Need opinions on new build!

[Bacchen]

Hello everyone, first time poster here!

I am looking for some advice on my next build. My current pc is starting to lag behind in the modern games and it's time for an upgrade. I have a few questions about it, and I figured this was the place to ask!

Current PC:
PSU: OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI 700W ATX12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Supply

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor BX80570E8400

GPU: EVGA 512-P3-N841-AR GeForce 8800GTS (G92) 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

RAM: CORSAIR XMS2 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X4096-6400C5

Mobo: ASUS P5Q Pro LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard


What I am thinking about building, is of course, one of the most controversial things possible, the scorpius platform that features a FX 8120. I know there's been a firestorm of hate over it, and I may be clueless over the intricacies and all the comparisons that have been made. I still like it, and it'll take a LOT of convincing to otherwise sway me. Though, I may wait for Piledriver.

PSU: ( Same if possible )

CPU: Newegg.com - AMD FX-8120 Zambezi 3.1GHz Socket AM3+ 125W Eight-Core Desktop Processor FD8120FRGUBOX + Newegg.com - CORSAIR H70 Core High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler

GPU: Newegg.com - ASUS HD7850-DC2-2GD5 Radeon HD 7850 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

RAM: Newegg.com - G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL

Mobo: Newegg.com - ASUS Crosshair V Formula AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Gaming Motherboard with 3-Way SLI/CrossFireX Support and UEFI BIOS


I do not plan to overclock to crazy levels, I have never even overclocked my e8400, and might not even overclock the 8120. All I care to do is play the latest games at decent settings ( mainly BF3 ), and for the overall build to be better than what I have now. I think, that for the money, and the chance of windows 8 to really give proper dues to the FX8120, it might be worthwhile to get it. Anyone have an opinion? Specifically people that actually own the 8120/8150?

[rfglass]

Most here will mention the PSU and say go with anything made by Seasonic http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/psu_manufacturers But I have a system (not this 1) that uses same OCZ PSU and has worked flawlessly for 4 yrs @ stock pc settings. atm I am using a Corsair AX 650 made by Seasonic. About the rest of your system, there are more people here more informed than me.

[Bungwirez]

I also like my OCZ PSU. 1200ZX. been no problems.

of course, if you watch the news, OCZ is being acquired by Seagate soon.
so who knows what the PSU dev will do.

[Bacchen]

Same here, Rfglass, I've had this pc for about 5 going on 6 years now, and it's never ever given me any problem. The GPU has had a few bakes in it's time due to artifacting, but even it still works xD

[moocow]

I would hold out for another 2 months for Piledriver. Bulldozer has reach EOL status more or less at this point. Is there another alternative to Asus Crosshair V? It seem a bit over kill for your intended use.

[Bacchen]

Well, I picked the Crosshair V simply because in most testbenches involving the 8150/8120, that's what was used. Other than that, I have no real idea of it's capabilities. I may wait, as you've said, for piledriver. I could go intel and have a really nice PC still, and I don't mind intel, but something says go AMD this time :)

[BrutalGreen]

Originally Posted by Bacchen

but something says go AMD this time :)

that something is wanting you to loose money...you know there are alot of people at AMD who lost their jobs/resigned mainly cause of how much of a flop bulldozer was?

[MARSTG]

Originally Posted by moocow

I would hold out for another 2 months for Piledriver.

Piledriver architecture has already been previewed on Tomshardware, being the actual architecture from Trinity APU, which showed 15% increase in performance over Zambezi in clock for clock, but that is kinda all that Piledriver will get. For gaming is the core i3 that is the very good gamer, and if you plan on gaming a lot that is the way you should go. You also need to think that FX will suck a lot of electricity, especially if overclocked, that H70 is a nice touch which will help. If you go the FX way , mobo wise I would take the Asus M5A99X EVO, you have 3 slots for video cards, it is certified for SLI and CF, tou could have a CFX setup with a third card, Nvidia, to process CUDA, so like this you have all the corners covered, or you could do a tri-sli setup. Storage wise you could go with an additional controller card that sports the Marvell 9130 chipset which offer Hyperduo mixing the HDD space with the SSD speed acceleration. Seagates new HDDs, those larger than 1TB, have 64MB cache and Seagate says they will do 210MB/s read and 165MB/s write so going with a 1 TB drive and a 128GB SSD on SATA III would seem the perfect combination.

