I am sad to admit I don't follow hardware as much as I used. I guess that's what happens when you get a job. Anyways, I was wondering if the FX8350 is still the CPU to get? I wouldn't have a clue if AMD have brought out anything better or if Intel have something good in Haswell?
I have a GTX 670 already and am looking to upgrade from my E8600 to something more modern. I know I am getting an SSD to run it, and I saw this bundle:
http://www.pp.co.nz/products.php?pp_id=AA48090
and I was wondering if this would be the thing to get?
Depends on your budget, at stock clock, the new Intel Haswells blow the 8350 out of the water, but they are of course much more expensive, and due to shoddy construction, they don't OC very well unless you de lid them.
I want to play games, specifically Skyrim and Grim Dawn when it comes out. Also web dev, but I can do that on anything. I will be running Linux, no Windows at all.
My budget is whatever it has to be. Not constrained but I'm not about to just buy the most expensive everything.
I did want to OC, but if I can get comparable performance without it then I'm okay with that. I don't have the time to play with clock speeds like I used to.
Bascially, if the CPU can keep up with the GPU I'll be happy.
I am not a fanboy of any company, but I would go with Intel at the moment. The new Haswell chip is a solid performer until it comes to overclocking but with a little tweaking that can be changed. You also have to remember that AMD owns ATI now as well.
Now AMD have been a nice company so far (such as releasing TresFX openly) but all that was just to spite NVIDIA. If NVIDIA keeps taking over the market at the same speed that it is (and hopefully, things will level again) then AMD are gonna need to do something pretty drastic to change that. A few mandatory updates and some compatability issues means all those with AMD processors need to buy an ATI GPU...probably never going to happen but companies are evil...always.
haswell has phenominal power saving capabiltiys. But RAW performance? No doesnt "Blow amd out of the water" It's better but not that much better. Haswell vs. ivy is like less than 5% difference in real world results. not quite worth the cost for a gaming machine i'll agree.
In heavy multicore applications the 8350 will still beat out the similar haswell parts. Intel has been kicking butt on there IPC performance. so in general tasks that don't take many cores the intel will perform better.
Shoddy Construction? It's the nature of integrated VRM that haswell gets molten HOT when OC'ing but at stock clocks haswell is relatively normal @ stock.
Id consider going for one of the i7 4770K bundles that are out there if you want a little more longevity
Some good bundels here to give you a idear of possable combos and OCs you can expect (keep in mind these are pre overclocked so a bit more expensive then what id expectyou to pay for just the components in land of the long white cloud!)
You can't overclock much on a new unlocked intel, and there's no real reason to, unless you need to shave time off rendering videos or 3d images or synthetics. Go for fx 8350 if you're just looking for gaming, there's also a big chance it will run better than a quad core with hyperthreading in linux. Nvidia was going to partner up with intel but they are competing in a way and disagreed upon this for a long time. ATi on the other hand was doing so much better in 2001-02 and 2008-'9. After hd 5850 not so much. Nvidia also did the same thing and rebranded most of their GPUs after 8800. Even now when both amd and nvidia have changed the cores they are still around the same performance of the previous gen and STILL USING 256 BIT BUS on a performance card and there are still 128 bit "mainstream" cards (that outperform the high end cards of 2008 but still, are crippled). The freaking 2900xt had 512 bit bus.
7970 is an enthusiast card, just like 2900xt, just because it's affordable to people that buy performance cards doesn't change it's class (though the price is competing with simmilarly priced cards of the competition)