I had a friend recommend an AMD build which had a FX-8370 over a 4790K build, but after searching different websites for benchmarks I've come to the conclusion he's probably just an AMD fanboy. Not trying to hurt feelings to anyone, but am I wrong? is the FX-8370 actually better since it's core speed is the same, but with more cores? I'm not a computer tech so I really don't know; I only know what I read.
yes
no
NO
Depends on what you want to do. For streaming and video editing the FX might have a slight edge. For gaming you want the Intel.
No feelings hurt.
Nope the 4790K is way faster then the FX8370 in terms of per core performance and ipc.
Its not even close.
So grab the 4790K its no brainer.
And i say this as a FX8350 owner, which is the same chip as a FX8370.
Even there the 4790K whipes the floor with it.
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It depends on your budget and what you care about really. Intel processors are usually better processors, but they cost more, and you are looking at a particularly expensive intel processor.
the i7-4970K blows the FX-8370 out of the water performance wise, but is less than half the price ($300+ difference in price). Often the boards AMD chips are cheaper as well. Even between these two, you probably will get more "bang for your buck" (or more power per dollar) with the FX-8370, but you'll get a lot less bang.
Depending on what you want, you might do just fine that way. You can do a lot with the FX-8370, and you can use the extra money on a better GPU or other components (or just keep it for your own other purposes), which may have a bigger impact on certain games or other purposes than the CPU itself. You may need to watch out though that whatever board you would end up getting will have the other capabilities you want as well, like enough PCIe lanes (or PCIe v3 lanes) for whatever you plan to add in and such. Intel often makes more capable chipsets too, so keep that in mind.
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this^^^^^^^^^^
You could indeed start a argument about price to performance.
The FX8370 is ofc allot cheaper then the 4790K.
But with the 4790K you of course do get a more modern platform.
In terms of motherboards, a for a FX8370 you basicly want a decent AM3+ mobo with a decent vrm design to run that "8 core" on properly.
A decent 990FX chipset board for example, costs arround the same as a decent moderate Z97 board now days.
So in terms of platform costs the difrence isnt that big.
Ofc there are a very few cheaper 970 chipsetset boards with a decent enough vrm design but yeah.
Also wenn you look at it from a gaming standpoint.
You can also go cheaper on the intel side.
A locked Skylake i5-6500 or a Haswell i5-4460 with some cheaper motherboards like H170 or H97
That will be cheaper then a FX8370 setup, and it will still blow the FX out of the water.
It does not realy make that much sense anymore to look into a dead AM3+ platform with a FX8 core for gaming nowdays.
Unless you are on a realy tight budget, and you realy need those 8 threads for your "other" workloads.
I'm not sure off the top of my head how the Z97 chipset compares to the 990FX in general specifically, but at least the places I buy parts from will give you a better deal on the bundle of the board with any AMD processor than with the Intel, including for those sets. The difference for the board cost isn't huge, but it's still there.
Also, I double checked prices for the 4790K, and I was off with my earlier point about HOW different the price is (google had a poor choice of shown result), but it's still at the "more bang for your buck" situation.
Either way, it will still come down to what you need. OP never said what he was doing with this (gaming, video editing, streaming, media server, bitcoin farm, scientific research, whatever). The intel sets will be better, but there are certain purposes for which the AMD is a better price fit. And as someone who is on a pretty tight budget, I wouldn't throw that consideration out the window.
Oh I'm just your average gamer haha. I don't do any streaming or anything out of the ordinary. The justification he tried to feed someone else was that it would help them run their hamachi (VPN program), skype, curse chat, vent etc in the back ground while playing their games. I really don't think those programs are very high in resource usage to warrant the 4 extra cores.
I returned my 4790k for a 8370e.. The reason was simply due to price. I was able to get the cpu, ram, and mobo for $230 compared to the $400 I spent on the intel cpu, ram, and mobo. The intel IS better, but when gaming at 4k I saw the same results(GPU's are the bottleneck and by the time they are not at that res I figure it will already be time to upgrade platform) so I found it worth the money saved to buy a second GPU for CF. At the end if you are going to play 1080p at most, and have more than a 60hz monitor, than it is intel is very beneficial(due to AMD CPU limitations being apparent at lower res). I am an AMD fanboy, but use all three brands(writing this from my i7/960m laptop).. I just go for what fits my needs and budget. If you can afford Intel than go for it, if not AMD is no problem either.
