The Fx Series the BEST bang for the $$$ in Gaming pcs

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I 99% agree with you but woudl personally still pick the 6300 over an i3.
The main problem I have with intel is the plethora of haswell cpu's with negligible clock speed differences at vastly different price points- created solely by intel to create a different consumer price point that shouldnt really exist imo.
5 variations of the i3 with 100mhz clock differences,no unlocked i3,the haswell refresh which requires a different chipset ,even more variations of the i5,a massive price premium for an unlocked i5 or i7 ,a plethora of different chipsets,a different chipset needed to overclock an already unlocked chip - its a mass of confusion for the novice builder
 




I would run you for your money, but im a poor pleb with a r9 270x. I paid the same for my h97 platform as your AM3+ platform when i paid for it(microcenter deals to good)(good lord the euro dropped like a rock recently).

My argument against the fx is that there is no solid upgrade path, going from a 6300 to an 8350 yields no large gain gaming wise.
 
Absolutely agree there. Pricing is quite strange for intel, but the same partially applies to amd, too. Since the whole fx 6xxx or 8xxx/9xxx are the same line. I personally wouldn't get an i3, either. I'd save up 30 bucks more and get an i5. Or, if I were to use it as a primary work pc and just game ocassionally, the fx would be my choice. I actually almost chose a fx 8350 (since I don't really play games) but in the end decided to spend a little more to get m.2 support and a still noticeable difference in heavy workloads.
 


The struggle of being a poor college student. My laptop is even worse.

But to stay on topic, intel has way to many models of its processors, half of them could be dropped and no one would care.
 
The Intel following on Tom's is very strong, many don't see the value in AMD systems and how to properly utilize them. That's not gonna change anytime soon. Some people think with statistics on paper and hear-say, instead of real life performance (that can be noticed) and their wallets/purses which only exacerbates the problem.
 


I only think It's understandable.

Look, the FX-6300 is a good performer.

However the i3-4150 for example is more efficient, needs a less capable motherboard to work just fine and doesn't need an aftermarket CPU Cooler. The upgrading path is a also a lot better.

I would like to suggest FX-6300 builds but would it be worth it over the benefits of Intel mentioned above? For a CPU that won't perform significantly better?
 
There's three major partitions. One is pro intel and just recommends intel for any scenario. An other one is pro amd and recommends amd for everything. And the last has no preference and suggests choosing what's best for the situation, which happens to mainly be intel since the majority of questions asked is about mainly gaming.

For that matter, I'll keep recommending amd cpu's for budget workstation pc's. Their value is unmatched there. Meanwhile, while intels value in gaming isn't as good as, it's still better than amd's in purely gaming and I'll therefore keep recommending intel for gaming builds. Even though, I wouldn't really ever recommend an I3 for a gaming build. If an upgrade is planned soon, a pentium is more than enough. If not, waiting a little bit to afford an I5 is usually the better option.
 
Alright communists

I want to elaborate a little on what is being said about this discussion and what my original Intention of this discussion was to prove

The AMD fx 6300 is what I will compare to an i3

The AMD fx 6300 will generally do worse by 1.8 percent based off of us.hardware review on the cpu battle but it is 30 dollars cheaper, yes you could just argue that buying an Intel core i3 without a heat sink but you need to realize that this needs to be approached by a budget gamers perspective

A budget gamer like myself who (double click) is not and AMD fanboy I really like all the products they make, but what I have found is that when I go to buy a processor I want one that will give me a good bang for the buck

And sure the i3 will perform better on about 6/10 games but it's 30 dollars more
And when you go AMD you will generally buy a heat sink and the hyper 212 Evo is a great choice since it is around 28 bucks, but no one ever said you HAD to buy a after market cooler, and hey the stock fan isn't the greatest but it does the job enough that as long as your aren't even touching the multiplier, you will be absolutely fine, now when you want to over clock, and not everyone does but I encourage people to try it out because it's very helpful, you can put your money into an after market cooler and get that baby to a point where it's outperforming the i3 by 10-15 percent, for the SAME PRICE

But when we get to the mother board, we find that a good AMD motherboard and a good Intel board actually have a difference in price, sure you can cheap out and call it a draw because both sides have 50 dollar mobos, but according to sales, not many people do that, and what I would recommend is to spend some money into a motherboard that has features, has a good rep and uses good components, a typical Intel board that has this will cost around 80-100 for the good components, adequate features and has a good rep, when we get to AMd, well a mother board like that will run you 50-90 bucks, and I'm still saying you can cheap out on the mono but what I would recommend and what other recommend is to put some money because it will be well worth it for more reliability and more features

Another argument is the cores, yes the fx 6300 has 6 cores, and yes the core i3 has 2 cores with hyper threading (4 cores kinda) but in the games that the I3 beats the 6300 are typically games that are less optimized for 6 cores (3 modules) and more for faster cores, but in other games we see the fx 6300 take the lead, because of its more (logical) cores
What I mean by this is more and more games are utilizing more cores and it seams that you will get better performance in certain games

