FX-9590 vs i7-4930K

I've been looking at building a new rig, but was trying to stay under $1500. I'm currently 4boxing FFXIV, and am experiencing a moderate bit of lag. I'm currently runnin the following:

i7-2600K (3.40 GHZ)
16GB
2x GTX 760 4GB

Both video cards seem to be doing ok... usually the GPU's are between 50-70% utilized. My CPU on the other hand is running 100% on all 4 cores.

Ultimately I'm trying to determine if an 8 core Athlon, or a 6 core i7 would be better.

From a price point, the Athlon build gets real close to my $1500 budget, but the Intel route does not.

I'd love to hear some thoughts, suggestions.

FYI, I plan on bringing over my two GTX 760's to the new system.

Thanks in advance.

[MiRai]

From a price point, the Athlon build gets real close to my $1500 budget, but the Intel route does not.

How does the AMD build cost more than an Intel build? Can we see the lists of hardware you're looking at?

Sorry MiRai, I guess I wasn't clear.

The Athlon build is LESS expensive than the Intel build. Here is the parts list I've put together so far, haven't dug too deep into it yet.

Case - Thermaltake Chaser A71 109.99
Motherboard - ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z 224.99
CPU - FX-9590 342.71
RAM - G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2400 (PC3 19200) 359.99
Cooler - Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme All-In-One Liquid Cooling System CLW0224 99.99
Corsair Professional Series AX 1200 306.62
DVD ASUS Black 12X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 12X DVD-RAM 8X BD-ROM 8MB Cache SATA Blu-ray Burner BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/AS 69.99
HDD Seagate Barracuda 2 TB HDD SATA 6 Gb/s NCQ 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST2000DM001 86.99

Total $1601.27

Case - Thermaltake Chaser A71 109.99
Motherboard - RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION 499.99
CPU - Intel Core i7-4930K 579.99
RAM G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2400 (PC3 19200) 359.99
Cooler - Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme All-In-One Liquid Cooling System CLW0224 99.99
PS - Corsair Professional Series AX 1200 306.62
DVD ASUS Black 12X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 12X DVD-RAM 8X BD-ROM 8MB Cache SATA Blu-ray Burner BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/AS 69.99
HDD Seagate Barracuda 2 TB HDD SATA 6 Gb/s NCQ 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST2000DM001 86.99

Total $2113.55

I have 5 128GB SSD's and the two GTX 760's that I plan to carry over from my current system, the HDD listed above is just for storage. The OS, and games will live on the SSD's.

As you can tell I tried wherever possible to keep the parts identical. This wasn't so much an exercise in making the 'perfect rig' as it was to determine ballpark how much of a price difference AMD vs Intel would be. Which then lead me down the path of is 8 core's better than 6 hyper-threaded cores.

I'm a server admin, so my experience tells me 8 cores is better than 6. I've also read multiple posts on these forums about cores vs hyper-threading, and I believe based on what I've read, that ultimately 8 real cores will be better than 6 real with 6 fake. All that being said, none of that takes into consideration the difference between the AMD and Intel architecture.

Oh.. and sorry about the crappy formatting... I had it all in Excel, and no it did not paste over very cleanly.

[MiRai]

Finally getting a chance to reply...

Eight cores is better than six only when you're comparing apples to apples -- Which is not Intel and AMD. There's a reason that Intel's 6-core processor is priced $200+ than the AMD 8-core (module)... and that's because it's better; and since I'd recommend the Intel build, I'm going to comment on that one.

1) That motherboard is the third-most expensive X79 motherboard that you can currently buy. Unless you're looking for the absolute best, then there's no reason to spend $500 on a motherboard that's just going to hold a CPU with a mild overclock and barely be utilized -- Any motherboard can do that. However, I just picked up a RIV-BE myself and I will say that it's an amazing board which is much more stable than EVGA's X79 Dark, but I'm also the kind of person that spends several days trying to dial in the best overclock I can get on air cooling. So, if you're on a budget, then a $500 motherboard doesn't exactly fit that category.

