Opinions required... (AMD FX Series Price Vs. Perf)

~Darkseeker~

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Howdy!

So, I'm pretty convinced at this point that the SATA controlled on my veteren EVGA Z68 SLI Micro is starting to go south. A wealth of ATAPI error on the controller, but zero SMART indicators on any of the hard drives has me thinking this way (Kingston SSD Toolkit and Western Digital Data Lifeguard back up this theory, no bad sectors on any drive and 100% life cycle remaining on SSD).

I've also got a feeling either my i5-2500k or the chipset or VRM are starting to faulter too, because for 3 years she was running steady at 4.4GHz @ 1.195v, and now all of a sudden increasing the voltage above stock even slightly results in ridiculous load temps and it simply will not go above 4.0GHz regardless of voltage or other variables. Even with everything at default and the CPU fans running at jet turbine speed, I'm seeing 50-60C idle temps in a room with an ambient temperature of 20C - tried 3 different coolers (H75, Freezer Pro 7, Akasa Venom) and even bought some expensive cooler master thermal paste and no change.

Essentially, I want to change the motherboard - which is also going to involve changing the CPU as there is no cost effective way to get hold of a decent Z68 board these days

These are my considerations:

AMD FX8350 + MSI Gaming 990FX = £263.27 (Inc Shipping)
Intel i5-4690k + MSI Gaming 5 Z97 = £303.23 (Inc Shipping)


all I do on this PC is game (rest of the spec in sig) - nothing CPU intense really at all, which is why I discounted the prospect of going for an i7.

I'm planning on building an all new machine on Skylake or Haswell-E in the near future, so I'm not looking to do much really other than make this PC stable for the foreseeable, so I can carry on gaming! Out of those two, or any other similar combo you can recommend; do you think offers the best price/performance ratio for gaming?
 
If I was you get the fx8320 and overclock it to 4ghz because the 8320 and the 8350 are the same chip, also I have the 8320 with the Asus sabertooth 990fx and it beats every game I throw at it :) (with the exception of arma 3)

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If the money is not an issue then go with the i5-4690k. I have a 8320 and know it is a good chip but the i5-4690k will outperform it or a 8350 handily.

If this is just going to be a stopgap measure until you build the new system I wouldn't even go with a 8320/8350. Just nab a cheap quad AMD or a Pentium G3258 and use it for the time being.
 
Yeah I agree with trottertech the i5-4690k would be a better choice if you have the spare cash

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It beats the 8350 in single core tasks and draws less power

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Some stuff recently came out regarding the 8350 and it's kin basically only having one FPU between each two cores, which I suspect is the culprit for the poorer per-core performance.

Given that games only really ever use 1-2 cores, and modern games probably up to 4 - never seen one that uses 8. I'm leaning towards the 4690k unless anyone can scare me otherwise :p
 
Sounds like you already know what you want. Why would you come to a forum and expect people to try and change your mind? enjoy your new cpu.
 
I'd personally go for the Athlon x4 860K and a cheap motherboard if you're just using it as a temporary PC before your next build. The only reason I haven't suggested the Pentium G3258 is because it only has two threads, and I seem to recall that some games don't even bother running now unless you have 4...
 
Sounds like you already know what you want. Why would you come to a forum and expect people to try and change your mind? enjoy your new cpu.

I was a bit torn you see, between buying something that is, in essence, older what what I already have (Bulldozer chips have been around since just before Sandy bridge i believe) and the fact that it's likely to be temporary.

Weidly, I just bit the bullet and upgraded to windows 10 and things seem slightly better... maybe it was some weird drivers all along...

time shall tell, but I think you're probably right - i sort of knew I'd end up sticking with Intel but I was basically asking you all to sense check me :angel:
 
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