Phenom II X3 710 vs AMD FX 4100-4300

[DrMrLordX]

Sometimes it is best to limit advice to the products the OP has mentioned. The 6300 and 8320e would both seem to fall within the board's power budget, but without knowing the model, we know nothing of BIOS support and other factors.

And naturally we know nothing of the OP's budget.

 

[soccerballtux]

the 8320e and similar low TDP 8-core CPUs basically never make use of the top frequency P-State. There's no rhyme or reason to AMD's turbo implementation it's just 'hey sometimes we run at 4.3ghz'. By that I mean if you monitor the core frequencies cores that don't have any threads or work on them will boost, and cores that do will throttle to 2.9ghz, and it's not like the threads are bouncing around quickly-- you can lock a thread to the core and AMD will still boost cores randomly. It doesn't even boost them for very long, maybe 5% duty cycle. On mine at least-- the rest of the time it keeps them at 3.7ghz. Tolerable-- but they could basically delete the 4.3ghz pstate as it puts the chip outside TDP too quickly being at 1.42v...

 

[cbn]

AMD AM3/AM3+ processor prices (going by ebay "buy it now" listings):

Phenom II x3 710 (2.6 Ghz), (United States seller) starting at $23 shipped.
FX-4100 (United States seller) starting at $45 shipped.
FX-4300, (United States seller) starting at $63 shipped.

(None of the above processors come with heatsink)

Phenom II x3 710 (2.6 Ghz) Passmark: 2496 CPU marks http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Phenom+II+X3+710&id=341

FX-4100 Passmark: 4045 CPU marks http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+FX-4100+Quad-Core

FX-4300 Passmark: 4653 CPU marks http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+FX-4300+Quad-Core&id=1814

 

[cbn]

(Without knowing more info on the rest of his set-up) my vote goes to Phenom II x 3 710.

It would also be nice if he can unlock to Phenom II x 4 910 (also a 95W processor).

Phenom II x 4 910 (2.6 Ghz) Passmark: 3329 CPU marks http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Phenom+II+X4+910

 

[B-Riz]

Point is that the pentium has a lot more overclocking headroom than the FX. I am not trying to argue for a pentium as a great gaming processor, but I hardly think it is fair to call it a "toy" compared to FX4300. The pentium will in fact beat it in a lot of games, especially when both are overclocked to the max. But, as someone else said, both are in fact really low end. Thus my recommendation to try to move up to 6300 or 8320e.

And a real proper 4.5+ OC on the G3258 needs a good Z97 board and boss HSF or CLC.

Don't try to sell me on a half baked H81 or whatever OC either.

Please stop defending a nostalgia toy; using a board you already have and snatching a CPU off eBay is so much easier than a platform change right now.