Intel? Or AMD? Looking for some stronger performance.

Currently using a Phenom 965 (or some such - stock @ 3.2GHz) @ 3.8GHz. It does nearly everything I want it too - struggles a bit when streaming ultra high quality video.

I want to upgrade my processor to either the FX-8120 or the i5-2500k. Now, if this were a new build, it'd obviously be a no-brainer on which to buy. However, since I already have a motherboard that supports the 8120, I wanted to know if it was worth it to go up to the 2500k (or the 2600k, as that might be an option) since I would have to buy a new motherboard as well?

Currently using the Asrock Extreme3 970 AM3+ motherboard, and was considering getting this board (had good experiences with Asrock - feel free to suggest another):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157271

To replace it, along with either the 2500k or the 2600k. My other option is, of course, to get the 8120. The 8120 gets 7,100 on Passmark, and the 2500k gets 6,700. I know my friend's 2500k OCs to an easy 8,900 score on Passmark, and I don't know whether the 8120 will be able to match that scaling. I also know that Passmark isn't the end all be all of benchmarks, but it's served pretty well in the past .

Also, two side questions:

If I did end up getting either of these CPUs and overclocked them, would my GPU (Radeon HD 4890 reference card, non-OC'd) bottleneck it in games?

And is this a good monitor for gaming? Looking for a cheap 1080p monitor to throw beside my current one for a dual monitor setup.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009316

That's a tough question. Well, you might also consider a Phenom II x6 1090T or 1100T if you can find one for cheap. If you with bulldozer, get the 8120, its that same chip as the 8150 just will lower stock clocks. The 8150's are supposed to be the best of the bunch, but from what I've seen you'll be able to OC the 8120 just as much. I guess the question is how much are you willing to spend, and what value you put on stuff.

The MB you linked looks fine.
Monitor is nothing fancy, but looks like a good value. The feedback shows it does its job. Gaming wise, I feel 21.5" is a little too small. Here's a 23.6 incher
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236052

There are a lot of variables that could cause the CPU or GPU to be the bottleneck but it almost always is the GPU. If you want to know what is the bottleneck for you right now, lower the resolution and observe how the FPS changes. If it goes up, then the GPU is the bottleneck, if it stays the same then the CPU is the bottleneck.

I think a good plan would be to save some money for a couple months and wait for Ivy Bridge to come out and buy the i5-25xxk Ivy. That will be a solid upgrade and probably won't cost you much more than what a 2500k upgrade will cost you today.

Whitefang said:

It does nearly everything I want it too - struggles a bit when streaming ultra high quality video.

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What do you use to stream said videos? You can use your GPU to decode videos which make it much easier to do 1080p.

screen name said:

That's a tough question. Well, you might also consider a Phenom II x6 1090T or 1100T if you can find one for cheap. If you with bulldozer, get the 8120, its that same chip as the 8150 just will lower stock clocks. The 8150's are supposed to be the best of the bunch, but from what I've seen you'll be able to OC the 8120 just as much. I guess the question is how much are you willing to spend, and what value you put on stuff.

The MB you linked looks fine.
Monitor is nothing fancy, but looks like a good value. The feedback shows it does its job. Gaming wise, I feel 21.5" is a little too small. Here's a 23.6 incher
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236052

There are a lot of variables that could cause the CPU or GPU to be the bottleneck but it almost always is the GPU. If you want to know what is the bottleneck for you right now, lower the resolution and observe how the FPS changes. If it goes up, then the GPU is the bottleneck, if it stays the same then the CPU is the bottleneck.

I think a good plan would be to save some money for a couple months and wait for Ivy Bridge to come out and buy the i5-25xxk Ivy. That will be a solid upgrade and probably won't cost you much more than what a 2500k upgrade will cost you today.

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I listed the 8120, silly.

And I'm currently using an 18" monitor. A 21.5" will be a huge upgrade for me, and I don't want to be spending a lot of money on it.

My CPU is currently bottlenecking my GPU - LoL gets the same average FPS in 1024x768, or 1366x768, or 1280x720. My friend owns an i5 2500k OC'd to 4.5GHz (around where I'd put mine), so I'm going to see if I can pop my card into his rig and see how bad the bottleneck is, if any.

Not gonna buy yet - just considering. Might wait.