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This seems to be the popular consensus. If you got the extra money, go intel. Otherwise an AMD will probably do just fine.
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At 4k gaming the gpu will indeed be the biggest limmitation.
But i dont count as a vallid standpoint to go with AMD.
Because if you talk about a 4K gaming machine, you dont talk about a budget build anymore.
I dont say that AMD FX8 cores cpu´s are bad by any means, i use one my self for more then 3 years now.
But they are just starting to show their age.
You can get a i5-6500 Skylake cpu for arround the same price as a FX8370.
And for Gamers that i5-6500 will be an overall better choice over the FX8370 in terms of gaming.
No matter the resolution.
Most games dont realy use more then 4 main threads,
there are only a very few games that might benefit from the extra threads,
like Watchdogs.
But till now, we have still not realy see a significant large diffrence between an i5 and i7 from the same gen at the same clockspeeds in most games.
Of course if you could afford a i7 without making sacrefices on the GPU,
i would definitely recommend it.
You may be right about the general performance of the i5-6500, and that may be a very good option. The performance difference is a lot less there though, with the 8370 being better in certain areas, particularly areas where enough threads are used (since the AMD one has double the threads). You are right though, most games right now don't take advantage of that many threads, or scale with threads, but it does appear that we may be right at the start of that changing, and more threads making more of a difference for more games.
But, you probably won't be at a huge loss either way. I'd say look at what deals you can get on quality parts for both builds and see how it all lines up with your budget and desires. You might find your local computer store happens to have one of these with a great bundle shaving off $100 bucks tipping the balance one way or the other on the value. Then again, OP might not care about the price so much. The whole setup, and cost of the whole setup counts more than the particular part, though the CPU is a big aspect.
Well in terms of multitheaded performance.
The FX8 cores are indeed not bad, however since the lack of certain instructions like AVX2.0, and the fact that 2 cores inside the module share sources like cache and the fpu, they are still lackluster in terms of performance.
The per core performance and ipc of FX cpu´s are realy awfull compaired to current intel counter parts.
But its ofc not a fair compairisson, since i compare a cpu from back into 2011 with a cpu from 2015.
There might be a very few cases in which the FX8370 will be better then the i5-6500, like virtualization.
But in terms of video editing and rendering, they arent realy faster. (depending on application)
its ofc a personal opinnion,
But like i said above, to me it does not realy make much sense anymore to look into AMD FX 8 core cpu´s nowdays.
Unless you are on a realy tight budget, and you realy need those 8 threads for certain workloads,
like in running multiple vm´s simultaneously for example.
Anyway i dont wantto go too far offtopic.
But back to the main question, the 4790K is the better cpu, no brainer.
this is an odd question. You are comparing to CPUs in massively different price brackets. The I7 is a much better part but it is how ever 50% more expensive. If you have the budget you should always get the better part.
If budget is not a concern and you won't sacrifice on any other piece of the build get the i7 4790K. Don't be tempted to get a "cheaper" 4770K because the thermal interface between the CPU and the heatspreader is really bad. Maybe if you don't plan on overclocking you can get an i7 4790. It won't be as powerful as a 4790K even out of the box (-400mHz on the core for standard speed and -200mHz in turbo mode) but will still be faster than an AMD 8370 kicking out less heat and not requiring a beefy motherboard in terms of power delivery. Either way you'll get a part that won't be upgradable without changing entirely the platform so choose carefully what you need and may need in the future.
A little side note: if you can always save up money for the best thing you're willing to spend money on and you won't regret it in the future. I've been running my Q6600 (B3 revision) till last year and is still pretty capable compared to modern CPUs.
If your trying to save money AND there are some really good CPU/MB combos available AMD makes sense. For example for me the 8320e was the best choice because of several sales/rebates came together. Having said that for most people the 4790k would be the best option. Also the 4790k and their MB's are coming down in price.
Allot depends what the stores available to you are doing and how budget strapped for cash you are. Also if your Linux gaming most Linux games would fly with the haswell or skylake Pentium G. If your trying to save money the 8320e to me looks better cause is so much cheaper and very overclockable. So thats what I went with.
Don't get the i7 4790 or the non i7 4 series k skews. Just get the Xeon 1231v3, its cheaper than the i7 Haswell and costs about the same or just a tad more than if you go with AMD. It basically a cherry picked i7 Haswell Refresh CPU that is made for servers. It has no iGPU that is the same with the 8 core AMD.