Which Direction to go?

[Guest]

Hi all. So I've got 2 computers that I've built myself in the past 3 years and I was wondering which route I should take as far as an upgrade path.

Computer "A" (About 3 years total motherboard was originally a 890GX, but upgraded 18 months ago or so)
AMD Phenom II X6 1055T
Asus Sabertooth 990fx R1 Motherboard
At the moment using a simple low powered graphics card (GT 610, since all I do on this is Netflix, Ubuntu, light gaming)
8 GB (2x4) DDR3 1600 Mhz
Windows 7 x64/ Ubuntu 12.04 Dual Boot w/128 GB Sata II SSD Drive
Other misc. stuff.

Computer "I" (about a year or so old)
Intel i3 2100
Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3
GTX 560 "SE" (I know, it's crappy but it was better than what I had previously. A GTS 250)
8 GB (4GB x2) DDR3 1866
OCZ Vertex R2 Plus 128 Sata II SSD
2 1TB WD Green Drives

I want to upgrade only one of these machines, and I am leaning towards getting a SB 2500K. But this Intel motherboard has had some serious flaws in the past. Namely boot loop (seems common on the Z68 platform) and when running the UEFI BIOS on it, somehow the BIOS became corrupted (thankfully the DualBIOS did it's job and I was able to revert to non-UEFI bios)

I'm not happy with the results of the PileDriver based AMD's (they don't seem to justify the cost compared to the performance of my soon-to-be out of warranty 1055T) but since I do a fair bit of video work and visualization I might need the extra "Cores" (if you can call them that, from what I understand each "module" is the real core and what amd calls a "core" is similar to Intel's HT technology). I am also not happy with the direction AMD is taking as a company and laying off a huge amount of workers and the fact they don't even have a dedicated chip manufacturer (Didn't they part ways with GlobalFoundries?)

I just need some opinions. I am fairly happy with both builds at the moment, but I know the AMD one is getting long in the tooth, as well as if I decide to go back to PC Gaming (which I probably will during Winter) I know that my old i3 just isn't much any more and the money would probably be better spent on that machine.

Thoughts?

 

[Outlander_04]

if the AMD motherboard is not an AM3+ unit you should upgrade the intel

 

[Guest]

Its a sabertooth 990fx rev. 1 (Now discontinued ) sorry i forgot that.

 

[hytecgowthaman]

Upgrade i3 to i5 processor

 

[Outlander_04]

Its a sabertooth 990fx rev. 1 (Now discontinued ) sorry i forgot that.

A BIOS update , and drop an FX 8350 in to it

 

[Guest]

A BIOS update , and drop an FX 8350 in to it

it has the newest bios. Why should I upgrade this AMD machine?

 

[Outlander_04]

it has the newest bios. Why should I upgrade this AMD machine?

A $200 processor upgrade will give you gaming just as good as any intel . At 1080p in online gaming it will probably make better FPS . It will encode as well as an SB or IB intel
And you can update for at least one more generation of processors

The intel is more expensive to upgrade , and the platform dies in 5 months time

The only downside of the AMD upgrade is higher electricity usage ....around 1 cent per hour at full load , and nothing at idle or web surfing .

PS what AMD have done with the FX processors is split one section of a traditional core in half so it can run two threads simultaneously . Thats an over simplification , but close enough . A hardware implementation of hyper threading
Its "weakness" is single threaded performance. but that is an increasingly rare circumstance these days .
Games like BF3 can use any number of cores, and so can newer software

 

[Guest]

A $200 processor upgrade will give you gaming just as good as any intel . At 1080p in online gaming it will probably make better FPS . It will encode as well as an SB or IB intel
And you can update for at least one more generation of processors

The intel is more expensive to upgrade , and the platform dies in 5 months time

The only downside of the AMD upgrade is higher electricity usage ....around 1 cent per hour at full load , and nothing at idle or web surfing .

PS what AMD have done with the FX processors is split one section of a traditional core in half so it can run two threads simultaneously . Thats an over simplification , but close enough . A hardware implementation of hyper threading
Its "weakness" is single threaded performance. but that is an increasingly rare circumstance these days .
Games like BF3 can use any number of cores, and so can newer software

I appreciate that. I know Haswell is around the corner and it's supposed to be a new socket type (I think 1150?) so basically buying a new motherboard right now for an Intel platform would be a waste of money. I get that. And in my case, with my Intel board, if I was going to dump down the cash for a i5 I would probably have to replace my existing board since, as I stated in the first post, mine has had issues in the past.

I know my Sabertooth 990FX still has something like 3.5 years under warranty (tough little board, and I only bought it so I could have a 5 year warranty. Although I hear ASUS is pretty hard headed about honoring them) and moving away from that platform at this point in time might be a bad move only because, as you pointed out, it would cost more.

But I just checked out the TH CPU hierarchy chart that was released a few days ago, and the Intel's beat the AMD's pretty badly on it. I'm glad AMD can FINALLY catch up to an i7. Too bad it's from 3 generations ago. Also, it looks like the top of the line 8350 can still only game as well as the i3 2100 I have in my other machine, so I think that might be a sign to leave the AMD machine in the dust. I don't know. Still not honestly convinced one way or another and need more input.

 

[Guest]

Best answer selected by NoSupport4U.

 

[hytecgowthaman]

thanks for selecting as the best answer.....

 

[Outlander_04]

"wins" for the intel happen at low resolution and image detail settings

They are supposed to indicate what happens when you take the gpu load out of the equation .but since thats not what happens when you are actually gaming is a meaningless synthetic test
At 1080p , and high image setting the FX processors can show decent margins over the intels . And its not that those situations are GPU limited . If it was then the results would be identical
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1285/pg1/amd-fx-8150-black-edition-8-core-processor-vs-core-i7-2600k-review-introduction.html

an older FX 8150 kicking sand in the face of an i7 2600K

 

[Guest]

Thank you for the link, Outlander. I'll read it later on. But my decision was made, I actually just put a better video card in my i3 setup and it runs just fine. I like my 560 Ti 448 FTW card. I've moved my 560 SE into the AMD machine, and both are doing pretty well.