AMD FX 4350 or 6300 for Gaming?

[Yuriman]

I don't think there's a wrong choice between the two; it's more a matter of what you value. FX has potential overclocking, better productivity performance. i3 draws less power, runs quieter and cooler, has upgrade potential. Both trade blows in games.

 

[john5220]

What about the possibility of a G3258 now and a i7 later down the years?

But do you think an i7 will get cheaper in years to come when games start really using 8 cores in DX 12?

 

[Yuriman]

i7 quads have been around the same price for a long time. The hex cores have come down a bit though.

You could grab a G3258 now, but an i3 will provide an all around better experience, I think. You might not even feel compelled to upgrade for a while.

 

[john5220]

^ I believe you are right. I think I will take the plunge and go with the i3 4150, the real popular games with online always seem to want intel

I am hyped for DayZ, currently unplayable on AMD

who knows IF the quad core i7 will ever drop anyways.

 

[escrow4]

There is plenty of reasons under the $150 price point. It is a much better investment to buy a quad or or better AMD versus the various dual core Intels. Obviously, once you are at the i5 price point -- Intel is the way to go. But if you can't afford an i5, I'd rather run a FX-6300 / 8320e for gaming.

Then up the budget. You don't build a gaming box every day. Cheap out and get an ancient platform with an ancient CPU. If you are wanting to save go H81 and an i5 4590 with 8GB RAM. An i3 is an odd halfway house. For an office box sure, for anything else I'd pass.

 

[john5220]

Then up the budget. You don't build a gaming box every day. Cheap out and get an ancient platform with an ancient CPU. If you are wanting to save go H81 and an i5 4590 with 8GB RAM. An i3 is an odd halfway house. For an office box sure, for anything else I'd pass.

well yeah but what you feel will happen in the future? what if DX 12 starts taking huge advantage of 8 cores? and the FX 8 cores literally becomes faster than the 4590?

If I was going i5 would be a 3.1 GHZ i5 4440 that intel claims to turbo to 3.3 ghz
I can get it locally at a brick store for $240 which is about the price with customs vat in this country if I ordered it online save $15

I feel thats slower than a FX 8 core in Witcher 3 etc

 

[AtenRa]

Then up the budget. You don't build a gaming box every day. Cheap out and get an ancient platform with an ancient CPU. If you are wanting to save go H81 and an i5 4590 with 8GB RAM. An i3 is an odd halfway house. For an office box sure, for anything else I'd pass.

Even the entry AMD 970 Chipset is better than the H81 and you are talking about ancient platforms ???

 

[escrow4]

well yeah but what you feel will happen in the future? what if DX 12 starts taking huge advantage of 8 cores? and the FX 8 cores literally becomes faster than the 4590?

If I was going i5 would be a 3.1 GHZ i5 4440 that intel claims to turbo to 3.3 ghz
I can get it locally at a brick store for $240 which is about the price with customs vat in this country if I ordered it online save $15

I feel thats slower than a FX 8 core in Witcher 3 etc

A) Its not 8 cores, its 8 modules so in effect a quad core - some resources are shared.

B) That old argument that 8 cores will catch up has been around for years. Intel is now on Skylake, AMD is way behind. It ain't happening. By the time DX 12 is heavily in use Intel will be on 10nm and beyond. AMD right now is 32nm, way way behind. Same with the chipset. Its ancient.

C) A 4460 is the worst of the i5s due to it being locked and clocked slow. A 4590 is substantially better clocked and I wouldn't drop down. Both are Haswell refresh.

 

[escrow4]

Even the entry AMD 970 Chipset is better than the H81 and you are talking about ancient platforms ???

A 970 is a rebadged and tweaked 770. Old chipset, old interconnect. VRMs that will likely blow with a cheapo model. And for a gaming box, how many SATA ports do you need? H81 still has onboard USB 3 unless you get an ultra cheap board and you don't need to worry about overclocking or blowing the VRMs out. Mobo performance is irrelevant. A 4590 is plug and play. Way less heat and power usage too.

