low budget cpu: i3-4150 vs fx-6300 vs fx-4350

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ashrosene

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Jun 29, 2014
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Hello,
As the title says, I am trying to upgrade my CPU (and mobo, obviously).
I am stuck between I3-4150, FX-6300 and FX-4350.
I know that i3-4150 has much better, albeit fewer cores, but I was wondering if that is matched by the FX's more cores.
This PC's most CPU intensive games will be Total war games, the occasional Skyrim and Fallout, and Paradox Interactive games.
Post note:
How Important is mobo chipset? I am thinking of an msi-h81 for the I3.
 
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logainofhades
Yea I am such a fanboy, that I own two FX 8320 rigs. I couldn't turn down the $100 Microcenter deal for black friday. Lay off the AMD fanboy kool aid. $200 more, please... To get an overclock to even remotely touch a Xeon 1231v3, you would have to have exceptional cooling and a higher end motherboard. I could pair the Xeon with any board I want and they will all perform the same. Overclocking costs more, and AMD needs to be overclocked to compete, which makes their value pretty poor.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz 8-Core Processor ($159.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($71.74 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock...
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Hello,

What these guys forget to mention is all about how future proof is each of your variants. And when I say future proof I'm not talking about upgrade path (even though AMD announced that they have plans for a new AM3+ processors generation... search Google....), but I'm talking about future software optimizations.
I will not talk here about numbers, graphs or architectures, but about facts, based on my personal experience.

I remember that, back in 2009, I was to choose between an Phenom II X4 (quad-core) and an Intel Core2Duo (dual-core)... or even the more expensive Core I3 first generation (also dual core).
At that time, the software was optimized for dual-cores but also there was still alot of old software designed for old arhitectures (single cores), therefore, quad cores were something uncommon, ahead of their time, apparently expensive and useless.
Due to that, at the time, a Core2Duo or an I3 first gen was on par with a Phenom II X4, or they were even able to outperform it sometimes, due to their higher per/core performance (IPC). This can be seen on tests / graphs from 2009, when Phenom II appeared.

I stayed and I was thinking alot, studying the market and the trends and finally, I choose the Phenom II X4.
After no more than 2 years, I could only congratulate myself for my choice, since in the mean time the software got optimized for more than 2 cores... (i.e. quad cores) and the Phenom II started to show its muscles in front of Core2Duo or older I3s... see the graphs / comparison charts from 2010, 2011 and above... Obviously the (older) Phenom was outperforming the older Intel dual-cores by a large margin. The better IPC of older Intel dual-cores was not able to keep up with the newer software designs which went on to use more than two cores (i.e. quad-cores) => therefore, two cores (even if more efficient) were not able to keep up with a full-quad architecture.

The same scenario will happen during the next two years with FX6300 and current I3s. The gap bewteen them will enlarge (even more in this case because it is about 6 cores versus 2), as the the time will move... in favor of FX of course, and don't think it will be too much until then... we will see in one or two years...
Let's face it guys... the future is for multicore. Software will go further and further in using more cores as they will be available.

As about myself, during the time (last 20+ years) I had systems from both platforms, Intel and AMD, but I'm not biased to either one side or another (i.e. not favoring Intel or AMD), I'm only biased to my wallet :) And for now, for these times, I consider that Intel is asking for a too much price for what they offer (their performance). That's why now, at these times, I choose AMD as they offer a much better performance / price ratio.

The choice is yours, depends on what you want to do with your future CPU and how much are you willing to spend on it.
 
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Misha,

Core count is not a measure of execution resources.

Doesn't matter if the CPU is 2, 20, or 200 cores, the cores have to add up to something greater to actually be recognized as something greater.

Please go here: http://www.agner.org/optimize/
Read #3. Spend some time contrasting and comparing haswell cores, vs piledriver modules. Note that all modern CPU design has both intercore and intracore parallelism. Look carefully at the very large difference in intracore parallelism between the piledriver and haswell core architecture.

If you're paying attention as you read through there, you might notice that a hyperthreaded haswell core has more execution resources, lower cache latency, higher cache/memory bandwidth, a shorter instruction pipeline length, and fewer instruction penalties than a PileDriver module (2 cores). While you're at it, you might spent some time comparing and contrasting instruction latency and throughput of each architecture as well...

The "gap" that could theoretically "grow" between the FX-6300 and i3-4150, can never be larger than the gap in access to raw execution throughput. As such, the largest possible advantage a 6300 will have over a 4150, will always be restricted to ~25% (unless the 6300 is overclocked). In the large number of workloads that can not, and will not scale proportionally into many-cores, the i3 has up to a ~50% performance advantage over the 6300. I'm not sure how anyone could look at those numbers and decide that the 6300 offers a clear value advantage. At best it's a valid alternative with different strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, the area it is weak in, is significant, and the area it is strong in, is by relatively thin margins. Today's contrast doesn't look anything like the quad core deneb vs clarkdale i3 decision. At that time, the tradeoffs were much more "flipped," with the advantage in potential performance on the Deneb in multi-threaded workloads being large (>50%), and the tradeoff in single threaded threaded performance being narrow (<20%).