[moocow]

Well I made the suggestion to wait only because he wanted to go AMD. To be honest, if you don't have existing AM3+ hardware (like me) then there's no need to go Piledriver. For a bit more money, Intel's current line up really kick AMD ass and you won't need something like Hyperduo because some of the Intel boards already have a mSATA slot for SRT. While the Piledriver core is already in the Trinity APU and the later Athlon CPU line, the FX line apparently will be an improved one.

AMD FX-8350 Piledriver-based CPU to land mid-Q3 - CPU - News - HEXUS.net

BTW MARSTG, thank you for bring that up because I been pondering how to do SSD acceleration on my current 1055T rig.

[Tjj226_Angel]

Hey, I know that you want to go with AMD, and I can respect that. However, my friend and I were tinkering with his 8150 on the windows 8 developer preview and there is basically no improvement over the patch that was released for windows 7. Like I said, I can respect your decision to use AMD, but don't kid yourself into thinking that the AMD FX chips will get some magic performance boost on windows 8.

If I were to convince you to switch to intel my argument would be that the reason the FX chips get as much hate as they do is because of the way the chip was designed. The 8 cores are actually broken down into 4 modules. 2 cores equals 4 modules with a certain amount of cache that is shared between the two cores. The issue is that each core is kind of underpowered. This means that the single thread performance of BD chips is very low compared to sandy/ivy bridge chips and even AMD phenom chips. Right now game designers are really just starting to take advantage of 4 cores on a CPU in games. The best example of this would be BF3. So you really have no need for the multi core function of the FX chips (with the exception of workstation type applications). However, you still benefit from having a much higher calculations per clock performance that intel and even phenom (to a certain extent) still offers.

Another aspect to keep in mind is the price between the AMD system and the intel system is a bit misleading. I have personally found that intel is actually cheaper believe it or not. The reason why is that even though the 8120 and even 8150 is cheaper than the i5 2500K, the fx chips throw off a lot more heat and they are a tad more messy to overclock. This means that you need a bigger heatsink to OC your chip than you would need for an i5 2500K or even a i5 3570K. Let me put it this way, with an i5 3570K at a price of 215 US (on sale on newegg) and a hyper 212 evo, you can probably OC your chip up to 4.5-4.6ghz fairly easily. So it would be 215 for the cpu, 30 for the heat sink for a total of 245 USD. The 8120 is 160 and the H70 is 85 which also equals 245 USD. With the H70 you might be able to get your chip up to 4.5ghz. Even when the chips are equal in clock speed, the i5 will still beat in in lightly threaded applications and even some multi threaded applications.

The other key difference is that with the AMD chip you need to get a higher end board so that you have particular options in the BIOS that would allow you to OC to the same levels as the intel chips, while on the opposing side you can get a very cheap board and still hit the max overclocks of the intel chips. This would further reduce the price of an intel build vs an AMD build.

What I have mentioned above is crucial. If you would consider for a moment that the AMD setup that you have right now would cost 465 USD (CPU, Mobo, heatsink) for LESS performance, less features (intel has PCI 3.0 and virtue MVP), and less power effient than an i5 3570K, a gigabyte z77 mobo , and a hyper 212 evo that would only cost you 395 USD.

On top of THAT, you can take the money you saved and upgrade your video card to an Asus direct cuII AMD 7950 Newegg.com - ASUS HD7950-DC2T-3GD5 Radeon HD 7950 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

So if you go with intel over amd as far as I can see you would just be getting a CRAP ton of more bang for your buck.

How is that for convincing?