 

[john5220]

^I dunno how I feel about that 8320E and its low clock

I see the FX 6300 is noticeably more powerful than an i3 in certain games. Sadly this graph does not compare the FX 6300 to a i3 4150 its the old ivy bridge i3 so its not a fair comparison. The FX 6300 is miles ahead of it.

Also you talk about AMD being ancient yeah I know this, and its a dead socket, but how does this new features in an intel CPU and socket affect me? Is it at the end of the day all about power consumed, performance in what you use? I don't care about USB 3.0
But I do have a new 256 GB Crucial SSD that I would like a sata that takes advantage of its power.

 

[john5220]

btw is a Athlon 760K closer to a FX 4300 or 4100 due to its non existent L3 cache? when it comes to gaming? also in that graph look how the FX 6300 at stock gives the i5 K edition a run for its money its so close to performance. WTF thats incredible considering the FX 6300 is $100 while the i5 is $230, look at that HUGE difference in cost.

Not to mention BF4 isn't even a proper DX 12 multi threaded game its still limited to DX 11 with poor efficiency on multi cores yet look how it comes near dead close to the 4670K

Infact if you notice its more powerful than a sandy bridge 2500K

 

[Shakabutt]

Switch to intel, i switched some months ago to my first intel processor from a 6100 and never looked back. It gave wings to my GPU, and honestly took a burden off my shoulder from the platform, i always felt insecure with my system, now these days theres barely a game that gives me troubles, and some games that slogged on my AM3 are like new now.

I always owned AMD, even gpu's but i gotta admit, the grass is greener on the other side, atleast on the CPU side lol

 

[FearfulSPARTAN]

Then up the budget. You don't build a gaming box every day. Cheap out and get an ancient platform with an ancient CPU. If you are wanting to save go H81 and an i5 4590 with 8GB RAM. An i3 is an odd halfway house. For an office box sure, for anything else I'd pass.

Not everyone has the luxury to simply up the budget, if you have a stable income and not too many expenses then sure save for it but if you dont than an i3 is perfectly fine and hold up surprisingly well.

 

[john5220]

Alright guys from this review

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8962/the-directx-12-performance-preview-amd-nvidia-star-swarm/4

apparently quad cores have an obscene increase in power. hmmm Even dual cores not sure whats going on here.

hard choice FX 6300 vs i3 4150 hmmmmmmm both close price, both perform well with the intel favoring DayZ which is a huge plus.

I think better to chance the intel as I intend to play Street Fighter 5 and Killer Instince both which I feel as though would perform better on intel. Maybe with multi core use on the horizon with DX 12, intel will be forced to drop prices on i7

hard decision yo.

 

[StrangerGuy]

A 970 is a rebadged and tweaked 770. Old chipset, old interconnect. VRMs that will likely blow with a cheapo model. And for a gaming box, how many SATA ports do you need? H81 still has onboard USB 3 unless you get an ultra cheap board and you don't need to worry about overclocking or blowing the VRMs out. Mobo performance is irrelevant. A 4590 is plug and play. Way less heat and power usage too.

I will take <$120 i3 4160 and H81 mobo with USB3 front header for sure over any AMD at the price range for gaming, for the very same reasons. Haswell i3s are significantly better than the SB/IB versions to the point I would call them quite underrated.

 

[AtenRa]

I would take the ASRock 970M Pro3 (currently at $50 AR at Newegg) with a FX8320E @ 4-4.4GHz over any H81 + Core i3 Haswell.

ASRock 970M Pro3
6x SATA 6Gb/s with RAID support
4x Memory slots DDR-3 2400MHz up to 64GB
Support up to 140W TDP CPUs
2x PCIe 16x slots Gen 2.0 with CrossFire support
USB3 Front Header slot

vs

H81
2x SATA 6Gb/s
2x Memory slots DDR-3 1600MHz up to 16GB
1x PCIe 16x Gen 2.0 slot
USB3 Front Header slot (only from $50 price and up models)

With latest games supporting more than 4 threads and DX-12 games on the horizon, going for the Core i3 now is a no no unless you really want to play a game like Dayz only.

