Upgrade: AMD FX 6200 [bulldozer] --> AMD FX 8320 [piledriver]?

JOOK-D · Oct 24, 2013

Current Rig:
CPU: AMD FX 6200 [bulldozer] (stock)
GPU: HD 7870 (stock)
MB: ASUS M5A97 R2.0
HDD: WD Black 500GB 7200rpm (looking to get a SSD boot drive with a bit of storage space)
RAM: 2x4GB Kingston HyperX 1600mhz
PSU: Corsair TX650 (weird coil whine)
Monitor Res: 1360x768 (upgrading to 1920x1080 soon!)
Windows 7.

So I've had this rig for about a year and after continuous testing I think I need a CPU upgrade - it just isn't delivering what I need it to.

I'm looking to upgrade to an FX 8320 CPU - my question is whether this will be even slightly future proof, and whether I will be able to overclock it in future because I've heard that my motherboard isn't particularly good for it (bad phase design? I don't remember), and whether I would see a performance boost. Along with it I'd probably get the Hyper 212 EVO CPU cooler as I've heard good things about it (if anyone has a better suggestion in the same price bracket, please mention it!

)

I'd like to get a consensus on whether the FX 8320 would be a good choice for an upgrade. I'd like to go with it rather than change to intel since I have an OEM copy of windows, as well as the extra cost required to get a new mobo and the intel cpu's also tend to be more expensive.

If anyone has any experience with the CPU, could I get some info on how it performs when gaming or rendering?

Thank you very much in advance.

rolli59 · Oct 24, 2013

You got one of the better 970 boards for OC which has cooled vrm's http://www.overclock.net/t/946407/amd-motherboards-vrm-info-database
Unless you are running out of processing power then the upgrade is not exactly noticeable. It will handle more threads and better at multitasking.

getochkn · Oct 24, 2013

That about exactly the system I am piecing together and going to build in a week or so. Same board too. As said above, its good for OC'ing. The only difference between the 970 99fx 990fx is really full 16x lanes for sli/crossfire and a few other minor differences. I think it's a good board, good reviews and I can't seem to justify spending like $200+ on a motherboard. I'm in Canada and while somethings are the same prices as the states, sometimes we get screwed and MB's seem to be one that is a lot higher here, so I am getting that board.

RaDiKaL_ · Oct 24, 2013

Depends on where you want to see any improvement, for gaming those 2 extra cores won't make any difference, for rendering and similar multi-threaded tasks you will get a decent boost.

getochkn · Oct 24, 2013

bouncedk :

For gaming, nope. You won't see any improvements. They have the same base clock, same l3, almost the same turbo core (6300 actually goes 100mhz higher) and it's also 95 TDP compared to the 8320's 125 TDP. In heavily threaded apps such as encoders, 2 cores will help quite a bit.

Your motherboard is also on the cheaper side of things, but you should be able to OC a little bit. An M5A99X Evo R2.0 would be an excellent choice for a new motherboard and does come with far superior quality components (such as 5k caps, solid chokes, big fat heatsink etc.) that is built for overclocking and has a better phase design (6+2) compared to your 4+1.

Anyway I have an 8320 paired with an R9 280X on an M5A99X Evo R2.0 motherboard and it performs like a champ even on stock (but I did manage to OC it to 4.5 without any trouble). For streaming, those 8 cores will make the realtime stream encoding completely transparent so you can still enjoy your games while streaming. I also use an NH-D14 cpu cooler and it keeps the cpu below 43c when gaming and tops out at 55c when using Prime95. Ambient room temp is between 23-24c, so kinda warm.

fyi, the board he has has 4+2 not 4+1

logainofhades · Oct 24, 2013

FX 8320 would be an improvement over the faildozer you have now. You could try overclocking what you have first, though. If you don't want to overclock an FX 8320 is a fairly decent upgrade, but nothing spectacular.

