Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: January 2012 (Archive)

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[citation][nom]Memnarchon[/nom]Core i7 950 in the same tier as Athlon II x4 640? oOThere must be a mistake here...[/citation]

The i7-950 is at the top of that tier whereas the Athlon II x4 640 is at the bottom. They're almost a full tier apart. Do you think that they should be more than that far apart?
 
We're also seeing more news about Intel's next-gen Haswell-based parts; leaked slides suggest this chip will surface at this year's Computex, in Taipei. It'll employ the same 22 nm manufacturing technology as the Ivy Bridge architecture, and is said to offer substantial graphics performance improvements, too.
Click to expand...
Yeah, old news. June 2 is believed to be launch date, though announcements will apparently start before.
 
That Phenom II article is about 3.5 years old. The Athlon II article is even older. Despite that, these CPUs still get recommendations.

Wake up, AMD!
 
[citation][nom]Is it morning yet[/nom]That Phenom II article is about 3.5 years old. The Athlon II article is even older. Despite that, these CPUs still get recommendations.Wake up, AMD![/citation]

They get recommendations because they're dirt cheap. They're dirt cheap because they're old AMD CPUs. It's not always easy to compete with prices of an old product that is pretty much on clearance sale 24/7. If you want to yell at AMD over these CPUs being worth buying over many newer models at their current prices, then you should yell at Intel too.
 
Seriously they couldn't recommend the FX 6300 for $3 more? Seriously? And the FX 4300 only gets "An Honorable Mention" when compared against a Dual-core i3. I'm really starting to question this site against certain party bias.
 
[citation][nom]Chief7285[/nom]Seriously they couldn't recommend the FX 6300 for $3 more? Seriously? And the FX 4300 only gets "An Honorable Mention" when compared against a Dual-core i3. I'm really starting to question this site against certain party bias.[/citation]

Newegg has the FX-6300 at $20 more expensive than the FX-4300. The smallest difference using all sites at pcpartpicker.com except for Microcenter's in-store pickup is ~$14. The next cheapest is still ~$17 more expensive than the FX-4300. That may not seem like much, but it's a lot more than $3.

Also, just what do you expect against i3? They use a lot less power for comparable performance (much better performance in games that don't scale well across four threads, granted they're replaced by quad threaded and up games or updated to that point more and more) at a similar price, so of course they got the recommendation.
 

They recently switched from recommending Pentiums to recommending Athlons and Phenoms, so I'm not really seeing the bias.
 
[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Newegg has the FX-6300 at $20 more expensive than the FX-4300. The smallest difference using all sites at pcpartpicker.com except for Microcenter's in-store pickup is ~$14. The next cheapest is still ~$17 more expensive than the FX-4300. That may not seem like much, but it's a lot more than $3.Also, just what do you expect against i3? They use a lot less power for comparable performance (much better performance in games that don't scale well across four threads, granted they're replaced by quad threaded and up games or updated to that point more and more) at a similar price, so of course they got the recommendation.[/citation]

Last time I checked the FX 4300 was $130 where I live and its price was dropped to $120 and here the FX 6300 is literally $13 more @$133.

Every other site I have been to and looked around for builds, people always recommend a FX 6300 at the $130 mark over the i3 every time. This is the only site I see that still uses the i3 as a good choice for a $130 CPU.

 
[citation][nom]Chief7285[/nom]Last time I checked the FX 4300 was $130 where I live and its price was dropped to $120 and here the FX 6300 is literally $13 more @$133.Every other site I have been to and looked around for builds, people always recommend a FX 6300 at the $130 mark over the i3 every time. This is the only site I see that still uses the i3 as a good choice for a $130 CPU.[/citation]

I'm not saying for sure that the FX-6300 doesn't deserve the recommendation more, just that it isn't what's been shown by Tom's tests and they are not biased.

Also, nitpicking, but the FX-6300 is literally $13.80 more expensive than the FX-4300 in the USA right now, so that's closer to $14 than $13.
 
[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]The i7-950 is at the top of that tier whereas the Athlon II x4 640 is at the bottom. They're almost a full tier apart. Do you think that they should be more than that far apart?[/citation]
Well according to benchmarks that they are all over the web, yes. Do you think they shouldn't?
 


Yeah I gotta say that the FX-83xx should be at the bottom of what is currently tier 1. Maybe the i7-39xx's should be bumped up to their own tier too...
 

I disagree on both accounts. I think the 8350 is a good value (especially considering overclock potential), but its performance is noticeably lower than the first tier's (and by noticeably, I mean noticeably in benchmarks). As for the i7 Extremes, they perform no better than a 3770k (worse, in most cases due to IB's better architecture).
 


For stuff that can take advantage of eight threads, the i7s take off, but gaming rarely uses that many. For most gaming situations, the i7-950 would only be around 20% faster according to what I've seen.
 
You know everywhere i've looked for the last month the fx 6300 is about 130-140... heck... at micro center you can get it for 115...

