Cheap i3 or FX?

[frozentundra123456]

Good pt.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/328387-28-intel-power-consumption

dude crunched math, found like 11 bucks difference in a year, assuming full load for 40 hrs/wk (which is a lot of gaming)

Still, another factor you have to account for is like the bigger and more expensive PSU you're going to have to shell out for to account for the increased power draw

That sounds about right, if you dont overclock. I you overclock the 6300 then the power draw becomes a bigger factor, although difficult to determine because it is hard to know the power draw overclocked. Even then though over 3 years of use, that would be 33.00, more than negating the price advantage vs i3 and getting you half way to a low end i5.

 

[galego]

Eh, I recall in another thread on intel vs AMD someone stated that when you take power consumption into account, AMD loses pretty badly.

That is an over-exaggeration. Typical cost of about pennies a month.

 

[popobearr]

That is an over-exaggeration. Typical cost of about pennies a month.

Agreed. The savings on the FX will be on par or equal to intels in total energy cost.

 

[Homeles]

That is an over-exaggeration. Typical cost of about pennies a month.

Depends highly on whether or not the processors are overclocked, how often they are running, what kind of power saving features are active, and workload. It can easily add up to being dollars a month.

Assuming the OP isn't doing anything out of the ordinary, this is a non-issue, though.

 

[Headfoot]

Exxxx was a good deal for gamers. Most games simply did not use more than 2 or even 1 core.. heck even today it's the rare game that can saturate more than 2 cores (running 3 cores at 30% and 1 core at 95% doesn't count). With the money you saved by going Exxxx instead of Qxxxx, you had more left in the bank for your next upgrade, compared to the guy who got a Qxxxx.

Running 3 cores at 30% and 1 core at 95% absolutely does count. That clearly means a number of tasks have been spun off from the main thread. Since your core 0 is running at 95% that means it is the bottleneck (provided sufficent GPU power, of course). That means every task which is removed from the bottlenecking core 0 main thread directly impacts the FPS by allowing a different processing unit which is not bottlenecked to use its unused spare cycles in lieu of core 0's highly demanded cycles. Multi-threading doesn't need to be symmetrical to be useful.

A really simple multi-threading technique is to pre-cache or pre-load some data for work by the main thread through a secondary helper thread. It's not a huge speed up, but it helps, especially where the main thread spends time waiting on slow data where if it were pre-loaded/formatted to a faster memory pool it could roll through much more quickly

 

[Headfoot]

OP:
My opinion is that you try to convince him to allow you to overclock. You could get the FX 6300 (since it's unlocked) and overclock away the IPC difference between the two processors in WoW and still have more than dual-core for the future.

You'll get the best of both worlds this way

 

[Sleepingforest]

OP:
My opinion is that you try to convince him to allow you to overclock. You could get the FX 6300 (since it's unlocked) and overclock away the IPC difference between the two processors in WoW and still have more than dual-core for the future.

You'll get the best of both worlds this way

The cheapest 9XX motherboard is $78, and a 9XX motherboard is necessary for overclocking since the 8XX series have different electrical characteristics (and aren't true AM3+ since they only support the newer FX chips due to modified BIOSes). A cheap cooler to allow you to overclock away the IPC difference is $30. Including the $120 FX-6300, that's $228.

The cheapest B75 motherboard is $60, and a Pentium G2020 (which still outperforms the FX) is $65. That's $125. The difference between the FX and the Pentium could be spend on getting a 7870XT instead of a GTX 650 ti. Alternatively, a Phenom II X4 is $100, and an 880G motherboard is $50--$150 total. That money could get at least a 7870.

There's a much bigger performance delta between a 7870XT and a 650ti than an FX and a Pentium in games.

 

[CRaul87]

at the moment I would recommend buying an i5 3350P,
it's more expensive than the 6300, but it performs better for gaming, uses less power (it's less likely to need additional cooling or a better motherboard).
3350P + b75 board would be good.

between i3 for $130 or 6300 for $120 I think the 6300 is probably a better choice, as long as you don't use more money for MB+cooling.

I kinda beat myself up for not buying a i5 3350P instead of my 3570k cuz that way the cpu would have been cheaper, would have been able to buy a cheaper MB and with the saved cash get a decent GPU instead of my HD5670 🙁

 

[TerryMathews]

The cheapest 9XX motherboard is $78, and a 9XX motherboard is necessary for overclocking since the 8XX series have different electrical characteristics (and aren't true AM3+ since they only support the newer FX chips due to modified BIOSes). A cheap cooler to allow you to overclock away the IPC difference is $30. Including the $120 FX-6300, that's $228.

