This video is brought to you by CM Storm, preferred choice of mice,
headsets, and mechanical keyboards of Curse Gaming. Visit
www.coolermaster-usea.com/team_curse for more details. Guys, welcome to part four
of our 3570K versus FX8350 gaming
showdown. I'm going to start with our platforms. We've got a Crosshair 5
formula with an FX8350 at 4.6 GHz. This
overclock should be attainable by pretty much anyone running this chip on an
overclocking ready platform. Uh, but there is some headroom to keep going.
However, we have an equally conservative overclock on our 3570K running on a
Maximus 5 formula. This guy's running at 4.2 GHz. Now, they're both running
Mushkin Blackline memory. There's copperhead heat spreaders on here, but there's nothing special about those.
It's just regular 1600 MHz memory, and we're running a 128 gig SSD for our boot
drive, an AX850 for our power supply, and an H100 for our cooler. Now, I
specifically called out that you needed an overclocking ready platform. This is
something I wanted to bring up because the cost of the platform, the cost
difference between these platforms is not sheerely dictated by the cost of the
chip itself. So, the FX8350 is about $20 cheaper on average than a 3570K.
However, these two boards actually have a $50 price difference. And if you look
at what the minimum bare minimum Z77 board costs, it's around $120. Whereas
you can get a 970A board as long as you're not planning to run a high-end
dual GPU setup that you need. So even then it supports 8x8x for crossfire
operation. Um you can get one of those for around 80 bucks. So that's something
to consider when you look at the performance numbers we're going to show
you. Methodology wise we're using our usual approach. So our standard card is
an MSI GeForce GTX 660Ti Power Edition.
This guy right here. We run it at a standard overclock that we always run
this card on. You can check out all of our GPU overclocks on any of our video
card reviews. We are using FRAPs to record average frame rates. However, we
are aware of the new methodology of measuring frame times. However, there's
also been I mean it's been an explosive time in GPU benchmarking. Um, and the
correct tools for measuring frame times actually don't yet exist except with
some very specialized equipment. So, we're doing what pretty much everyone else is doing, and we're still using
Fraps to measure frame rates, but expect that to change sometime over the next
little while as more tools become available. We do use in-game runs, so
you guys are going to see little messages pop up if you want to see exactly how we benchmark each game. Just
go ahead and click that, check it out, and then you can run your game the same way that we do and find out how your
system stacks up. So, you're going to see four scenarios on each graph.
Windows 7 with Intel, Windows 7 with AMD, Windows 8 with Intel, Windows 8
with AMD. We're running anti-aliasing on all of the games this time around. We
have a separate video where we ran with no anti-aliasing. And we're going to
start with Far Cry 3. So, in Far Cry 3, the only real change um that happened
was when we went from Windows 7 to Windows 8, both platforms improved in
performance, particularly the Intel one went from 15 frames per second minimum
to 24 frames per second minimum, delivering a much smoother experience,
while the AMD platform was at 20 plus frames per second minimum on both
Windows 7 and Windows 8. So, it looks like Windows 8 comes ahead, but the
actual results in terms of the average frames per second was about the same on
both cards, giving you about the same gaming experience regardless of which chip you choose. Crisis 3 is pretty much
nothing to report here, guys. So, the FX8350 and the 3570K perform about the
same, and they performance doesn't really change from Windows 7 to Windows
8. In Battlefield 3, we saw a bit of a different story with both of them
recording about the same average frame rates. So, a little bit higher with the
8350 edging out the 3570K. Actually, I shouldn't say edging out. It's about,
you know, 5% performance difference. However, it should be noted, but because
we're using real runs, the uh margin of error for our tests is a little bit
higher, although we do run them multiple times to get them as accurate as possible. However, both platforms
increased in minimum frame rates from 35
to 43 on the 8350 and from 37 to 51 when
moving from Windows 7 to Windows 8. So, there was uh there was less less of a
dip when you run into an intensive scenario on Windows 8 versus Windows 7.
In Skyrim, there wasn't really much to report. The 3570K gets a clear win here
versus the 8350, and performance didn't change going from Windows 7 to Windows
8. It should be noted that our Skyrim benchmark is run with about 18 custom
mods enabled, and we haven't released our Skyrim benchmarking guide yet, but
that will hopefully be coming sometime soon. In Dirt 3, this was one of the
more dramatic changes. Without anti-aliasing, both chips were running
at an average around 150 frames per second, enabling anti-aliasing on this
title had them both tanked to around half of what we were seeing previously.
It should also be noted that they didn't really change in performance from
Windows 7 to Windows 8. Once again, Witcher 2, we saw performance
improvements going from Windows 7 to Windows 8 in terms of the minimum frame
rates. So on the AMD platform, we went from 52 to 57 and on the Intel platform,
we went from 51 to 64. So Witcher 2 ran
better on Intel, particularly on well,
not on Windows 7, but on Windows 8, it ran better on Intel, but not on Windows
7. So that was a very interesting observation. It also took the averages
and put about a 10% difference in performance between the two chips.
Whereas on Windows 7, they were much much closer, pretty much within margin
of error. In Metro 2033, we saw a performance improvement for the 8350 of
about 10%. And we saw average frame rates for the Intel stay pretty much the
same. They actually dropped a little bit, but again, margin of error, anything, you know, a few percentage
points, we should pretty much uh not read too much into. Crisis 2, we didn't
really see any optimizations go on from Windows 7 to Windows 8. So, that pretty
much leaves us with Intel being the clear winner for Crisis 2 if you still
play that game, which I suspect most people do not, but we like to include it
just because of the old, can it run Crisis? So, there you go, guys. Windows
8 on the surface looks like the optimal gaming platform whether you go AMD or
Intel. And I mean, quite frankly, it's up to the individual viewer whether you
watch a video like this and go, "This performance difference is worth this
number of dollars to me." We're not going to make that decision for you. We're going to let you go do that. But
it looks like Windows 8 is the optimal gaming platform. However, there were
some issues that we encountered running our games on Windows 8, such as the
requirement to install games for Windows Live before actually installing any
games, otherwise it causes all kinds of halaloo and games just not launching and
things like that, and some other random glitchy behavior. It should be noted
though that with some googling we did get all of the games working. So if you
want that extra little bit of performance, that's me, then it might be
the way to go. Thanks for checking out this video. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for unboxings, reviews,
and other computer videos.