Quality of life upgrade (Phenom II -> FX series)

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RaceCarVroom

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I am currently running a Phenom II 955 @ stock speed.
I am considering the FX-8320e, FX-8350, FX-8370e.
(The lower wattage series because lets be kind to mother earth)
Whilst most threads concentrate on gaming performance, it is not the information I am seeking. How are the FX series in terms of everyday performance overall?
I am not expecting a dramatic performance boost, but enough to be considered an improvement in quality of life.

Daily workload:
Editing, viewing, creating PDFs (Latex).
Moving, un/compressing, copying files.
Light Photoshop and Vegas work.
Java (Eclipse), Python (IDLE), HTML (Dreamweaver), etc...
6 million tabs on Chrome.

Gaming (not as important!):
Steam (Tomb Raider, Bioshock, Shogun 2 etc...)
Emulators (Dolphin, ePSXe)
Blizzard (Starcraft 2, WoW)
League of Legends (I know it won't matter)

System:
CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 955
MOBO: Asus M5A97 R2.0
RAM: Cheapo 8gb 1333
GPU: Club 3D r9 285
PSU: EVGA 500w
SSD: Kingston v300

Note:
Budget ~$200
I just bought the motherboard so I will not go intel.
I don't over-clock. Period.

TL;DR:
Phenom II 955 -> FX-8xxx; Go faster?
 
Solution
cdrkf


That's difficult to quantify, I mean an FX 8XXX part is faster than your Phenom II x4 although how much depends on the software in question.

In software that uses lots of threads (e.g. video encoding) then it's a good speed up. Modern games also benefit as they are moving towards more threads (especially given that the new consoles are 8 core machines). Where things are less clear cut is for single threaded apps, certainly I would recommend getting a full power variant rather than the low wattage parts, as...
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cdrkf

cdrkf

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Mar 18, 2013
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I have an FX 8320 with an R9 280 (about the same speed as your 285, albeit without some of the new features). I could possibly run a benchy or 2 for you to compare with if you like?

I'm curious what your finding slow though, as to be honest I would have thought your Phenom II would be plenty fast enough for all of that. I mean in my experience the biggest problem for making a modern PC 'feel' slow is the HDD. I have an older phenom II X6 machine I use for work, and I upgraded that with an ssd (as I didn't need the space for games when it's sole purpose is work), and to be honest that machine feels quicker than this for day to day usage as this is using a mechanical HDD.

Edit: oops! I just seen you already have an SSD :p
 
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R

RaceCarVroom

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@cdrkf
:) I got a bonus so I felt like replacing my 5 year old cpu.

@i7Baby
I've updated my bios. Thank you!
The FX series are at a higher tier, but will it end up as a worthwhile quality of life upgrade?
Thats my concern.
 
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cdrkf

cdrkf

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Mar 18, 2013
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That's difficult to quantify, I mean an FX 8XXX part is faster than your Phenom II x4 although how much depends on the software in question.

In software that uses lots of threads (e.g. video encoding) then it's a good speed up. Modern games also benefit as they are moving towards more threads (especially given that the new consoles are 8 core machines). Where things are less clear cut is for single threaded apps, certainly I would recommend getting a full power variant rather than the low wattage parts, as they've been shown in benchmarks to throttle back too quickly and could actually be slower. My issue with recommending it to you is that most of what you've listed is quite single thread dependent so your not going to see a huge boost.

If you were going to get the FX, then I think the FX8350 is your best bet. If anything I think the FX is a good option for future proofing your system, for most of the stuff you've listed though it's not going to make a huge difference I don's think.
 
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I

i7Baby

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Jul 25, 2012
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'worthwhile' is a bit subjective. A rich man wouldn't hesitate. This is something you need to weigh up yourself taking into account the 'quality of life' improvement.
 
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