JOOK-D · Oct 24, 2013

logainofhades :

I've tried OC'ing and didn't get particularly impressive results. The whole bulldozer-piledriver thing is what's basically swaying me towards this upgrade, since this FX 6200 does seem pretty awful. In many games it doesn't perform very well at all.
Do you know what kind of performance boost I could be expecting?

Thanks for the reply.

JOOK-D · Oct 24, 2013

rolli59 :

Good to know! The FX 6200 performs pretty badly in gaming for me, I'm hoping there will be some kind of increase in performance, if not just for future-proofing with the 8 cores. :s

Thanks for the reply.

JOOK-D · Oct 24, 2013

getochkn :

Cool! Hope it goes well.

Thanks for the reply.

JOOK-D · Oct 24, 2013

RaDiKaL_ :

No improvement? :??:

I would think the Bulldozer -> Piledriver architecture change would give some kind of boost, but there's a reason I'm the one asking the questions, and that's because I don't know that much haha.

Thanks for the reply!

JOOK-D · Oct 24, 2013

bouncedk :

Yes it's an improvement. I wrote the stuff below thinking you had an FX-6300 .. Silly me.

For gaming, nope. You won't see any improvements. They have the same base clock, same l3, almost the same turbo core (6300 actually goes 100mhz higher) and it's also 95 TDP compared to the 8320's 125 TDP. In heavily threaded apps such as encoders, 2 cores will help quite a bit.

Your motherboard is also on the cheaper side of things, but you should be able to OC a little bit. An M5A99X Evo R2.0 would be an excellent choice for a new motherboard and does come with far superior quality components (such as 5k caps, solid chokes, big fat heatsink etc.) that is built for overclocking and has a better phase design (6+2) compared to your 4+1 (Edit: 4+2, typo sorry).

Anyway I have an 8320 paired with an R9 280X on an M5A99X Evo R2.0 motherboard and it performs like a champ even on stock (but I did manage to OC it to 4.5 without any trouble). For streaming, those 8 cores will make the realtime stream encoding completely transparent so you can still enjoy your games while streaming. I also use an NH-D14 cpu cooler and it keeps the cpu below 43c when gaming and tops out at 55c when using Prime95. Ambient room temp is between 23-24c, so kinda warm.

Haha no probs, thanks for the advice.

What kind of improvement do you think I'll get FPS-wise in badly threaded games? (I tend to play a lot of games that aren't optimised

or are highly dependent on single-core)

BTW, how's the R9?

Thanks for the reply.

rolli59 · Oct 24, 2013

Piledriver will but not a revolution. It is though more energy efficient and the day will come that 8 cores will be better than 6 cores even in gaming.

8350rocks · Oct 24, 2013

On average, BD to PD picked up about a 15% improvement across the board, which means in gaming (we'll low ball here) you'll pick up roughly 5-7 FPS if you're at 50 FPS. If you're around 30-40 FPS, you should pick up anywhere from 3-6 FPS in those games too. Even more with an overclock...

JOOK-D · Oct 25, 2013

8350rocks :

Thanks. How does your rig run, since it's pretty similar to what mine will be. Any bench's on games like: TF2/Gmod/Skyrim/Chivalry/Saints Row 3/ Just Cause 2/ DiRT 3? Don't worry if you don't, just wondering if you had any at hand.

Thanks a lot for the BD-PD infor, that's really helpful. Thank you for the reply!

8350rocks · Oct 25, 2013

JOOK-D :

Crysis 3 runs over 50 FPS on high...(not ultra).

Other than that, I play MechWarrior Online and run it on Very High with full effects and never a hiccup. Have a few other games I play, but not any of those you have listed there...

JOOK-D · Oct 25, 2013

8350rocks :

JOOK-D :

Crysis 3 runs over 50 FPS on high...(not ultra).

Other than that, I play MechWarrior Online and run it on Very High with full effects and never a hiccup. Have a few other games I play, but not any of those you have listed there...

Nice!

Thanks for the info.

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