Amd FX-6300 vs Intel i5 3550

[alex92692]

Hi,

I got a AMD x3 450 with the unlocked core active.
My question is witch is the best upgrade to do for the price:

Intel i5 3550 220$ or FX-6300 135$

I know that the I5 is better but for the price does the 6300 AMD would be a better choice?
In most benchmark the 6300 is a good choice.

My spec:
Amd x3 450 3,2 Ghz
8 Gb DDR3
Asus 6850
Thermaltake 500watts

 

[nekulturny]

Hey mate, no offence intended but I really think you don't quite know what you`re talking about when it comes to 6850. On my current system, which by your standards, is a "dinosaur" : Gigabyte H55M-UD2H, Core i3 530 + Titan Fenrir cooler (OC @4.2 Ghz stable 24/7), a Sapphire Vapor-X 5850 (OC @ 850 core / 1200 mem) and 8 Gb Corsair XMS3 @2000mhz CL9, I am able to max out (8x msaa and 16x anisotropic) ANY game that is out on the market now.
Battlefield 3 runs at ~40 fps, Assassins Creed3 60-80 fps, Far Cry 50+ fps.
This was by no means a mocking post, just a reminder that you are way off track with your estimation of the earlier generations of video cards` performance.
Bear in mind that the 7850 is only about 10-15% faster than the 6850, which in turn is marginally better than is precursor, the 5850. Also, the 5970 mops the floor with the brand new 7870.
So overall, the performance gain from one generation to another of GPU`s isn`t anywhere near as big as you imagine it.

L.E. Seeing the current products available, I would say that, in almost every system configured by users, the CPU acts as a bottleneck for the GPU. The current GPUs are way too powerful for the CPUs available. For instance, there isn`t a single cpu out there that won`t bottleneck a gtx 690. Not even the i7-3770k can keep up with that gpu.

All in all, my advice for the OP is go for the i5, as your gpu can hold any current games or any games that will come out in the next year or 2. (maybe in like 2-3 years you will have to lower your details a bit but that is a minor inconvenience )

No I understand what you're saying. The 6850 still has some decent milage left on it.. But when you're talking about building a new system today and you have the budget to allow it, theres no reason to choose the 6850 over the 7850. Nor is there a reason to buy a 5970 over a 7870 today. Why? Well, not only may you run into problems finding one available, because it is two generations old, but performance improvement is not the only thing that improves in newer generations. There is the concern (although admittedly, I don't care that much since electricity is covered in my rent utilities), but power consumption. As you can see from the link majin put up, the 5970 consumes nearly twice the power as a 7870, even if power cost is not a concern to me, I'm still going to pick the newer card.

And yes, I understand new generations offer marginal improvements over previous ones.

As far as the point I made you intially responded to.. Battlefield 3 specifically in ultra.. You can see here, why the 6850 would not be my first choice if I wanted to max that particular game:
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/battlefield_3_vga_and_cpu_performance_benchmark_test,8.html