Intel Core i3-4340 Haswell vs. AMD FX6300

[Malvin]

If there is a thing AMD CPUs are ain't missing it's the ISA support. All the way from lowly dual core Trinity parts to 8C FX they all support almost all instructions (they lack AVX2 and a few other irrelevant ones for games). So nope, AMD CPUs do not lack anything in that respect. AMD is not cutting off the virtualization or AVX/AES and similar ISA support even on the lowest end parts.

Thank you for the clarification.

 

[Malvin]

What surprised me most about these tests (and I'd love to see them verified elsewhere too) is not how strong the i3 4340 is compared to the FX-6300, but how much the i3-4340 dominates the i3-3240 as well. Did anyone else notice that? It looks like those 2 extra ports and doubling of cache buffers allows Haswell to HT much, much more efficiently than Ivy Bridge in threaded situations. For a 6% boost in clock speeds, it appears you get a ~20% boost in framerates (Metro and BF4 see even higher boosts at +42 and +22%, respectively, at least according to this assembly of tests).

I post a replay to that comment asking the same thing (somehow the forum flagged it to be approved by the admin!).

I am more interested in the methodology in which those tests were conducted under.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Since I live in a small town, I do not have access to one of these stores. But for holidays, I'm at a place where there is indeed a Microcenter store, and those bundles do look promising (I am even tempted to consider A10's now). I wonder if I can put together a CPU/MB with the same price...

Now, something I cannot parse from your response is that the SSD might "hurt gaming performance". Why is that?

I am not a fan of amd's apus for gaming, ironically. They are very borderline for gaming on the igp alone, and their best feature , the igp, is not used if you get even a moderately powerful discrete card. I would advise sticking with the FX series or Intel if you are going to add a discrete card.

If you are going to be near a microcenter and can stretch your budget to get one of their i5 combos, I would suggest that, as you get a more well rounded processor that has both fast single core performance and good multi core performance as well. An fx will also do the job though, although overclocking would be helpful to alleviate their poorer single threaded performance at stock speeds.

 

[KingFatty]

Since I live in a small town, I do not have access to one of these stores. But for holidays, I'm at a place where there is indeed a Microcenter store, and those bundles do look promising (I am even tempted to consider A10's now). I wonder if I can put together a CPU/MB with the same price...

Now, something I cannot parse from your response is that the SSD might "hurt gaming performance". Why is that?

The way I read the hurt statement, is that the cost for the SSD would take money away from your budget where you'd be forced to spend less on the video card.

As an example, you'd spend maybe another $80 on the SSD, and then that would mean your video card would go from $200 to $120.

However, maybe look at this another way. You are trying to predict the future. and guess at the level of power your computer might need for some future software. That is typically a bad idea to try to predict that.

But considering your budget, I think your best tactic would be to maximize value all around, going for the biggest bang for your buck with each component.

Also, look inside yourself, and try to understand what you value in a gaming experience. Can you enjoy a game that is running below 60 frames per second? Can you enjoy a game where you've turned off fancy shadow effects?

What do you enjoy from a game? Is it the immersion into the interactive plot of the story telling? That aspect of gaming is not affected when you turn down effects, because the storytelling remains compelling independent of graphics.

Or do you value the beauty of the computer rendering the graphics and eye candy? How big of a resolution are you satisfied with?

If I were you, I would just keep in mind that you can get a great experience by targeting value parts. Also, take a look at various game performance with different CPUs. Will it matter to you, if the game appears the same to you visually, but in the back of your mind you will know that you've lost 10 frames per second, even though you can't see it? If one CPU can get 200 frames per second and the other can only get 100 frames per second, will you even notice if your display is limited to a maximum of 60 frames per second?

What is important to you? For me, money in my pocket is pretty awesome, and your budget suggests you are already compromising on gaming performance at that price point, so it makes sense to save a bit more money where you can.

 

[Arkaign]

Since I live in a small town, I do not have access to one of these stores. But for holidays, I'm at a place where there is indeed a Microcenter store, and those bundles do look promising (I am even tempted to consider A10's now). I wonder if I can put together a CPU/MB with the same price...

Now, something I cannot parse from your response is that the SSD might "hurt gaming performance". Why is that?

You will have access to a MC? That literally changes everything (in combination with the fact that you already have a Windows license to work with!). A prebuilt is no longer the only way to do it.

As for why an SSD might hurt gaming performance, of course it wouldn't. HOWEVER, if a significant portion of a limited budget is allocated to an SSD vs. the fundamentals necessary (8GB+i5+Decent GPU), one could argue that it would harm the gaming performance collaterally because you would be running lower horsepower on the major components to squeeze that in.