The "value advantage" of today's AMD product on the grounds of performance and compute efficiency are questionable at best. It isn't until we include the fact that the AM3+ platform offers ECC memory and IOMMU support (on some motherboards), as well as extensive performance tuning options even on budget CPUs, that the AM3+ platform even holds relevancy as a viable alternative for hardware enthusiasts.
 
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Mdocod,

First of all, I seriously doubt that IPC on Intel is 50% higher than on AMD.
And then yes... applications will scale well on multiple cores within the next years. Maybe not 100% proportional but enough to kill that (teoretical) 50% IPC advantage of Intel and even to surpass it.
And... don't forget... we are comparing here a 2 core (I3) with a 6 core (FX)... 300% core count ratio in favor of FX -> therefore the difference will be even higher.
If you would compare FX (X6) with an I5 (quad), then maybe yes, you would be right, but the discussion here is about FX-X6 vs Core-I3, because they share the same price range.
 
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The IPC gap is actually up to 75% when we run 1 thread on a PD module vs haswell core. The 6300 has turbo speeds, while the i3 doesn't, and I rounded for simplicity sake, thus, ~50% in this example. This gap shows up in real-world comparisons all the time.

You can "doubt" it all you want. I've done the research and tested it myself. I encourage you to do the same and have given you a good resource to use as a starting point on that journey.

I think you are implying a position of intelligence on the subject, while simultaneously admitting that you are being led by your "feelings" about how CPUs must perform. Go research intracore execution resources between these 2 architectures.

And then yes... applications will scale well on multiple cores within the next years. Maybe not 100% proportional but enough to kill that (theoretical) 50% IPC advantage of Intel and even to surpass it.
Click to expand...
The 25% advantage that the 6300 can scale to, assumes IDEAL MP SCALING already. There's no "more" to scale into beyond that.

And... don't forget... we are comparing here a 2 core (I3) with a 6 core (FX)... 300% core count ratio in favor of FX -> therefore the difference will be even higher.
Click to expand...
Core count is not a measure of execution resources. Compare the execution resources of the i3-4150 and the 6300. They are much closer than you might think. A haswell core has more execution resources than a piledriver MODULE. The 6300 contains 3 piledriver modules, the i3-4150 contains 2 haswell cores.

If you would compare FX (X6) with an I5 (quad), then maybe yes, you would be right, but the discussion here is about FX-X6 vs Core-I3, because they share the same price range.
Click to expand...
I am comparing the 6300 to the i3. All 6 cores of the 6300 combined manage a ~25% advantage in combined maximum execution throughput over the 2 cores in the i3. This is well established information.
 
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I thought we agreed to end this conversation, once for good, since this thread is very old already.

I see that you are good on theory but that is, just purely theory... In practice, always the things looks different. We will see about that in the next 1 or 2 years.

I have no more else to say regarding this subject.

Now, another topic.
I downloaded some documentation from the links you provided, the one with microarchitectures... very interesting :) It remembers me about the days when I was at university, about laboratories where we were doing programs in assembly language. Once I wrote a binary program to replace the bootsector of my hdd -> yep.. an OS boot loader 😉 I used plain C and ASM... But that was 15 years ago... Good memories ! :)
 
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I never agreed to anything.

The thread is as relevant to readers today as it was 6 months ago, and undoubtedly is pulling in hits from google searches etc. You dug it up and shared a bunch of from-the-hip conjecture then move straight to proposing that we end the conversation. Doesn't matter if the thread is a week old or a year old, I don't see any good reason that the final word should be that of misinformation.

It's very frustrating to be accused of sharing "just theory" by someone who has dropped into this thread with nothing more than his subjective thoughts on the matter generated from a position of grand ignorance. The irony here is almost sickening.

Haswell and PileDriver are mature current production products. We don't need 2 more years to discover what they are or how they perform. To summarize, a haswell core has a significantly wider and more refined instruction engine than a piledriver core. The difference in the size and performance of these different core architectures is significant.
 
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Well, it describes you perfectly ! You said it, not me or anyone else... It seems that you don't know when to stop !

I will not follow this thread anymore.

Good luck in endlessly watching this thread and hunting people who dare to have a different opinion than yours... :)

I'm out of this.
 
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I'm not sharing an opinion contrived from random intuition. I'm sharing facts contrived from in depth research and testing. If you want to turn a blind eye to that and maintain your state of ignorance that's your prerogative.
 
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I scrolled past alot of the replies because it was getting stupid. I built a noob ill-researched gaming pc with an AMD x4 750k cpu.. And guess what, with an r9 270 gpu it was awesome in games.. High/ultra settings 40-60 fps at 1080p... Sold that for £550.. Same it cost to build. Now I'm doing an fx-6300 build, totally 100% happy with my choice... For what I need, it will be a long lasting pc. It's only for pc unique games, as I have xbox one for my quick urge to kick ass.. Basically its entirely down to you and your funding.. Yes Intel is better, but from what I saw with my first "bad" set up pc, I would feel sorely ass raped spending all the extra for a minor improvement...
 
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Could we let this fucking thread die, you clearly cant did not read the dates of the previous post.
 
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