Anthony Hayes82 said:To prevent a pointless debate, I just put both builds together. When people are playing multiplayer, the i5 definitely eats the FX for breakfast.
Hmm, maybe if you're just running everything at stock settings. I have an FX 8300, and from what I've noticed, that CPU basically fights against itself when the BIOS is left on the default settings. For me, Grand Theft Auto V would stutter even on medium settings because of unnecessary CPU throttling. The load was only at 50%, and the gap to Tmax was only about 35°C. And don't even get me started on the voltage—it was hitting 1.4V per core.
After messing around with the BIOS, I managed to bump it up nicely from 3.3GHz to 4.0GHz. I set the voltage to 1.32V, and under load, it even dips down to 1.296V. I ran Prime for an hour, and it stayed perfectly stable. The gameplay improved significantly, giving me about 15 extra FPS, which actually let me turn the graphics settings up a bit. Not to mention the boost in performance during multi-threaded tasks like After Effects.
And speaking of heavy lifting, I can play a multiplayer game and record in 720p simultaneously with the FX without any noticeable FPS drops. I think the FX still holds an advantage with those 8 cores, since roughly 4 are handling the game while the other 4 stay free.
So, it isn't enough to just cram a good processor into a build; you have to know how to squeeze out the best performance possible.
As for the 95W TDP, honestly, at 4GHz and 1.32V, my LC-CC-120 handles it easily, provided the room temperature is around 68°F and the case has decent airflow—which is way more important.
Now, as for whether the actual power draw of the processor hits 125W? I haven't a clue. 🤷
By pure coincidence, I know of one setup running an AMD FX-8300. I'm not sure about the motherboard, but it's likely an ASRock. It’s got 8 GB of RAM, a Kingston Technology SSD (probably HyperX), and some mid-range graphics card. The power supply and case are total overkill, though, because it was originally meant to be some kind of office server: light software, web browsing, and a basic home-grade internal security camera app (which doesn't even work).
Right now, it’s being used as an average office PC. Those programs ran perfectly fine on an Intel Core 2 Duo, and on an i3 build with that same software package, the CPU stays mostly idle or barely breaks a sweat...
But on this AMD FX build, the system sporadically "freezes." Usually, there's just one program open, a browser with 3 or 4 tabs, and occasionally an email client. Everything runs smooth for a while, and then suddenly the whole thing just "freezes" for a second or two, or even the simplest task lags out... The problem is that installing all this business software isn't exactly easy, so there's no room to experiment or try reinstalling everything. There's a chance the initial setup just didn't go perfectly.
The fact remains that the computer works flawlessly most of the time, and then these sporadic "ice ages" happen. It feels more like something you'd see on a single-core processor getting choked by a bunch of threads, yet this chip should have plenty of breathing room. And there's no pattern to it either: "I did this, and then I noticed *this* specific task caused a lag"... It's seriously mysterious...
Anthony Hayes82 said:Fair point. Maybe us 5% who actually know our stuff should just start a business and charge those people for helping them figure out how to overclock... 😁
Hey, why not? Might be a decent little side hustle. 👏
Go for it! In this country, entrepreneurship is practically its own national pastime. You get your small business license for about $190, pay a few bucks in taxes... sounds like a pretty great initiative to me...