Happily, any of this stuff can be added in later, but I find it easier to add the SSD than anything else as a '6 months later' part, because it doesn't entail replacing any part, just adding a part (and imaging over or reinstalling windows of course). Say you start out with a dual core and lesser GPU and SSD. Then later you want more multitasking grunt, so you upgrade to a quad or quad+HT. Well, at that point you have to yank the i3, and deal with selling it, keeping it, who knows what. Ditto the GPU. Now I love having spares, but I work on this stuff 360 days a year

Anyhow, now that we know that

A- You have a Windows license
B- You have $600
C- You have MC access

I can build you out a pretty stout box for that. And because 600 is 600 and not 650, I will calculate with sales tax and without consideration of rebates, because I know that sometimes the budget is a hard limit, you don't have time to wait 6-12 weeks to get $ back that you didn't have to spend in the first place (IOW I hate rebates).

Onward :

From MC :

4670K + Gigabyte Z87 $260 ($281.45 after typical 8.25%, depending on your area)

Newegg :

Samsung 24X SATA DVDRW $15 Free Shipping
4GB DDR3 1600 $43 Free Shipping
80GB RevoDrive PCI-e SSD ($50 Refurb/free shipping, add $6 for 1YR replacement plan) = $56
Logisys Case w/480W PSU $43 shipped
Refurb 660 SC 2GB $160 Free Shipping

$598.45

Obviously you'd want to take care of some things as you got more cash together down the line :

(1)- That PSU is a temporary item at best. With Haswell at stock you'd be okay as long as it wasn't DOA, but with such a weak 12V+ rail and cheapness, best to get a legit 500W+ Antec/etc before too long.

(2)- 4GB of ram is pretty small, but adding a good 2x4GB 2133/2400 pack down the line would be doable if you scour deals as they come by.

(3)- The RevoDrive 80GB isn't the largest SSD, but they are pretty snappy (update to latest firmware before you use it, they were massively improved over time). That said, grabbing a 1TB 7200RPM drive down the line for cheap would give you room for non-Critical stuff, and you could keep just Windows + your most used stuff on the Revo.

And there ya go!

 

[Yuriman]

I am not a fan of amd's apus for gaming, ironically. They are very borderline for gaming on the igp alone, and their best feature , the igp, is not used if you get even a moderately powerful discrete card. I would advise sticking with the FX series or Intel if you are going to add a discrete card.

If you are going to be near a microcenter and can stretch your budget to get one of their i5 combos, I would suggest that, as you get a more well rounded processor that has both fast single core performance and good multi core performance as well. An fx will also do the job though, although overclocking would be helpful to alleviate their poorer single threaded performance at stock speeds.

On the flip side, AM3+ is an old socket that is rather lacking in feature parity.

Haswell i3 is a solid chip on a solid platform. FX6300 is a good choice if looked at in isolation but it's on an already dated platform. FM2 is a better platform (and will even be receiving future updates!) but only has dual module chips and devotes a lot of die space (and adds cost from) an iGPU that OP likely will not use with his budget.

EDIT: Arkaign's recommendation makes a lot of sacrifices to fit an i5 into your budget but it also makes a lot of sense in that the weak points are all items that can be expanded on or replaced without losing your windows installation. Dropping to an i3 will allow you to get a refurb 200+GB SSD right away and 8GB of RAM within the same budget. I don't think either is a bad choice.

 

[Arkaign]

That sums it up well indeed. In a vacuum with no future budget opportunity, i3 of FX6300 + 8GB + larger drive would be my suggestion. Neither of those give me a great feeling long term for various reasons though, so my personal suggestion is to get the fundamentals strong out of the gate (CPU/Mobo/GPU), then enhance things piecemeal over the next year. With another $50 here, $50 there (8GB ram on sale, 1TB HDD on sale, Good PSU on sale), spending $200ish over the next 3-12 months could really put some polish on it.

 

[AtenRa]

I would go for FM2+ (X78 or X88) + A10-7700K Kaveri. You will get higher Single Thread Performance than FX Vishera and close to FX6300 MultyThreading. Also you are getting PCI-e Gen 3.0, True Audio and lower Power consumption.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I would go for FM2+ (X78 or X88) + A10-7700K Kaveri. You will get higher Single Thread Performance than FX Vishera and close to FX6300 MultyThreading. Also you are getting PCI-e Gen 3.0, True Audio and lower Power consumption.

We dont know the single threaded performance of Kaveri yet, what the clocks will be, or how well it will overclock. If the op has a chance to get a one time microcenter deal, I would take that on an i5 or an FX rather than waiting for Kaveri.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I would go for FM2+ (X78 or X88) + A10-7700K Kaveri. You will get higher Single Thread Performance than FX Vishera and close to FX6300 MultyThreading. Also you are getting PCI-e Gen 3.0, True Audio and lower Power consumption.

