Fx 4170 or i3 2120

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zayzo

zayzo

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Aug 4, 2012
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Hello, i am wondering on whether i should gte the fx 4170 or the i3 2120... i plan on mostly gaming and on a 600$ budget and these are about in the same price range.
 
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No, it isn't.

cinebench.jpg
 
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sometimes it feels like a nut, sometimes it don't!
😗
 
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XFX Double D FX-785A-CDFC Radeon HD 7850 2GB @ Newegg 270$

Rosewill Green Series RG630-S12 630W Continuous @ Newegg 65$

Mushkin Enhanced Ridgeback 8GB (2x4) 1600mhz cas 8 @ Newegg 50$ (or buy the higher rated g.skill same stats for 5$ more.)

AMD FX-4170 Zambezi 4.2GHz in combo deal with ASRock 970 EXTREME3 AM3+ AMD 970 @ Newegg 202$

Total (after shipping): 591.79$

I went with the XFX Double D because you'll regret it later on if you don't, as it really helps cool the card down. It is really worth the extra 20$. You can get the normal version for 250$.

Neweggs Rosewill makes pretty decent PSU's for the price. This one should be enough juice to power that video card and processor.

I picked the cross between budget ram and performance ram there. The 1600 speed, and the cas 8 times. A lot of people just get low latency 1333mhz ram and don't notice a difference. That is up to you if you want to save a couple bucks there. The key is to make sure that you have 8GB of ram.

In terms of gaming the FX-4170 might be the best that you can go in terms of AMD. This is because most games only use 2-3 cores. There are slowly starting to be more games coming out though that use more.

I didn't include hard drive, or case because that is the most user relative feature I find. I can get by with a cheap case, and add my own fans later. while others want a fancy expensive case. Hard drive prices are going down slightly finally to where you can get a 250GB HD for 65-70$, so add that to the price I guess.
Honestly I scrap Cases, Hard drives, and Optical drives from previous computers. This is up to you.
 
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So after hearing about how much more Intel costs I went ahead and drew up an Intel $600 build. I put the optical drive in there as a joke/to prove a point. Feel free to drop down to a normal one and up the GPU.

CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115077
Intel i3-2120 $125

CPU Cooler: No OCing so stock cooler is fine for now.

Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130614
MSI Z68A-G43 (B3) LGA 1155 Intel Z68 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 $83

Memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231544
G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory $44

Storage: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185
Almight Samsung F3 1TB. $90

Video Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102908
SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6850 $135
***Requires rebate. You can also sub in a 7770.***

Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147073
Rosewill R218 steel ATX. $25
***Case is a cop out. Trying to find something cheap that anyone can get
and not need to get from a store deal that you might not have. If you can
re use a case then by all means do so.***

Power Supply: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371033
Almight Antec 380W green. $42

Optical Drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136246
LG 10x BD-ROM DVD burner. $50

Total: $594 counting shipping and rebates.

I don't think Intel is so much more expensive then AMD. They have made great strides into the low end now. BTW, I do have a z68 board in there so upgrading to the 2500K and OCing is possible for later.
 
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Neweggs Rosewill makes pretty decent PSU's for the price.
Click to expand...

They also make giant steaming piles of crap. Before buying rosewill make sure you know which you are getting.

In terms of gaming the FX-4170 might be the best that you can go in terms of AMD.
Click to expand...

A better AMD option is an old stars CPU. The PhenomII x2, x3, or x4 chips I'd bet are faster then the 4170. Maybe not the x2's, but it'd be close.
 
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And that's whats good about the z68, P67, Z77, etc. Even if you have to get a G8xx or 2100/2120 now, you can upgrade to a 2500(k) later. Yes you might have to buy one second hand, but that CPU should be able to keep up with anything low end or midrange coming out soon. Gaming wise at least.
 
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That Intel build was only so cheap because you switched the 7850 out with a 6850. The 6850 is really starting to show its age, and actually does performance at par with, and sometimes less than the 7770. There are also times where it beats out the 7770.
You are doing nothing but bottlenecking that pc with a 6850. BTW most 6850 prices went back up to 150-160$ now. If you paid that much he would be better off with a 6870.
Nice find on the 44$ cas 8 1600mhz 8GB ram kit, which website is selling it?


On most websites the Phenom II 970+ are hard to find and marked up. You can get a Phenom II 965 which is 90% as fast as the 4170 but is 20$ cheaper, but no combo deal. (So this could be better if you want a good 60$ AM3 mobo).
 
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Oh if you do go the Radeon 7770/6850 route I found this powersupply to work really well for me.
I built two PCs with a 600W Diablotek
http://www.amazon.com/Diablotek-Series-600-Watt-Supply-PSDA600/dp/B003UWNL2O/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1344277897&sr=8-2&keywords=diablotek

One PC with it I've had for 4 years
Phenom 9600 Quad-Core BE OC'd to 2.5GHZ
Radeon 4850
4GB 1066mhz kingston hyper-x memory with 5-5-5-15 memory times
3 hard drives - 250GB Seagate HD with 8mb cache, 750GB Samsung F1 with 16MB cache, 1TB Western Digital Blue with 32MB cache.
Dedicated Creative Sound card
Foxconn A76ML-K (DDR2 Version) Motherboard with max TDP of 95W

Running games games of just about every genre on a regular basis. Crysis/Warhead, Doom3/Quake 4/Wolfenstein (2009), Unreal 2-2.5 engine games, Unreal 3 engine games, World of warcraft, Starcraft 2, Two Worlds, Assassins Creed1+2/Prince of Persia, etc. The PSU is still holding strong.
I was impressed so much that I bought a second one for the build for a relative that is exact same except it had a similar performing Athlon II 450 3.2GHZ triple core processor. My cousin has had the system for about a year and a half now, and so far no complaints.

