Newer architecture or more power? (Budget build)

[Aceina]

I'm building a new budget gaming pc, and I'm trying to decide on a cpu around the 130$ range.
On one hand, the Skylar i3 seems like a decent option since it has 4 threads, a decent clock rate, and the newest architecture. The one I found was around 115-125$
On the other hand, AMD has much more powerful CPUs at this price. I was especially looking at the FX-8300 which has 8 cores and is overclockable, but has a pretty old 32nm architecture and might get outdated relatively fast.
The socket is likely to be outdated with the new Zen chips as well, which means I won't be able to upgrade. With Intel at least, i can easily upgrade to an i5 or better should I get the money

I'm wondering if it's better to go for fast, efficient cores which are hyper threaded and upgradable, or go for the seemingly more powerful FX-8300? (Is it actually more powerful with the apps I'm using?)
The games I'll be playing are:
League
Overwatch
GTA 5
Ark: survival
Heroes of the storm
Photoshop
And this will all be on windows 10
Thanks for any help!

 

[Supernova1138]

For gaming, the i3 is usually the better choice, offering comparable or slightly better performance than the 8 core FX CPUs most of the time. The i3 also has the advantage of having an upgrade path to an i5 or i7 and being on a newer platform that will have access to better I/O, the FX 8300 is pretty much as good as it gets on AM3+, with everything above it being the same processor just with higher clockspeeds.

For the games that you do play, they largely favour Intel CPUs and tend to rely more on single core performance, which the FX CPUs lack, so the i3 would be a better choice for you. Really, the only game on your list where the FX 8300 might be a bit better is GTA V which does scale fairly well across large numbers of cores and threads.

 

[Aceina]

For gaming, the i3 is usually the better choice, offering comparable or slightly better performance than the 8 core FX CPUs most of the time. The i3 also has the advantage of having an upgrade path to an i5 or i7 and being on a newer platform that will have access to better I/O, the FX 8300 is pretty much as good as it gets on AM3+, with everything above it being the same processor just with higher clockspeeds.

For the games that you do play, they largely favour Intel CPUs and tend to rely more on single core performance, which the FX CPUs lack, so the i3 would be a better choice for you. Really, the only game on your list where the FX 8300 might be a bit better is GTA V which does scale fairly well across large numbers of cores and threads.

Good to know. One more thing:
Will the i3 still be able to get through games like GTA 5? there are more and more games that seem to require quad cores, and I haven't heard much about how hyper threaded dual cores stand up to the challenge.

 

[Supernova1138]

The Core i3 offers decent performance in GTA V, you might have some trouble holding 60FPS in multiplayer or some of the more crowded areas of the game if you have the population density cranked up to maximum, but that would also depend heavily on what GPU you intend to use. For the moment dual core with hyperthreading is sufficient for current titles as long as you don't have extremely high performance standards eg. 90+FPS solid at all times.

AMD's current lineup's future viability for gaming is largely dependent on DirectX 12 vastly improving multithreading to get games to benefit from AMD's high core count rather than being hamstrung by their poor per-core performance. Unfortunately most DirectX 12 games so far have not shown huge performance gains for AMD's processors relative to their similarly priced Intel counterparts (aside from the AMD sponsored Ashes of the Singularity) so the future isn't looking all that great for them. Honestly, by the time DirectX 12 support becomes widespread for games, Zen is going to be out and the current FX line will have been discontinued and written off as obsolete.