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Questions about the FX 8350?

16K views 401 replies 54 participants last post by  Mega Man 
#1 ·
I'm looking at a new build soon. The FX 8350 is one of the cpu choices right now. What I would like to know is this.

Is it a gamming chip? (games like farming simulator and BF4)

How is the OC on this chip?

Does the FX mean is overclockable?

What kind of temps?
What MB would pair with this chip.

Thanks.
 
#2 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by phreakwarz View Post

I'm looking at a new build soon. The FX 8350 is one of the cpu choices right now. What I would like to know is this.

Is it a gamming chip? (games like farming simulator and BF4)

How is the OC on this chip?

Does the FX mean is overclockable?

What kind of temps?
What MB would pair with this chip.

Thanks.
yes its a great gaming chip

the 8350 should overclock good,,,but every chip is different

I would recommend a closed loop water cooler,,especially if you want to get above 4.5ghz

make sure you get a minimum 6+2 power phasing,,i would recommend 8+2 power phasing

FX is just the series,,black edition means the multipliers are unlocked
 
#3 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by phreakwarz View Post

I'm looking at a new build soon. The FX 8350 is one of the cpu choices right now. What I would like to know is this.

Is it a gamming chip? (games like farming simulator and BF4)
AMD markets it as a gaming chip. I would call it a budget workstation chip. The gaming performance for the money isn't particularly great. The much less expensive to implement FX-6300 will perform on par in most games. Alternatively, similar cost to implement i5's perform better in games, so from a value perspective, there's not much reason to choose an FX-8350 for a gaming rig at this time.
Quote:
How is the OC on this chip?
Depends on how much money you throw at it. On a $90 board with a $40 CPU cooler you can expect 4.4 - 4.5ghz or so. Double the price of the board and triple the price of the cooler and hitting 5ghz starts to become a reality, (there's not much *value* in overclocking at that point, it's just for fun, novelty, bench-marking, experimentation, braggin rights, milestones, etc).

On the other hand, a $110-125 board and a $40-50 cooler will get the i5-4670K to ~4.5ghz, which will out-perform the FX-8350 in any game even if you throw it on a $200 board with a $140 CPU cooler.
Quote:
What kind of temps?
Hotter than reported
wink.gif

Quote:
What MB would pair with this chip.

Thanks.
The M5A97 R2.0 and GA-970A-UD3P are the high value (<$100) options that can run this chip at a modest overclock. Better 990FX boards with more features and a bit more overclocking grunt (clean power delivery) start ~$125-150 and go up to ~$200+
 
#4 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by phreakwarz View Post

I'm looking at a new build soon. The FX 8350 is one of the cpu choices right now. What I would like to know is this.

Is it a gamming chip? (games like farming simulator and BF4)

How is the OC on this chip?

Does the FX mean is overclockable?

What kind of temps?
What MB would pair with this chip.

Thanks.
Yes, it's a gaming chip.

FX 8350 is overclockable and comes with an unlocked multiplier.

The temps are going to depend on your ambient temperature, the cooling unit you're using on the CPU and amount of voltage you're feeding the CPU. You'll need something like Noctua NH-D14 or a H100i to go over 4.6 or 4.7 GHz.

If you're willing to spend some cash, then the Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 is the way to go!
If not, then get the Asus M5A99FX PRO R2.0; it's a solid board at a good price!
 
#5 ·
the 8350 is a good chip that was better binned than the 8320, the 8320 can overclock it as far as the 8350 if you have amazing cooling. i am running 4.8@1.425 stable 24/7 but i can get 5.0 but there is no thermal margin. but i would say get a h80i or bigger for the cooler, or go with a custom loop. for a budget amd makes some amazing cpu's.
biggrin.gif
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#6 ·
Quote:
The M5A97 R2.0 and GA-970A-UD3P are the high value (<$100) options that can run this chip at a modest overclock. Better 990FX boards with more features and a bit more overclocking grunt (clean power delivery) start ~$125-150 and go up to ~$200+
If going for the M5A97 flavors, get the M5A97 EVO R2.0, it has the extra Digi+ chips on the back like the M5A99 boards have. The plain M5A97 R2.0 does not, and skip the M5A97 LE R2.0 version altogether for overclocking.

