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No, I'm not a shill or a paid spokesperson but I just found out about a great deal and figured I would pass it on.
I was using an o/c'd 3570k and after all the abuse, the system starting locking up, freezing, would fail to boot but then for no apparent reason it would start working again with no problems...for a while. About a month ago it failed to boot completely and I figured it was time to build a new system, unfortunately due to serious financial crunch I'm on a tight budget and I ended up falling for the hype around AMD's APU's, namely the A10-7850K. Microcenter has that bundled with a motherboard for $120 for the cpu + $5 for the motherboard, so I decided to pick one up and got 4gigs of Corsair XMS DDR-1333.
I had that setup for for 2 weeks and even though the Steamroller cores did show some potential I just wasn't happy coming from an O/C'd 3570K. so I decided to return it and get a Haswell based Core i3 for about the same money.
As I'm looking through the display at the cpu's trying to decide which one to pick up I notice that Microcenter has the FX8320 for $120! I then ask the kid behind the counter if the bundle deal applies to this AMD processor as well and he tells me that if you buy ANY AMD cpu you get $50 off any supporting motherboard!
So I chose a Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3, which was on sale, and after the $50 bundle deal it cost just $5 bucks! That's 4 DIMM slots, 4 USB3, 2 USB, 6 SATA 3Gb/s for $5.
They also had a deal on 8gb of Crucial Ballistix DDR3-1600 for $70 and I decided to pick up a cheap video card, an EVGA GT 610 2gb for $40 with a $20 mail in rebate.
I have to say I don't care what any review says, this cpu is a beast. It feels like a better multi-tasker than my old 3570K and it's capable of encoding a 1080p VC-1 source to 1080p x264+placebo at 10fps, to x265+ultra fast at 15fps and to Divx HEVC fastest setting at 25fps.
If anyone is thinking about building a new system, I highly recommend this deal, $125+tax for a FX8320 + good motherboard is a really good deal.
Again, no shill, but maybe someone is thinking of building a system or upgrading and would like to spend as little as possible.
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Looks like a sweet deal.
Thanks for sharing! -
Nice deal you got there.
As to reviews, they mostly damn the AMD FX 8-cores with faint praise. I don't get it. They're a helluva value and as you say, they multi-thread/ multi-task very well. I'm quite pleased with my FX-8350.
If you're thinking about overclocking this one, you're gonna need an aftermarket cooler. They overclock easily, but the cooler won't be up to the job. I had mine overclocked nicely, but backed off (gotta edit my computer details). It got too hot on long encodes. I decided against a new cooler unit, since it's plenty fast as-is, and the cooler is not excessively loud to me.
Anyway, I get over 80 fps with BDRB, hi-speed BD25 option, and 22 fps or so with RipBot at default speed preset (is that the slow preset?), tune film, standard settings otherwise. You would get close to the same.
Good luck.Pull! Bang! Darn! -
I do like the 8 core FX AMDs. I have a black version FX-8350 and it does perform very well for H.264 encodes. I do use a Corsair H-50 water cool setup.
The FX-8350 is a 125W CPU, so good cooling is important. With water cooling it runs 42C even at 100% on all cores at 4.2Ghz. Very happy with the setup.
Though the FX-8320 has a lower speed, the 8 cores still make a big difference for encoding with codecs that can make good use of multiple threads/cores. -
You gotta take reviews with a grain of salt, there are too many corrupted reviewers and ...Originally Posted by fritzi93
Anyway, if you can find comparison tables that use real world programs (preferably the ones you use) you will get a more reliable idea of what to expect from your gear. You'll probably find that Intel's core i7 is always at the top, but if you look at the numbers the difference with AMD's FX is not very significant making AMD's offering a greater value. -
Well for starters there are not really 8 independent cores. Second getting stable overclocks with AMD CPUs is harder than with Intel CPUs.Originally Posted by fritzi93
But having said that price performance wise AMD tends to be the better deal. -
I generally upgrade my computer every 5 years or so. I like to at least double my CPU power and spend around $500. I just bought a new PC Intel core i7 4790 bare minimum for $500. It only came with 4 GB Ram, but I just ordered an 8 GB stick for it. In my tests so far, it's more than twice as fast as my 6 year-old Q9300.
Got my retirement plans all set. Looks like I only have to work another 5 years after I die........ -
Well yeah, I would expect the 4790k to at least twice as fast as a Q9300 and that's a processor with a lot of life in it. But you also spent $500 and only got 4GB of ram.Originally Posted by racer-x
The way I see it is by only spending $125 for processor and motherboard if let's say Intel releases a killer cpu next year or AMD finally releases the long rumored 8 module 16 core desktop cpu based on Excavator then I won't feel like a sucker if I decide to upgrade. -
That's good logic. In my case, every time I upgrade, my wife gets my old one. My wife has been complaining lately about wanting a new PC, this was killing two birds with one stone. Otherwise I was happy to keep using that 6 year-old Q9300........
PS: I installed Linux on that old Q9300 when I gave it to her. That way I won't have to keep fixing here issues........Last edited by racer-x; 29th Dec 2014 at 05:26.
Got my retirement plans all set. Looks like I only have to work another 5 years after I die........ -
Yeah, two birds with one stone. I was fine with my Phenom II Thuban 6-core build, but my wife's computer finally gave up the ghost.Originally Posted by racer-x
Pull! Bang! Darn!
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