The FX-8350 gets a tad less FPS than the i5-3570k, but you can get much more streaming performance. Those 4 extra cores make a difference. Also, of course you're going to see stutters if you use a low-end CPU.

P.S, Some Intel CPUs use the same 32nm architecture as the AMD CPUs. I'll list a few.

Intel List
i3-2100 series
Celeron G500 series
i7 2013 Socket CPUs
Pentium G600 and 800 series

Would an 8350 get over 120fps at all times?

Slightly worse single threaded performance for significantly better multi thread. A tad less fps in tf2 doesn't matter when my 3 year old CPU runs tf2 at over 200 fps on mid fights.
Also for future proofing all the new consoles are using 8core x86/64 AMD APUs with the same basic design as the FX series. As such most games (console ports) will be optimized for AMD.

Of course it would, if you don't get a GPU that's going to bottleneck the CPU.

https://teksyndicate.com/videos/amd-fx-8350-oc-vs-i5-3570k-oc-battle-continues

I use the 8350, no issues with tf2 at all. Always 240+fps with a 7850

What FPS config do you use? I have the 8350 as well, but with my GTX 680, my average FPS in scrims/pubs is around ~170ish with dx9frames. Which is nice, but I was expecting I'd be able to get better performance than that.

Probably not getting any extra performance because the gpu won't give you extra fps in tf2. And yeah, thanks for giving me the numbers JOE and rays. I guess I'll be getting the 8350 since there's no point in getting yet even more fps. Even if I get a 120Hz monitor, 170 fps is fine

Fermi architecture hates tf2 for some reason.

What are you saying. Giving tf2 a TITAN won't give tf2 more fps. It's very much cpu intensive so adding a more powerful gpu won't give you extra fps. Having a decent gpu will just maintain the fps that your processor is getting but won't give more

I use an AMD FX 4100 and never have any problems with any games, for TF2 specifically i play on full graphics and have 240fps it sometimes drops to 230 at mid fights but at times it hits 260 so i can't complain

80 at midfights or bust

dx8, i dont like dx9

If you are planning on purchasing a cpu right now you should wait a couple of weeks.
with the new Intel parts coming out you might find things change quite a bit.

Yeah, I'll be getting one over the summer but I wanted to know how the 8350 performs in tf2 so I know if I should even consider it. And Flakx, since your Irish, do you know any places other than dabs.ie to buy computer parts in Ireland?

can you list your specs rays? I think something is bringing the 8350 down and it probably isn't the 680. Perhaps it's overheating? What's your ram frequency and temps as well?

Try 30.

I really need to make a build.

I use FX8150 and a radeon 5870 2gb and never drop bellow 200 fps. All stock settings.

I currently run an 8350 with a GTX560 and I get 300fps constant.
Sometimes it dips to about 200 in a lot of action.

Streaming I play at about 150 constant, sometimes dipping to 100 in action.

32nm isn't an architecture, it's just the size of the transistors used in it. The similarity ends there, they're not the same architecture. They will use roughly the same amount of power per transistor I guess

But you should be fine if you have a reasonable gpu, especially if you run some fps config. You're not going to have any side effects of using an amd cpu, they just happen to have an architecture designed more for parallel execution, and team fortress is pretty bad at taking advantage of multiple cores.

I have a 3770K @ 4.3GHz and an HD 7970, and my FPS goes down to around 80 in fights on 24-28 player pubs (especially payload maps, for some reason they seem to be the worst). Maximum CPU utilization is ~30% and GPU is less than 40%, the game only uses a maximum of 4 threads of my 8, and the main thread goes up to about 90% maximum usage. I'm using DXlevel 95 and pretty much maxed out settings, but r_shadows is set to 0 because it seems to help raise the minimum FPS by a good 10% or so on many systems. Sadly, most of the games I play seem to have this "overhead" where I get FPS drops even though nothing on my system is actually "maxed out."

no, what I normally do is buy stuff off ebay/amazon/uk websites and deliver them to my grandmothers house up north.

which probably isn't much help to you unless you have friends/relatives that you visit often in northern Ireland.

edit:
(depending on what you were looking for you might find parts on ie.farnell.com but It's mainly for electronics components.)

that doesn't seem right. I have almost a straight downgrade from that (i5 750 @ 4.0 and HD6950) and I get considerably better fps using chris's max quality config. Are you sure it's not throttling you or anything (thermal limits)?

90% cpu usage could very well be maxing out in this case, because the code isn't perfectly optimized and may have to stall or not make full use of the processor all of the time. But that said, a 3770k at 4.3 shouldn't be that strained to do 80fps. Try using something like CPU-Z while you're playing to make sure you're actually getting 4.3 and it's not limiting you.

Sorry, I guess this is kinda off topic. I may be able to help, feel free to add me if you want.

CPU - AMD FX-8350 @ 4.0GHz
GFX - SPARKLE GTX 680 2GB
Memory - 8GB g.skill Sniper Series (2x4GB) 1866
Monitor - Acer GD235HZ, 120Hz (primary) + Asus VE245, 60Hz (secondary)
Headset - Turtle Beach Earforce PX-21
Mouse - Razer DeathAdder 3.5G
Mousepad - Generic OCZ mousepad
Keyboard - Generic eMachines keyboard
Connection - TWC Ultimate - 50 down/5 up

Sorry about the late reply, I was out of town all weekend. I just copied and pasted this from my Twitch page though, so if you need any more info, let me know.

I use HWiNFO64 and MSI Afterburner along with RivaTunerStatisticsServer to overlay my CPU usage (total and per thread as well as core clocks) along with GPU information into my games. TF2 uses 4 threads and the highest one is the first thread most of the time (90% was the greatest I have seen it). CPU temperature never exceeds 82c under normal circumstances using a Thermaltake Water 2.0 Performer AIO cooler with push-pull fans.

Here's an example screenshot on Dustbowl. I think the pub was full (24-28 player range). The FPS just casually went down to 85, and it often hangs out around 100 if I am in a spectator camera after being moved to AFK or being unassigned to a team. http://img.techpowerup.org/130529/2013-05-24_00001.jpg

I can easily get 160-260 FPS without VSYNC on around a half full server, but once the pub becomes pretty full, I get annoying FPS drops like this. Same thing happened with my 2600K @ 4.5GHz, an HD 7950 and a different ASRock Extreme series motherboard.

I really wonder how many players are on some players servers when say "I never get under 200 FPS" or whatever, as my computer got pretty high average FPS on the TF2 benchmark demo thread. 6v6 FPS is obviously going to be a whole lot different than 24-32 player server FPS.

I used to play on a 24 player harvest server, and it stayed above 150. 82 is a bit warm but it should't be limiting you. Idk, maybe 32 player is harder on it than I thought, I can't say I've done that in a while.

Like I said earlier, 90% cpu could be "maxed out" because the code isn't as simple/optimized as something like folding or a stress test. It has to stall to wait for memory or other tasks to finish. I'd say you are being cpu limited. But you said you have clock speed overlayed, it's not clocking down at all is it?

Just to be clear, do you typically play with vsync on? Also, you may want to try running some optimized config. Something like Chris's configs are great, and should improve things (and if you get max quality it'll look just as good as max settings).