Intel 3350p or AMD FX-"I don't know"

[rothingham]

I am building a budget gaming pc for my brother.
Since money is the big bottleneck here, I've tried my very best to make it as cheap as possible, while still being decent.
I managed to buy quite a lot of stuff second handed.

Now, the only thing left I need, is a CPU and mobo.
I was going to buy a i5 3350p, which seemed decent enough (and an Asrock B75 pro3-M).

But, as I said, I bought a lot of stuff second handed, and I actually bought a pc which already included a CPU (AMD athlon X3 450) and of course a mobo (don't know the exact model, haven't got the box with me).
I was going to take out these two, and replace them by the intel, but then I noticed that the AMD mobo supported the AM3+ socket as well.

So, I don't know if I should buy an AMD FX-.... or go for the intel (with which I still have to buy a new mobo)

My main concern is the power supply, which is a 500W sharkoon (not sure which exact brand). The GPU is a ASUS GTX 560Ti directcu ii.

Other system specs: (sorry for low level details, can't check now, since I'm not home)
HDD: 1TB @ 5400RPM
RAM: 8GB DDR3 @ 1333MHz
OS: Win 7 64 bit
Display: Samsung syncmaster ??? 22" 1080p
Some SATA DVD player

If you need some more specifications/information, let me know.

 

[kirilmatthew]

Go with FX. For a budget the 6300 will do a great job. Intel would be a waste of money when you have a MB. Plus the i5 costs more then the 6300. The GPU is quite weak though. I'd almost recommend going with a phenom II x4 965 because of cost and the fact neither will bottleneck. As for PSU I wouldn't use that. Get a 430W corsair PSU. Its not very expensive. Hope this helps.

 

[8350rocks]

I would recommend 6300 + 500-550W PSU from a reputable brand.

 

[Sakkura]

Depends what motherboard you've got. It may not support an FX CPU after all. Check that first.

Now, if the CPU does support FX, then that's a no-brainer. If it doesn't, then a Core i5 is going to deliver better performance at a not that much higher price point. But it also depends what the system is going to be used for and whether there will be any overclocking (which you have to pay extra for with Intel).

 

[kirilmatthew]

Depends what motherboard you've got. It may not support an FX CPU after all. Check that first.

Now, if the CPU does support FX, then that's a no-brainer. If it doesn't, then a Core i5 is going to deliver better performance at a not that much higher price point. But it also depends what the system is going to be used for and whether there will be any overclocking (which you have to pay extra for with Intel).

I disagree. If it doesn't support FX then get phenom II x4. With that GPU it will do just fine.

 

[MajinCry]

I'll just mention that the i5 2500k averages between 125-130% of the performance @ the same clocks of a 965 BE, for more than 200% of the price of a 965 BE.

Now, the i5 2500k can overclock higher. Sure. But even if you overclocked the i5 2500k to the max (and the 965 BE for comparison) and got 150% of the performance, that still wouldn't justify the 200% higher price tag.

Now, you're not talking about the i5 2500k, but it's pretty much the go-to SB proccy. The IB 3570k is in the realm of having 106% of the performance of an i5 2500k, as another comparison.

So jah. Go for a 965 BE. I paid £150 for 8GB DDR3 RAM, a 965 BE and an AM3 motherboard (M3N78D, for those who are curious). I would not be able to buy an i5 2500k with that money either; I'd be paying £165 for the i5 alone.

Good value for money, them phenom IIs.

 

[Sakkura]

Depends what motherboard you've got. It may not support an FX CPU after all. Check that first.

Now, if the CPU does support FX, then that's a no-brainer. If it doesn't, then a Core i5 is going to deliver better performance at a not that much higher price point. But it also depends what the system is going to be used for and whether there will be any overclocking (which you have to pay extra for with Intel).

I disagree. If it doesn't support FX then get phenom II x4. With that GPU it will do just fine.

It may not support a Phenom II x4 either.

 

[Sakkura]

I'll just mention that the i5 2500k averages between 125-130% of the performance @ the same clocks of a 965 BE, for more than 200% of the price of a 965 BE.

Now, the i5 2500k can overclock higher. Sure. But even if you overclocked the i5 2500k to the max (and the 965 BE for comparison) and got 150% of the performance, that still wouldn't justify the 200% higher price tag.

Now, you're not talking about the i5 2500k, but it's pretty much the go-to SB proccy. The IB 3570k is in the realm of having 106% of the performance of an i5 2500k, as another comparison.