Now that I somewhat elaborated I want to say my final opinion about this topic and why you should buy the fx 6300, it's a cheap processor that will run you around 100 bucks, if you choose to add an after market fan, (hyper 212 evo) lets say you buy the $30 off of newegg or something
That's $130 for fx 6300 and fan ($100 with stock)
$160 for i3 and (130 with stock)

Insert mother board let's say we go with
AMD fx 6300, hyper 212 evo and asus m5a97 which for the money offers tons of features usb3- 2 PCI 16x slots (gen 2 but makes little or no difference), more audio ports, vrm heatsink Sata III 6g, 3 internal USB ports, and tons of asus features like dual Epu and high quality mosefts etc, also remote features, windows 8.1 ready, and this doesn't sound relevant but to some it does has over 300 5 star reviews on mewegg
All that with AMD cpu $190 without fan ($220) with hyper 212

Step in Intel core i3 and we have the asrock pro4 which is the same price around 90 dollars, which significantly less Internal usb support, only one vrm heat sink as opposed to two on the northbridge, on the AMD board, no power control cpu, AMD only one x16 slot which is still gen2, and a lower power phase compared to the AMD board, which means more over clock ability on the AMD board

All this at $220 without fan and $250 with hyper 212

That's 190 for fx 6300 and m5a97 and $220 with hyper 212

For the core i3 amd pro4 that's $220 and $250 for hyper 212

The AMD solition offers more features for the price

And if you wanted to over clock you could spemd the $220 and have an after market cooler and be able to over clock the fx 6300 and get better performance than the i3, the asus mobo has better overlooking potential via the great power deliver and many features

The Intel side yu would have to spend $250 to have a good over clocking potential (you can still over clock with stock fan but it would be hard to keep temps low), AMD even still you would be limited to the no so good power design on the pro4

So in conclusion the reason I side with the AMD fx 6300 is the more bang for the buck where performance wise it might trail behind, but in terms of over all BANG FOR THE BUCK which was the point if this discussion, the AMD side just wins, you can over clock more to beat the i3 while still being cheaper, and even if you didn't over clock you would get nearly identical performance for cheaper while still getting more features on your board

Cheers commies
 
Also I want to add that the core i3 isn't unlocked, but I hear you can just mess with the base frequency, but still it's hard to do and even then you wouldn't typically be overlooking in the stock fan anyway
 
The i3 performs better whether the fx is overclocked or not, cost less, you dont need a 100 dollar mobo for an i3 or a cooler, you NEED a cooler for an fx to overclock and you NEED a quality board to overclock the FX. AM3+ offers no upgrade path, and lacks some pretty useful features that current gen intel has.

I paid 180 usd for my i3 4370 and asrock h97m pro4, note the i3 4370 is around 10% faster than the typically compared i3. At microcenter, the cost for the 6300 is the same because you have to include a new hsf.

Your also forgetting the cost of the increased power consumption, extra heat into your system, and the larger power supply you will need to power the 6300. The i3 uses around 40-50 watts, the fx overclocked can use 100-150.
 


yes the i3 does perform better but not much better, and yes the upgrade path is better but sometimes not everyone is willing to pay another 200 dollars just for a faster cpu and no i dint include the power consumption because its more power but in terms of actual cost its barely a few dollars a year more and will never out price the and build for the actual life of the system, and actually over clocking the fx 6300 will actually outperform the i3 its been proven, and no you don't NEED a new after market cooler, the fx 6300 runs around 60-70 degrees which is fine if your not going to overclock, and if you don't plan on over clocking you do not by any means need a good mother board to keep it working and even if you are planning on over clocking, the asus and gigabyte boards come with excellent power phase designs which allow for very good overlocking for around 90 bucks

look its rain
im not trying to call you out but you need to look at this from a perspective of bang for the buck, and when you look at the benchmarks, an intel core i3 is barely better then the fx 6300 for 30 dollars more
i can see why you would by one, they are better, but interns of price to performance, the 6300 is just a better buy
 


I am looking at it for bang for the buck perspective, let me tell you why. You pay ~180 USD for the AM3+ platform(mobo + cpu + hsf). You pay the same for intel. In 2 years, you can still use your intel platform, while the AM3+ will be completely outdated. So, you spend 180 now with intel, then 250 later for the best processor you can buy for that socket, which totals 430. If you went amd, you would spend 180, then when you need to upgrade, you need to spend 350 to upgrade to intel/amd with equal performance. You spend 100 more in the long run if you buy amd, unless amd updates AM3+, which is very unlikely. You can also add another 10-20 dollars to the amd system for the higher wattage psu that you will need.

So, in short you spend 120 more, to get somewhat worse performance at the start and have to throw away that platform in 2 years when it gets outdated. Some may argue that AM3+ is already outdated.

Also to note, the FX line of cpus, as stated by amd should be run under 62C, also the stock amd cooler is obnoxiously loud.

Im looking at overall bang for the buck, building your system with no upgrade path is just pissing away money.

To also note, im not sure your here other than to incite intel vs amd threads.
 
 
But i just proved that it isnt the best bang for the buck? Your basing your statements on what your buying, other than the facts of the two platforms?

