JUNE 12, 2013 UPDATE
I've had this CPU for going on four months now. It's still rocking it! Runs the latest "Metro Last Light" with a breeze. TO fixing my heating issues I mention below, I have upgraded the fans on my radiator to the Corsair SP120 high performance fans. As of now I have this thing running at exactly 5018Mhz stable right now. Also over time I experimented with RAM. Believe it or not, decreasing my RAM speed actually gained me some FPS in all of my games (its running slightly below 1600Mhz now). I recommend doing FPS benchmarks if you are aiming for gaming with this. Also I wanted to add in my last Power Supply blew up on me. I am now using the gold rated Corsair HX750 that seems work better with this CPU overclocked in terms of heat/stability.
Let me skip all the BS. This is a BEAST of a CPU! I've had an AMD Phenom II x6 1045t for the past year now. Although I loved the 1045t CPU, it simply wasn't the greatest for gaming. My stock speed was 3.9Ghz and I overclocked it to 4.5Ghz via the turbo, but with turbo on the Phenom II chips, only three cores would activate. I also was gifted recently an XSPC Raystorm rs360 liquid cooling kit and with that high end cooling I simply wanted the best overclockable chip out there.
For about three month's I eyeballed this CPU up on various websites. I wanted it desperately, but I had a few issues and asked myself the following questions. Was it a big enough upgrade over the 1045t? Was it worth buying over the cheaper 8320 model? Lastly should I consider saving up for an intel system instead because of AMD's rocky future in the CPU world (reports say the excavator models are pushed back to 2014 at least)?
I took the plunge - I ordered this CPU and could not be happier. The base speed of 4Ghz is awesome, it's nice to see something like that right out of the box. Furthermore the overclockability of this chip is absolutely astounding. You can overclocked it to the Moon assuming you have proper cooling. With the Raystorm rs360 I was able to get this chip to a stable 5Ghz, liquid cooling the CPU and the VRM's on my motherboard.
Overclocking is nothing without performance though - how does the CPU perform? Excellent! I got a very noticeable framerate increase in all my games. Crysis 3 I can run completely maxed out with msaa on medium at 60fps (which some intel users can't even handle :o)
Some minor pet peeves/issues with this CPU:
1) If you're doing overclocking, you will absolutely need a custom cooler. This is a very power hungry, very hot CPU at overclocked speeds. This thing has scarily overheated on me a few times already, I've gotten this to a stable 5Ghz, although I can run it at speeds of up to 5.4Ghz it simply gets too hot at anything else. Although the stock cooler is actually impressive having copper on it, it's still not going to do the job. Here's what I recommend per the speeds you are trying to reach based on my own experience and from what I've read on the web:
- Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO or similar: 4.6Ghz
- Closed loop cooler (such as the h100i): 4.8Ghz
- Custom cooling kit: 5Ghz+
- At least a 600w PSU for anything above (this thing consumes alot of power overclocked)
2) AMD STILL SUCKS WITH HIGH SPEED RAM. If you're overclocking this thing even slightly, good luck getting the specified 1866Mhz RAM to work with it. I can only run mine at around 1700Mhz. I tried two modules at 8GB and four modules at 16GB. Could never get this to stably run 1866Mhz, even at stock CPU speeds. If you'r buying RAM stick with a 1600Mhz kit.
Other than the power/heat issues and the RAM, this is a great CPU. I paid for a $200 CPU and it felt like I got what I paid for performance wise. Vs. Intel you will see alot of users complain that the "per core" performance isn't as good, and than an Intel i5 3550k will outperform this. Personally I don't give a crap. I'm not reverting my whole system over to Intel just because some silly benchmarks are slightly better. Besides the multi-threading of this CPU will blow away an i5, especially in DX11 games which do utilize all 8 cores.
One more thing - vs the AMD 8320 I think this is a much better buy - $10-20 more and you're getting a CPU that's going to be much better in the overclocking department and the increased speeds are going to be much better in gaming. Overall definitely worth the money. Great CPU that will last years to come and AMD's future is rocky if you're waiting for the "next" best thing I think you should just go with this...
My build:
8350 @ 5Ghz, 1.5v core, 250Mhz bus speed, 20x CPU multiplier
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3
XSPC Raystorm rs360 water cooling
Primoflex tubing w/ deionized water
Enzotech wmst-81 VRM Water Block
G Skill Ares 1866Mhz (4x4) 16GB RAM (@ 1700Mhz)
MSI Radeon Twin Frozr III 7950 overclocked
Corsair Force 120GB SSD
Thermaltake 600W PSU
LG Blu Ray reader/writer
NZXT Phantom Full Tower case (white)
| Processor | 4 GHz amd_fx |
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