only real affect on PC users is that it keeps AMD in the game as a competitor, which his good for everyone, as having competition helps drive innovation while helping keep prices down.
- Nov 7, 2011
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this is how tomshardware think the gaming cpu hierarchy
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-5.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-5.html
That sounds a great deal if you got an i7 cheaper than an FX-8350! As for "the wrong" choice, um hardly! The 8-core Jaguar in the new consoles is basically the equivalent of 2x AMD A6-5200's operating in parallel with an "iGPU" that's roughly on par with a 7790-7850 AMD discrete card. The XBox one runs at only 1.75GHz and the PS4 only 2GHz. Assuming perfect 100% core scaling (which rarely happens in reality), you could take the A6-5200 score, double it, and it'll still be way short of a i5 let alone i7...
"The major change between AMD’s Temash/Kabini Jaguar implementations as what’s done in the consoles is really all of the unified memory addressing work and any coherency that’s supported on the platforms. Memory buses are obviously very different as well, but the CPU cores themselves are pretty much identical to what we’ve outlined here.
AMD A4-5000 1.5GHz Jaguar Quad-core = 0.39 1T / 1.5 4T (Cinebench 11.5)"
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6976/amds-jaguar-architecture-the-cpu-powering-xbox-one-playstation-4-kabini-temash/3
Double that (for 8-cores) and add 30% (for 2GHz) and you get Jaguar-console-equivalent Cinebench 11.5 scores of : 0.5 (1T) & 3.9 (8T).
Cinebench comparison:-
FX-4300 3.8GHz = 1.04 (1T) / 3.24 (4T)
i3-3220 3.3GHz = 1.50 (1T) / 3.30 (4T)
XB1 @ 1.75GHz= 0.45 (1T) / 3.50 (8T)
PS4 @ 2.0GHz = 0.50 (1T) / 3.90 (8T)
i3-4340 3.6GHz = 1.79 (1T) / 3.94 (4T)
FX-6300 3.5GHz = 1.07 (1T) / 4.50 (6T)
i5-3350P 3.1GHz = 1.39 (1T) / 5.60 (4T)
i5-3570K 3.4GHz = 1.60 (1T) / 6.05 (4T)
FX 8350 4.0GHz = 1.11 (1T) / 6.94 (8T)
i7 3770K 3.5GHz = 1.66 (1T) / 7.91 (8T)
Basically even with 8-cores, the very slow sub 2GHz clocked console chips have 2/3rds of the performance of a very low-end i5-3350P clocked at 3.1GHz, and roughly similar to a high-end Haswell i3-4340 at 3.6GHz. Overall, they're basically a half-speed FX-8350. Look at FX-6300 vs i3-4340 1T scores, and you instantly see Intel has a whopping 70% IPC advantage over AMD desktops almost at same clock (and consoles run at half the clock speed).
And this will be the "base target benchmark" for cross-platform games developers for years. It's hardly going to make quad-core i5/i7's "obsolete" because as has already been said many times before - there's more to performance than simply counting the number of cores.
- Apr 27, 2009
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cmi86
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Now now now what makes you think it's all about clock speed ? We are talking about a closed environment 8 thread system running only software specifically designed and coded for that specific 8 core CPU resulting in highly threaded and heavily optimized software designed around that hardware by 1000's of devs because everyone is optimizing for the same exact hardware. Just look how fast the big core FX's are when they have a software that actually efficiently uses all their cores, they are quite often faster than 3770/4770 i7's, sometimes even faster than a 3930K when using linux. The point I am making is we are no longer in a day and age where clock speed and straight through put rule. We live in the age of hardware specific coding and optimizations to use specific hardware more effectively. Don't believe me ?? Go play metro last light with a high end AMD card. It's a "plays best on nvidia" game and without the AMD "patch" enjoy 20 FPS out of your 7970 at low settings. Like I said it's all about optimization.
