Is there a big differnce in games between the 17 4770k and the fx 8350?

No, your build is fine. i7 is a waste of money and has no benefits for gaming. i7 has hyperthreading which is good for mutitasking intense tasks such as editing/rendering.

We are entering an odd time of transition with games right now as the new consoles are both 8 core parts, which may mean that games in the near future may finally be able to take advantage of something bigger than a quad core, so take the following advice with a grain of salt and know that it applies mostly to today's games, and not games coming out in the near future:

1) If just for gaming then do not get an i7 processor. Games today only take advantage of 4 cores, and what few will take advantage of more cores only use real cores, not HT cores.

2) Generally speaking, games are far more GPU bound than CPU bound. A quad core i5 Intel or octo core FX AMD chip is going to be the way to go at the moment. As consoles are now all on AMD octo-core designs then there is a chance (but clearly no guarantee) that an AMD system may have an advantage going forward with new games that are designed primarily for new consoles. As a general rule of thumb you should get an adequate CPU and then pour the bulk of your money towards the GPU.

3) If you are really looking at your computer as a workhorse for gaming and video capture/edit/exporting then I would highly suggest stretching your budget to get a 6 core LGA2011 i7. The added 2 cores will give games a little boost, but having 12 threads of editing horsepower at your disposal will go a long way to keep capturing smooth and exporting painless. Even last gen's 2011 equipment is going to give significant content creation advantages even if it will not affect gaming performance much.

4) You need either a robust HDD array or an SSD (or both). When I converted up to an i7 for my video editing rig I had a hard time pushing the CPU past the 60% load mark when editing because my HDDs were simply not fast enough to keep the CPU busy. Even when running seperate drives for different types of content and scratch discs it was still not enough throughput to properly utilize the rest of the system. Upgrading to larger modern HDDs in a RAID array and having a system drive with SSD space for a scratch disc put the bottleneck back on the CPU where it belongs.

For ram, the more the merrier. 8GB minimum to be sure, but throwing 16-32GB would be nice. However, you can always add more ram later. Your main concern is going to be the CPU and GPU, with the drives used as a secondary concern.

If using a 60GB SSD then do yourself a favor and use it as a cache for your HDD. My wife's PC use to have a 60GB SSD for the system drive and there were some serious issues installing programs and file management for documents and such. Using the drive as a cache will not give you the full SSD performance... but it will be significantly faster than a HDD alone and avoid the file management issues that come with small system drives. Eventually if you upgrade to a 120GB+ drive then consider using it as a dedicated system drive.

Is there a big differnce in games between the 17 4770k and the fx 8350?

Click to expand...

The answer is that it depends on the game.

BF4 single player campaign does not really care how powerful the CPU as long as it does not bottleneck the graphics card. BF4 multiplayer is CPU dependent though so you will likely slightly different results between those two CPUs.

A game like Hitman: Absolution is very dependent on the CPU so there can be a large difference in performance between the i5-4770k and the FX-8350. Most games are not as dependent on the CPU like Hitman: Absolution, so in most cases you will not see a dramatic different in performance. However, Skyrim is another example of a very CPU dependent game.

http://www.techspot.com/review/734-battlefield-4-benchmarks/page6.html




http://www.techspot.com/review/608-hitman-absolution-performance-benchmarks/page6.html

You will have stable 70+fps and reach at times close/ up to 110fps. Usually depends on the map and what's going on within the game. (I like how people are giving you random tips you didn't ask for.)

Yes, BF4. 1920x1080p assuming.

Nope, didn't see why I had to OC, I was satisfied with the performance.
If anything I just use the MSI Gaming app once in a while to OC the gpu a bit.

those benchmark charts that were posted aren't even apples to apples comparison...you show two charts, one without AA on a 290x and one with AA on a 7970ghz.

I would dump the nVIDIA Graphics card and go with a Radeon R9 280x or 290. I'd couple that card with the AMD FX-8350 or a Core i5 CPU.

The reason being you mentioned Battlefield 4 on Ultra. This month, later on in the Month, a patch for Battlefield 4 will be released allowing users to ditch DirectX and use AMDs Mantle API. This won't work on an nVIDIA graphics card. Also, Mantle ought to boost the AMD FX 8350s performance as well.

Food for thought as the way things are heading, with AMD having locked up the Console designs, there should be very little reason to invest in an nVIDIA GPU. Drivers won't even matter that much with Mantle as well (not that AMDs Graphics drivers are an issue anymore anyway).

those benchmark charts that were posted aren't even apples to apples comparison...you show two charts, one without AA on a 290x and one with AA on a 7970ghz.

sorry for the double post. also just realized those are two different games. derp.

The Radeon R9 280x is about on par with the GTX 770: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1041?vs=1037

4GB version only makes a difference if your playing something like modded skyrim or resolution higher than 1080p. I would take the 4GB 770 over the 3GB 280X, but you can't go wrong with either card.

If the 280x is cheaper where you are then go for it...its 100 USD more here then it should cost so that's why I would go with the GTX 770, though I do prefer AMD cards (not a fanboy here just a preference, I'll take whoever has the best price/performance at the time).