will it work on your current motherboard and all that? I don't know from shit about CPUs and stuff at the moment but that's a whole 2000 bigger than the other one. Sometimes that means they changed the architecture and whatnot, right?

Not worth the bother IMO

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-FX-6350-Six-Core-vs-AMD-FX-8350-Eight-Core/1910vs1780

If you look at the "score" it looks impressively higher. Clock speed is same, single-core performance advantage negligible. Translation: you will seldom see any noticeable speed boost.

If you are running VMs, you have extra core for that.

The honest answer is, I don't know. It'll fit the AM3÷ socket. I can't actually remember my motherboard series off-hand, but I'll check compatibility before I buy.

Thanks for that, Smiffy. I'll save myself £50 then.

Where is the bottleneck? Game stuttering? Video rendering?

Here's another comparison:

https://www.game-debate.com/cpu/index.php?pid=1863&pid2=1140&compare=AMD%20FX-6350-vs-AMD%20FX-8350

I'm always reluctant to perfom open heart surgery on a pc for < 20% speed boost.

On a tangential note, I'm looking at upgrading the missuses' PC and was looking at the new fangled AMD CPU/APUs, but there's the issue of bios' on newer boards not supporting the APU side. Which isn't an issue if I can get a discrete GFX card, but is an issue if the chip doesn't work at all if the APU isn't working.

Would that APU thing be an issue on the new CPU you're looking at?

Quality settings in VR. I'm running games at lower settings than I think a pretty high-end GPU will be able to handle. When I bump up the settings, I get freezes and even reboots, so I'm blaming the CPU

I don't think so. The FX series are old gen.

Appears to be a somewhat common issue:

https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=htc+vive+crash&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

I'd be surprised if this is a CPU performance issue. Until late last year, my PC was a 7-year-old 1st-gen Core i5. Running modern stuff at higher graphics settings used to just cause poor performance, sluggish framerates and the like. I'd suggest instead a problem that's causing your main issues:

1) Overheating maybe? Try running CoreTemp and see what the temps are like when you stress the thing. I've had CPU heatsinks clog up with fluff after a while so that the PC performs poorly/unreliably under load. Cleaning things up fixed that one for me. Try hammering it with Prime95 and see what it does.

2) PSU struggling to cope with high demand maybe? The GTX 1070 is a thirsty card, so if your PSU is struggling under high load, this could also cause instability when you crank up the detail.

3) Possible RAM issue? Prime95 can be configured to hammer the RAM as well, might be worth doing this to see if you can provoke a crash from it, or try and run a memory test on it?

Worth a shot anyway to see if you can find out what's causing the instability...

My old pc (which is still sitting on my desk, daring me to find a use for it) got a new lease on life from a new, more powerful PSU. Fixed a host of problems.

Thanks Dave!! I don't think I've got issues with the PSU - It's 950W, and even though it's old, the power output shouldn't have dropped off to the point where it would be an issue. 

I fear I may have steered this thread awry with talk of freezes and reboots. They are only occasional: I just cvited them because I assumed they were indicators that the CPU was under pressure. My primary interest is in whether the FX 8350 will allow me to increase the in-game visual quality settings when I'm in VR. 

I might look at the CPU cooling anyway. I'm just using a stock fan atm.

Is your GPU (GTX 1070, memory???) supposed to be able to handle highest settings in the particular VR game?

It's not the highest specified Geforce card - that would be the Titan or the 2080 - but it's pretty high up the tree. I'd expect to be towards the top end of quality settings.

It's an impressive card. I've heard tell of some games that can challenge top-end rigs on high/est settings. I usually dial quality back to lowest acceptable especially with regard to things like supersampling and shadows, and see how it goes. Visual quality is important, but playability is paramount. I'm absolutely stunned by the FC4 visuals (not counting the characters, which are a tad cartoonish up close).

I grew up in Himalayan North Pakistan, so part of the pleasure of FC4 has been a dash of familiarity.  I was a child, so the opportunities for for wholesale slaughter were limited.  Do you love Pagan Min yet?

Wow. Nah just had a couple of taunting phone calls, still rooting out his minions in the puckerbrush. 'Liberated' the first outpost (actually a stray elephant did the heavy lifting) and wandering towards a new bell tower. What's interesting about the scenery is that it strikes me as a mashup of realism and Indian miniature/Mughal manuscript painting (which I'm very into).

Yeah, the 1070 is a decent card. I have the slightly later Ti version in my current PC and it can handle most modern things with high detail without issue. 4k gaming could be a struggle, but it should handle pretty high detail fine without any issues.

its best to use mac os for video edit as its more stable then windows is now