updating desktop,

Not really sure which way to go, at the moment I have an Asrock board and and AMD 8350 8 core CPU, with 8GB of ram, which have been ok, but i think the board is giving out.
Now I have three choices.
Option 1
Because it is an AMD I can get a new board with ease, that would be the cheapest option, but the technology is getting on now, AMD have not updated their chipset or CPUs for a while now and it shows.

Option 2,
hang on for a bit and wait and see what this new AMD zen will be like, as long as it don't take too long, it is suppose to be pretty good and will certainly be cheaper than Intel. But it will be an update to memory as well as I have DDR3, the zen will use DDR4.

Option 3
I am not struck on this option, Drop AMD and go for intel, I know they are more powerful than AMD, even the quad core 4460 which have less cores and runs at a slower clock speed beets my poor litle AMD in performance.

But here are the problems, well for me anyway.
Intel chips are massively over priced.
The motherboords do not seem to offer the expansion, I have a PCI Firewire card and a lot of boards seems to have got rid of PCI and even do not seem to have enough PCI-E either .

Too many sockets types and they go out of fashion pretty quick, My AMD board is 5 years old and yet I got a new chip last year for it. Try doing that with a 5 year old Intel board.,

I do not like intel as a company, i have used AMD more or less since I been using PC machines, my very first one I owned in 1997 had a Cyrix 166 CPU, after that it was all AMD.

So I am stuck what to do.
I noticed the Intel boards all have video ports on the back, yes I know that the video is built into the chip which I would never use, is there any Intel boards without the ports?

If i went for Intel it would also mean a memory change, saying that there are still some Intel chips that uses DDR3.
Intel is so confusing. so many chip sets and so many sockets.


My computer is ok most of the times, but does start to have problems with the effects on hitfilm, certainly when there is a few layers and using composites. I thought maybe about updating the memory, but not sure if that will do much good.

i wish now I did not buy the 8 core last year, it would have made deciding much easier.

Your five year old motherboard will mean you are running with a five year old north bridge and south bridge. This, in turn, will limit you to a five year old PCI Express, USB and SATA implementation. It depends on the hardware connected to these interfaces and your workload as to whether you are feeling these limitations.

These days, most hardware connects to PCI Express, USB 2.0 or USB 3.0. SATA is still common, but there is a gradual move to SSDs connected to PCI Express using the NVMe standard (this comes to you from a laptop with an PCI Express 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD, so the laptop's SATA controllers are disabled). DisplayPort is becoming increasingly dominant, especially as you can drive HDMI displays from a DisplayPort port with the right adapter or cable, though HDMI ports are still found. Thunderbolt is a common interface for high bandwidth external hardware.

The future is probably USB Type C ports, with higher end machines having Thunderbolt 3 support on some or all of their Type C ports (Thunderbolt 3 is an alternate mode on Type C). As DisplayPort can travel over Thunderbolt, future machines might have Type C ports and little else. For now, USB 3.0 Type A ports are still the most common port found on desktop hardware and many laptops.

Because most hardware now uses external interfaces, and the preference is for increasingly small footprints, internal expansion slots are often very limited on modern desktop boards.

Another effect of all this is that legacy interfaces are rapidly disappearing. PCI has all but disappeared - you will probably struggle to find a latest generation desktop board with PCI support. Firewire is also becoming extinct. Professional audio hardware, which is the Firewire application I'm most familiar with, became reliable on USB 2.0 for low channel count implementations many years ago. High channel count audio hardware typically uses USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt.

If you still need Firewire, there's some relatively inexpensive PCI Express x1 Firewire boards available - TI and Agere based boards are usually regarded as preferred over VIA based boards, especially on Windows 10.

I wouldn't base your buying decisions on owning 8GB of probably older DDR3 RAM. The DDR4 transition seems finally to be happening. I'd be inclined to put 16GB of RAM in any new build or newly upgraded desktop, especially if you have any interest in content creation, software development and/or virtualisation.

All my machines are Intel. As you say, Intel often launches a new chipset for every new generation of processor and it's rare for an Intel chipset to support more than two generations of processor.. It's best to regard a motherboard and an Intel processor as a pair - when you replace one, expect to replace the other. This is another reason why motherboards have relatively limited feature and port count - it's cheaper to replace this type of motherboard when the time comes.

If Intel is the more efficient choice for your workload, I'd go Intel. It may be than a sixth generation Core i7 quad core with two logical processors per hardware core and 16GB of DDR4 RAM is more responsive than your AMD 8350 on your existing motherboard. You can always try to sell on the AMD processor and motherboard or find another use for it.

I've not been following the next generation AMD processors, but if you have a suspect motherboard and are fairly certain you will need DDR4 memory, you're looking at a new processor, motherboard and memory whether you hold out for the next generation of AMD or go Intel.

i know that it is all PCI express these days, but even then on some boards there are very few, I seen some with 2, what is the point?
My board have USB 3, but it is not via the AMD chipset as that do not support USB 3, that is done via a Etron chip, I did put via based USB3 card in so I could bring USB 3 to the front of the case.
i also know that AMD uses a north and south bridge chipset where Intel have gone for a all in one. i am not bothered about USB3 C, I doubt I will ever use it or Thunderbolt, i am not that bothered about having SSD connected to PCI Express either, my SSD via Sata 3 is fast enough.

Firewire i need for my old camcorder, I only just got the firewire card for that reason, i do not think I want to buy another one, the problem is my old camcorder is not working and my brothers do not play the tapes correctly.so i may have to look for a cheap camcorder from somewhere that does widescreen.

I was thinking about 16Gb of memory if i do go for a new build. Even if I wait for AMD new chip it will still be DD4, the prices are not that bad. 16GB of Corsair Vengeance is £89, that is pretty high end by the looks of it, so I expect memory can be got cheaper. I still need to look into DDR4.

It is the price that is the problem, I just done a quick work out from Scan.

The CPU, a Intel Core i7 6700 Skylake is £282.48, a Asrock Pro4S Intel H170M is £73.40, then the memory which I found Corsair 16GB DDR4 Vengeance is £68.32, which all comes to £435.70. I fair chunk of money.

the new AMD chip will require DDR4 memory, so it will be a new board, chip and memory for that as well.

I will have to have a think, I do know that this machine do struggle sometimes with hitfilm and I do have a fault with the board.

thinking time.