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

[ashrosene]

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.

 

[mdocod]

CPU

 

[logainofhades]

CPU

That line is a bit blurred, since WoD released. CPU does still matter, but GPU matters more, than it did in previous expansions. If GPU didn't matter, then I would still be able to play with the 7600gt I had back in BC, or the FX 5200 in vanilla. Neither of those cards are gonna provide any kind of acceptable performance. Intel still does better than AMD, though. An i3 4150 will beat FX, every time, in WoW.

 

[JOOK-D]

 

[mdocod]

 

[Calebe Zacai]

CPU

That line is a bit blurred, since WoD released. CPU does still matter, but GPU matters more, than it did in previous expansions. If GPU didn't matter, then I would still be able to play with the 7600gt I had back in BC, or the FX 5200 in vanilla. Neither of those cards are gonna provide any kind of acceptable performance. Intel still does better than AMD, though. An i3 4150 will beat FX, every time, in WoW.

Thanks. I recently made a few upgrades on my pc set.

I upgraded my 2x2gb Kingston 1333mhz to a Crucial Ballistix 2x4gb 1600Mhz. That was a tremendous difference. Now i can alt+tab WoW.
I bought a 840 Evo for OS and WoW. The difference was also noticiable.
But since my mobo it's a Asrock H55M-LE i only have Sata 2. There is no cheap controller in my country or even the Asus P7D55 whatever with sata 3 by Marvell. My CPu are i7 860 @2.8ghz (yep 1156) I used to run WoW on Ultra when was WoTLK. Since cata on Recommended and now on low. For some reason (recently) my MSI R5770 can't handle Ashran anymore always about 10-25fps.

I've made my decision by bang-for-buck (no idea if is right way to spell) Since i haven't used the immense power of my i7 i'm going "upgrade" to a i3-4160 @3.6Ghz and Mobo ASUS H81M-C. I believe with this combo i'll have a 2.5x increased performance from sata 3 and higher clock from cpu. And last but not least a new gpu. I can only go for budget, but amd never (again). GTX 650 or 660 or even 750ti. What is your thoughts about this decision? Can i do a better deal?

 

[logainofhades]

Yea, that 5770 is holding you back. I would just upgrade the graphics card. The graphical requirements go up every expansion. Cata they did a pretty big overhaul, and WoD it went even further. Instead of getting a new CPU and Motherboard, use the money towards GPU. The GTX 960 will be out soon. I think that card will be a good one, considering how well the 970 and 980 have done.

 

[Calebe Zacai]

Yea, that 5770 is holding you back. I would just upgrade the graphics card. The graphical requirements go up every expansion. Cata they did a pretty big overhaul, and WoD it went even further. Instead of getting a new CPU and Motherboard, use the money towards GPU. The GTX 960 will be out soon. I think that card will be a good one, considering how well the 970 and 980 have done.

Well i don't think it will cost less than the 760. For WoW the Gtx 760 is an overkill. Accordind to this graphic i could even consider the r9 270x.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Palit/GTX_750_Ti_KalmX/22.html

btw i use a 1366 x 780 monitor.

 

[logainofhades]

But it might drive the cost of the 760 down, as AMD and Nvidia get into another pricing war. 😉 You might want to give this a read though. GPU is more important in WoD, than previous expansions, and Blizzard is looking to make more GPU centered changes, in the future.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/15936285/engineer%E2%80%99s-workshop-engine-evolution-in-warlords-of-draenor-9-17-2014

 

[Calebe Zacai]

But it might drive the cost of the 760 down, as AMD and Nvidia get into another pricing war. 😉 You might want to give this a read though. GPU is more important in WoD, than previous expansions, and Blizzard is looking to make more GPU centered changes, in the future.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/15936285/engineer%E2%80%99s-workshop-engine-evolution-in-warlords-of-draenor-9-17-2014

Thanks. I'll check the link when i get home.

 

[mdocod]

The problem with the way this is being characterized, is that you're going to come away from logains posts thinking that if you don't buy at least a middle tier GPU you're not going to be able to get good performance from WoW. This is incorrect. The only thing that can guarantee bad performance in this case is an older or slower CPU. At 720P a GTX750Ti can play Crysis 3, BF4, and a laundry list of the most graphically "intensive" games at medium-high settings at 60FPS. Whether or not the CPU can keep that pace is a different story and depends on in-game conditions. The CPU is the hard cap, the GPU isn't. Overall you'll have better performance going to the haswell i3 combined with a GTX750Ti, conversely, staying on the older architecture CPU and installing a GTX960 or similar would result in the ability to run higher visual quality settings, but have lower FPS minimums (poorer performance) in congested conditions.

