AMD Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition vs 8 Core Zambezi for gaming

[stuartredman1]

I am building a budget gaming rig, What would be the best AMD card in the price range (100-150) ? I was going to get and 8 Core Zambezi but I heard most games only use four cores, I looked at the phenom and some benchmarks online say it is better. Also, I have heard the 6 Core AMD's are terrible, can anyone confirm? Thanks!

 

[Tradesman1]

970 would prob be a good choice, quad, very good single core performance, so gaming should be very good, also with the lower price allows more to go to GPU which is the true heart of a gaming system

 

[Nitro192]

I've actually spent the past few nights going over benchmark after benchmark trying to get to the bottom of this and in a lot of very CPU intensive games the FX 6 core series has a drastic performance increase (7-8FPS) compared to the 970 but only the 6300 series offers a large increase. The 6300 and 6350 are very cheap right now and offer as much as a 20fps boost over the phenoms in some benchmarks. the 8350 is the one they say beats the intel 3570k in most benchmarks so by all means if you can afford it, get that.

 

[Tradesman1]

Just a note, yes the 8350 can take the 3570K in video rendering, but that's about it, put the two clock to clock (both at 4.1, 4.3, 4.5 or whatever) and the 3570K simply runs away from the 8350

 

[Nitro192]

Just a note, yes the 8350 can take the 3570K in video rendering, but that's about it, put the two clock to clock (both at 4.1, 4.3, 4.5 or whatever) and the 3570K simply runs away from the 8350

True. The 3570k for sure pulls away in most cases and in almost all scenarios but it is intel afterall. The 8350 is only an AMD so that in consideration it's still a pretty good competition. May not be as fast as a 3570 but it is still a very well put together CPU.

 

[Tradesman1]

Yeah, wish AMD would sink a little money into R&D and actually show some real improvements in their CPUs

 

[catshannon]

From experience the fx 6350 and 83xx series kill the phenoms in single core and gaming.
Get a fx6350 and a http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150656 for 170 as you have saved money by buying the 6350

 

[catshannon]

Yeah, wish AMD would sink a little money into R&D and actually show some real improvements in their CPUs

Also its nice to see familiar faces

 

[catshannon]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125410 good cheeapo card btw

 

[nikoli707]

at the $150 price point its no contest that the amd fx8350 is the best option. but like said above, its your gpu that is going to help in gaming, plenty of people use 670/7950 cards on budget $100-120 cpus, or much older cpus.

a pentium g2120 with a 7950/670 will flat out game much much better than an i7-3930k oc'd to 4.6ghz and a 7850/660.

if you can get that black edition 970 for cheap with a mobo, then use that extra $50 saved to jump to the next tier gpu.

 

[catshannon]

at the $150 price point its no contest that the amd fx8350 is the best option. but like said above, its your gpu that is going to help in gaming, plenty of people use 670/7950 cards on budget $100-120 cpus, or much older cpus.

a pentium g2120 with a 7950/670 will flat out game much much better than an i7-3930k oc'd to 4.6ghz and a 7850/660.

if you can get that black edition 970 for cheap with a mobo, then use that extra $50 saved to jump to the next tier gpu.

This is not true of more modern games or multi-core optimised games to come the i7 will kill the pentium in anything other than single core options, 8350 and 6350 will perform the same in most games as each other but the 8350 is a better all rounder and more future proof and neither of them will bottleneck any gpu at the moment (unless you run crossfire or sli)
The 8350 or 6350 + good cooler is the budget build king right now and punch above their weight and quality.

 

[Tradesman1]

The 970 is quad core so it can handle current and upcoming games, the GPU is where the Gaming brain lies, as said initially.........and there are no immediate games coming out that will use more than 4 cores

 

[The Q6660 Inside]

The 970 is quad core so it can handle current and upcoming games, the GPU is where the Gaming brain lies, as said initially.........and there are no immediate games coming out that will use more than 4 cores

I would go for the FX6300 or 6350, it is honestly the best tradeoff. Also, the 3570K is matched in gaming by the 8350 quite a lot. It is the upcoming properly threaded console ported games such as BF4 where it will shine. For 160, you can even get an 8320, which is the best value for a CPU on the market.

 

[Tradesman1]

Just in general, I think you'd be happier with the 970 and taking the extra $70 saved from an 8350 and adding it to your GPU budget, and thenin the future look to more CPU once anybody ever gets around to putting out 4 or more core games, which I don't think will be real soon