New "would you rather" question for the community

[wildside50]

Alright, I've already decided to stick with my i7-860 over the new FX chips. I've also decided a $100 FX 4100 with free motherboard is a better new platform for my daughter than a pentium G620 with $55 mobo.

So now it's a question of my friend and his Q6600 PC. I sold him a Dell Q6600 (2.4 Ghz) PC with 4 Gigs of RAM and an ATI 5770 in order to build a Battlefield 3 / League of Legends box (he's a mac guy otherwise). I sold him the PC for about $200.

I am offering to buy back the PC, sans the HDD, optical drives, case, and video card for $100 and build him an upgraded system.

My options are an AMD FX 4100 for free, FX 6100 for $40, or FX 8120 for $90. The 4100 and 6100 come with a free but cheap $50 mobo. The 8120 comes with a better $100 mobo.

My question is if the FX 4100 is even an upgrade for the hastle, given it's free, if the 6100 is worth the $40, and if the 8120 is worht $50 more. He MOSTLY games with those 2 games on it, though if his overall PC performance was better, that's good too.

If you want to see the exact Mobo's that come free with said chips, see them here --

http://www.microcenter.com/special [...] PROMO.html

Overclocking is a factor as his current Q6600 rig is not overclockable, but the FX's might be given the mobo options.

Thanks for your opinions/advice.

 

[Maximilian]

Go for the 8120, BF3 can use 8 threads which it provides and for LoL it wont matter which CPU you pick, i ran LoL on a dual core 1.2ghz celeron it was fine.

I dont think the 4100 is much of an upgrade from the Q6600 and the 6100 ehhh.. im not so sure about. Cant find any solid numbers on google and AT bench unfortunately dosent have those chips listed.

All the bulldozer chips overclock reasonably well but their power consumption goes through the roof when you do overclock these chips, keep that in mind.

 

[Soulkeeper]

since you say the Q6600 is not overclockable the FX 4100 should have no problem beating it

On the other hand, if the Q6600 was overclocking as 3.2GHz or higher the upgrade would likely be less/not noticeable. core2 quad were excellent chips

The black edition FX might be more fun, but i'd personally spend the most money/deciding on a quality motherboard. You/He'll have some good upgrade options later

 

[tulx]

I know an unlocked 960T at stock speeds can run BF3 on ultra (with a pair of 5870ies), so the 6100 should do the trick.

 

[Concillian]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/53?vs=434

My interpretation of this comparison is this:
The obviously single threaded benchmark is 40% faster on an 8150. Speed benefit is 3.6 vs. 2.4 = 50% faster. So, per clock a BD core is slower than the Q6600. So you need a speed of around 2.7 GHz to be about equal to a Q6600. 4100 and 6100 are both the same speed as the 8150, so these would also see significant single threaded benefit.

The multi-threaded benchmarks do not show that 8 cores are acting like 8 cores. If you look at the same Cinebench, but now multithreaded, then remove the 40% benefit you saw in the single threaded benchmark that the clockspeed is giving, then the 8150 is approx 1.5x faster than the 4 core 6600 at the same speed. So the 8 core BD is acting like a 6 core Q6600 at the same speed. This suggests the 4 core 4100 will act more like a "3 core" and the 6 core 6100 will act more like a "4.5 core" when compared with the Q6600.

So a 4100 would be an upgrade. Significant in single threaded and a much smaller upgrade in multithreaded apps. The 6100 will be a more meaningful upgrade in applications that are signficantly multithreaded. BF3 is decently multithreaded. It heavily weights 2 cores and gives a little lighter load to remaining cores. The 6100 seems to have significantly more benefit for only $40 more, but a 4100 should still be faster than the Q6600 in all cases.

The 8120 trades off clock speed, which is something I definitely would not do, unless you were planning on significant overclocking.

Bottom line is that a 4100 is usable, and should be a little faster than a Q6600, though a 6100 will be a more substantial upgrade in multi-threaded applications. OCing is gravy at this price point, and will add more distance between either of these and a Q6600.

 

[sm625]

Will that 5770 be going into the newly upgraded system?

 

[LoneNinja]

Battlefield 3 is one of the only games that use more than 4 cores, and the benefit of going from the FX 4100 to FX 8120 probably won't be noticed with the 5770.

