New Member, New Build

[SoulShank]

thanks for the link, ive found the first case in black as well now like both of them for looks so just got to make a decision now first one looks a little better to me though so probably will go for that.

Pentium G3258 - since you mentioned this i have been looking at it and doesnt seem to bad at all especially for the cost of £50! have you had any personal expereince with this CPU? im going to youtube it when i get home see if i can see it in action but compared to some of the i5 costs i know that they have a ton more features (hyperthreading/turbo boost etc) i might look at this to begin with.

if i did for example get the Pentium G3258 could i upgrade to an i5 at a later date without having to clean-install windows do you know?

p.s. i have read your modern CPU guide great info by the way in there!

 

[PP Mguire]

I don't have any personal experience with it, but have seen the benchmarks and reviews and when you give it a slight overclock it rivals i5 and i7 performance in gaming. Just don't forget it's still a dual core and so other tasks that rely on multithreaded performance won't perform the same but it isn't a slouch either.

Yes, easily. As long as you don't switch the board Windows shouldn't fuss. If you want to make sure you're fine you could always go with a cheaper Z97 board like an ASRock Pro3.

THanks. At least some people read it.

 

[SoulShank]

Have been selling some stuff on eBay saving up to buy me a case and processor and while looking around at deals on various websites the AMD FX-8350 seems to be (from benchmarks and passmark). be on par/in the league of the I7's and at £120-130 seems like a bit of a steal for its performance

but this is 8core and was wondering if you know how this performs for online/single player games in general? i'm at work at the moment so cant hit-up any youtube video's but i have an inkling feeling that this would be better suited for video/music editing and rendering rather than gaming?

 

[PP Mguire]

Short answer, just no.

Long answer.
http://www.techist.com/forums/f76/your-cpu-modern-games-guide-those-building-261626/

 

[Slacker]

H81 boards are the majority of recommendations from me. Typically the Asus H81-E because I have the bios that can OC the Pentium G3258.

A good start would be the i5 4440 and that board, 8GB cheapest 1600MHz RAM, and instead of a low end SSD like that Kingston get a Samsung EVO or Crucial MX100 instead.

If you have a 650w Corsair, use it. Saves you cash.

Do the ASUS boards come with the bios or you have the one that works with it?

 

[PP Mguire]

I have OCable bios files for select boards in my Dropbox for TF members to be able to OC the Pentium G3258.

 

[SoulShank]

I'm aware of your modern games review but I was wondering about what you think now and have you tested an 8350? A lot of the reviews on this processor with the improved piledriver arc seems to be regularly competing with the i7 range and beating a lot of the i5s especially with streaming (which I will be doing a lot of)

For example the majority of reviews on the 8350 have surprising outcomes with the testers themselves being very surprised and it's speeds and benchmarks.

bf4 for example had 88fps on ultra at minimum while the more expensive by around £100 where running at 92 minimum on ultra and for £100 more that's a bit of a joke now none of these where over clocked which is something I doubt I'd venture into on this particular rig but I might do suppose it all depends. And once streaming is inserted the reports suggest and show that the 8350 destroys on the recording and streaming front with no performance dofferences.

As I said before I'm reading and watching a lot of reviews and I will probably stick with Intel but this particular processor keeps popping up in reviews and either holding its own or being slightly better...so again have you personally tested and benchmarked the 8350? I didn't see any references to it in the guide.

 

[PP Mguire]

Yes, I have personally tested and built with each FX CPU besides a select few. I expand on Piledriver later on in a slight update on a later post in that thread. Mainly speaking i3 vs FX 4300.

The Vishera silicon improves on the IPC but it's still no comparison in gaming compared to IB or Haswell. I have to ask exactly what reviews you have been looking at. It's best to stick to non-satire/biased sites and the most reputable. Those being the likes of Anandtech, TPU, Guru3D and such who have a solid foundation for proper testing. People simply playing with hardware on Youtube don't exactly have a "standard" for a real comparison, and typically don't have a proper reviewing setup either.

