51 replies to this topic

[Barbaric Soul]

Oh, forgot to add to my first post here, re-use a DVD drive out of your current computer.

Vulpesveritas, on 02 February 2012 - 10:02 AM, said:

And AM3+ boards are confirmed for piledriver support and expected for steamroller, giving an extra year of upgrade path. so how is this bad advice? Also, Intel has said Ivy Bridge is more of a energy saving upgrade than anything else, whereas AMD is touting Piledriver as both an IPC and frequency upgrade, and as things stand, and AMD FX-8150p is an i7-2600k's equal back and forth (depends on thread load). with a 15% increase in IPC as AMD is claiming, then perhaps we'll see AMD take a slight lead, only time will tell. Oh and there's also the fact AMD boards are still slightly cheaper, and the GPU is the main thing to focus on right now.

What does the performance of the FX 8150p have to do with this. You didn't suggest that CPU, you suggested a Phenom II, which clock for clock, is slower than a Core2Quad. Only way a Phenom II beats a Core2Quad is by being clocked higher, meaning a 3 ghz Phenom II is not better than a Core2Quad at 3ghz. Sandy Bridge quadcores out performs all Core2Quads, and thus out performs all Phenom II.

You say that the FX 8150p is a equal match to not just a Sandy Bridge cpu, but to the 2600k. Not true at all, before I go get benchmarks to back what I'm saying, let's look and the others things you mentioned.

AM3+ motherboards being cheaper. The board I suggested is only $104, which is $15 more than what you suggested. Considering I'm under the $800 budget, I don't think that is a issue.

Games are more GPU limited. Well that really depends on the game, but for arguements sake, I do have a 6950 in my build, not a 6850 like in your intitial build.

Now for benchmarks-

http://www.anandtech...duct/434?vs=287

http://www.cpubenchm...h_end_cpus.html

http://www.tomshardw...-Dead,2432.html

http://img.techpower...0202/lol435.jpg

Do I need to go on?

Edited by Barbaric Soul, 02 February 2012 - 10:59 AM.

[Barbaric Soul]

Oh, and after the failure that BD turned out to be, you really have any hope for AMD being competitive against Intel without moving on to a totally new archtecture? As much as I wish it would happen, I don't believe it will.

[Vulpesveritas]

Barbaric Soul, on 02 February 2012 - 10:33 AM, said:

Oh, and after the failure that BD turned out to be, you really have any hope for AMD being competitive against Intel without moving on to a totally new archtecture? As much as I wish it would happen, I don't believe it will.

the two primary reasons BD failed is it had a slight IPC drop in favor or more threads and doing betting in heavily threaded applications. In properly octa-threaded applications the 8150p trades +-1-2% of the performance with the i7-2600k at stock clocks. This however, is not the case of gaming. That said, Piledriver is stated to have a 15% IPC increase, and steamroller an increase after that.
Also, lack of cooling much? no aftermarket heatsink or decent TIM in there. (once again bias in my regard as this is an OCD point for me.)
Not as good of a case, and if looking to upgrade you're looking at a case for 2-3 motherboards.
And as things go, paying almost half as much on the CPU helps when we're not seeing heavy CPU games out. That Phenom II X4 is more than enough for any game out there at the moment that I know of. Once again, I do agree with the 6950 choice, however at the time I looked.

Oh and read your own benches- the 8150p does run faster than the i7 in some of those. figure'd I'd mention that.

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 02 February 2012 - 11:25 AM.

[Barbaric Soul]

Vulpesveritas, on 02 February 2012 - 11:19 AM, said:

the two primary reasons BD failed is it had a slight IPC drop in favor or more threads and doing betting in heavily threaded applications. In properly octa-threaded applications the 8150p trades +-1-2% of the performance with the i7-2600k at stock clocks. This however, is not the case of gaming. That said, Piledriver is stated to have a 15% IPC increase, and steamroller an increase after that.
Also, lack of cooling much? no aftermarket heatsink or decent TIM in there. (once again bias in my regard as this is an OCD point for me.)
Not as good of a case, and if looking to upgrade you're looking at a case for 2-3 motherboards.
And as things go, paying almost half as much on the CPU helps when we're not seeing heavy CPU games out. That Phenom II X4 is more than enough for any game out there at the moment that I know of. Once again, I do agree with the 6950 choice, however at the time I looked.

