Upgrade path. I5 2500k or fx-8150

[Reaver192]

Hey all back again now more confused about my upgrade path. I'm rockin an am3 (not am3+) board with an AMD 965 be, and 2 5870 vapor-x's, with a 750 watt psu. I was trying to figure out if a z68 I2500k with pci express 3.0 or a bulldozer will be the way to go. Please no fan boyism for either camp even though I root for AMD personally. I game at 1920x1080 and want to enable as much eye candy as possible. I will mostly play first person shooters. I want to support AMD and it looks like the gaming performance is good in some games and really messed up in others. I really want to support AMD but I think the i5 is the way to go. I'm just afraid about not supporting AMD during this rough time. Can anyone find a benchmark comparing an i5 2500k to an fx-8150 for crossfire scaling. Also battlefield 3 is the main reason for me to want to upgrade and it looks like AMD may have the lead in that particular game? Also future upgrade paths are important to me so z68 looks pretty good to me along with pci express 3.0. The Asrock extreme7 gen3 1155 motherboard is really the best board I can find. Bulldozer doesn't seem to have a board that's anywhere near as impressive.

 

[noob2222]

personally if I already had an x4 phenomII, Id stick with it till the next upgrade products, just overclock it a bit. also, wich board do you have, you may be able to just drop a bd into it, though no tests have been done yet on the am3 boards.

 

[chesteracorgi]

If you want to upgrade in the near future the path is clear: Intel. I was an AMD fanboy, but their product seems to be both a day late and a dollar short on performance.

The 2500K kills the fx 8150 in most gaming tests, but you have a superior upgrade path to the 2600K (and perhaps the 2700 line in the future) if you stay with the same mobo. AMD has no comparable upgrade on the horizon.

I wouldn't recommend ivybridge because of cost, but it seems to have a lot more potential than AMD.

I wanted to get the bulldozer if it proved to be what was promised, but it isn't even a match for the Sandybridge.

I'll attest to the ASRock mobos. I've run the P67 Extreme6 since April and had no problems.

If you had the AM3+ I might hedge my opinion, but not with you having to upgrade bot the CPU and mobo.

 

[Reaver192]

I have the asus crosshair IV board but now I'm reading a thread that says the asus crosshair V board messed up some of the reviews on bd. I'm not sure if I want to drop a am3+ in an am3

 

[chesteracorgi]

Reaver, the Bulldozer can't run on the AM3 mobo

 

[phatbuddha79]

even if it could it probably cannot run optimally, as BD is already a flop.

 

[noob2222]

Asus AM3 motherboards that get Bulldozer support after a BIOS update are as follows: Crosshair IV Extreme, Crosshair IV Formula, M4A89TD PRO/USB3, M4A89TD PRO, M4A89GTD PRO/USB3, M4A89GTD PRO.

I don't know if that bios update has been supplied yet

As far as the 2500k killing, bd, its hit and miss depending on the game. Here is a crosssfire 2x HD6970

There isn't very many full game reviews on BD, most used 2-4 games and called it good enough.
hopefully next week we will get some more testings. the only crossfire 3x was done with 2600k @5.2ghz vs 8150 @ 4.7ghz so the numbers are not accurate

 

[Supernova1138]

FX 8150 is 'good enough' for games only because just about every game these days will be GPU bound way before the CPU becomes an issue, especially at those high resolutions used in those benchmarks. That said, the FX 8150 is not worth its asking price if you are looking for a gaming CPU, not when the i5 2500k will perform way better in games in situations where the CPU can be a bottleneck, all at a significantly lower price. Really, as far as gaming performance goes, if the OP wants to stick with AMD, he might as well not upgrade at all. The Bulldozer CPUs will not perform any better than the Phenom IIs when gaming, and that won't change unless games start to use more than 4 threads.

 

[Reaver192]

Yeah everybody says my CPU is a bottleneck for my crossfire 5870's. I was really hoping bd would have been my cheap upgrade path as asus said my am3 iv formula would support bd (did not buy the board for that reason) as that would be a cheap upgrade path. I'm not sure if I would get a good crossfire review for my ghetto rigged board. I hate to give up but I think I'm jumping ship. It just feels like I might be passing judgement to soon. I will go with the I5 2500k and drop in ivy bridge later. Anyways appreciate all your help. Would you agree my AMD 965 black edition is bottlenecking my cards?

 

[noob2222]

at stock speeds, but if you overclocked it, you could make it last till ivy bridge.

 

[Reaver192]

How far should I push it? I know they don't over clock so well. I will probably just stick with it at stock. I'm going to hand off this CPU and the board to my little brother most likely. Don't want to overclock it before giving it to him.

 

[Reaver192]

Thanks guys I'm going to just bite the bullet and get the i5 and be done with it. I loved my core 2 duo. I upgraded from a E6850 and saw almost no performance boost. I have not really been happy with my AMD cpu.

 

[Onus]

Supernova has it right. While I'm still waiting for multi-GPU tests myself, any gains there (or rather, the absence of penalties found in prior generation tests) may be attributable to the chipset as much as to the CPU.
While I'm a frequent proponent of lower raw performance being "good enough" when it is notably cheaper, Bulldozer fails there for being more expensive, either to buy (fx-8150) or to operate (fx-8120 with the necessary OC to get performance). I think the 990FX chipset is particularly robust, but a GOOD Z68 board with a PLX chip on it should offer similar features.

 

[fb39ca4]

an i5 is the way to go. you should be set gaming wise for the next 3-4 years with that, like people said, most games are now gpu bottlenecked.

 

[Reaver192]

Best answer selected by Reaver192.