Fx 8350 and asrock 970 extreme 3

[jjd103]

just built my first pc here are specs
fx8350 4.0
asrock 970 extreme 3 motherboard
16 gb corsair ram
msi radeon 7850 twin frozr 2 gb
750 w power supply
1 tb hard drive ....
just wondering if I am bottle necking or hurting performance with this setup??

 

[Daedalus12]

Looks like it will be a well balanced system. You're not going to get as much gaming performance from the fx8350 as you would with an i5, but other than that it looks like a good build.

You should also have the ability to throw in a more powerful GPU in the future (1-2 years) without too much fear of bottlenecking. Consider an SSD as an OS drive in the future as well. Makes a huge difference.

 

[Outlander_04]

You will get near enough identical game performance to an i5 build at 1080p resolution with image details on high . In some games you may even get a little more , in some a little less but the difference will be too small to notice

16 gig of RAM is not needed for gaming . Games never use more than about 3.5 gig .
I'd have installed 2x4 gig and used the money you saved to get a better motherboard . Maybe the extreme4

The psu is over kill too . You needed a 500 watt psu for that build

 

[redeemer]

Looks like it will be a well balanced system. You're not going to get as much gaming performance from the fx8350 as you would with an i5, but other than that it looks like a good build.

You should also have the ability to throw in a more powerful GPU in the future (1-2 years) without too much fear of bottlenecking. Consider an SSD as an OS drive in the future as well. Makes a huge difference.

false you will get exactly the same amount of gaming performance and even more mulit-threaded performance!

 

[chase3567]

just built my first pc here are specs
fx8350 4.0
asrock 970 extreme 3 motherboard
16 gb corsair ram
msi radeon 7850 twin frozr 2 gb
750 w power supply
1 tb hard drive ....
just wondering if I am bottle necking or hurting performance with this setup??

Get the 970 extreme 4 and later if you want crossfire the 7870 for more performance it won't be an issue. You can keep the 750 if you plan on doing that one day or OC your CPU. I'm using 700w and glad I got it from the beginning.

 

[Daedalus12]

false you will get exactly the same amount of gaming performance and even more mulit-threaded performance!

Are you and Outlander sure about that? Unless the game is completely GPU bound, the gaming and other tests don't look comparable at all...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/5


Also, like Outlander 04 said, you don't need 16 Gb of RAM currently. 8 Gb will serve you well for all gaming. If you want to put the money toward the extreme4 instead, that is another good option so long as you will use the extra features. However, I find that ram is dirt cheap now. When the time comes that you may want more than 8 Gb, DDR4 may be the standard and another 8 Gb of DDR 3 is going to be more expensive. Nothing wrong with getting it while it's super cheap.

A 750W PSU is fine as well. Overkill for the current system but will give you plenty of upgrading options and that's never a bad thing.

 

[Outlander_04]

Are you and Outlander sure about that? Unless the game is completely GPU bound, the gaming and other tests don't look comparable at all...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/5

Anandtechs benches show that if you run a stupid test you get a stupid result .

Comparing the results at lower resolutions to try and remove the gpu as a restriction just doesnt show what happens when you play games at reasonable resolution and quality settings .

Worse still the results become utterly meaningless when you factor in that almost all LCD monitors refresh at 60 Hz . That is 60 times a second , or the same thing as 60 FPS . When processor A makes 120 fps , and processor A makes 180 fps it is NOT going to give you 50% more FPS . Both will actually show 60 FPS because thats all the monitor can ever show

Whats important to most gamers is FPS at 1080p with high or ultra image quality settings .
Do that and the FX is often the better processor

 

[jjd103]

I appreciate the feedback.. went with the best deals the week before Christmas so that why I ended up with what I did. I got the extra power supple because I hope to eventually either crossfire another 7850 or just go with the best car possible if I struggle with any of the next generation games coming this year . playing far cry 3 right now and it looks amazing getting anywhere from 30 to 50 fps with everything maxed and also in crisis 2 seems to be a bit lower in metro 25 to 40fps but that's with no overclocking yet

 

[Outlander_04]

you cant crossfire with an extreme3

 

[tr1x-]

you CAN crossfire with an extreme 3 -.- how come I have this than? lol

 

[tr1x-]

The 970 chipset does support 2 X pci express 16 slots. Hoever, unlike the top end motherboards like the 990FX, these boards are limited on pci exress lanes.