But keep in mind the 990 boards, the M5A99X EVO R2.0 is on sale for $104 after rebate with the M5A99FX R2.0 $10 more. Just a little bit more than the 970 boards, but well worth it. (the $20 prepaid Amex rebate card does take from 8 - 12 weeks, and they are sticklers for documentation though)

All FX chips are unlocked.
 
#7 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by XAceX View Post

Yes, it's a gaming chip.
It doesn't matter how we wrap up the FX-8350; on stock cooling, with cheap cooling, with expensive cooling, on a budget motherboard, on an expensive motherboard, there's a way to get more games to run better on an i5 for the same or less money.

Provide ANY example of the FX-8350+HSF+MOBO+GPU+PSU and I can show an example of an i5+HSF+MOBO+GPU+PSU that costs the same or less that performs better in real-time workloads. To me this means that the FX-8350 isn't a particularly good value for a gaming machine.
 
#8 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by mdocod View Post

It doesn't matter how we wrap up the FX-8350; on stock cooling, with cheap cooling, with expensive cooling, on a budget motherboard, on an expensive motherboard, there's a way to get more games to run better on an i5 for the same or less money.

Provide ANY example of the FX-8350+HSF+MOBO+GPU+PSU and I can show an example of an i5+HSF+MOBO+GPU+PSU that costs the same or less that performs better in real-time workloads. To me this means that the FX-8350 isn't a particularly good value for a gaming machine.
Doesn't the 8350 whack the 4670 in multi threaded games like BF3/4 and Crysis 3?
 
#10 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by diggiddi View Post

Doesn't the 8350 whack the 4670 in multi threaded games like BF3/4 and Crysis 3?
No really. In games with good multi threading the FX-8350 and 4670k are pretty equal but in poorly threaded games the 4670k will obviously do better. Hence the 4670k is generally regarded as the superior gaming chip of the two. In tasks that have near perfect threading the FX-8350 is faster then an 4670k but there are no games like that and its pretty rare even for software to be able to perfectly load balance over 8 threads.

Not that its a huge issue as both the FX-8350 and 4670k will have enough grunt to push +60FPS in most games.

 
#11 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aonex View Post

Lol didn't take long for this to turn into an i5 vs FX discussion.
ya,,doesn't take long does it
 
#12 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bit_reaper View Post

No really. In games with good multi threading the FX-8350 and 4670k are pretty equal but in poorly threaded games the 4670k will obviously do better. Hence the 4670k is generally regarded as the superior gaming chip of the two. In tasks that have near perfect threading the FX-8350 is faster then an 4670k but there are no games like that and its pretty rare even for software to be able to perfectly load balance over 8 threads.

Not that its a huge issue as both the FX-8350 and 4670k will have enough grunt to push +60FPS in most games.

Thanks for clearing that up
 
#13 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by diggiddi View Post

Doesn't the 8350 whack the 4670 in multi threaded games like BF3/4 and Crysis 3?
Doesn't matter how "threaded" the game is. The simple of the matter comes down to the fact that a Haswell CORE has more execution resources than an entire PileDriver module combined, and that core is strapped to significantly lower latency, higher bandwidth cache, lower latency FPU access, a shorter instruction pipeline on average, lower branch mis-prediction penalties, lower instruction prefix penalties, a more sophisticated memory controller, and dedicated execution ports for memory access.

