| Pemalite said: Pay the extra $50 and get the FX 8320 with it's extra 2 threads, worth it in my opinion if you intend to keep the system for years. |
The thing with AMD is that he is likely to run in to bottlenecks with PCIe 2.0, slower memory controller, DDR3 2133 limit (highest stable RAM I can achieve with 2400 mhz sticks), NB bus speed...etc... before he runs in to true CPU bottlenecks where more cores would be beneficial.
As a current user for the 8350, I've benchmarked this thing in every possible way I could and honestly the performance is identical for gaming, productivity and pretty much everything else 90% of us do with 4 cores disabled compared to all 8.
Only places where I see performance benefits with all cores enabled are rendering, game streaming and synthetic benchamrks... and i doubt he will do any of this.
OT - 7870 for 170 is a great deal. But if you see the 7870 XT, PCS+ or whatever ese they call it edition...get that one. Its not a 7870 but a 7950 with a few things disables and a higher clockspeed. It actually beats the 7950 in benchamrks. I've seen it as low as $219.