It may be labeled as a 600Watt PSU, but don't use it as a 600W PSU since it is a cheapo. Treat it like a 350-450 watt psu. For only 30$ you can't beat it.
 
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The unit has no saftey controls, that's why its cheap(overvoltage protection, undervoltage protection etc) so if it does manage to break down, It has a much higher chance of taking something down with it, in the end forcing you to pay more for the part replacements. The PSU is the one part of the computer you should never be really cheap on.
 
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@landass Your build isn't $600. If I had more funds I could have got a better GPU. (I already said to drop the BD player and spend the extra $30 on the GPU.) He didn't say he had any case or hdds to reuse so saying to reuse them isn't going to do him any good. $600 for everything not counting OS, monitor, keyboard/mouse is what I and others in this thread have done. Not saying your build is wrong/bad, but it doesn't include all of what he asked.

As for where is the ram, the links are clickable...

Edit: I have seen a couple of reviews of Diablotek units. Even if you gave it to me I wouldn't put it in my computer.
 
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I was just noting I've had mine for years, and not a single problem. The unit has witnessed heavy usage, power outages at my dorm, and at home, overclocking of the processor, etc.

Tell me if you really care 4 years down the line if it kills your aging "lower mid-range to mid-range at the time of purchase" components. 30$ vs 65$ for a namebrand hmm.

The only thing that would hurt is hard drive failure. Hell the Phenom System started out with a 550W BFG powersupply that died in a couple months frying the original motherboard. BFG at the time was a "Good power supply". I paid around 70-80$ at the time for the BFG on newegg.


My sister has fried 2-3 computers between 2002-2008, with name brand powersupplies, and we found out it was her "surge protector".
I'll quit posting my comments, because it has nothing to do with the OP anymore as others have said.
 
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I didn't mean that literally, I'm just stating that I've had no problems with various cheap power supplies. I feel like some people are brainwashing others to spend unnecessary money on products that aren't better in quality. A very conservative notice to trick people into buying pointless products. For example tricking people into buying a 2000$ apple computer when it has the capabilities of a 600$ computer that you can install linux on, or windows for gaming.
Almost as bad as the arrogant notion american's use to say that there cars were better even though the cars were proven to have to be worked on or even replaced more often. Or such and such speaker system isn't good just because it doesn't have "THX Certification". Etc

I've met more gamers who had good Power supplies and fancy motherboards have their pcs fail then those with cheaper parts. My notion is the differences between brands isn't aren't as open as what reviewers want you to think.

The business world has become far to corrupt. The motherboards I've witness fail the Least are those cheap Foxconns, followed by Asus. Of course luck of the draw may take a role as well.
 
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I feel like some people are brainwashing others to spend unnecessary money on products that aren't better in quality
Click to expand...
I don't disagree with you. I see the issue all the time on the forums, such is the "problem" with a public forum. But even so, there are certain things that just shouldn't be cheaped out on.

I've met more gamers who had good Power supplies and fancy motherboards have their pcs fail then those with cheaper parts.
Click to expand...

I won't pretend to know what your personal experiences in life are, but I will say that without more details to really take into account, it can't really be taken at face value. Off the top of my head I can think of several factors that also have to be taken into account, including the fact that even "name brand" PSUs are not necessarily good, and even PSU makers with good models have a few turkeys in their lineup. Also you have to consider that "gamers" are probably overclocking or otherwise taking their system beyond the factory recommended specifications, there is always a risk in that. And when you say the PC's fail is it the PSU that failed? Or did they fry a CPU or blowout a mosfet on the mobo? Thats not a lot of information to go on lol.

Almost as bad as the arrogant notion american's use to say that there cars were better even though the cars were proven to have to be worked on or even replaced more often.
Click to expand...
Some of them are, some of them aren't. Its like computer parts to an extent, even brands known for quality have some turkeys. I drive an Acura. But I've owned Fords and Chevys. By far my favorite car I've ever owned was a 30th Anniversary Mercury Cougar (Ford). But I think we're getting off topic here.
 
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One benchmark does not make for the general claim.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1766/7/
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1766/5/
povray.jpg


Read the full review and see more!

I like how you choose the only benchmark where bulldozer is weak and shows it off when in the same review the FX 4100 wins every other multithreaded benchmark...
 
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I am no fan of bulldozer but why must you speak complete junk? SC2 uses max of 1.5 cores is one of the worse choices to talk about multicore scaling. Weird that tom left out most but 1 game in their benchmark suit that day that actually stress more than 2 cores, metro 2033 is the only game where it uses 2 main threads and 2 weaker threads. Look to something on source engine for best example of multi threading and multicore usage.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-2010/Gaming-Left-4-Dead-2,2433.html

look at how the dual core i5s with HT fair against real quad cores?

see what happens when a game uses 4 threads on an i3?
re5.jpg

re5-cpu-usage.jpg

This game title runs on up to four threads as you can see from the task manager shot above that was taken on a test system that was running the Intel Core i7-2820QM processor.
Click to expand...
 
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Okay, well I just woke up, so forgive my lack of morning coffee crabbiness but...

You stated that the FX was "much better multithreaded" than i3.. But... all three of those links show the FX-4100 barely outperforming the i3-2120, and the Phenom II 980 with a comfortable lead over both of them. Which brings us back to, if the Phenom II is the same price as the FX-4100, why buy the inferior CPU?
 
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