The ONLY workloads where the FX-8350 out-performs the i5-4670K, are non-realtime workloads that saturate and bottleneck on the i5's 4-threaded fetch rate. I'm not aware of any real-time workload (game) that scales into parallelism so well that it winds up performing better on the FX-8350. BF4 does scale into parallelism pretty nicely, unfortunately, the FX's better fetch rate (double) isn't enough to overcome all of the other advantages that the i5 has for real-time workload performance, so BF4, which stands as the best example we have of a highly parallel real-time workload that has been optimized to work well on AMD CPUs, winds up performing about the same on the FX-8350 as it does on the i5-4670K. That's a great argument for the AMD chip, in this ONE game title. The problem is that, BF4 is among only a small percentage of CPU intensive games that work as well on a PD module as they do on a haswell core. Most game engines that are CPU intensive, scale much better into the higher performing single non-hyperthreaded haswell core, than into a piledriver module that demands 2 threads to achieve similar compute throughput.

The i7-4770K is basically the i5-4670K, with a fetch rate that matches the FX-8 chips (8 threaded 128Byte/cycle combined maximum). Doubling up on the front end offers performance improvements where the fetch rate was the bottleneck and the execution resources are not (mixed workloads). In these conditions, it offers up to ~35% performance improvements.

AMDs really serious contender for a gaming CPU is the FX-6300@~$110. It can be overclocked further for less money than the FX-8XXX series, which puts it in a price (implementation costs included) class that Intel only offers locked chips at. THAT is the AMD chip with competitive value for gaming.
 
#14 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by mdocod View Post

It doesn't matter how we wrap up the FX-8350; on stock cooling, with cheap cooling, with expensive cooling, on a budget motherboard, on an expensive motherboard, there's a way to get more games to run better on an i5 for the same or less money.

Provide ANY example of the FX-8350+HSF+MOBO+GPU+PSU and I can show an example of an i5+HSF+MOBO+GPU+PSU that costs the same or less that performs better in real-time workloads. To me this means that the FX-8350 isn't a particularly good value for a gaming machine.
Who said anything about the FX 8350 being better than the Core i5s? I'm well aware that Intel CPUs are far ahead of AMD CPUs, but that doesn't mean that the FX 8350 doesn't qualify as a gaming chip.
 
#17 ·
Real-time workloads NATURALLY favor any architecture that crams as much processing payload into a single logical core as possible. Always have. When AMD had better core design, these workloads favored their "architecture."

Most software actually has not been compiled to favor the haswell core architecture any more than it has been compiled to favor AMD core architecture. There's about 15% "on the table" that hasn't been tweaked out of either architecture in many workloads.

1. Make a list of existing games that spread out the draw calls, AI, and real-time functions of the render to multiple cores.

2. Make a list of existing games that don't.

(start with 1, 2 is everything else. You can probably count the entire list from category "1" on your human digits).

How the heck does a handful of multi-threaded games, in a world with thousands of poorly threaded games, qualify the FX-8350 as a "gaming chip?"
 
#18 ·
I agree that there are only a handful of games that spread out the draw calls, AI, and real-time functions of the render to multiple cores, but this doesn't necessarily mean that games that don't do this are going to run so poorly on the FX-8350 that you have to compare it to a GT640. (No offence intended to gamers who game on the GT640.)

The FX 8350 is approximately close to a Core i5 2500K... which is still an amazing CPU in my opinion.
 
#19 ·
I think you are looking at this the wrong way.

Go like me and spend less on CPU, more on GPU, and more on monitor.

Once you break past 1080p, the CPU bottleneck is relieved massively.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8350-core-i7-3770k-gaming-bottleneck,3407-3.html

See how it all closes in? CPU performance is less important at lower resolutions. But if you're gonna spend $300 on a CPU and you're using a cheap 1080p TN panel, I don't know what to say to you. It's like buying really expensive speakers and then using it to listen to 64kbps MP3s. In my opinion, it's the biggest thing wrong with what people are doing with their builds right now. Spending $300 on GPU, $300 on CPU, and then playing on some old 1080p monitor.
 
#20 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by sdlvx View Post

I think you are looking at this the wrong way.

Go like me and spend less on CPU, more on GPU, and more on monitor.