FM2+ and discrete GFX doesnt make any sense. Then you simply choose the wastly superiour Intel platform instead.

 

[jacktesterson]

I would go for FM2+ (X78 or X88) + A10-7700K Kaveri. You will get higher Single Thread Performance than FX Vishera and close to FX6300 MultyThreading. Also you are getting PCI-e Gen 3.0, True Audio and lower Power consumption.

Makes no sense

If New, something like

i5-4570 + h81/B85 + 7850/7870/660/660 ti is best for this budget, IMO

Or 8320 + 970 + 7850/7870/660/660 ti


Could Also go used and probably get a 2500k + P67 and then something like a 7950/7970 or 670/680

 

[bononos]

...

Now, something I cannot parse from your response is that the SSD might "hurt gaming performance". Why is that?

Since you're on a tight budget, trying to add an ssd is too difficult without hurting the budget for other components.

 

[crashtech]

Since obviously the 4340 is socket compatible with i5 and i7 parts, I don't think an i3 is necessarily a bad way to get into a decent performing system. It's all part of the budget tradeoff and deciding what is most important for any particular build. For instance, a larger SSD could be chosen instead of an i5, I've built systems like this and had nothing but positive feedback. The new i3s can in a pinch even drive a higher-end video card fairly decently, and it is clear they will command decent resale, making future upgrading a relatively easy and inexpensive process.

 

[Malvin]

If you are going to be near a microcenter and can stretch your budget to get one of their i5 combos, I would suggest that, as you get a more well rounded processor that has both fast single core performance and good multi core performance as well. An fx will also do the job though, although overclocking would be helpful to alleviate their poorer single threaded performance at stock speeds.

If I were you, I would just keep in mind that you can get a great experience by targeting value parts. Also, take a look at various game performance with different CPUs. Will it matter to you, if the game appears the same to you visually, but in the back of your mind you will know that you've lost 10 frames per second, even though you can't see it? If one CPU can get 200 frames per second and the other can only get 100 frames per second, will you even notice if your display is limited to a maximum of 60 frames per second?

You will have access to a MC? That literally changes everything (in combination with the fact that you already have a Windows license to work with!). A prebuilt is no longer the only way to do it.

Appreciate everyone's insight and recommendations.

What do you guys think of Gigabyte GA-Z87-D3HP? Is it a reliable motherboard for Intel i5 and in general?

 

[Arkaign]

Appreciate everyone's insight and recommendations.

What do you guys think of Gigabyte GA-Z87-D3HP? Is it a reliable motherboard for Intel i5 and in general?

Yes, it's great. Because modern Intel CPUs have such extremely low power draw, and there's been a shift to using solid-state caps on every important area even on the lower-end 1155/1150 mobos, that will be just as reliable as anything else.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

Could Also go used and probably get a 2500k + P67 and then something like a 7950/7970 or 670/680

This. Just upgraded my son's box with:
1) used 2500k $130 shipped
2) new ECS black P67 $50.- after rebate free ship
3) two used EVGA GTX 570's $140.- shipped

We built it over the weekend and got good results. Very hard to beat for the $$$. Outscores my sig rig in Heaven and 3dmark by a fair margin. Power usage is the only drawback.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I'd take the FX 6300 over any i3. But I'd take 1150 over AM3+. So my suggestion is to look for a good deal on an i5.

 

[judywhite]

You can opt to have Intel i7 Core 950 cpu running at 4.2Ghz -6 GB RAM with - Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5 motherboard. How about -ATI RADEON 5970 dual video card guys? Have you tried it? They say it's profitable in dogecoins.​

 

[crashtech]

The 4340 enjoys a very large single-threaded advantage over the 6300, but the 6300 is significantly faster in fully loaded apps. I was going to post some numbers, but ultimately it all depends on the workload. What has sold me on the i3s for all-around performance is that the single-threaded and lightly threaded advantage is utilized much more often, whereas the advantage given by the six cores of the AMD CPU only shows during compute intensive apps and certain games, situations that don't seem to apply very often with most users.

And of course, there is always the ability to upgrade to i5 or i7.

 

[Malvin]

Let me write a little bit of update on this post and say, that I finally decided to purchase an Intel i5 (4670 for $165).

Thanks to those who pointed out to try a Microcenter store. They had a discount/coupon deal on that particular day that I just couldn't refuse. I kept asking them whether they are selling me an open box, but thankfully it was a factory sealed box. I still cannot believe I bought it at such low price.

 

[AtenRa]

Core i5 4670 at $165 is very nice