Unless you had applications that really made better use of those 8 cores than Haswell's scheduler does with the hyperthreads (4 cores, 8 contexts), you would end up behind on performance for power. Intel has done a number on power consumption in the 22nm architecture, and for most applications, the Core i7 is more performance at two-thirds the power. I'm thinking SMP applications, things that don't hyperthread well, would do well on AMD FX. Those aren't consumer things, more like massive script servers.Ironically, I feel I am stepping down by reliquishing my Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro. My current motherboard is 3 years old but it happened to have a legacy PCI slot. I also had a motherboard with a serial port just before this one (used to have an M2N32-SLI Deluxe). Some people want more, not less
@Guy N'wah
Everybody loves Intel and I5's and I7's. I remember you telling me the newer AMD's were capable of competing with the consumer line of Intel, right? So performance and energy bill wise, how would a top tier 8-core FX compare to an I7 4770K or so?
AMD has 20nm manufacturing, but has only recently taped out 20nm parts; it will be next year before they have product competitive on power, and by then Intel will have 14nm in production. It's tough to beat a CPU division that is run by Rony Friedman and takes Moore's Law as marching orders.