Once you break past 1080p, the CPU bottleneck is relieved massively.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8350-core-i7-3770k-gaming-bottleneck,3407-3.html

See how it all closes in? CPU performance is less important at lower resolutions. But if you're gonna spend $300 on a CPU and you're using a cheap 1080p TN panel, I don't know what to say to you. It's like buying really expensive speakers and then using it to listen to 64kbps MP3s. In my opinion, it's the biggest thing wrong with what people are doing with their builds right now. Spending $300 on GPU, $300 on CPU, and then playing on some old 1080p monitor.
+1
 
#22 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Peanuts4 View Post

Just make sure you add good cooling if your going to OC That thing.
Ayup! I am doing fine on this air cooler. This is after a long session of Bioshock Infinite.

 
#23 ·
Is it a gamming chip? (games like farming simulator and BF4)

It does very well at games, especially modern multithreaded ones like BF4.

How is the OC on this chip?

Depends on the chip, but some clock pretty darned high.

Does the FX mean is overclockable?

"Black editions" are overclockable.

What kind of temps? What MB would pair with this chip.

They're toasty chips, but not that hard to cool even on air unless you OC the heck out of it.

A notable board is the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3...good bang for the buck, which is why we buy AMD stuff anyway
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#24 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by phreakwarz View Post

I'm looking at a new build soon. The FX 8350 is one of the cpu choices right now. What I would like to know is this.

Is it a gamming chip? (games like farming simulator and BF4)

How is the OC on this chip?

Does the FX mean is overclockable?

What kind of temps?
What MB would pair with this chip.

Thanks.
Very capable gaming chip, I prefer it to the 2500K, 2600K and 3770K's that I have/had. The games most Intel supporters point to to express their advantage generally give poor fps on Intel as well. Often the minimum fps is only captured at one sample point , but that is enough to generate a point of contention, even if it is all but unnoticeable. Average frame rates are a better indicator of performance in my opinion because of this. All I have to do is run the bioshock infinite benchmark to see this clearly being expressed. There is no game that I play on a regular basis that the 8350 doesn't offer a very good experience with.

FX = unlocked easy to get a basic overclock on , but you can spend literally years tweaking it to get the best performance. General stable OC expectaions - Up to 700 mhz OC on Big air or good 120mm clc and good motherboards, 700 + to around 1 ghz on 240 MM clc's and motherboards with the best power delivery. Beyond that it takes a very good custom loop, great psu and an offering to the silicon gods in addition to the top motherboards.

Temps are partly a factor of VID it seems , in the case of my 3 , 8 core Vishera's the 8350 with the 1.28 vid runs 8-10 C cooler than my 1.38 vid chip at the same high overclocks. The 9370 has a VID of 1.538 and it runs very warm at stock speeds and above. It can be substantially undervolted and run at stock speeds however. At stock speeds they are very similar for temps as shown below.

Example Prime 95 @ stock , 1.28 vid chip on MSI 990FXA GD-80 - H100 cooling 68 F ambient 15 min run


1.38 Vid chip on a CHV-Z with a Thermaltake 2.0 water extreme cooler, 68F ambient , over an hour on prime 95


It's difficult to compare core temps Intel vs AMD because they are measured so differently.

Heat is no problem for the 240 CLC's I have until 4.8 GHz + on stress tests or 5ghz for daily use. However if you are in this territory of overclock, you need to have good case airflow to cool the VRM's on the motherboard and socket area.

People who put the FX down as being a space heater are exaggerating greatly, the air coming off my 7970 is much hotter than the exhaust of my CLC's , even when pushing 5ghz+.

The Intel's do use less power, but in real world usage, it's not nearly as huge a deal as people make it out to be, with powersaving features turned on, idle power usage isn't that great. People always seem to point to the extreme when discussing advantages / disadvantages, but even in the extreme, the difference between the 2 could be made up by replacing a couple 100 watt incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent alternatives .