Oh and read your own benches- the 8150p does run faster than the i7 in some of those. figure'd I'd mention that.

Man, AMD's FX processors are about even clock for clock with the Phenom II cpus(meaning a quad core FX is the same as a Phenom II quad). That's why it failed. It's not really any faster than thier last generation of CPUs. I won't believe anything I hear about Piledriver or Steamroller until I see independent reviews of them.

How are you coming up with the fact that they are then faster or just as fast as an I7? BTW, which benchmarks are you referring to? The one's in the Anadtech review? May I suggest you look alittle closer then. Higher score is not always better(some of those benchmarks are lower scores equal better performance).

Ok, I can agree with you saying that a Phenom II is adequate for todays games(my Q9650 would still be plenty CPU for me today), but long will that be for? Another year at the most is my bet. Then the OP will have to spend more money and pray AMD get's thier next line of CPUs atleast close to the performance of a I5 or I7. The OP will spend less money in the long run and get a longer life out of the system being built without any upgrades by going with a I5 or I7 cpu.

About the case, I just put that in there. Personally I never seriously suggest a particular case for someone as picking a case has alot to do with personal preference as it does with making sure the case has good air flow. BTW, I'm on my 4th motherboard with my current case( I have a Lian Li V1200b Plus II).

[Vulpesveritas]

Barbaric Soul, on 02 February 2012 - 11:48 AM, said:

Man, AMD's FX processors are about even clock for clock with the Phenom II cpus(meaning a quad core FX is the same as a Phenom II quad). That's why it failed. It's not really any faster than thier last generation of CPUs. I won't believe anything I hear about Piledriver or Steamroller until I see independent reviews of them.

How are you coming up with the fact that they are then faster or just as fast as an I7? BTW, which benchmarks are you referring to? The one's in the Anadtech review? May I suggest you look alittle closer then. Higher score is not always better(some of those benchmarks are lower scores equal better performance).

Ok, I can agree with you saying that a Phenom II is adequate for todays games(my Q9650 would still be plenty CPU for me today), but long will that be for? Another year at the most is my bet. Then the OP will have to spend more money and pray AMD get's thier next line of CPUs atleast close to the performance of a I5 or I7. The OP will spend less money in the long run and get a longer life out of the system being built without any upgrades by going with a I5 or I7 cpu.

About the case, I just put that in there. Personally I never seriously suggest a particular case for someone as picking a case has alot to do with personal preference as it does with making sure the case has good air flow. BTW, I'm on my 4th motherboard with my current case( I have a Lian Li V1200b Plus II).

I'd say longer than a year, given that the new consoles have been pushed back to late 2013 at the earliest. Also, given that the main issues attributed to bulldozer failing by what I've read attributes much to the high latency of the L1 cache, then should that be corrected, along with the other changes AMD has stated, perhaps we will see some interesting competition, however that will be later this year.
Oh and maybe YOU should read the reviews;
Sysmark 2007 elearning
2nd pass of x264 encoding 0.59.819
7zip benchmark
figured i'd point that out.

[Barbaric Soul]

Vulpesveritas, on 02 February 2012 - 11:59 AM, said:

I'd say longer than a year, given that the new consoles have been pushed back to late 2013 at the earliest. Also, given that the main issues attributed to bulldozer failing by what I've read attributes much to the high latency of the L1 cache, then should that be corrected, along with the other changes AMD has stated, perhaps we will see some interesting competition, however that will be later this year.
Oh and maybe YOU should read the reviews;
Sysmark 2007 elearning
2nd pass of x264 encoding 0.59.819
7zip benchmark
figured i'd point that out.

I'd say a year at most. There are already several games that use more than 4 threads(BF3 and Skyrim are the newest I know of). I've heard Skyrim works the heck out of a regular quad core(it'll actually push the 2500k), though I haven't tried it for myself. It's not my style of game.

