Swapping CPU's

[Saintbob]

Hey everyone,

Hopefully one of you will be able to help me.
I made a grave error in judgement! Let me explain, here is my build...

• CASE: Silverstone Raven RV01 Chassis w/ Advanced
• Processor: AMD FX(tm)-8350 Eight-Core Processor (8 CPUs), Over Clocked ~4.3GHz
• CPU COOLING: Corsair H80i Dual Fan Advanced High
• MOTHERBOARD: GIGABYTE SABERTOOTH 990FX AMD (Socket AM3+)
• MEMORY: 16GB Corsair® VengeanceT DDR3
• Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 4gig
• PSU: 850W Corsair® Enthusiast Series Bronze 80 Plus Certified PSU
• HDD: 2TB Seagate
• SSD: Samsung 840 Series 120GB SATA 3
  
• + all the normal extras

No the build was specifically purchased to do High end gaming in terms of performance and Graphics.

Can you spot the grave error in my build? Well I couldn't when I purchased it nor could the company I bought it from when I told them I wanted it to Game with.

It turns out that my mistake was opting for a AMD CPU... not being a computer genius I made the fatal error of thinking more Cores = better rig. How wrong was I. Now having the Rig for around 8 months, I'm finding alot of issues with it in terms of playing games specifically Diablo 3.

Turns out that D3 is a CPU intensive game, more than GPU intensive. So because of that, I did some research into CPU and finding out why my 8 core AMD CPU could not handle the game at full 60fps.
Turns out that the CPU is designed more for multiple tasks and running multiple programs at the same time. Not so much at running games.

So I have a few questions that I'd love some help on before I tackles this problem...

1. Is what i am saying correct? Is the AMD CPU any good at gaming?
2. How difficult is it swap the AMD CPU for an Intel CPU?
3. Is an Intel CPU compatible with my current MOBO?
4. Is swapping the CPU a simple case of swapping them out? Or is there anything else I need to do... such as BIOS settings?
And lastly... What is currently the best/top Intel CPU to be used specifically for gaming?

Hopefully someone can shed some light on this for me...

Thank you.
Much appreciated.

 

[PP Mguire]

The 8350 technically is perfectly capable of gaming and D3 really isn't that CPU intensive honestly. What resolution are you gaming at is going to be the first question I ask, and the second being how many things do you have running in the background?

Next I'll say, AMD lacks in single threaded performance compared to Intel but you're not the first one to come on the boards saying they are disappointed. A few have said that even after my advise against the 8350. Now to answer your questions specifically.

1. Depends on your answers to my original questions.
2. You need a new motherboard to go with your new Intel CPU. So it depends on if you can handle the swap (which is easy).
3. Read #2. No.
4. Like #2 says, you need a new motherboard. You unplug everything from the old motherboard (HDDs, cables, take RAM out, take H80i block off), take the AMD setup out, put Intel CPU into socket, switch H80i mount to Intel mount after properly cleaning old thermal paste off, put board in, put grain of rice sized amount of your favorite thermal paste on (literally that size, don't spread), put H80i block on, insert RAM, plug cables in, done.

The best Intel CPU for gaming for the price is the 4670k. My recommended motherboard of choice for most all people is the ASRock Z87 Extreme4.

Edit: Before you go spending some money, it appears that others recently are having issues and they have Intel processors, one having a 780. I'd say your 8350 is not the issue if you're having a similar issue.
Very weird problem with Diablo 3 (stutter/jitter) and CPU usage/Ressourcemonitor - Windows 7 - Windows 7