Pemalite said:
You do see a *massive* difference in performance with PCI-E 3.0 x16 in compute scenarios. Think: Folding@Home.
It was one of the many reasons I upgraded from an AMD FX to my Socket 2011 3930K.
As for AMD and backwards compatibility... More often than not it is true.
However, if AMD pulls another AM3+ move you will have to buy a new motherboard for Steamroller, no way around that, never buy into a platform thinking you can endlessly upgrade it. :P
Now onto the Intel vs AMD.
If he is playing games like StarCraft 2, Sins of a Solar Empire or any lightly threaded demanding game, go Intel, even a dual-core, as Intel will dominate in those games.
If he is playing games like GTAIV, Battlefield 3, Civilisation IV, go AMD.
If you are bent on going AMD, then the FX 8320 is a wise choice, they will overclock to around 4.2-4.4ghz on stock voltage, some chips higher. But keep in mind you still need a 500mhz core clock advantage just to match a Phenom 2 in single threaded situations.
Heck, if you are going to be overclocking anyway you could also consider the FX 8120 and overclock that, hence saving some money to put towards a beefier GPU for overall better gaming performance.
Today though, because hardware is so far ahead of games and software, either platform will be fine.
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Yeah, regarding PCIe 3.0, I agree if he was to do folding@home...but he probably doesn't know what that is nor does it interest him to do such a thing. The bottom line is when you get to crossfire and SLI which he will probably think of doing within a year, AMDs PcIe 2.0 is equal to Intels 1155 4.0 if the AMD mobo is x16, x16.
From what I've seen Piledriver offers noticable difference over Bulldozer (15-20%), but the price of 8120 isn't more than 10% less so I figure 8320 offers slightly better value, not to mention less heat and better power consumption.
I doubt he is going to be shtting everything down when gaming...he'll probably have torrents running, antivirus, software RAID0 amongst other things...so those extra cores on the FX processor should come in handy.