 

[logainofhades]

Their i7 860 is still plenty good for WoW. I have a friend playing WoW with an i5 750, with an HD 5850. The 5770 is the bottleneck here. A GTX 750ti is a good card, but I would wait till the 960 comes out and see how it shakes up prices. I believe I read it releases tomorrow.

 

[Calebe Zacai]

The problem with the way this is being characterized, is that you're going to come away from logains posts thinking that if you don't buy at least a middle tier GPU you're not going to be able to get good performance from WoW. This is incorrect. The only thing that can guarantee bad performance in this case is an older or slower CPU. At 720P a GTX750Ti can play Crysis 3, BF4, and a laundry list of the most graphically "intensive" games at medium-high settings at 60FPS. Whether or not the CPU can keep that pace is a different story and depends on in-game conditions. The CPU is the hard cap, the GPU isn't. Overall you'll have better performance going to the haswell i3 combined with a GTX750Ti, conversely, staying on the older architecture CPU and installing a GTX960 or similar would result in the ability to run higher visual quality settings, but have lower FPS minimums (poorer performance) in congested conditions.

Understood. I haven't mentioned, but i'm planning to go Orlando, FL. I believe i should save some money for the best cost-benefit ever: GTX 970. With that gpu i believe never more in my life get a replace. The only thing that bothers me atm is to know my ssd is working like 50% of its performance. Since sata 3 is 600MB/s and it can reach 510MB/s. My sata 2 only allow it to go 300MB/s last CrystalMark test showed 247MB/s Read.

 

[mdocod]

Actually, in real world conditions, your SSD will rarely even saturate SATA 2 anyway, that should be the LEAST of your concerns.

Most real world workloads for the system drives are very non-sequential in nature. In these conditions, mechanical drives tend to give about 1-5MB/s and SSD's tend to give about 20-100MB/s, either way, no where near capping SATA2. Next time you run CrystalDisk, take a look at the 4K non-sequential test results... that's a closer representation of the workloads presented by booting and load (tens of thousands of files being accessed).

I have one SSD that seriously can only manage like 150MB/s read speeds in sequential workloads, and another that can do over 500MB's. In real world conditions as system drives, they both boot and load applications at about the same speed because in those workloads, the bottleneck is not the bandwidth, it's access latency.

--------

A sub-3ghz nahalem CPU will run WoW at ~15FPS during RAIDs. I'm not sure how that qualifies as "good enough" but hey.. whatever.

 

[logainofhades]

I know that WoW comment to be a bold face lie, as the i5 750 rig my friend is using, used to be my own, until a few months ago. He bought it to replace his old Athlon 64 X2 rig, and was low on cash. The i5 750 is just as fast, if not faster than the FX 8320 I bought, on the cheap, to replace it, which was doing High Maul LFR just last week. The ONLY time that system suffered such fps numbers is during the 40 man world boss encounters, and even my 3570k, @4ghz, struggled on those, especially Ordos. The i5 750 system was used, in my home, till at least 5.2/Thunder King patch, before I sold it. I put it aside, until he paid it off completely.

 

[mdocod]

Interesting, accuse me of lying, then confirm the truth of what I have said all in the same breath. Impressive.

 

[logainofhades]

Any system will be brought to its knees in a 40 man world boss encounter. In an instanced raid, the i7 860 is fine. A true raid is a dungeon raid.

 

[AppleGeek911]

Personally, I'd go for the Core i3. Don't let the number of cores deceive you, it's a very capable CPU that's on-par with quad-cores that eat twice as much power.

 

[mdocod]

Any system will be brought to its knees in a 40 man world boss encounter. In an instanced raid, the i7 860 is fine. A true raid is a dungeon raid.

All things being equal, when the i3-4150 is "brought to it's knees" to ~30FPS in those conditions, the i7-860 that caleba is running will be running ~17FPS. That's a very meaningful difference...

At 30FPS, things will still appear to be relatively smooth. Once we drop below ~23FPS the effect of motion is lost, it's a literal slideshow that is fatiguing to watch and bordering on impossible to play.