 

[Abwx]

With latest games supporting more than 4 threads and DX-12 games on the horizon, going for the Core i3 now is a no no unless you really want to play a game like Dayz only.

The same were advising to buy Pentium G3258s instead of Athlon 860Ks, or even FXs, not so long ago....

 

[Essence_of_War]

and DX-12 games on the horizon, going for the Core i3 now is a no no

So we've transitioned to "DX12 on the horizon!" from "the consoles have 8 threads!"?

 

[Chriskey2015]

FX 4350 for me

 

[TeknoBug]

Why is the i3 4150 being mentioned? Why not go with 4160 or 4170? (3.7 or 3.8GHz out of the box and among the top fastest IPC and has the benefits of a quad core).

And like I said, don't even think about the FX 4350, even at 4.7GHz it's still one of the slower CPU's- the FX 6300 I'd say is the bare minium even 4 phase motherboards usually can handle. And the G3258, it's a toss up, I personally wouldn't get one.

 

[Madpacket]

People slam the G3258 but it's the cheapest way to get into a decent gaming PC. Decent as in at 4+ GHz on the stock cooler it'll handle most of today's games. Once you outgrow it in a few years or if games really start taking advantage of multiple cores you can always save up and sell the G3258 and then pick up a 4690K or i7 Haswell down the road.

If on a real budget that's where I would be aiming. Spend the extra money a better videocard or larger SSD.

 

[richierich1212]

Nevermind.

 

[stateofmind]

Get the FX8310 or FX8320E, if you cant then settle for the FX6300 but try OC to 4GHz at least.

Games do use more than 4 threads today and DX-12 games will use even more than 8.

barely use, no?
Benchmarks with a good GPU show that even an I3-4130 is a very good option in most games for most graphics settings and resolutions, to a point of it being hard to justify an I7. An I5 seems like the better option

About DX12/Vulkan - we'll have to wait and see how well and how fast it goes

 

[Yuriman]

I would take the ASRock 970M Pro3 (currently at $50 AR at Newegg) with a FX8320E @ 4-4.4GHz over any H81 + Core i3 Haswell.

ASRock 970M Pro3
6x SATA 6Gb/s with RAID support
4x Memory slots DDR-3 2400MHz up to 64GB
Support up to 140W TDP CPUs
2x PCIe 16x slots Gen 2.0 with CrossFire support
USB3 Front Header slot

vs

H81
2x SATA 6Gb/s
2x Memory slots DDR-3 1600MHz up to 16GB
1x PCIe 16x Gen 2.0 slot
USB3 Front Header slot (only from $50 price and up models)

With latest games supporting more than 4 threads and DX-12 games on the horizon, going for the Core i3 now is a no no unless you really want to play a game like Dayz only.

i3 supports 4 threads, and OP says he will not likely overclock. Yes, I might give a nod to the 8320E if OP planned to invest a little more in a nicer motherboard, aftermarket cooler, slightly bigger power supply, and crank it up to 4.4, but stock vs stock? It's a tossup.

@OP, you'll find benches supporting both sides. The reason it's a hard decision is that they're they're roughly equal but different.

~

I went onto gameGPU and opened up each genre in a tab, and picked the top / most recent review for each section. Here are their CPU charts:

In 4/5 games, the i3 beats the FX-6300, though it's very close in one test.

In 1 game the i3 beats the 8150, roughly ties in 3/5 games, and loses in one game.

In 3/5 games, the FX-8150 beats the FX-6300, though they're often close.

In 4/5 games, the i3 loses to an FX-8350.


^ This is a small sample, but they're all recent releases. What this suggests to me is that these games are mostly well threaded already, since the older, slower 8150 is beating or matching the FX-6300. Even so, the i3 is approximately in between an FX-6300 and an FX-8350. I would expect it to be a tossup when compared with an FX-8320E, which comes out below an 8150 in some tests, and above it in others.

So again, no wrong choice here.

 

[john5220]

wow wolfenstein the FX 6300 is significantly faster than the i3 4330 OMG

Thank you so much Yuri Man this does help me.