Here is a good set of benchmarks for the 4100/6100/8120 since most sites didn't bench them. You'll see the 3 perform about identical in games and are well below most other processors.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-fx-8120-6100-4100_6.html#sect0

Here is the only BF3 online 64 player benchmarks I've seen. You can see the extra threads help the Phenom II X6 over the X4, and the FX 8150 does well, but this is with a 6990 so there isn't a severe graphics bottleneck.
http://www.sweclockers.com/artikel/14650-prestandaanalys-battlefield-3/5#pagehead

Personally I would just go the cheap route with the FX 4100, maybe the 6100, but I see no benefit getting the 8120 for gaming.

 

[Phynaz]

According to this, an i3 is faster than any FX cpu on BF3.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-3-graphics-performance,3063-13.html
Edit: Note the above is single player, not multi-player. Maybe more cores would help in a multi-player situation.

CPU performance per Guru3D
http://www.guru3d.com/article/battlefield-3-vga-and-cpu-performance-benchmark-test/3

Check out the video and gaming forums here also, as there are threads on BF3 performance.

How good of a friend is he? You are going to get what you pay for, do you want to sell / give a friend a $50 motherboard?

 

[bononos]

According to this, an i3 is faster than any FX cpu on BF3.
.........

The problem is that the BF3 testing according to the articles you linked is very cpu insensitive - so (based on the article)you could have also just as easily said that that the i3 is better than the 2600. Paraphrasing from the 2nd link "the numbers are ridiculously close".

 

[Rvenger]

According to this, an i3 is faster than any FX cpu on BF3.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-3-graphics-performance,3063-13.html
Edit: Note the above is single player, not multi-player. Maybe more cores would help in a multi-player situation.

CPU performance per Guru3D
http://www.guru3d.com/article/battlefield-3-vga-and-cpu-performance-benchmark-test/3

Check out the video and gaming forums here also, as there are threads on BF3 performance.

How good of a friend is he? You are going to get what you pay for, do you want to sell / give a friend a $50 motherboard?

Actually, I am probably going to get flamed for this but the FX6100 and up should perform better than any 4 core Sandybridge without hyperthreading.
BF3 multiplayer loves multithreaded performance.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2226338&page=3

 

[LoneNinja]

Actually, I am probably going to get flamed for this but the FX6100 and up should perform better than any 4 core Sandybridge without hyperthreading.
BF3 multiplayer loves multithreaded performance.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2226338&page=3

I wish we had more BF3 multiplayer benchmarks floating around the web, but the ones I already linked show a 2500k out performing both the Phenom II X6 and FX 8150. I can't back this up with evidence, but I believe the 6100 would fall between a Phenom II X4 and Phenom II X6 in BF3.

 

[jacktesterson]

I agree, if BF3 is primary target, the the FX 6xxx/8xxx series or 1035T-1100T would suit quite well.

BF3 loves moar corez

Its not like these CPU's wont have a similar life span than the 2500k when it comes to gaming.

 

[AtenRa]

Get the FX8120. The combo at MC has a very nice Mobo.

Just raise the multiplier to 18 and you have a nice FX8150 without even spending more for a better heat-sink

 

[Denithor]

Just swap in a motherboard that can overclock that Q6600.

/thread

 

[Phynaz]

Just swap in a motherboard that can overclock that Q6600.

/thread

Missed the part where he said Dell?

Is Dell using standard ATX mounting now?

 

[blckgrffn]

Just swap in a motherboard that can overclock that Q6600.

/thread

Tell you what. I'll sell the OP my CPU and Mobo and buy the 8120 bundle, even up. Heck, I'd throw in the ram.

I want DDR3, I want better idle power consumption, I want more threads and I want a more robust motherboard (USB3 and SATA3, etc.)

It would be very unwise, IMHO, to spend the money to get that Core 2 Quad to the same performance you can get walking into MC with $200 with will get you. Not to mention the time and trouble, etc.

A decent case can be had for ~$40 at MC and he should be able to pickup a decent power supply as well. Worse comes to worse, MC has builder series Corsairs for reasonable prices.

Talk him into the 16GB of ram for $60, if you can. Buy it cheap while you can. Plus, if a stick goes bad and you have to RMA you don't have to figure out how to make things work in the meantime. (typically you have to RMA the pair)

For $350 out the door at MC (+ the optical drive (sata?), HD and Video card he'll be keeping) he'll have a pretty nice darn rig.