Edit: ShadowPho, I use XSplit to stream League of Legends. Can't squeeze 60fps out of my CPU, only 45fps (and not all the time, either?). Not sure if they allow the GPU to carry some of the work load, but I'm still using a good 75-80% of my GPU to run League of Legends. Not that much left.

Whitefang said:

I listed the 8120, silly.

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I know, just emphasizing that's the bulldozer to get if you go that way.

Well, yeah. I knew that xD.

I would go for the 8120. Ya the 2500k can beat it in a few x86 benchmarks but it is one solid damn CPU. X86 performance is not the only thing to consider with a CPU. Keep in mind that the FX processors support 128 and 256 bit instructions also. With 8 compute units(4 flops) I feel like it multi tasks far better than a faster quad.

Since your goal is to run the game as smooth or smoother than it already is, while improving performance of another complex program(encoding video is hard work) I would go for the FX. Take the money you were going to spend on a motherboard and stick it into a bigger monitor, 2nd video card, or some other peripheral.

Also a consideration you WILL need a high end cooler if you want to really push your FX.

My game runs fine, so that isn't a problem - I wouldn't expect a new CPU would make that worse xD. I only lack the CPU power to encode 720p (possibly 1080p, but I dunno if it could handle it) at 60 FPS. I can currently get to streaming at 30, but no more before I start dropping frames.

It's that hot, eh? Would you recommend something like the NH-D14, or a similarly priced prebuilt liquid loop, such as the H70? I saw a video earlier that compared the two, and the H70 was supposedly about 5-10C hotter.

They DO run that h0t. Forum here has at least 5 or 6 posts about heat. I bet there are not more than 20 posts for FX cpu altogether yet, so that is pretty pointed toward heat. I mean posts about real use of FX, not that years worth of original hype.

H100 is about the least prebuilt loop that is being found to allow 24/7 use at about 4.5Ghz. When you start streaming you are going to be performing cpu wise like running Prime95 it sounds like, so I would not spend $80.00 on a cooler that does not do the job when another $25.00 is what it really takes.

All this put into an honest equation and if you did not have a mobo that an FX would fit into, the 2500K would easily be the straight forward choice. Now you got to sit down and run the realistic numbers.

If you want to go LC on FX and not willing to go custom loop its H100 or nothing. Any of the top tier air coolers can handle it pretty well also. 4.2ghz is around the run away point on the 8120 in my experience. Up to 4.2Ghz the thermal profile is pretty linear and stable but every 100mhz past that is a massive extra heat load. The lowest I could honestly suggest would be a 212+/evo and I would strongly suggest something a little higher end. If you go to the homepage muddoctor has done alot of HS testing for us and any of his top 5 coolers would suit your need just fine.

I feel the last two posts are an argument not to get a bulldozer.

So far I have not seen any site 'hyping' much of anything for cooling the FX series processors when pushed. Most test with some form of the same old Intel system. Not that the one in this test does n0t get got but the dang FX processors get HOT when pushed.

This should give you some idea of the differences between 4 different pre-built closed loop systems.


Benchmark Results: Temperature, Noise, And Acoustic Efficiency

Well Bulldozer has a die size of 315mm2 with a TDP of 125W => W/mm2 = .397
Thuban has a die size of 346mm2 with a TDP of 125W => W/mm2 = .367
SB die size 216mm2... TDP 95W => W/mm2 = .301
SBE die size 435mm2... TDP 130W => W/mm2 = .299

The point of this comparison is to show how concentrated the energy is in a bulldozer and it does matter. The same power in a smaller area will get hotter because it will take a higher delta T to create equal heat flux through a smaller area. The focus should be comparing SB to Bulldozer. I just thought the other two should be included for more completeness.

I know I know I know, this does not tell much, but it does tell something. Yes, TDP is misleading cuz the cpu will actually draw more than that, expecially with SBE and Bulldozer and yes with a cooler normally the limiter is how much power this can remove from the chip. Yes, of course SBE is also a cooling problem and its at the bottom of the chart and it may be considered contradictory, but that is more of a shear power problem.

Whitefang said:

Edit: ShadowPho, I use XSplit to stream League of Legends. Can't squeeze 60fps out of my CPU, only 45fps (and not all the time, either?). Not sure if they allow the GPU to carry some of the work load, but I'm still using a good 75-80% of my GPU to run League of Legends. Not that much left.