The cheapest B75 motherboard is $60, and a Pentium G2020 (which still outperforms the FX) is $65. That's $125. The difference between the FX and the Pentium could be spend on getting a 7870XT instead of a GTX 650 ti. Alternatively, a Phenom II X4 is $100, and an 880G motherboard is $50--$150 total. That money could get at least a 7870.

There's a much bigger performance delta between a 7870XT and a 650ti than an FX and a Pentium in games.

This is false. I overclocked to 4.4 GHz on an Msi 760g-P34 that I paid $45 for.

 

[Sleepingforest]

Then the difference in CPU cost is still enough to get a 7850 or GTX 660, which is still a larger performance delta.

 

[Headfoot]

OP:
My opinion is that you try to convince him to allow you to overclock. You could get the FX 6300 (since it's unlocked) and overclock away the IPC difference between the two processors in WoW and still have more than dual-core for the future.

You'll get the best of both worlds this way

The cheapest 9XX motherboard is $78, and a 9XX motherboard is necessary for overclocking since the 8XX series have different electrical characteristics (and aren't true AM3+ since they only support the newer FX chips due to modified BIOSes). A cheap cooler to allow you to overclock away the IPC difference is $30. Including the $120 FX-6300, that's $228.

The cheapest B75 motherboard is $60, and a Pentium G2020 (which still outperforms the FX) is $65. That's $125. The difference between the FX and the Pentium could be spend on getting a 7870XT instead of a GTX 650 ti. Alternatively, a Phenom II X4 is $100, and an 880G motherboard is $50--$150 total. That money could get at least a 7870.

There's a much bigger performance delta between a 7870XT and a 650ti than an FX and a Pentium in games.

He's also mentioned ME3 (Unreal engine), Witcher 2.
Witcher 2 example: http://www.techspot.com/review/405-the-witcher-2-performance/page8.html.

Direct scaling from clockspeed (meaning he should get an unlocked processor if he can within his budget, and overclock) and okay scaling from 2 to 4 cores (meaning he should get more that 2 threads if he can in his budget).

Mass Effect 3 also shows scaling over more than 2 cores, and should be indicative of other Unreal Engine 3 games. http://www.techspot.com/review/507-mass-effect-3-performance-test/page5.html.

I think it's pretty clear at stock speeds given the spread of games and the fact that WoW is his main game at the moment that you could make a good argument for either the Fx or the Pentium.

There are only 2 reasons people keep parts like this at stock speeds: 1) it's a work machine and the risk of a spontaneous failure outweighs the increase in speed, 2) ignorance of how easy and low-risk it is these days.

Overclocked the Fx6300 will be acceptable for WoW (might be slightly slower than the pentium, but on the order of 0-10% after overclocking, so not significantly). No one can reasonably argue that a dual core will age better than 3 module CMT.

If the OP plays ever plays another game besides WoW primarily (and given a 2-4 year average time span on a desktop), it's very likely he will at least for some portion of time, the extra cores will almost certainly help.

Basically, just overclock. It's not hard. It's not going to ruin the motherboard or CPU. Just overclock to whatever degree you can on the stock cooler and call it a day. It doesn't need to be a spectacular overclock, just whatever you can get out of stock volts. I stand by my statement. It will be with ~$20 between the Fx6300 and i3 3225 (stock cooler, 760g mobo), and within 10% performance-wise per core (after overclock) BUT you will get the benefit of having extra cores should you ever need them. Don't close off his options in the future for a 10% gain today.

OP: whatever you do, ask your friend how much he cares about noise. Either stock fan will be fairly loud. Even a cheap cooler like this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835233082 ($20 with deal at time of post, which is an incredible deal) will both perform better and more quietly

If he absolutely refuses to overclock, just get whatever. He clearly doesn't care that much about performance if he won't overclock so the whole discussion is moot anyways. Also to be honest, the difference in the grand scheme of things isn't that big, and I'm sure he'll be pretty happy with either processor

 

[Sleepingforest]

My retort to that: he can still go with the Phenom II at $100. In Bioshock Infinite, a more modern UE3 game, it performs within 2 frames of the 8350. The 7850, on the other hand, gets an extra 10 frames (25%) over the 650ti.

You're losing track of where the bigger performance gain is. Sure, the FX-6300 and it's AM3+ platform has better longevity (I will not deny that). But the money could be put into a better place.

 

[Cerb]

There are only 2 reasons people keep parts like this at stock speeds: 1) it's a work machine and the risk of a spontaneous failure outweighs the increase in speed, 2) ignorance of how easy and low-risk it is these days.

1) No, it's risk of silent corruption. No apparent failure, but a bit here or there different from what the stock machine would provide. With floating point, this could be nearly impossible to detect, without running the same data through multiple computers. I'm pretty sure IDC actually found this going on, with one of his older rigs.

