Searching for a gaming desktop

• RebeccaBlack wrote on 2013-08-15 16:26
  Well, the problem is games have to be written for hyperthreading :P In a way, they don't "exist" (to the game) until a game is made for it. The same could be said about 8 core CPUs, but yeah. I'm actually arguing that hyperthreading will probably come before support for 8 cores, which is why Intel might be a good decision.
  
  It's not about thread optimization being reduced, it's about console ports not needing all the cores to function well and thus not necessarily gaining much of anything noticeable out of having them. That is to say, even without hyperthreading 8 high-powered cores that come with modern desktop CPUs might lose some of their usefulness in gaming and be overboard. PCs do evolve and so will these games, but consoles keep the same hardware until the end. As long as they're mainly aiming at consoles, the PC ports won't be terribly more powerful than the console versions.
• Evaris wrote on 2013-08-15 16:46

  Quote from RebeccaBlack;1136158:

  Well, the problem is games have to be written for hyperthreading :P In a way, they don't "exist" (to the game) until a game is made for it. The same could be said about 8 core CPUs, but yeah. I'm actually arguing that hyperthreading will probably come before support for 8 cores, which is why Intel might be a good decision.
  
  It's not about thread optimization being reduced, it's about console ports not needing all the cores to function well and thus not necessarily gaining much of anything noticeable out of having them. That is to say, even without hyperthreading 8 high-powered cores that come with modern desktop CPUs might lose some of their usefulness in gaming and be overboard. PCs do evolve and so will these games, but consoles keep the same hardware until the end. As long as they're mainly aiming at consoles, the PC ports won't be terribly more powerful than the console versions.

  
  
  What you don't seem to get that any code written for hyperthreading will automatically be readable by an additional core count of the number of virtual cores. So that point is moot in that 8 Cores is as good or better in this situation. As for the ports, there will be titles written for 8 threads that will use everything that they can get, just wait and see.
• RebeccaBlack wrote on 2013-08-15 16:59
  Oh, I see where the disagreement is. Wasn't entirely sure what you were saying. I see, then. We'll have to see how much those console ports use.
  
  As for the other point, I was mainly stating (indirectly) that I consider Intel to have higher per-core performance across their current range of products, and with hyperthreading activated... well, yeah.
• Evaris wrote on 2013-08-15 17:14

  Quote from RebeccaBlack;1136178:

  Oh, I see where the disagreement is. Wasn't entirely sure what you were saying. I see, then. We'll have to see how much those console ports use.
  
  As for the other point, I was mainly stating (indirectly) that I consider Intel to have higher per-core performance across their current range of products, and with hyperthreading activated... well, yeah.

  
  
  This may be true, but hyperthreaded virtual cores don't have the performance of the physical cores in an AMD 8 core, not to mention that the only CPUs with the four hyperthreaded cores all cost in excess of $300 compared to the $150 FX-8320, so in such future situations you're paying double for only marginal performance increases at best, so...
• RebeccaBlack wrote on 2013-08-15 17:49
  I don't think they're that expensive. This i7 930 (not even the lowest model of that generation) was bought for about $300 around 2009-2010. By now, even these are in the 200s. Lower end models (920) could be less.
  
  And it certainly performs better than an FX-8320, but that really isn't saying much because they're not quite in the same range. It's true, an 8320 is cheaper price-wise. I can't think of any direct competitors that are hyperthreaded so in that sense I can't exactly challenge it appropriately. Looking at higher end CPUs, though...
  
  It also really depends on if you overclock or not. But I won't go into that too much because it's not really the purpose of discussion. You know about that anyway, so yeah. It'd be relevant if most people did it.
• Evaris wrote on 2013-08-15 20:12

  Quote from RebeccaBlack;1136216:

  I don't think they're that expensive. This i7 930 (not even the lowest model of that generation) was bought for about $300 around 2009-2010. By now, even these are in the 200s. Lower end models (920) could be less.
  
  And it certainly performs better than an FX-8320, but that really isn't saying much because they're not quite in the same range. It's true, an 8320 is cheaper price-wise. I can't think of any direct competitors that are hyperthreaded so in that sense I can't exactly challenge it appropriately. Looking at higher end CPUs, though...
  
  It also really depends on if you overclock or not. But I won't go into that too much because it's not really the purpose of discussion. You know about that anyway, so yeah. It'd be relevant if most people did it.

  
  
  Umm... no the i7-920 is not faster than an FX-8320. In multithread the FX-8320 is faster, and in single thread it is about the same speed, as piledriver is as fast clock-for-clock as Nehalim (Intel core architecture in 1st gen i7's.) And physical cores are superior in performance to hyperthreaded cores.
• RebeccaBlack wrote on 2013-08-15 21:41
  Was referencing the 930. In any case, the tests I've seen effectively say it'd need to utilize the additional cores to match up. This is assuming hyperthreading isn't active. Perhaps they were rather OCed or something. 930s (and 920s) do tend to really push it in that regard. I don't think that was the case, though.
• Evaris wrote on 2013-08-15 22:41

  Quote from RebeccaBlack;1136379:

  Was referencing the 930. In any case, the tests I've seen effectively say it'd need to utilize the additional cores to match up. This is assuming hyperthreading isn't active. Perhaps they were rather OCed or something. 930s (and 920s) do tend to really push it in that regard. I don't think that was the case, though.

  
  
  Clock per clock, core per core, Nehalim and Piledriver are in the same league, while Piledriver is vastly superior at overclocking and has up to eight integer cores, offers superior instruction set support, runs on a more modern platform, and is still cheaper years later.
  
  Are you certain the tests you've seen were with Pildriver, and not it's predecessor which is 10-20% slower clock per clock, Bulldozer?
• RebeccaBlack wrote on 2013-08-16 15:27
  There's a chance I've been looking at the wrong set of CPUs from AMD. I distinctly remember Vishera being mentioned, which would fall under Piledriver. Nehalem overclocks very hard as well... going from 2.6Ghz in the case of a 920 to at least 4 (and very rarely even 5!). But I'll take your word for it that the 8320 does better in that regard as you have a more detailed experience with the Piledriver lineup than I do.
• Evaris wrote on 2013-08-16 22:05

  Quote from RebeccaBlack;1136706:

  There's a chance I've been looking at the wrong set of CPUs from AMD. I distinctly remember Vishera being mentioned, which would fall under Piledriver. Nehalem overclocks very hard as well... going from 2.6Ghz in the case of a 920 to at least 4 (and very rarely even 5!). But I'll take your word for it that the 8320 does better in that regard as you have a more detailed experience with the Piledriver lineup than I do.

  
  
  The FX-8320/8350 are known to hit 4.5 in most cases on half-decent air cooling, up to 5.5 on water. hell, they have chips that are 4.7ghz and 5.0ghz out of the box for price premiums with the Fx-9xxx series.
• RebeccaBlack wrote on 2013-08-17 03:11
  They start at 3.5 and 4, though. Relative to that, it's not quite so big.
  
  I've been looking at those premium chips, actually. In fact, the FX-9370 in particular relative to the 3770K, 4770K, etc. A lot of the other ones are quite high up there in price. But meh, it's good that they exist.
  
  Anyway, this has been seriously derailed at this point so I'll just start leaving visitor messages instead.