3 out of 43 benchmarks(yes, I counted them)? Come on. Really?

I do hope AMD can do something to become competitive with Intel again. I do like AMD. Intel having no competition means Intel won't be pushed to make thier processors better or less expensive. I really wanted to do a AMD build with Bulldozer, but compared to Sandy Bridge, performance wise, your alot better off with an Intel based system.

Oh, and just to show off alittle, my current specs-
Processor: 2600k @ 4.2ghz Motherboard: Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Cooling: Corsair H60 Memory: 8gig(2*4gig)Corsair Vengence DDR3 1600 Video Card: 2* XFX 5870 in CrossfireX Hard Disk: 500gb Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 Optical Drive: HP Lightscribe x24 DVDRW CRT/LCD Model: Samsung SyncMaster 305t 30" LCD 2560*1600 res Case: Lian Li V1200b Plus II w/ metallic paint job Sound Card: Realtek High Definition Audio PSU: PC Power and Cooling Turbo-Cool 860 Software: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

Edited by Barbaric Soul, 02 February 2012 - 02:50 PM.

[Catamount]

Barbaric Soul, that case wouldn't really be adeqaute for the build (from the looks of it, you'd have serious ventilation problems, and having a case that's 10 or 15 C above ambient because it can't bleed heat off fast enough is bad).

That said, if you swapped out that case for an NZXT gamma (http://www.newegg.co...pk=NZXT%20Gamma), and tossed in a $5 120mm fan or two, it would make your build really nice.


For $800, it does offer the best performance suggested here; that's a hard proposition to argue with (and for future reference, the Gamma is basically the go-to case for budget gaming builds; I know of no other case that comes close to having as much ventilation at $40, and its construction is surprisingly good).


Also, this is a better power supply for the money, imo: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16817151096

It comes to the same $60 after shipping, only no mail-in rebate, and offers 70W more (yes, I know, it's 70W more overkill, but it's the same price! ).


AndrewOsis, you might want to consider Barbaric Soul's i5 build (with my two tweaks here, of course )

As I said, it is the the most powerful build for the money offered up thus far.

Edited by Catamount, 02 February 2012 - 03:08 PM.

[Barbaric Soul]

Catamount, on 02 February 2012 - 03:04 PM, said:

Barbaric Soul, that case wouldn't really be adeqaute for the build (from the looks of it, you'd have serious ventilation problems, and having a case that's 10 or 15 C above ambient because it can't bleed heat off fast enough is bad).

That said, if you swapped out that case for an NZXT gamma (http://www.newegg.co...pk=NZXT%20Gamma), and tossed in a $5 120mm fan or two, it would make your build really nice.


For $800, it does offer the best performance suggested here; that's a hard proposition to argue with (and for future reference, the Gamma is basically the go-to case for budget gaming builds; I know of no other case that comes close to having as much ventilation at $40, and its construction is surprisingly good).


Also, this is a better power supply for the money, imo: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16817151096

It comes to the same $60 after shipping, only no mail-in rebate, and offers 70W more (yes, I know, it's 70W more overkill, but it's the same price! ).


AndrewOsis, you might want to consider Barbaric Soul's i5 build (with my two tweaks here, of course )

As I said, it is the the most powerful build for the money offered up thus far.

I can agree with those proposed changes. Like I said about the case-

Quote

About the case, I just put that in there. Personally I never seriously suggest a particular case for someone as picking a case has alot to do with personal preference as it does with making sure the case has good air flow.

So I really didn't put alot of thought into that. That Seasonic is a killer deal, and Seasonic do make some of the best PSUs available.

[Vulpesveritas]

I, personally would still get the Phenom II X4 and use the extra money there and put it towards cooling.
Once again, that's me.
cooling solutions in price range;
cases in price range with decent ventilation:
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16811147060
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16811147023
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16811147144
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16811146061
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16811156247
TIM:
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835426020 Personally Recommend.
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835186038
Heatsink:
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835103099 Personally recommend at price point.
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835118100
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835233082
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835181011
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835288001
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835185168
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835118079
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835214026
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835118059
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835426023
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835207009
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835106161
Casefan:
LED- http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835200049
No LED-
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835233084
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835168006
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835200021
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835103061

Once again, this is me, combined with being an AMD fanboy (and hopefully future employee) And in general being OCD about cooling.