2) With a Pentium or i3, it's not easy at all. With others, you still might need to raise voltage, and/or apply a beefier cooler. Then watch temps. Then, perform stress testing. If you get disk or memory errors, or BSODs, try to figure out if you went too high in Hz settings, need to adjust RAM timings, need to raise voltage somewhere, etc. etc..

In the last gaming build I made, the guy isn't so tech savvy, and wondered about doing it. I explained it as best I could, and he decided he'd rather have a GPU speed bump, instead (non-K CPU and non-Z mobo savings went straight to the video card). I think you're very out of touch with users who aren't the kind to browse tech forums and such 🙂.

Sure, it's far easier than back when we had to adjust things by DIP switches, and the CPUs had thermal protection, and no MCA, even. But, it's not without its effort, costs, and risks. If it's not something you've been doing, it can present a large learning curve, and time sink. If it's something you have done before, or want to do for the extra performance, then either way, it will be less of a hassle, and could possibly even be one of the reasons for the upgrade (to have a new rig to tinker with!).

 

[blastingcap]

Running 3 cores at 30% and 1 core at 95% absolutely does count. That clearly means a number of tasks have been spun off from the main thread. Since your core 0 is running at 95% that means it is the bottleneck (provided sufficent GPU power, of course). That means every task which is removed from the bottlenecking core 0 main thread directly impacts the FPS by allowing a different processing unit which is not bottlenecked to use its unused spare cycles in lieu of core 0's highly demanded cycles. Multi-threading doesn't need to be symmetrical to be useful.

A really simple multi-threading technique is to pre-cache or pre-load some data for work by the main thread through a secondary helper thread. It's not a huge speed up, but it helps, especially where the main thread spends time waiting on slow data where if it were pre-loaded/formatted to a faster memory pool it could roll through much more quickly

We're comparing 4 cores to 2 cores, not 4 cores to 1 core. Dual cores had a great run and saving money with a Exxx vs a Qxxx was the right move for most games. That money saved could then be used on something else like RAM, HDD/SSD, or simply saved for future builds.

 

[Headfoot]

1) No, it's risk of silent corruption. No apparent failure, but a bit here or there different from what the stock machine would provide. With floating point, this could be nearly impossible to detect, without running the same data through multiple computers. I'm pretty sure IDC actually found this going on, with one of his older rigs.

2) With a Pentium or i3, it's not easy at all. With others, you still might need to raise voltage, and/or apply a beefier cooler. Then watch temps. Then, perform stress testing. If you get disk or memory errors, or BSODs, try to figure out if you went too high in Hz settings, need to adjust RAM timings, need to raise voltage somewhere, etc. etc..

In the last gaming build I made, the guy isn't so tech savvy, and wondered about doing it. I explained it as best I could, and he decided he'd rather have a GPU speed bump, instead (non-K CPU and non-Z mobo savings went straight to the video card). I think you're very out of touch with users who aren't the kind to browse tech forums and such 🙂.

Sure, it's far easier than back when we had to adjust things by DIP switches, and the CPUs had thermal protection, and no MCA, even. But, it's not without its effort, costs, and risks. If it's not something you've been doing, it can present a large learning curve, and time sink. If it's something you have done before, or want to do for the extra performance, then either way, it will be less of a hassle, and could possibly even be one of the reasons for the upgrade (to have a new rig to tinker with!).

I don't mean he should get an i3 if he decides to overclock. That's why I did not suggest it, and instead repeatedly suggested the Fx6300. Of course the i3 isn't easy to overclock, not all processors are made equal. My entire point is he should pick the overclocking processor.

Silent corruption falls under the "work computer" reasoning I listed. A flipped bit doesn't make a difference in a gaming computer, but it could be very important on a work computer.

I'm not suggesting the buildee overclocks the computer, I'm suggesting OP (who is in a tech forum right now by virtue of posting) mildly overclocks the Fx6300 and leaves it be. I've mildly overclocked builds I've done for people. In fact, I built 2 Q6600 computers overclocked to 3.0 (so nothing crazy) in 2008, both of which are still running that original overclock from 5 years ago. Same with a buddy with an i5-750, another with a Phenom II x4 940, another with a e8400... I could go on. For whatever reason people in tech forums assume that an overclock must go as far as possible. I've found for a computer you don't monitor personally, it's much less troublesome to overclock mildly to basically whatever you can get on stock volts. Most the support I have to do on these builds is upgrading the OS as new ones come out

 

[Headfoot]

We're comparing 4 cores to 2 cores, not 4 cores to 1 core. Dual cores had a great run and saving money with a Exxx vs a Qxxx was the right move for most games. That money saved could then be used on something else like RAM, HDD/SSD, or simply saved for future builds.

I'm not comparing anything. I'm narrowly refuting the contention that asymmetric multi-threading isn't worth it