Are i3's really the best budget CPU

[Phyrexiancure]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2270271

Toward the bottom of the first post is a benchmark graph for cpu performance in the latest Battlefield 3 expansion. The results are rather surprising, it shows the Phenom's chocking for some reason and the last gen FX processors showing pretty impressive results. Even the I3, which is the most suggested budget processor is beat out by the lowly last gen FX 6100 that also beats all the other Phenom processors. Would these results suggest that for that the I3's really aren't that great for modern mulithreaded games. And since AMD offers the FX 6100 and 6300 in their price range people should suggest it more often as a competitive alternative. Maybe even the quad core FX 4300 since the FX 4100 comes close and can overclock.

 

[grumbledook]

In well threaded games the 3 modules will beat out 2 cores and 2 extra threads of i3. Keep in mind that the i3 and 6100 here are last gen, the ivy bridge i3 will perform a bit better and the 6300 will be quite a bit better. Depending on the games you play, you could make a case for either i3 or 6300 as the better budget cpu for gaming. In games that aren't well threaded the i3 will do better thanks to the much better ipc but it is closer now. I doubt games will stop getting more and more threaded tho so for "future proofing" the 6300 seem to make more sense to me. (of course you can just upgrade the i3 to an i5 or i7 later...)

 

[Phyrexiancure]

Best answer selected by Phyrexiancure.