Hey Ive recently upgraded from an Fx 6350 to the 8350 and ive noticed a drop in performance on games like Dayz etc that are quite CPU heavy. I look at core stats and only 2-4 cores are used depending on the game etc. Ive tried several fixes like the microsoft hotfixes for the Bulldozer platform with no luck yet.
Any help is appreciated as Ive heard when working correctly the 8350 is a very strong Cpu for gaming,
Specs
AMD Fx 8350 Stock with a Coolermaster 212 evo cooler
Uhh no offense, but your motherboard is a piece of shit... It throttles That processor so hard its not even funny. Get a new motherboard or downgrade your processor to the 6300. That motherboard may even throttle the 6350 because of its 125 watt tdp.
That motherboard is not powerful enough to power the 8350. It's got a 3+1 power phase, where you should really be looking at a 6+2 like the m5a99fx or at the very least a 4+2 like the m5a97 r2.0. But even then 2-4 cores is rather unusual. You can try unparking your cores with this utility and see what happens
Don't try to run it on the 4+2. You could but i'd worry about long term usage and really you'd be better off just buying the better 6+2 or 8+2 for $20 more.
Problem is, all the motherboards with a decent power phase design are ATX form factor, which happens to be bigger than your current mATX board. You need to have an ATX (or larger) case to fit an appropriate motherboard inside.
This motherboard is highly recommend. It's actually packed full of features:
Both are good boards. By purchasing the ROG branded motherboard, you're getting those ROG features which are largerly gaming related, improved audio; but these are not necessary features. You'll have to read up on those. Fact is that both boards come with all the important, really useful stuff. But then you might consider the ROG board for the aesthetics.
Both are good options for running dual GPUs. They both include all the good stuff like USB 3 which will be the standard sooner or later. ASUS have really good onboard utilities.
There are people that are fanatical about ROG branded products. Now, I don't rate all of their products, but there's no faulting their motherboards. Very few boards are competitive. Especially on the AM3+ line.
DayZ and Arma are Intel favour games, they have realy poorly multi threaded optimization, thats the reason why they run better on an intel cpu. Most people get poor numbers with Arma 3 on AMD. i get arround 30 to 40 fps on mine...