So jah. Go for a 965 BE. I paid £150 for 8GB DDR3 RAM, a 965 BE and an AM3 motherboard (M3N78D, for those who are curious). I would not be able to buy an i5 2500k with that money either; I'd be paying £165 for the i5 alone.

Good value for money, them phenom IIs.

Statistics made up on the spot aren't reliable. Besides, you can't just blindly judge by FPS averages. Not only because of stuttering but also because GPU or other bottlenecks can skew the results.

 

[8350rocks]

I'll just mention that the i5 2500k averages between 125-130% of the performance @ the same clocks of a 965 BE, for more than 200% of the price of a 965 BE.

Now, the i5 2500k can overclock higher. Sure. But even if you overclocked the i5 2500k to the max (and the 965 BE for comparison) and got 150% of the performance, that still wouldn't justify the 200% higher price tag.

Now, you're not talking about the i5 2500k, but it's pretty much the go-to SB proccy. The IB 3570k is in the realm of having 106% of the performance of an i5 2500k, as another comparison.

So jah. Go for a 965 BE. I paid £150 for 8GB DDR3 RAM, a 965 BE and an AM3 motherboard (M3N78D, for those who are curious). I would not be able to buy an i5 2500k with that money either; I'd be paying £165 for the i5 alone.

Good value for money, them phenom IIs.

Statistics made up on the spot aren't reliable. Besides, you can't just blindly judge by FPS averages. Not only because of stuttering but also because GPU or other bottlenecks can skew the results.

25% better performance seems like a generous estimate in my mind...

though the price/performance ratio is right inline.

 

[MajinCry]

-snip-

FPS Averages? That's only half the game. The other half is application timings 'n' shiz, which I took into account.

And the statistics weren't made up on the spot. There was an article on the front page with CPU benchmarks not too long ago; there is also Anandtech's CPU benchmarks. I took both into account (Though Anandtech seems to have rather few CPU benchmarks; I wonder why...). The range in terms of differences in performance were from "(1-10%(Margin of error))-40%" in the i5 2500k's favour, with most of the results being in the sub 30% range. Several of Anandtech's benchmarks go into the range of said 40% (With like, 2 portraying the 2500k as faster; smells like intel's compiler showing it's ugly head again).

Not everyone pulls them out of their asses; I do appreciate your skepticism without throwing a bunch of fanboy attitude alongside it. That's actually refreshing.

 

[Sakkura]

Well, okay. There was recently a roundup that showed the Athlon x4 750K generally hanging in there with the slightly more expensive 965BE, and the FX-4350 getting substantial extra performance for a reasonable premium (and the FX-4300 delivering even better value if overclocking, since that would generally hit the same clocks as the 4350 but at a lower price).

That article, by the way, showed the Core i5-3570K outperforming the Phenom II x4 965 by 42-61% with both at stock clocks.

But again, the choice also depends on whether the OP can reuse the old motherboard. That affects the value proposition of various processors a lot.

IMO you shouldn't look at CPU price and performance in a vacuum - it needs to go into a system with an aggregate price and an aggregate performance (which is why you want to balance the various components rather than going for whatever's best performance per dollar in each category). So 50% more performance with a 100% price premium may actually be a better deal if it lets you get your money's worth from the graphics card. Plus, of course, at some point you may just demand a certain level of performance as a minimum, and whether lesser hardware technically delivers more performance per dollar by being way cheaper becomes irrelevant.

Oh, and newer processors may widen the performance gap to older ones over the coming years as newer instruction sets become more popular in software. That's a slow process though.

 

[jaguarskx]

The following is my response to a similar thread when comparing the i5-3350p vs the FX-6300 from the below thread.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1773484/fx6300-3350p.html

Hopefully it can guide to in the right direction which suits your needs.

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Overall, in games that are CPU dependent, Intel CPUs will provide better performance than AMD CPUs. At the end of my comment section are benchmarks for Metro: Last Light and Hitman: Absolution.

The Intel i5-3350p runs at 3.3GHz, however, the closest match in the benchmarks is the i5-3470 which runs at 3.2GHz; 100MHz slower. The benchmarks for Metro Last Light shows that the game favors Intel. I will note that graphics card being used is a nVidia Titan. The FX-6350 running at 3.9GHz gets 65FPS as opposed to 68FPS for the i5-3470. The i5-3350p will likely achieve 69FPS. While the Intel CPU does better, it is only about a 6% improvement in performance, therefore by the numbers Intel is better.