I haven't tried Haswell, but my 8 core FX's are noticeably quicker during my daily combo of surfing while gaming ,messaging etc, than my Ivy and Sandy I 7's are.

As for motherboards, you should base your purchase on what your overclocking goal is, same goes for cooling.

I like my MSI 990FXA GD-80V2 the best, but it's not for novice overclockers.
It doesn't offer the thermal and current protections that the ASUS 990 Sabertooth and CHV-Z boards do. Also, the ASUS boards have LLC which simplifies the overclocking process.
I have no experience with Gigabyte boards ( some people love theirs), and the only Asrock AM3+ I have is a 990 FX extreme 3 and I wouldn't recommend it for the 8350.
 
#25 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by cssorkinman View Post

Very capable gaming chip, I prefer it to the 2500K, 2600K and 3770K's that I have/had. The games most Intel supporters point to to express their advantage generally give poor fps on Intel as well. Often the minimum fps is only captured at one sample point , but that is enough to generate a point of contention, even if it is all but unnoticeable. Average frame rates are a better indicator of performance in my opinion because of this. All I have to do is run the bioshock infinite benchmark to see this clearly being expressed. There is no game that I play on a regular basis that the 8350 doesn't offer a very good experience with.

FX = unlocked easy to get a basic overclock on , but you can spend literally years tweaking it to get the best performance. General stable OC expectaions - Up to 700 mhz OC on Big air or good 120mm clc and good motherboards, 700 + to around 1 ghz on 240 MM clc's and motherboards with the best power delivery. Beyond that it takes a very good custom loop, great psu and an offering to the silicon gods in addition to the top motherboards.

Temps are partly a factor of VID it seems , in the case of my 3 , 8 core Vishera's the 8350 with the 1.28 vid runs 8-10 C cooler than my 1.38 vid chip at the same high overclocks. The 9370 has a VID of 1.538 and it runs very warm at stock speeds and above. It can be substantially undervolted and run at stock speeds however. At stock speeds they are very similar for temps as shown below.

Example Prime 95 @ stock , 1.28 vid chip on MSI 990FXA GD-80 - H100 cooling 68 F ambient 15 min run


1.38 Vid chip on a CHV-Z with a Thermaltake 2.0 water extreme cooler, 68F ambient , over an hour on prime 95


It's difficult to compare core temps Intel vs AMD because they are measured so differently.

Heat is no problem for the 240 CLC's I have until 4.8 GHz + on stress tests or 5ghz for daily use. However if you are in this territory of overclock, you need to have good case airflow to cool the VRM's on the motherboard and socket area.

People who put the FX down as being a space heater are exaggerating greatly, the air coming off my 7970 is much hotter than the exhaust of my CLC's , even when pushing 5ghz+.

The Intel's do use less power, but in real world usage, it's nearly as huge a deal as people make it out to be, with powersaving features turned on, idle power usage isn't that great. People always seem to point to the extreme when discussing advantages / disadvantages, but even in the extreme, the difference between the 2 could be made up by replacing a couple 100 watt incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent alternatives .

I haven't tried Haswell, but my 8 core FX's are noticeably quicker during my daily combo of surfing while gaming ,messaging etc, than my Ivy and Sandy I 7's are.

As for motherboards, you should base your purchase on what your overclocking goal is, same goes for cooling.

I like my MSI 990FXA GD-80V2 the best, but it's not for novice overclockers.
It doesn't offer the thermal and current protections that the ASUS 990 Sabertooth and CHV-Z boards do. Also, the ASUS boards have LLC which simplifies the overclocking process.
I have no experience with Gigabyte boards ( some people love theirs), and the only Asrock AM3+ I have is a 990 FX extreme 3 and I wouldn't recommend it for the 8350.
Detailed analysis, very informational, +rep sir
 
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#26 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by XAceX View Post

The FX 8350 is approximately close to a Core i5 2500K... which is still an amazing CPU in my opinion.
I'm sorry I think that's giving the PD too much credit. The FX-8350 can indeed be much faster than an i5-2500K in non-real-time workloads, but in terms of gaming (real-time) that this thread is concerned about, Sandy Bridge has a more robust core architecture and tends to clock into the near 5ghz class like PD, which gives it the edge in these less-threaded, difficult to achieve saturation workloads. PD/BD was originally slated to be in competition with Nahalem, and it has very similar performance characteristics. An FX-83XX@5ghz is almost a dead even match-up to an i7-970(hex core)@4ghz in all sorts of workloads. (real-time or otherwise).