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Some encoders definitely use GPUs, which drops your cpu load down to very low. For example, 4 years ago i was using my e6600 to run 1080p. It ran like hell at 100% utilitization. I then got a video encoder a year later and it dropped to 6% smooth sailing with a 8800gt.

Just look into it.

As for the intel side remember it also has quicksync. It isn't that widely supported, but it gives you a huge performance bonus for transcoding vides with discrete gpu while not using cpu/gpu much.
$180 buys you a 2500k
$120 buys you a asrock z68 extreme3 gen3.
$25 buys you a coolermaster 212+

This setup costs $325 and will clock to 4.5GHz at about 60C with no problem.

Here's a comparison charts vs 8150: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=287

I would say grab a new mobo + cpu if you are planning to upgrade in next two years, otherwise grab a phenom at $200.

I already have a 212+ on my CPU. Running a Phenom II 955. The i5 is $230 - I don't live near a microcenter. It's about $350, versus $200, which is why I'm hesitating.

ORRR Wait for Ivy Bridge and get the i5 3550k instead? Kgo? .

But seriously.. If you already have an AMD motherboard; I'd just buy a Bulldozer chip; and make sure you OC it well over 4ghz. But eh. I'm not partial to AMD right now.. Bulldozer when OC'd pulls sooo much power.. But is slower clock for clock than both sandy bridge (by a decent stretch) and even its older Thuban brother.. But considering you're doubling the core count in your situation; and if you manage say a 4.2-4.4ghz OC; you'd be pretty sweet! I doubt that'd have any issues with streaming/encoding etc.

Ok, so using my gut I feel the present value of Ivy Bridge is the best. I'm not going to try to calculate the expected utility you would get from each processor each month going forward, I'll just go about it this simplified way.

right now you're 965 is about 2.5yrs old and you're about to upgrade so we'll use a 2.5 year lifespan.

2500k = $350, been out 1 year=> 1.5yrs left => $233/yr

Ivy = $400(up for debate), been out 0 years => 2.5yrs left => $160/yr

1100T = $200, been out 1+ year but its kinda just a 965+2cores so call it 1.5yrs => 1yr left => $200/yr

FX-8120... well this is a tough one, cuz it came out recently but was a disappointing so its very open to debate but here's my best guess. About as good as 2500k depends what you're doing so i'll call it 1year old even with the 2500k. When it comes to price, seems you'll be getting a cooler. So +$70? maybe more

8120 = $270, 1.5 years left => $180/yr. Maybe since you're doing encoding which will use all 8 cores you can add a little more time.

Ivy bridge is going to be priced similar to sandy bridge was. A I5 will set him back only 250 or less. But the way you calculate things like that.. isn't really the best way to go about it.

955* Btw. . You could argue then my almost 3 year old I7 x58 build is out of date then? But it still wont struggle with any given task at all.. eh.

I am using that same board and love it. I was always an Asus and Gigabyte guy, but after ghearing lots of good things from Asrock recently I decided to go for it.

I went from a 970be at 3.8ghz to a 2500k. At stock clocks the 2500k is insanely fast, but as easy as it is to overclock, why not right. Thats why we are all here. 4.5ghz is like turning a knob, and without much effort can go higher. Persoanly I have to believe the 2500k will last a lot longer than 2 years.

Mjolnir said:

Ivy bridge is going to be priced similar to sandy bridge was. A I5 will set him back only 250 or less. But the way you calculate things like that.. isn't really the best way to go about it.

955* Btw. . You could argue then my almost 3 year old I7 x58 build is out of date then? But it still wont struggle with any given task at all.. eh.

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I know Ivy will be the same, I just added cuz the 2500k will get a price cut.

As for the x58, well as you know that chipset is a level above what's being considered. A sandy will do better and cost less so... And a x79 is just more money than we got to spend here and the extra bucks may not turn into any additional utility.

The chips compared are the same level in the market just a different times. So over the course of their lives they will deliver the same utility. My numbers benefit the old more than the new cuz the utility from the first year will be greater than the last but i'm treating it as the same. The number benefit the the newer ones because I have $1 in 2yrs having the same value as $1 today.

Overall, the numbers are skewed to hurt Sandy and then Ivy, cuz Sandy was way better than expected.

Just want to point out. You guys are pointing out flaws which actually make the conclusion stronger. => wait for Ivy