HD 7850 and Phenom II X4 965BE

[box o rocks]

Would the above combination be suitable for 1920x1080 gaming (modern games)? Or is the aging Phenom II too slow for the HD 7850? For sake of argument, let's assume the 965BE is not overclocked.

 

[mocchan]

The 965 at stock settings is still a very modest CPU and is very well capable of handling modern titles

The Intel Core i3 21xx CPU's are kind of the basic/bare minimum you would want to get for gaming rigs. Also, the i3 21xx CPU's will NOT bottleneck the HD7850. Keeping that in mind - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/289?vs=102

That bench clearly shows the X4 965 is on-par with the i3 2100

 

[azraa]

I agree with mocchan, Phenom x4 is still very capable.
Altough, I kinda disagree about the i3 statement. Yes they perform very well on games, because games dont use so many cores, and i3 has 4 really efficient cores.

However, for about the same price of a i3-21xx (50USD more) you can get an FX8120, which, for starters, is unlocked and competes as very well with it in gaming performance. Besides, it gives you 8 cores instead of 4 (data taken from anandtech itself, same site you mocchan referred to)

You probably have an AM3+ mobo, so an FX should fit nice in your machine, and it does not bottlenecks that graphics card at all.

So, thats my take on the issue. The FX option, in my humble opinion, gives you an overall more customizable CPU, better overclocking, you can turn off a core per module making it a 4-core is you need it to and bumping up the performance to match a 2500k in lightly threaded apps, etc. The other thing is that Win8 introduces changes to the threading management for AMD chips, so quite a big bump of free performance might come from it.


So thats it, the Phenom will be up to the battle, so dont feel that you must upgrade right now.
Cheers!

edit: add links to processors in question.

Price data:
i3 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115077
FX8120 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103961

 

[mocchan]

I agree with mocchan, Phenom x4 is still very capable.
Altough, I kinda disagree about the i3 statement. Yes they perform very well on games, because games dont use so many cores, and i3 has 4 really efficient cores.

However, for about the same price of a i3-21xx you can get an FX8120, which, for starters, is unlocked and competes as very well with it in gaming performance. Besides, it gives you 8 cores instead of 4 (data taken from anandtech itself, same site you mocchan referred to)

You probably have an AM3+ mobo, so an FX should fit nice in your machine, and it does not bottlenecks that graphics card at all.

So, thats my take on the issue. The FX option, in my humble opinion gives you an overall more customizable CPU, better overclocking, you can turn off a core per module making it a 4-core is you need it to and bumping up the performance to match a 2500k in lightly threaded apps, etc. The other thing is that Win8 introduces changes to the threading management for AMD chips, so quite a big bump of free performance might come from it.


So thats it, the Phenom will be up to the battle, so dont feel that you must upgrade right now.
Cheers!

Actually the i3 is a Dual Core CPU with Hyperthreading, so it appears to have 4 'cores' when in reality, it is 2 cores 4 threads
That shows you how well they stack up to the Phenom II X4's IMO.

However, for the same price as an FX-8120/FX-8150, I would prefer to get an i5-3450. It's around $190 USD at the moment, which is only around $20-$30 more expensive than the FX-81xx options with much, much more performance.

 

[mocchan]

Haha, I totally understand what you mean. I loved overclocking with my Phenom II X4 955..so much tinkering... With my current 2700k, it's a speed demon, however, I can't tinker as much with it not as fun as I would like it to be.

 

[azraa]

Oh yup, gotta agree with that one.
I just like to have that option to disable cores, and the unlocked multiplier. I am kind of tinker about these stuff.

But hey, Intel, the competition is just very strong right out of the box

 

[box o rocks]

Good discussion folks. I'm learning a lot on this forum. I'm going to up the specs a bit now... So, when all is said and done, what graphic card(s) would be the max for a PhIIX4 965 O/C'd to 3.7GHZ (I guess that would be = PhII X4 980) w/o experiencing CPU bottle neck? Same resolution.

 

[mocchan]

I would feel comfortable with something up to a GTX660Ti/Radeon HD7950. Anything higher end than that and I would consider a serious CPU upgrade. -coughs- i5 3570k -coughs- :lol:

 

[box o rocks]

I would feel comfortable with something up to a GTX660Ti/Radeon HD7950. Anything higher end than that and I would consider a serious CPU upgrade. -coughs- i5 3570k -coughs- :lol:

Wow! You really think the K10 chip boy can keep up with cards of that caliber? I'm happy to hear your vote of confidence.

 

[mocchan]

Wow! You really think the K10 chip boy can keep up with cards of that caliber? I'm happy to hear your vote of confidence.

Yes, I feel confident a K10 chip can keep up to cards with that power However, I do have one bad news.

The Phenom II's I would personally feel comfortable pairing such powerful GPU's with would be Phenom II X4 955's and higher. The X3 you have will most likely get the job done until you upgrade your CPU, however, you may run into some bottlenecking. This can be easily remedied if you can unlock your CPU and OC, but until then, you'll see a performance hit.

**EDIT**

Disregard my statements about X4 Phenoms...I mixed this thread up with another one I'm currently in :lol: My apologies.

 

[amuffin]

However, for about the same price of a i3-21xx (50USD more) you can get an FX8120, which, for starters, is unlocked and competes as very well with it in gaming performance. Besides, it gives you 8 cores instead of 4 (data taken from anandtech itself, same site you mocchan referred to)

Where's this "about the same price" $50 isn't the same price

 

[box o rocks]

@mocchan
No, you are still mixed up. I'm the one with the Phenom II X4 965BE. I don't have the X3.
But I get your point about the 965 keeping up with fast cards. Good to know.

 

[mocchan]

@mocchan
No, you are still mixed up. I'm the one with the Phenom II X4 965BE. I don't have the X3.
But I get your point about the 965 keeping up with fast cards. Good to know.

Yes, which is why I said to disregard my statement about the X3 and X4's Looking back on the post, I may have confused you even further, so I apologise.

 

[1405]

Best answer selected by box o rocks.

 

[box o rocks]

I understand. Thank you for your help. I went ahead and got the HD 7850. It was at the high end of my price range. Haven't had a chance to test it out yet.