However from an actual gaming perspective, most people have 60Hz monitor which means your actual FPS is capped at 60FPS. However, most people will not have a nVidia Titan graphics card (at least I don't and I don't plan to buy one either). Let assume you have a less powerful card that will give you 40 FPS with the FX-6350. Assuming the approximate 6% performance advantage for Intel, the i5-3350p will likely give you about 42.5FPS. Not too big of a visual difference.

Let's move on to Hitman: Absolution which uses a Radeon HD 7970. Unfortunately neither the FX-6350 or the Intel i5-3350p is part of the benchmarks. Therefore, let's just use the FX-8350 @ 4.0GHz and the i5-3470 @ 3.2GHz as substitutes. The FX-8350 is only 100MHz faster than the FX-6350. Additionally, Hitman does not use more than 4 cores so the using a 6 core or 8 core AMD CPU doesn't really matter for this analysis. The FX-8350 gets 50 FPS, so the slightly slower FX-6350 will likely be able to achieve 49 FPS. The i5-3470 can get 58 FPS, so the slightly faster i5-3350p should be able get to 59 FPS. In this particular game, the increase in performance is pretty substantial; going from 49 FPS to 59 FPS is slightly more than a 20% gain in performance. While Metro: Last Light is more or less a toss up between AMD or Intel (because of only a 6% advantage for Intel), the case is clearly different when talking about Hitman.

Since I am currently playing Skyrim, I will definitely say that Skyrim favors Intel CPUs more than AMD CPUs. The chart at the bottom clearly shows Intel's advantage. The review was written before Piledriver and Ivy Bridge were released so there's no surprise they are not present. Simply look at the performance for AMD's FX-8150 / Phenom II X4 980 compared to Intel's i5-2500K.

However, it is not all doom and gloom for AMD CPUs because most games are not as CPU dependent like Hitman and Skyrim. Metro: Last Light kinda falls into that category because a 6% advantage is relatively small. BioShock Infinite is a game that simply does not care what CPU you have as long as it does not botteneck the GPU. I would say a large number of games are like BioShock where the CPU will not make much of a difference in performance.

The one advantage that the AMD's FX-3650 has over the i5-3350p is the ability to overclock. The i5-3350p is locked. Overclocking should help narrow the performance gap in Hitman and Skyrim, but even if the FX-3650 is OC'ed from 3.9GHz to 4.6GHz (naturally higher is generally better) I would say Intel will still have a small (but relatively negligible) advantage in those games. As for Metro Last Light and BioShock, OC'ing should have little overall impact for Metro, and absolutely no difference in BioShock.

In the end I would choose the i5-3350p simply because you do not need to bother OC'ing for better performance since you cannot do it anyway. Overall performance is high in games and can only be matched with an overclocked AMD CPU. The difference come down to price of the CPU + motherboard. I didn't bother checking on prices, but I am pretty sure the FX-6350 is a bit cheaper than the i5-3350p. However, on the motherboard side a mobo for the i5-3350p is probably cheaper than a mobo for the FX-6350. Generally speaking, mobos that are capable overclocking are a little to a lot more expensive compared to a mobo that does not allow you to OC.

The i5-3350p combo will still likely cost a bit more. However, taking into consideration RAM should further lower the actual price difference. The i5-3350p only needs DDR3 1600MHz which is in general cheaper than DDR3 2133MHz RAM used to overclock AMD's CPUs.


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http://www.techspot.com/review/670-metro-last-light-performance/page6.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/608-hitman-absolution-performance-benchmarks/page6.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/467-skyrim-performance/page7.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/655-bioshock-infinite-performance/page5.html

 

[Sakkura]

The Intel i5-3350p runs at 3.3GHz, however, the closest match in the benchmarks is the i5-3470 which runs at 3.2GHz; 100MHz slower. The benchmarks for Metro Last Light shows that the game favors Intel. I will note that graphics card being used is a nVidia Titan. The FX-6350 running at 3.9GHz gets 65FPS as opposed to 68FPS for the i5-3470. The i5-3350p will likely achieve 69FPS. While the Intel CPU does better, it is only about a 6% improvement in performance, therefore by the numbers Intel is better.

Nope. The Core i5-3350P has a basic clock frequency of 3.1 GHz and a max. turbo of 3.3 GHz. The Core i5-3470 has a basic clock frequency of 3.2 GHz and a max. turbo of 3.6 GHz.