Upgrading CPU/MOBO only

Hardware Hub CPU
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Hi all, until recently I had been dead set on an AMD FX-8350 to replace my ageing Athlon II X4 630. I will also be upgrading the motherboard to something on the 990 platform to replace my current 880. This made a lot of sense because my current motherboard could handle the FX-8350 while I saved the extra for the 990 motherboard or I could buy the motherboard and use it with my Athlon while I save for the CPU.

Now I play a lot of strategy games and some such as Sins of a solar empire perform better when the average performance per core is higher due to the game lacking multicore support. And according to passmark cpu scores the fx-8350 is barely 20% faster per core than my current Athlon.

I have always preffered AMD due to the better price performance ratio but I notice that even some of the entry level I3s outperform my AMD per core by more than double e.g. I3 3225 has an individual core performance of 2203 vs my Athlons 811 or the FX-8350s 1153.

I know if I buy an I3 I will likely regret it as I play a few games that supports multicore and will likely suffer if the total CPU performance is lower. Especially as I plan to keep my current Radeon HD5750 so the CPU may have to pull the slack from the GPU.

So my question really is does anybody on here think it is worth paying the extra £100 it will cost me to get an I7 3770k and motherboard?

I can afford it but I will need to save for a bit longer and it means I will have to stick with stock cooling and no SSD for a while longer as my budget will be wiped out. I dont plan to OC so the stock cooler wont be an issue but I was hoping to get an SSD a lot sooner than I will be able to if I get an I7 (Probably june 2013 instead of January lol).

I guess as an alternative I could go for something like an I5 3550 for the same price as the FX-8350 but it is a fair bit slower than the I7 or the I3 per core surprisingly (still not as slow as the AMDs though) Though it does have a total perfomance a fair bit lower than the AMD..

Just FYI the I7 has the highest per core performance of 2412 & the I5 is 1715.

 

I know passmark scores arent the most reliable way to judge performance given that some games are better optimised for certain platforms etc but it was the only one I could find that had scores for everything I am looking at and is supposedly based on raw perfomance.

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Not for gaming i would just get a 3570. Also those artificial benchmarks cant be trusted

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That knocks up the build cost by another £25 and I cant help but think I might be better off either spending the extra £75 on the I7 or saving the £25 and getting the lower I5 for the performance difference. Or am I missing something? All the gaming benchmarks I could find showed only a few fps difference between this and the 3550 but a good 10+ fps difference to the I7.

I agree with what you are saying about the artificial benchmarks but I cant really find anything comprehensive measuring single core performance on any modern CPUs so its gonna have to do as a rough guide.

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There is little diffrence between all of them i dunno where you seen benchmarks showing the i7 getting 10+ fps extra but that kind of result is rare for cpus. The diffrence between the 3570k and the 3770k is tiny to non existant as a result its generaly a better idea to get the cheaper 3570k and spend the money else where. I realsie you dont want to spend money else where in your rig but saving the extra money for something in the future is probably still a better idea than getting a 3770k.

I dunno benchmarks for the 3550 vs the 3570k but for gaming the diffrence will be tiny again the extra cost is really just because the 3570k is easier to overclock. You may not want to overclock now but when the chip is getting on its nice to have that option and should extend its life time a bit.

 

For me I wouldent consider the 3770k unless I have money to burn.