My view is that the 8320 is a brilliant CPU, but isn't anywhere near its potential at stock clocks. Now you can say that about any processor but there's another reason here - we all know that Piledriver's single thread performance is weaker than SB/IB/Haswell, but many games, including ones that run on 4 cores, rely on one thread as a kind of 'master' thread, with the others as 'helpers'. That can mean that sometimes the main thread can be at 100% CPU, with the others - up to 7 - held back. So overclocking not only speeds up the main thread, but can make 7 others far more efficient too, even without their own clock increase. Once you get a Piledriver CPU to about 4.5GHz it really comes into its own, and most of them can get around there with a fairly standard cooler. Even a 4.2GHz clock makes a big difference.
Please, can someone enlighten me, as to how an AMD is the same as an Intel processor clock for clock? You demonstrated it being that way in Crysis, that's one example. Intel still batter the living hell out of AMD clock for clock in most scenarios. It's not about getting less FPS, it's about maintaining a consistent FPS which AMD cannot do. Intel CPUs have a much higher throughput and thus keep the FPS higher and minimum FPS is usually a fair bit higher too. I'm not an Intel fanboy by any means, but saying that Intel is on the same path as AMD is pure wrong. I've played with both, and the Intel is noticeably faster in every possible scenario I've thrown at them. I know it's an extreme example, but if the AMD CPUs are "good in 3DMark13 because they finally adressed them", that's wrong. The reason they are worse for benching is because the graphics tests of most 3DMark tests are SINGLE threaded and Intel have a gigantic leap in performance over the AMD in single and multithreaded applications. Why do you think that for every possible 3DMark world record an Intel CPU is used? They're better, and there's no other way to put it. They're faster in every single respect imaginable. I had a FX-8350 that did 5.6GHz on water and it was still beaten to death in synthetics like wPrime for example by an Intel i5-3570K running at 4.4GHz. It was destroyed even further when an i7-3770K and i7-4770K entered the challenge.
AMD CPUs are quite capable of maintaining consistent FPS. Most games don't push the CPU enough for it to be a problem. You can see that an 8350 at 4.7GHz (i.e. a 9590) has no problem beating an i7, let alone an i5, in optimised multithreaded apps, e.g. wPrime favours Intel CPUs highly, so is not a good benchmark to compare.
No I haven't only demonstrated it in Crysis, I've demonstrated it in any game that supports the AMD architecture properly and some benchmarks. In most scenarios? OK look, let's break down your scenarios shall we? Intel CPUs have better single threaded performance. However, as we now know (I'm not sitting here spelling it out for you, venture out into the WWW and do some research) 1 x Intel core does not = two AMD cores. Thus, even though Intel have the superior single threaded performance they can not compete with twice the cores. I mean honestly, banging on about single threaded performance? that's like wanking to vintage porn. It's so 1998 Pentium 3 era. HAHAHAHAHAHA ! wipe your lip you've got some scat on it. And you're completely biased and it shows. The Physics test in 3DMark (13) is multi threaded. You can pretty much ignore the GPU tests but the physics tests tend to come back with a quite accurate account of what a CPU is capable of and a reasonable means of comparison. If they were single threaded then that means that clock for clock purely as a demonstration the AMD CPU is faster. Thankfully there's nothing sinister about it. It simply addresses all of the CPU and allows all of it to work. As for Intel CPUs being better? *sigh*. It all depends how you look at it. You can say yeah, a £900 Intel CPU is better than a AMD 8350 but that would be completely stupid, wouldn't it? When comparing anything the cost needs to come into account. World records are set with no price limit and the parts are put under LN2. IE - they do not represent realistic figures of what you can expect should you shove one in your PC. Price wise? Intel are far worse. Add in the cost of the expensive CPU (because there are too many people out there like yourself) and the more expensive motherboard (thanks to the licensing fees) and the new socket every 18 months? As I have said, the 8320 clock per clock in anything that supports it properly is above and beyond any Intel solution. In fact, Intel don't even have a solution to the 8320 on a price level as they charge that much for two cores.
Been waiting for ages for amd to be a "good chip" again...or at least one to think about.. Would have got them, but when i got my comp it was the i5 2500k to go for.. The fx chips at the time were just a no go
There was nothing wrong with Bulldozer. Each and every one of them were capable of providing you with a decent gaming experience. The problem these days is that people have become obsessed with reading data. Benchmarks, frames per second ETC. It's the reason why I don't game on a console, because I'm very aware of the fact that many games on consoles only operate at 30 FPS. However, when you remain ignorant to it? look how many people are perfectly happy with consoles.... I find it utterly hilarious that people bang on about wprime and superpi and so on. Who cares? do people really buy a PC and then sit there running benchmarks on it 24/7 afterwards? There is nothing fundamentally wrong with AMD CPUs and there never has been. Even back 'in the day' when the K62 3DNOW ! was pants compared to the Pentiums it still worked perfectly well and still provided you with a functional PC. AMD's biggest mistake was giving the world an 8 core CPU when pretty much every game and app out there was using two maximum. The only reason things are changing now is because of the consoles, and the fact that benchmark creators want us to buy their benchmarks. IE - when 3Dmark vantage used to use Physx and give you a massive CPU score ATI GPU users complained so they removed it. Because it wasn't fair...
Bulldozer isn't great - in multithreaded apps sometimes the 6300 can outperform the 8150. It's not quite as bad as many people think, but I wish it'd be withdrawn from sale, since Piledriver is a huge amount better and there's no reason at all to consider Bulldozer.
Is the best advice to give right now. Pair it up with a cheap 7950 or 760 and you've got a high end gaming rig. Oh I certainly didn't mean it was world class.. Only that if you had one then you would have been OK with it.
Thanks for the replys, although alien and teppic seem to be having their own conversation here ;-) I opted for the Intel route, simply because the single threaded performance although yes disputed at the moment as we move forward with software and games and multi threading, ive found higher single threaded performance chips I had were useful in doing other tasks as well as gaming or when not gaming. But there is evidence on both sides on the gaming front, but given what you have shown me as given me some to think about in the near future, I went for a 4670k and G43 Gaming msi board + 8gb veng 1600+ ram which i got for a sweet price instead of the pentium chip on the original offer from scan. But thanks though, i do appreciate your replies , i have been on nightshift at ambulance service the weekend and its been stupidly busy!!