Sandy Bridge changed everything with a decent jump in IPC/C combined with a decent jump in clock speed potential. My PD based APU doesn't hit i5-2400 class cpu performance until it is clocked into the 5ghz range. (not kidding, I've tested it). A $85 760K that can clock to "locked-i5-sandy" performance territory can be a great value for a performance tuning enthusiast on a budget.

In 1 thread per core vs 1 thread per module workloads:
Sandy: ~1.4X higher IPC/C than PD
Ivy: ~1.5X higher IPC/C than PD
Haswell: ~1.7X higher IPC/C than PD

In 2 thread per module vs 2 thread per non-hyper-threaded core:
PD: 1.3X higher IPC/M than Sandy-Core:
PD: 1.2X higher IPC/M than Ivy-Core:
PD: 1.05X higher IPC/M than Haswell-Core:

In 2 thread per hyper-threaded core vs 2 thread per module:
Sandy HT-Core = PD Module
Ivy HT-Core: 1.1X higher IPC/C than PD module
Haswell HT-Core: 1.25X higher IPC/C than PD module

When comparing the FX-8350 to an i5, MOST real-time workloads fall into "group 1" above where performance is compared 1 thread per core vs 1 thread per module.

Group "3" conditions above, come into play in real-time workloads when comparing CPUs with less overall parallelism, like the i3's vs 760K (HT core vs PD module, on a smaller scale).

Even the older Sandy bridge i5-2500K has no trouble out-performing an FX-8350 in 99% of CPU intensive games due to the way things stack up in that 1 thread per core vs 1 thread per module scenario. We have to go all the way back to Core2 Era before we can find intel chips that are consistently beaten in these workloads by Piledriver. (Nahalem performs on par with PD in these conditions)

Of most interesting note to me: With the expansion of execution resources in haswell, the non-hyper-threaded Haswell cores are now nearly matching the IPC/C of an entire PD module. (1 core = 1 module). Not surprising when we look at the architecture on paper. The Haswell core has as many ALUs (Arithmetic Logic Units) as an entire PD module.

I believe that what "qualifies" a CPU as a "great" gaming CPU, is great performance in real-time workloads in its price class. I'm sorry, the FX-8350's performance in real-time workloads is not competitive with Intel i5-K in that ~$200 CPU price class. The extra $20-40 price tag on the i5 is totally washed out when we compare actual cost-to-implement (cooling and PSU sizing), especially now with budget B85 boards getting BIOS updates that allow them to overclock haswell K chips. The value leading 970 chipset options are now having to compete with $80-100 B85 boards in the "budget tuner" class.

Drop down to the FX-6300 or 760K; in those price classes, AMD has very competitive performance in real-time workloads. The 760K and FX-6300 are "great" gaming chips in their price class because they don't have to compete with unlocked intel parts (760K + HSF competes with i3, FX-6300+HSF competes with locked i5s). The FX-8350 is out-maneuvered by similar-cost-to-implement Intel parts far too often to take seriously anymore (E3-1230V3 and i5-4670K). It's a novelty for AMD enthusiasts more than it is a serious contender in today's CPU landscape. If they want my stamp of approval on 8 core AMD CPUs as "gaming" chips the price has to drop to $140, $160, $180 and $200 for the 8320, 8350, 9370, and 9590 respectively. Only then can these chips compete against Intel in gaming performance value.
 
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