I never said it was "all about clock speed". It is however, a simple fact that IPC & clock speeds scale far better than "core attrition" in games (not video editing, etc):-
FX-8350 (8 core) = 48fps
FX-6350 (6 core) = 47fps
FX-4320 (4 core) = 46fps
i3-3230 (2 core) = 45fps
http://www.techspot.com/review/712-arma-3-benchmarks/page5.html
FX-8350 (8-core load) in Arma 3 = 12%/33%/8%/18%/11%/22%/19%/90%
http://gamegpu.ru/images/stories/Test_GPU/Action/ARMA%20III%20Alpha/test/arma%203%20proz%20amd.jpg
It may well be a "closed system", and consoles may well be a bit more tweakable, but the hardware is the same (as is the x86 platform), and there's just the same difficulty in magically getting even a 50% boost with doubling cores due to the fact not every line of code can be threaded.
That's partly why Battlefield 4 will be running at only 720p on the new consoles (but 1080p on PC's):-
http://wccftech.com/battlefield-4-sticks-720p60-fps-nextgen-consoles-frostbite-25-game-details-leaked-arriving-november-2013/
cmi86
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I understand that IPC is important but so is threading. Intel clearly has higher IPC yet an i3 barely put up a few more FPS than a 6300 and often less in multi player games, The only logic I can land on is the performance is being made up in thread utilization. Because if the i3's 70% better IPC (really iffy, synthetic tests are not a great measure and real world performance shows the difference to be about 30%, but well go with the 70% just for examples sake) were apparent in gaming the FPS advantage of the i3 would be MASSIVE, like +30-40 FPS, but it's not it's more like +0-5 and sometimes even less. So many in the intel crowd wan't to act like next gen console hardware will not have an effect on next gen PC gaming, i think they are just crossing their fingers. 99.999999% of games will be developed on X86 AMD hardware. People who want to ignore the notion of this having a positive impact on amd gaming systems are just purely delusional. Not to say all of a sudden games won't be playable on intel chips because that would just be stupid. I am sure they will still play just fine all I am saying is expect AMD to close that gap, big time.
The issue isn't so much Intel i3 vs AMD hex-core running 800MHz faster, the issue is that the efficiency of threading in games tails off significantly after 4 cores*. Even on Crysis 3 which is possibly the best game for showing off multi-cores, there was barely 10% difference on an 8C FX-8350 vs 4C FX-4170. A 100% increase in cores = a 10% increase in frame-rates. On PC's AMD does have 4GHz speeds to fall back on, but on consoles, they are running at a very slow 2GHz out of necessity (consoles simply cannot draw 150w electricity for the CPU + another 150w GFX card on their PSU's).
* Edit: That's not just true of AMD either, with Intel there's also very little difference in most games between an i7-3930K (6-core) and an i7-3770k (4-core).
No idea who you are talking about. I think next-gen games will certainly push PC's more, but the reality is, many console games are pretty much what PC's look like at 720p on "medium" precisely because they still have slower hardware, so to answer the OP's question, no, AMD's 1.75-2.0GHz Kabini isn't going to make 4GHz i5's (let alone i7's) obsolete...
cmi86
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Theres no chance they will make i5/i7's obsolete, like I said that would just be ludicrous to think. I think we see that tail off in performance/thread past 4T simply because we don't really have very many matured gaming titles that can (Intensively) utilize more than 4 threads as 2+ thread usage in gaming is a fairly new trend. However I think as development in implementing more threads in games continues this trend will certainly continue.I definitely think having a mainstream multi core chip that almost every game on the planet is being designed around in some form or fashion will certainly move things in the right direction over time. Who knows if 1st gen games will even use all the cores... Unfortunately I am not a psychic and only time will tell lol.
You did right buying the Intel you can probably upgrade to the Ivy bridge i7-3770K (Depending on the motherboard). You have much better performance then you would have had with any AMD chip. The rumor is they are ending support for the FX/AM3+ line and coming out with a new APU that will not be compatible with the FM1s or FM2s. APUs are not good gaming CPUs, for the money I'd go with a FX or Intel Ivy Bridge.
- Apr 27, 2009
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Depending on what you have now for a GPU, a GPU is probably your best upgrade for a gaming system. Your CPU is just fine till at least Skylake.
8350rocks
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- Mar 14, 2013
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If you were building a new system, I would definitely go with an AMD build.
However, since you just built your system not long ago...I wouldn't get too concerned over it. You should be fine until you're ready to upgrade there.
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