[Barbaric Soul]

Vulpesveritas, on 02 February 2012 - 08:51 PM, said:

Once again, this is me, combined with being an AMD fanboy (and hopefully future employee)

No offense, but that is why your advice was bad. I'm not a fanboy. I don't blindly choose where to spend my money, or suggest where others should spend there money. My suggestions and builds are meant to give the best possible performance for the money spent, whether that be AMD vs Intel(CPUs), or ATI(AMD) vs Nvidia(GPU), or Corsair vs Seasonic(PSU) and so on.

Edited by Barbaric Soul, 03 February 2012 - 04:08 AM.

[Catamount]

Vulpesveritas, on 02 February 2012 - 08:51 PM, said:

I, personally would still get the Phenom II X4 and use the extra money there and put it towards cooling...Once again, this is me, combined with being an AMD fanboy (and hopefully future employee) And in general being OCD about cooling.

The problem is that that's simply a tangible inferior way to go.

PC chips have a range of temperatures they can withstand for quite a long time, and you don't have to massively undercut that. If you want to, that's fine, but you should not be taking a considerable portion of a very finite budget, and putting it towards something that makes no difference, at the expense of something that makes a difference.


There's also a point of diminishing returns on cooling. Your case can't make things go below ambient temperature, so there comes a point, quickly, when you're just trading around very small differences in delta T (change from ambient). A good Antel 900 or HAF932 could probably dissipate 1000W without getting more than half a dozen degrees above ambient (albiet with some fans turned up!), or maybe even a fair bit more. After that point, wherever it lies exactly, delta T is going to probably start rising fast, but up to that point (give or take), you're fine. My case dissipates about half that much, and I can't even tell the difference between what the fans blow out and ambient air (and the fans are on medium). A full tower Antec 1200 can probably dissipate half again as much as a 900.

An NZXT Gamma with another two or three 120mm fans added... if I had to take a guess, having worked with the case? I'd put 600W or 700W worth of stuff in without blinking. The case is almost all ventilating mesh with fan mounts.


So maybe the OP could buy a way better case, but for what, a fraction of a degree lower delta T? That's just not worth spending money on. And if the OP buys an aftermarket cooler just to run stuff at stock settings, maybe his/her CPU will run at 7C or 8C lower load temps, but again, who cares? That will make no tangible difference to the chip.



As for AMD vs Intel, look I like AMD better too, but my job here is to offer the best build to the OP, not to pad the pockets of a corporation. If they can get an Intel CPU on their budget and have it be tangibly faster, especially now that more engines are popping up for which it matters, I'm going to tell them to get the Intel CPU.

The same goes for Nvidia. I owned a Geforce 8800, and wouldn't have batted an eye telling people the 8800gt was the best GPU ever made at the time. I own and recommend AMD now, but if, next year, Kepler proves to be the fastest thing under the sun, and its awesomely priced I'll tell people to get that instead.

[Vulpesveritas]

Catamount, on 03 February 2012 - 05:01 AM, said:

The problem is that that's simply a tangible inferior way to go.

PC chips have a range of temperatures they can withstand for quite a long time, and you don't have to massively undercut that. If you want to, that's fine, but you should not be taking a considerable portion of a very finite budget, and putting it towards something that makes no difference, at the expense of something that makes a difference.


There's also a point of diminishing returns on cooling. Your case can't make things go below ambient temperature, so there comes a point, quickly, when you're just trading around very small differences in delta T (change from ambient). A good Antel 900 or HAF932 could probably dissipate 1000W without getting more than half a dozen degrees above ambient (albiet with some fans turned up!), or maybe even a fair bit more. After that point, wherever it lies exactly, delta T is going to probably start rising fast, but up to that point (give or take), you're fine. My case dissipates about half that much, and I can't even tell the difference between what the fans blow out and ambient air (and the fans are on medium). A full tower Antec 1200 can probably dissipate half again as much as a 900.