There are LOTs of WOW players running overclocked i5 bridge/well's to help overcome the performance issue, and it works, most of the folks running an overclocked i5 bridge/well are maintaining 40FPS or better in big raids. Meanwhile, people running nahelem and -amd-anything- at stock clocks get <20FPS.

 

[Calebe Zacai]

Their i7 860 is still plenty good for WoW. I have a friend playing WoW with an i5 750, with an HD 5850. The 5770 is the bottleneck here. A GTX 750ti is a good card, but I would wait till the 960 comes out and see how it shakes up prices. I believe I read it releases tomorrow.

Dude,

I believe to some people the GTX 960 is a disappoint.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&Description=PPSSLQEGPIKMNK

Do you think is worth buying it.

 

[Calebe Zacai]

Any system will be brought to its knees in a 40 man world boss encounter. In an instanced raid, the i7 860 is fine. A true raid is a dungeon raid.

Well Ashran is about 50 vs 50. Even with all settings on low, the fps is about 10-25.

 

[mdocod]

When changing settings doesn't help, that's a CPU BOTTLENECK. Switch to haswell and your FPS in those congested conditions will nearly double. Buy a new GPU, and your FPS in those raids won't change a bit.

Like most progressions of CPU/GPU technology in the last 5 years, the GTX960 is an incremental step forward vs the GTX760. Slightly more render performance in most workloads, slightly less power dissipation. The largest gains are in low-power applications. Maxwell is at heart a low-power targeted technology, that is being ran at high power on the desktop. From what I can tell the GTX960 will probably the best thing ~$200 you're going to get. Closest competitor would be an R9 285, though from what I've seen you'll get better minium FPS in compute bound DX11 workloads on the nvidia driver stack so the GTX960 is the way to go.

 

[Calebe Zacai]

When changing settings doesn't help, that's a CPU BOTTLENECK. Switch to haswell and your FPS in those congested conditions will nearly double. Buy a new GPU, and your FPS in those raids won't change a bit.

Like most progressions of CPU/GPU technology in the last 5 years, the GTX960 is an incremental step forward vs the GTX760. Slightly more render performance in most workloads, slightly less power dissipation. The largest gains are in low-power applications. Maxwell is at heart a low-power targeted technology, that is being ran at high power on the desktop. From what I can tell the GTX960 will probably the best thing ~$200 you're going to get. Closest competitor would be an R9 285, though from what I've seen you'll get better minium FPS in compute bound DX11 workloads on the nvidia driver stack so the GTX960 is the way to go.

This guy was having only temp problem:
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/765663/geforce-700-600-series/whats-wrong-with-my-gtx-770/2/

How to set MSI afterburn to check during plays?

 

[Calebe Zacai]

When changing settings doesn't help, that's a CPU BOTTLENECK. Switch to haswell and your FPS in those congested conditions will nearly double. Buy a new GPU, and your FPS in those raids won't change a bit.

Like most progressions of CPU/GPU technology in the last 5 years, the GTX960 is an incremental step forward vs the GTX760. Slightly more render performance in most workloads, slightly less power dissipation. The largest gains are in low-power applications. Maxwell is at heart a low-power targeted technology, that is being ran at high power on the desktop. From what I can tell the GTX960 will probably the best thing ~$200 you're going to get. Closest competitor would be an R9 285, though from what I've seen you'll get better minium FPS in compute bound DX11 workloads on the nvidia driver stack so the GTX960 is the way to go.

Since i only play WoW the GTX beat the 285:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_960_STRIX_OC/26.html

 

[mdocod]

Try using HWiNFO to graph CPU temps while you play, or HWMonitor to record the highest temp reached while playing (leave it running).

If your goal is to find a magical hidden pile of performance locked away in your i7-860 for WoW, I'm sorry to have to inform you, you're probably going to come up empty, you're letting yourself be guided by hope here by entertaining that thread.

 

[Calebe Zacai]

Try using HWiNFO to graph CPU temps while you play, or HWMonitor to record the highest temp reached while playing (leave it running).

If your goal is to find a magical hidden pile of performance locked away in your i7-860 for WoW, I'm sorry to have to inform you, you're probably going to come up empty, you're letting yourself be guided by hope here by entertaining that thread.

Which hardware, temp, usage should i look during the test to conclude: "Oh... This is the cause of low fps..."?