Gaming wise, amd loses in most games because they only use 1-2 threads, which intel has much stronger IPC. Also, min frame rates on fx cpus are almost always lower, sometimes unbearably low.

You also fail to look at the cost beyond just the processor and mobo.

You can look up benchmarks all day, but you will continue your confirmation bias.
 


In no way am I being biased, I just stated what I bought, but in reality what people are generally going to buy is what delivers them the best bang for the buck

If we look at the CPUs purely objectively, the core i3 wins
But it's 30 dollars more, when we look at the fx 6300, it's 100 as opposed to 130 dollars core i3

We shouldn't even be including a mother board because both sides have differemt features ANd I admit that i shouldn't have argued using that point, both sides have mother boards that interest different people and both have very cheap mobos that will still run the processors

Purely on the chip
The fx 6300 is $100 dollars
The core i3 is 130

The core i3 is better, but not by much that buying the fx 6300 is fine and will deliver better price to performance ratio AMD still gets better fps in some games
 


I will never know why people buy an i3-4340 over an i5-4460 in any circumstance.

Not to mention the i5-4690 is also a foot length away in terms of price.

 
Since you mentioned heat sinks on a $90 intel board don't compete with those on a $90 amd board - you're right. Same about vrm phases. Still, the intel board will be a more potent overclocking board. You probably wonder why, so I suggest you to take a look at haswells fivr. Voltage regulation completely happens on the cpu, the motherboard only handles vccin and vddim. Aside of haswells consuming significantly less power than fx's.
Meanwhile, why would you buy a $90 intel board with none of the features when you can get a $50 b85-d3h which yields you six usb3.0 ports, crossfire, four ram slots, four sata3.0 and so on?
Fact is, capable overclocking boards for fx cpu's are much more expensive than fx overclocking boards. Just because fx boards need to have great heatsinks and vrm phases with high throughput, which you don't need on intel boards.

To seriously overclock a fx 8350, you're looking at a 990fx board, which is about the equivalent to a z97 board. Look at their prices for their respective feature set and you'll see what I mean quite quick. But that isn't on the topic.

Yes, the 6300 costs $100 and the I3 $130. You save more than $30 by a cheaper intel board and the non required stock cooler, though. And you will need an aftermarket cooler for the slightest overclock, if not for stock speeds already. 60-70c are simply too hot, that's the same as running an I3 at 105-115c.
And then the I3 does not only beat the fx in 6/10 games (rather 7.5/10), but also by more than just a few per cent. I think one of the benchmarks I posted showed a game average, an I3 4130 being 10-15% ahead of a fx 6350.
 
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FX-6300 has one major thing going for it, 6 cores, granted they are less powerful, but there are 6 of them. I am looking at some newer game releases and the minimums are looking like quad core +, not dual core hyperthreaded, no real quad core, I5 2500k and Phenom x4's. I own both intel and AMD, AMD provides bang for the buck, and Intel easily makes the most powerful chips you can buy, they both fill their role and both do a good job. This bantering over which one is better will soon become obsolete, because the FX-6300 will be able to run the newest games, and the I3 may not.

And all this talk of upgrade path, I guess that depends on how often you plan to upgrade, but I do believe Intel has already released the 5th gen of the I series chips, and will move on from this MB socket, as will AMD from AM3+, so no matter what you get, if you wait 2 years to upgrade, which is not totally unreasonable, you will need to buy another motherboard, which is what, $50 to $100 bucks,
 


http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-m5a97r20

That's the Asus M5a97 R2.0 a $90 motherboard that can overclock the FX 6350 just fine. An overclocking motherboard from Intel is equal if not more expensive.
 


If you would have read my post above, you would have noticed i got the combo at microcenter. Which, in this case, the 4370 was the same price as the 4160.
 


With four barely cooled vrm phases for a 95w tdp cpu. If that board can get a fx 6300 to 4.5ghz, a ga-b85-d3h can get an i5 4690k/i7 4790k to 4.6-4.7ghz easily. And that d3h is $50.

After all neither boards are meant for oc'ing, both can, but not very good. Though, for the intel board you'll run into voltage limitations (= throttling or not reaching 200mhz even though the cpu would be able) while the amd board might just burn up and possibly take the cpu with it.
 
The board works just fine for a decent overclock from personal experience. 4.6 is a push, why overclock that far? My experience has been 4.3-4.4 just fine. The older gentleman who owns that computer is still using it and it is coming up on 3 years old now.
 
CERTAINLY SWITCHING FROM AMD TO INTEL -.-
:pfff:

FX-6300 was my first choice awhile back. 1 month ago, I started saving money for MSI h97 gaming 3 and Intel i3 4160.

1 week ago, I had this problem with my AMD rig. (see my specs below). My Rig shuts down (http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2590782/gaming-shuts.html) because of apparent motherboard + cpu problem WHEN playing resident evil 6 and blacksite area 51. So I'm switching to Intel system. I like to buy cpu cooler and case fans, but that would cost me higher.

Damn this dilemma, my gpu already eats 180 watts of power, 6300 will eat more power than i3 -.-
 
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