Just higher clocks and VID.
I want to make that part of "johan's" statement perfectly clear unless someone misunderstand; he is speaking to the DEFAULT clocks and thus also to the Turbocore clocks and NOT to the overall overclock. The n0 real higher overall clock is what has got us into disappointment with the FX-9xxx series as they have higher default speeds for those that do not overclock but to those of us who are ducks to water about overclocking...the FX-9xxx series brings nothing extra to the party.
I agree with "johan" and had tried to say it in post above...later FX-8xxx cpus have seemed to reach a sort of magic 5.0Ghz and often so with a little less voltage than earlier FX-8xxx cpus, but again they have not seemed to have that magic speed bursts when overclocked to do the benching thing at ~5.5Ghz on heavy duty water.
I actually believe that were I heavily focused mostly on gaming, that an FX-6850 might well be my choice so that overclocks might be more easily accomplished by not having to drag along extra cores that in gaming are really only likely to just add heat to have to be removed.
In history with the downsize of the guts of cpus, has come the biggest grab bag of cpus and what to expect as an overclock and that fits the AMD discrete cpus and the Intel cpus since Sandy Bridge. You just have no clue how the dice roll is going to come out when you buy a cpu today.
I might even just get the FX-8100 and save almost enough money to just set a poor clocking FX-8100 aside and buy another in an effort to get that "gem" of a cpu. Hehehe. I have done such for years now so that I did not feel so dang obligated to the poor cpu and hold onto it with a death grip but could try another dice roll purchase to get closer to that "gem" cpu. But hey that is me.
I have no problem with buying a used cpu from someone I know well and have two of them now. One pretty darn good FX-8120 and the FX-8350 in my VidEdit rig I type from right now. I have one good new FX-8350 (idle right now) that under my water would do P95 Blend mode for over 2.5 hours at 5.2Ghz. Been awhile but I think that was at 1.5ish Vcore, maybe 1.525Vcore not sure since it has been idle awhile since I am between locations. No it was n0t like the new ones with a fairly low cpu voltage to run P95 Blend mode at close to 5.0Ghz with g00d water cooling on a good mobo, but I still like it very well. And it would bench in the 5.5Ghz range and for that I was more than pleased. Hehehe.
Roll'em cpu buying dice and go for it. Nobody knows what you will get. You have an awesome mobo and cooling phloon1981, so that will not be 'the' issue if your cpu does not clock well. It will be the cpu. Get'R done man. Hehehe.
RGone...
