Intel to AMD - Remove FX Hotfixes?

Yeah, it wasn't an easy decision as I liked my 8350 a lot but the more I play MMO style games the more I see it lagging behind in performance. GW2 is my game of choice right now and the difference between my 8350 and my friends older i5 chip is very noticeable, even with his older graphics card (I have a GTX 680 and he has a 570). With an Amazon gift card I got for Christmas, as well as selling my 8350 and my Sabertooth 990FX board I should break out even if not ahead slightly when I'm done.

And to the other guy, yes, I have a Z87 motherboard on the way as well. This isn't the first time I've done some major upgrades on my computer, just the first time I've switched from one chip manufacturer to another.

I was hoping to avoid doing a full OS reinstall, but I still have my key and disc from when I bought a non-OEM copy of Windows 7 a few years ago. Might not hurt to start with a clean slate, even though I've done a good job of keeping my system from slowing down since I installed it a few years back.

Just to throw in my 2 cents thats not really much of an upgrade maybe even less so since alot of the new games can use more than 2 or 4 cores ( I think the new frost byte can use 6 cores).

If you're only playing new games that are well threaded which is still rare overall.

GW2 as mentioned gets as little as 60% of the performance on the FX-8350 as the i5-4670K. I don't have that exact link, but this one's close enough: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/guild-wars-2-performance-benchmark,3268-7.html

Skyrim is yet another game that does far better on an Intel CPU.

The VALUE of upgrading is another question entirely and that's up to the individual. I hope AMD has something to close the gap on Intel soon.

The necessity to upgrade a good CPU like a recent i5/i7 has really dropped. Some people whine that Intel isn't making big processing improvements. Well, why should they? Aside from a sensible allocation of funds towards the MOBILE sector, on the desktop side:

a) AMD is far behind so why spend money distancing even further? And,
b) GAME developers are the main problem by not multi-threading properly yet.

This is why a good quad-core Intel is likely to be the best gaming CPU for a couple years yet. Hopefully the new consoles will encourage much better threading support but that doesn't necessarily mean the FX-8350 is suddenly going to be a better CPU than the i5-4670K for example in most new 2014/15 releases.

That's mostly why I decided to bite the bullet and make the switch. While most shooters were fine and I had no problems running Bioshock Infinite or Far Cry 3, for MMOs like WoW and GW2 and RPGs like Skyrim it was a total crapshoot how my FX8350 would perform. Before saying that WoW is easy to run, go into a 25 man raid with your graphics settings turned up and watch as the FX8350 struggles to pump out more than 30FPS during a fight. Going forward as well, I'm hoping that more companies start to use better multithreading but I'm not going to hold my breath.

I know that by switching to an i5 4670k I don't have to worry about that anymore. It feels like the sweet spot that most developers have in mind when they create PC games, and I know that no matter what game I buy it will play amazing on the chip. No more guessing, no more waiting for some website to do a review of a game to see if my AMD chip will keep up with Intel. I can now be 100% certain that every game I buy will work well with my setup.

I've never been a fan of AMD or Intel, I just picked AMD when I build my first custom PC because AM3 boards were cheap and so was a 965 BE. When I got some money, I upgraded my motherboard for better overclocking, and when that didn't make a huge difference I upgraded to the FX8350. After running it for 1 year now (got it last Christmas) I'm tired of telling myself it will get better, that game companies will write better code that will use all 8 cores. I want better NOW. I'm sick of waiting and watching my friend who hasn't upgraded anything in 3 years get better performance on just about every game just because he's running an Intel chip.

I'm legitimately excited for Thursday when all my stuff gets here. Pairing my new chip with the ASRock Z87 Extreme4 motherboard because I heard a lot of good things about it, even though I've never owned an ASRock product before. I'll probably leave everything stock for a bit to let the thermal compound cure and then see how high I can OC the chip. 4.3 or 4.4 will probably be good enough until I can afford an H100i to replace my decent but underwhelming H50. I'll also be teaching my 15 year old brother-in-law how to disassemble and reassemble a computer, since he's interested but never has the money to buy computer stuff himself.