An NZXT Gamma with another two or three 120mm fans added... if I had to take a guess, having worked with the case? I'd put 600W or 700W worth of stuff in without blinking. The case is almost all ventilating mesh with fan mounts.


So maybe the OP could buy a way better case, but for what, a fraction of a degree lower delta T? That's just not worth spending money on. And if the OP buys an aftermarket cooler just to run stuff at stock settings, maybe his/her CPU will run at 7C or 8C lower load temps, but again, who cares? That will make no tangible difference to the chip.



As for AMD vs Intel, look I like AMD better too, but my job here is to offer the best build to the OP, not to pad the pockets of a corporation. If they can get an Intel CPU on their budget and have it be tangibly faster, especially now that more engines are popping up for which it matters, I'm going to tell them to get the Intel CPU.

The same goes for Nvidia. I owned a Geforce 8800, and wouldn't have batted an eye telling people the 8800gt was the best GPU ever made at the time. I own and recommend AMD now, but if, next year, Kepler proves to be the fastest thing under the sun, and its awesomely priced I'll tell people to get that instead.

And no doubt, it is the inferior way to go, to certain points. First of all, as said before, I have a clear bias. Primarily based on moral grounds, while Intel might make a better chip, it doesn't change the fact that for years they paid manufacturers to not use AMD chips, making the gap between the two even farther than they already were. Second, that I've gotten a negative image of Intel-only users, mainly from my experience when selling computers, where I'll have a much better deal on an AMD computer (Phenom II X4, 8 GB RAM vs a Pentium w/ 4 GB RAM at same price, Phenom II X4 with a Radeon HD 6570, only integrated graphics on pentium, both midtower desktops.) And then they rant to me about how "AMDs are horrible, they bust all the time, they're crap, I'll never get one Intel is the only thing that should be bought." and then listening to another half hour of how they took classes and how they were taught in said class that AMD processors are horrible and the only way to go. Had that happen multiple times. So there is a psychological factor for me there.
Then there is ATI/Nvidea, and I have a bias there from personal experiance, although GPU wise I have less of an issue, if Nvidea clearly has a better product, then I'll go with Nvidea, no qualms there, however if at my price point there is a performance tie, or there is only at most a 5% difference in performance and the ATI runs cooler / consumes less power I'll still take ATI, and if an equal split i'll take the ATI.

As far as cooling, that is just me. As stated before. I realize for most it is stupid, however for me... it's me.

[Catamount]

Vulpes, I have a pretty deep-seated hatred of Nvidia, so I basically don't buy them anymore unless they absolutely plaster AMD. This company effectively waged war on DirectX10, and tried to on DX11 (with much less traction, and much less effort, since they got DX11 parts out fairly quickly).

Any tech company who competes by trying to hold back technology for everyone, rather than simply making their technology better, is a counterproductive company that hurts the market.

Nvidia is also very scummy about how they did it. They'd do things like use their clout with Ubisoft to remove DX10.1 from Assassin's Creed, because only AMD cards supported 10.1, and since its way faster than DX10 in how it handles textures, AMD cards were outrunning Nvidia cards in the game. DX10.1 is really just DX10, sans the neutering MS did as a quiet bailout for Nvidia, because their cards couldn't support full DX10, so MS knocked those features out, and then renamed the full-featured DX10 as DX10.1, which is vastly superior in performance. Not being one to allow that kind of advantage, Nvidia pulled every possible dirty move to keep DX10.1 off the market for quite awhile.

They did something similar with the various publishers of Batman, Arkum Asylum, which literally has a "no-ATI" code in it that disables anti-aliasing on all AMD cards.


Then there's the intentional Nvidia naming confusion. You know the GTX 460? Of course not, because that's not a card. It's FOUR cards. Nvidia took a wildly successful GPU, and named far lesser cards after it to confuse customers. The 768mb and 1GB versions are entirely different GPUs, as different as the Radeon HD 5850 and 5870 (probably more different, actually). The GTX 460 SE is at least named a little differently to warn customers... Nvidia wasn't so charitable on the OEM version. The OEM GTX 460 is nothing like the other 460s, and is a much slower card, but customers buy it as an option, because PC-selling companies can advertise it as a "GTX 460!", and customers think they're getting a good video card, when they're really getting crap that just happens to be named after a good video card.