AnandTech | The Haswell Review: Intel Core i7-4770K & i5-4670K Tested
Intel Core i5-4670K Gaming Performance | bit-tech.net
Intel Haswell i7-4770K & i5-4670K Review - Page 18

I don't think I need to continue posting links. The reason I wrote that guide is not to say Intel over AMD, but to simply educate on architectural differences and why a certain CPU set is better than the other for whatever task. Gaming being mostly single threaded will always favor Intel over AMD 95% of the time due to the way they wanted to incorporate their own version of HT. When it comes to gaming, the 4770k vs the 4670k is a no brainer. I've mentioned probably a million times on these boards alone that having an i7 for gaming is pretty dumb and not needed. If you want to stream, record, or whatever then simply having an Nvidia graphics card takes care of the majority of CPU overhead rendering needing an i7 pretty useless there too. The other point I make against AMD is the platform. People tend to overlook this when wanting to chose parts for their PC. They ask a question, most will simply say "oh AMD is just fine for gaming. Sure you can go Intel and get like 5fps more, but why when AMD is cheaper". Well, these people don't take into consideration that having higher IPC and memory bandwidth doesn't help with gaming, but also day to day tasks. The platform for AMD is also extremely dated where you have to pay "AMD top dollar" to get certain features that you can get on a 50 dollar H81 board. Not to mention, if you want to upgrade your AMD setup you're stuck. 8350 is end of the road. If you get an i5 4440, you have the 4670k, 4770k, or 4790k to upgrade to, way better motherboards with more features, ect.

 

[SoulShank]

NCix - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzkUvkXfGKw

tek syndicate - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu8Sekdb-IE

tons of others including gameplay and a few from OC3D - oc3d is a very revered reviewer or was and now is mostly doing custom case art for big events.

there two/three of the most reputable ''independent'' testers on youtube at least are said to be.

personally i do not think theres a completely unbiased review anywhere as companies all pay these people (including the websites) to either test, promote (both) or simply supply them with products as you know in hope of a good review/advertisement.

anyway i'm not arguing that this is a better processor or even -can- compete just was asking as the reviews i've seen around all point different ways kind of like a game of tag back from those school days.

all i wanted or would of liked from someone was to spare the techniqual crap for a moment and simply say ''well i play WoW on this and my dual core q8200 is better....so no dont get it'' or ''well yeh this is a beast for the price worth it'' etc etc.

as i said i am probably (99.9999%) going to stick with intel especially after you reminded me in your last paragraph about the mobo's, options and chipsets.

anyway thanks for your time and patience to keep coming back and posting really helped me out

p.s. i shall go and read the piledriver peice in the guide i completely missed that update obviously will be an interesting read

 

[PP Mguire]

Like I said, it's more about the FX4300 vs the i3 for gaming purposes.

The technical crap is exactly what makes one better than the other in gaming though. Sure, you'll be fine using an FX8350 or 8320 for gaming or anything no doubt. Never have I denied that on these forums. The deal is, an i5 is only a tad more expensive (usually) than the 8350 and will perform better in gaming. Try to remember that those Piledriver reviews were out before Haswell. Haswell gives an additional 10% or so above in IPC compared to IB giving it that much more of an advantage. Also 2 years ago the Z77 platform didn't have that much more of an advantage over AM3+. Today, that simply isn't the case and there is no denying that a 4670k is simply better than an 8350. If I could remember each name to this forum specific that made the swap (one dude to IB) I would say PM them for their own personal experiences. I personally still run with Sandy and it'll even still be fine for at the minimum a few years to come and so would an 8350. Thing is, why hold yourself back when you don't have to?

So in conclusion, would the uneducated simple buyer know the difference in a blind test? Probably not, or at best only slightly during certain games like BF4. The difference here being, you're not an uneducated buyer.