I've been building systems for a long time... with both intel and amd parts. And i'll have to say that the FX6300 is the best bang for the buck all purpose and or gaming CPU i've ever seen at any price point... in the last 20 years. That its not in this round up is stunning. A moderate overclock (and it will overclock and show linear performance gains straight into 5.5+ ghz territory, granted that's a pretty aggressive overclock) and it's indistinguishable from an i5-2500k... for 60% of the price.

there is a good reason every system builder who knows what he's talking about has been recommending the FX6300 in sub $800 builds since Christmas (right now, i've been putting together some monster gaming machines with fx6300 and those tahiti core 7870s... insane price/performance systems right there all for less then $800, frankly you can build them for less then 600 if you don't mind skipping SSDs and a few other tasty parts)... wonder when Toms will hop on that bandwagon.

Setting that minor gripe aside, this chart looks about right.

I'm curious for the reviews and performance numbers from the new fx 8300, that's about the only new gaming chip to get excited for prior to haswell's launch... well, that's not true... we have 2 whole generations of APUs to look forward to this year. Like many, I've been interested in the tech, just don't think it's there yet to use in anything other then a hyper low budget system, or laptops right now.
 
Can someone provide a comparison of builds please?

On one hand, we have an i5 running stock stuff on a simple NON-OC mobo, minimum PSU.

On the other hand, we have the FX 6300 TO BE OC'd to match the i5, so it needs a good COOLER o r HSF, an OC-able mobo, a higher wattage PSU and possibly more case fans(?)

and then later on sum up a months gaming usage of both in electricity costs

both GPUs being equal.

How would that cost comparison be like?

Would it still make practical sense to go FX 6300 - OC route?
 
[citation][nom]idecris[/nom]Can someone provide a comparison of builds please?On one hand, we have an i5 running stock stuff on a simple NON-OC mobo, minimum PSU.On the other hand, we have the FX 6300 TO BE OC'd to match the i5, so it needs a good COOLER o r HSF, an OC-able mobo, a higher wattage PSU and possibly more case fans(?)and then later on sum up a months gaming usage of both in electricity costsboth GPUs being equal.How would that cost comparison be like?Would it still make practical sense to go FX 6300 - OC route?[/citation]

What do you think of these:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/EPSd

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/EPVP

Going just off the CPU, I'd bet on it at being around 40W more power-hungry in gaming at stock with a somewhat higher number in moderate overclocking up to a much higher number more like 70-100W higher, maybe more, if you really try to push for everything, but I don't make an absolute guarantee.
 


20% is a lot in my opinion. And 20+% is the minimum of the 3 last games that I read CPU benchies and thats from i7 920. Expect a few fps more from i7 950:
Call of Duty: Black Ops II 81fps-102fps= i7 920 is 25,92% faster
Far Cry 3 47fps-60fps= i7 920 is 27,65% faster
Hitman: Absolution 29fps-53fps= i7 920 is 82,75% faster.
And these are numbers from i7 920 which is clocked 400mhz lower than i7 950.

Seriously, do you see that they are at the same tier? I don't.
 


Problem is that it's around 20% in most games. I did the math and looked at numerous reviews with dozens of gaming situations altogether today just to be sure. If we only judged by a few games such as Starcraft, then few if any non-LGA 1155 CPUs could touch even the top i3 and top Pentium LGA 1155 models. I could understand putting them a little farther away from each other since games that favor the i7 are getting more common, but I wouldn't put them more than another tier apart.

Also, around 20% difference seems fairly normal considering how far away they are from each other in their tier. They might as well be in different tiers with how far they are from each other within their tier on the chart. Given that the move in the industry is to take them further apart over time, I could understand bringing the i7-900 series up to the next tier, but not far into it.
 
[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]What do you think of these:http://pcpartpicker.com/p/EPSdhttp://pcpartpicker.com/p/EPVPGoing just off the CPU, I'd bet on it at being around 40W more power-hungry in gaming at stock with a somewhat higher number in moderate overclocking up to a much higher number more like 70-100W higher, maybe more, if you really try to push for everything, but I don't make an absolute guarantee.[/citation]

the problem is you don't build systems like this.

If i just saved $100-$150 going with an FX6300 and a 970 chipset board over the comparable i5+lga1155 board, i'm going to spend the savings on a better GPU. So they won't have the same parts. In your comparison, all things being equal, with the same "other" parts it makes no sense to go with anything but an i5. I mean you just spent $100 more for a system that will run faster in every situation.

But as i said, people don't build computers like this. This is a flawed comparison. People generally have a budget in mind and build the best system they can within that budget. So if I have a budget of $700 for my system and i can build an i5-3570k+HD 7770 system within it... or a FX 6300+HD7870, you would build the AMD system. Because whatever advantages the intel has in CPU power are wiped out AND MORE by the gpu differences. To the average user, the FX6300 would game MUCH better, much smoother and basically be the more impressive system in real life. The benchmark gaming tests would show a huge disparity between systems and their fps... with the FX system trouncing the i5...

This is why you build a system with an FX6300 over an i5. Not because the FX6300 is a better CPU... it simply isn't. But because the performance difference is so negligable to the real world user, that you can take the $$ saved and throw it at a superior GPU and walk away with a better system overall, one which you can TELL is a superior system.

Once budget stops being a concern, taking the AMD chip makes no sense... once budget gets high enough (around 1k) it stops making sense to go AMD. At about 1k, the extras you can stuff in the AMD system to make it play and work faster then the intel system (GPU/SSD) become easy to stuff into the intel system as well, so those advantages vanish, and going with anything other then intel makes less and less sense, unless you have some very unique system uses that play into some of AMD's small advantages.
 
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