Intel... well I won't go on another anti-Nvidia style rant, but sufficing to say I don't like them a whole lot more than Nvidia.


So like you, I'll spend money on AMD preferentially... however, I think it should be said that neither of us should seek to spend other people's money on those convictions. Make people aware that Nvidia's a scumbag company, and that Intel is dubious, sure, but it's also important to make them aware of the best computer they can get for the money.

Edited by Catamount, 03 February 2012 - 08:18 AM.

[Vincent Vascaul]

This discussion just got interesting

Edited by Vincent Vascaul, 03 February 2012 - 04:22 PM.

[Vincent Vascaul]

Well Vulpe and Catamount, I consider both of you as the overseers of the Tech forum and its interesting to hear your points of view as I shared them at one point or another. However there is a lesson I learned a long time ago and I was reminded of just the other day. That is All Corps are evil even FASA had their hands in some pretty unethical stuff that would surprise you. Do I like Intels business practices? no. Do I like AMD's Procs and GPU's? Hell yes! But I am still rocking a 2700k cause its what does what i need I haven't upgraded my 1090 Thuban cause I really see no reason to do so. The fact of the matter is this Apple is a Evil corporation that I genuinely dislike, while Microsoft is a Evil corporation I really like (I try not to use the word love for products as it rarely fits) You can't play in the business world on the scale that any of these companies do without getting your hands dirty its just the way it is. Does that mean your wrong for rooting for the AMD underdog? Of course not but if someone is posting for help on components they probably aren't involved enough with tech to care in the first place. Anywho as always I look forward to your thoughts and replies.

[Gremlich Johns]

Hey, Apple's business model is to be applauded. People WILLINGLY fork over more money they need to to be snobbish about their purchases that work as good as products 1/3 their cost. That is so cool - relieving people of their surplus cash and having them thank Apple for it.

[Vulpesveritas]

Gremlich Johns, on 03 February 2012 - 05:36 PM, said:

Hey, Apple's business model is to be applauded. People WILLINGLY fork over more money they need to to be snobbish about their purchases that work as good as products 1/3 their cost. That is so cool - relieving people of their surplus cash and having them thank Apple for it.

It just goes to show how many sheeple, money throwers, and wannabies are out there. lol.

[Vincent Vascaul]

Apple is the Monsanto of the Tech world they are as evil as they come.

[Xarg Talasko]

Vulpesveritas, on 02 February 2012 - 11:59 AM, said:

Sysmark 2007 elearning
2nd pass of x264 encoding 0.59.819
7zip benchmark

Not to be a ******, but last time I checked those aren't games. As stated by Barbaric Soul, that's 3/43, and none of those 3 are games, and this is a forum for an upcoming video game. That's not something I'd want to throw around as a counter-argument.

[Vulpesveritas]

Xarg Talasko, on 03 February 2012 - 07:46 PM, said:

Not to be a ******, but last time I checked those aren't games. As stated by Barbaric Soul, that's 3/43, and none of those 3 are games, and this is a forum for an upcoming video game. That's not something I'd want to throw around as a counter-argument.

well, no, but these were also pre-win 7 patch. albeit it doesn't i\mprove performance HUGELY, however it is still there.
also, they show how it can perform when it is being utilized in full i.e. properly multi-threaded and uses the scripts it is able to use.
Anyhow, difference in Crysis 2, the only game out there that uses this game engine, there is only a 5 frames per second difference. 5 FPS. When between the chip and mobo you are paying $75-$100 more. Oh, and let's not forget, that the AMD chip has a motherboard that can be upgraded for at least two years, where you're only getting 1 CPU upgrade to the LGA1155 board with Ivy Bridge.

That $75-$100 is the difference between a Radeon HD 7950 and a 7970, which is a 20% difference in frame rates. Those 5 frames per second, is only a 5-10% difference in frame rates.
So what is the better overall deal here for gaming?