AMD FX-8350 @ 4.0GHz/ Phenom ii x4 @ 3.8GHz Asrock 970 Extreme4 atx mobo Coolermaster Hyper EVO 212 (push/pull), front and bottom intake fans, rear exhaust fan Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 @1150/1400 MHz 8GB DDR3 1600 RAM Barracuda 1 TB 7200 rpm HDD Antec 650w PSU
I recently upgraded my Phenomii x4 965 for an FX 8350 and am not seeing any huge improvements when playing games. There are frame rate drops in the same places as there were when playing with my old phenom, which leads me to believe that either my 7870 is holding back, or the processor is underperforming. In far cry 3, for example, i'm getting 35-45 fps in towns as i did with the phenom. outside i'll easily get 50-60+. Same with the witcher 2. Also, the temps seem to be a little high for stock clock speeds. It goes around 35-40 C just surfing the internet... However it looks like it stays at about 50-55 C under prime95 tests. I'm not sure if these results are right or not for this processor. Could it be a faulty? Got it at newegg so the return process is probably a PAIN.. don't really want to go there just yet. Oh yeah, I heard something about a fix/patch Microsoft put out for 8350 enabling all cores or something. Will that do much (for these games)?
but the main issue is that most games do not utilize more than 4 cores, and since the 8350 and 965 have similar per core performance, for those games it will be a null upgrade
Your not going to see a massive jump in gaming performance, the GPU should be the bottleneck in most cases here, its takes a 7950 with a slight OC to keep and Even 60 FPS everywhere last time i saw FC3 benches/When i was playing.
but with that said there were a bunch of patches and fixes for the Poor initial performance of far cry 3, do you have all said fixes installed ?
Far Cry 3 is up to date. Being in town with more NPC's is more CPU intensive, no? The same with the Witcher 2. In town and in the battlefield especially with the zombie soldiers it gets really laggy (like 30-35fps). Plus all these 7870 benchmarks posted give 50 fps min. That's why I'm skeptcal about this. But yeah, the CPU sounds like it's not as good in per core performance and is what's slowing me down. What about the temps? They sound fine? I haven't overclocked yet because I'm afraid I'll get warranty void if it's faulty and want to return it.
Pistol frequently streams FC3 (at 720p), without lagging or dropping frames. her build is similar, 8350 and a 7870. the diffrence is she has her 8350 overclocked to 4.6 ghz, and she has 16g of ddr3 2400.
Well for AMD the Max temps for the FX cpu's are around 65c if your going to OC it.
it could be the CPU slowing you down but that might just be the game not fully utilizing the 8350 as i think Far Cry 3 was ported from consoles if im not mistaken.
seems odd though because if the 8350 was really a huge bottleneck you wouldnt be able to get past a certain FPS barrier/limit but an 8350 with a 7970 doesent have a problem playing it at 70Fps.
Yeah I can get 60 fps outside of town hunting or capturing posts, but in town or in certain missions is where it gets laggy. I lowered the settings to the witcher 2 all the way down and I was still getting the same framerates, so yes, it's the CPU. I'm not sure if this is how it should be performing though (if it's a faulty one I need to return). Oh well, we'll see if they start optimzing games for 6 or 8 cores now that the Durango is said to have an 8-core. It won't be a TOTAL waste if this happens.
if it was faulty, you wouldn't be having little issues like this. you would be seeing bsod's for sure, and more than likely, it wouldn't even work. get a bigger cooler, and try overclocking
Now that you mentioned it, I did get a blue-screen when running prime95 the first time. It was before I reinstalled it. I did a crappy job the first time and didn't use any sort of cleaner for the old thermal paste. i used rubbing alcohol the second time though and let it dry a little (wasn't THAT wet or anything) and made sure I put enough thermal paste (Arctic MX4). It hasn't gotten a blue screen since. I've only done like 10 min tests though so I guess I'll try it longer tests.