2) That Corsair PSU is barely going to be utilized to its full potential because your GTX 760s probably use < 700W total under full load (probably less than that according to Guru3D and their measurement includes an OC'd 3960X @ 4.6GHz). I realize it's nice to have the power at your disposal for when it's time to upgrade, but my AX1200 was completely underutilized for years until I finally upgraded to 3-way SLI and only now (with current generation hardware) am I able to pull ~1,000W from the wall. So, if you're looking to save some more money you can drop this down to a lower tier.

I will say that if you are the kind of person that does neat and tight cable management, then upgrading a PSU later down the line could end up being a nightmare. Tolerance levels vary from person to person, but it's a tedious and time consuming task swapping out a PSU either way.

With a potential for ~$300 in savings on the Intel build, that brings you more in line with your original budget. I'm a sucker for aesthetics and powerful hardware, though... so I won't judge either way.

Thanks for the info...

1) I may end up just ignoring my budget on this one. No matter how you look at it, I can't find another motherboard that is as sexy as the RIV-BE.

2) I will probably drop the power supply down a few notches as you suggested.

3) Any thoughts on memory? I'm shooting for 32GB off the bat, with an upgrade in 6 months or so to 64GB. Really want to try a RAMDrive. As for the memory, i just grabbed a part number off of Asus's QVL list. I've seen in several of your other post over at dual-boxing.com about not paying the premium for faster RAM.

All that being said, I assume you just moved the Dominator memory you purchased for the EVGA board over to your new board? Have you had any issues?

Once again, thanks for the info.

[MiRai]

Any thoughts on memory? I'm shooting for 32GB off the bat, with an upgrade in 6 months or so to 64GB. Really want to try a RAMDrive. As for the memory, i just grabbed a part number off of Asus's QVL list. I've seen in several of your other post over at dual-boxing.com about not paying the premium for faster RAM.

All that being said, I assume you just moved the Dominator memory you purchased for the EVGA board over to your new board? Have you had any issues?

Yeah, I just moved my existing memory over and learned a lesson in the process...

DDR3-1866 is supported as a stock speed. However, it is only supported with one DIMM per channel. If all slots are populated, then the maximum supported memory speed is DDR3-1600. Both situations are likely subject to memory timing, too. Intel usually makes this information available in their white papers.

Source

I have no Intel source on that mostly because I'm too lazy to look through their white papers, but I'll go ahead and trust what Asus is telling its customers about its motherboard and the current-gen CPUs. I found out the lesson the hard way and Windows only ends up BSOD'ing when running the memory at 1866MHz in the RIVBE. A bump in BCLK lets me run the memory at 1730MHz, so I sit halfway between 1600 and 1866 and I'm fine with that because my RAMDrive is just as fast, if not faster, than it was before (an OC'd CPU tends to help with this as well).

This is really a good example of why it's not really necessary to buy that super-awesome-lightning-speed RAM when it's not really supported and ultimately gives close to 0 boost in performance for the cost. I was almost regretting not grabbing the same memory, but at 2100MHz instead -- Now I'm glad I didn't.

They also recommend (in the same link) that you should buy a single memory kit rather than two different ones. I've heard mixed results on this, but I've honestly never listened to it and I purchased 2x32GB kits when I put the original build together (I don't remember why). Could it have come back and bitten me? Sure, but I think they tell people that to try and dissuade people from buying a second kit later down the line that isn't identical to the original. I'd like to think that top-tier RAM falls victim to the mix-and-match problems much less often than the cheaper stuff, but who knows.

To add to that (for anyone else who reads this), I'm going to assume that the more kits you "piece together" to make the capacity you want, the more likely you're going to run into issues. So...

Buying 1x64GB kit should lead to no issues with the memory being matched up because it's tested together all at once
Buying 2x32GB kits shouldn't lead to any issues, but might because it wasn't tested together
Buying 4x16GB kits may lead to issues because the kits weren't tested together (again)
Buying 8x8GB kits is kind of retarded and will probably have the highest chance to have problems

Hopefully this answers some questions, but as for a RAMDrive, these are my current thoughts on using one until further notice.

Thanks for all the info MiRai...

I realize its been months... had some RL issues arise, mostly xmas and kids... damn they get expensive when they hit their teens.

Anyway I really appreciate the input, and finally made my purchase this past week.

I ended up going with the Intel build, with a few modifications.

I think I've watched all of your videos at this point, and would love to see a tutorial on setting up Riva, and sweetfx (from the D3 Act 3 Video).