Gaming focus
A solid showing here.
The results in Aliens vs. Predator highlight an obvious truth; the test is so GPU limited, even on a £400 GeForce GTX 680, that the underlying CPU literally makes no difference at all.
The first (very) slight chink in FX-8350's gaming armour is observed in Batman: Arkham City. Run with fast-computing FXAA to improve jaggies, the onus is on the CPU to spit out the necessary data to the GPU. Intel's Core i5-3570K is 12 per cent faster. Does it really matter? Not when the average frame-rate is so high.
DiRT Showdown places a greater reliance on the host CPU to keep the GPU fed. Core i5-3570K is almost 30 per cent better in this regard. While FX-8350 improves upon FX-8150, perhaps what's most galling for AMD is the evidence that its best consumer CPU is slower than the older Phenom II X6 and no faster than a Core i3-3225.
Gaming performance with a top-class GPU, then, is best-described as adequate.