What this is trying to tell you is if you populate one channel with a graphcis card, it will run at 16X speed. I think 990X offers X8/X8 when you use two graphcis cards.

So according to the specs given above, on your motherboard if you populate both X16 slots with video cards, one will run at 16X speed but the second one would be limited to 4X.
Its not an ideal situation for crossfire, which is why most enthusiasts would go for the 990FX motherboards so they could have full 16X/16X for crossfire or SLI.

 

[Daedalus12]

Anandtechs benches show that if you run a stupid test you get a stupid result .

Comparing the results at lower resolutions to try and remove the gpu as a restriction just doesnt show what happens when you play games at reasonable resolution and quality settings .

Worse still the results become utterly meaningless when you factor in that almost all LCD monitors refresh at 60 Hz . That is 60 times a second , or the same thing as 60 FPS . When processor A makes 120 fps , and processor A makes 180 fps it is NOT going to give you 50% more FPS . Both will actually show 60 FPS because thats all the monitor can ever show

Whats important to most gamers is FPS at 1080p with high or ultra image quality settings .
Do that and the FX is often the better processor

Look man, you should probably calm down and try not to be so belittling. I think most of us on the Toms forums know what 60 Hz means and that you can't see any more than the screen puts out. Thanks. No amount of condescension is going to change the numbers from Anand, Toms, or the other reviewers out there. Sorry, I'm not trying to hate on AMD. I like the company and I've built my fair share of AMD systems for myself and others.

Also, the whole point of the Anand article is not to say "Hey, I can get 220 FPS to your 180 FPS." It's to look at the CPU limitations between the two on current hardware...generally meaning lower resolutions and/or CPU intensive games like Starcraft 2. This is important for two reasons. One is that it doesn't serve anyone any good by maxing out a game and showing 30-40 FPS across the board for every CPU...in a CPU review. Second and more importantly, is that as time goes on one CPU is going to become a bottleneck before the other, and the Anand test show you which CPU that will be. One is going to run out of juice first, and sometimes that extra legroom can be a difference of over a year in your upgrade cycle.

As for the last comment... how do you explain that? There is no way you that you can take a CPU that limits first, and get better results than the CPU that has more legroom when you are using the same GPU...regardless of settings. The best you can hope to do is close the gap as you shift towards GPU limitations. Skyrim is the perfect example of this. BF3 is a good example of an entirely GPU bound game where all the posted numbers are the same....not better.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8350-vishera-review,3328-14.html



Now to get pack to the OP's questions, JJD you have a good system. The 8350 and 7850 will be great together. For the right price, the FX processors can be quite the buy as well, so don't worry too much about my rambling with Outlander. Also, you can definitely Crossfire with an extreme3 in 16x/4x mode. It's on the specifications for the board. Have fun with the new system!

 

[Outlander_04]

you CAN crossfire with an extreme 3 -.- how come I have this than? lol

You can CrossfireX on an 970 extreme3 . The second x 16 slot runs at x4 . Thats a pretty severe limitation to anything but a low end graphics card , so while you can add a second 7850 to a board like that you are wasting money and wont see the benefit .
No 970 chipset can crossfire at x8/x8

The Asrock 970 extreme4 can crossfire at x8/x8 but actually has a 990X chipset so its not the exception

 

[Outlander_04]

As for the last comment... how do you explain that? There is no way you that you can take a CPU that limits first, and get better results than the CPU that has more legroom when you are using the same GPU...regardless of settings. The best you can hope to do is close the gap as you shift towards GPU limitations. Skyrim is the perfect example of this. BF3 is a good example of an entirely GPU bound game where all the posted numbers are the same....not better.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8350-vishera-review,3328-14.html

Errr, no
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8350-vishera-review,3328-7.html
shows the maths ability of the 8350 is well ahead of a 3570K

As game engines evolve to make use of multicore processors there's every reason to believe the AMD architecture will prove superior . The reason FX doesnt do so well in skyrim and Starcraft are that they use older DX 9 game engines that dont multithread well.
Results like anandtechs tend to show how strong an individual thread can be , rather than what happens when you start to use the processing power of the entire chip . Stupid test , stupid result . Unless you plan to play 5 year old games on a 17 inch crt monitor

You could also try reading this
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1285/pg1/amd-fx-8150-black-edition-8-core-processor-vs-core-i7-2600k-review-introduction.html
The older FX 8150 scores decent wins over the 2600K
And no the games are not GPU bound . If they were then the results would be near enough identical . They are not