What CPU for Gaming??? £140-£150

[RyanG-Unit]

What is better out of these CPU's? And is there any better for my money?

Intel i5-3470 3.2GHz 3.60GHz turbo
AMD FX 8350 Black Edition "Vishera" CPU (8 Core, AM3+, Clock 4.0 GHz, Turbo 4.2 GHz, 8 MB L3 Cache, 125 W)

 

[synphul]

It depends on the games you're into. Unless they're heavily cpu bound the i3 6100 does a pretty good job in most games. It would place you on the most current platform and if you want a stronger cpu down the road an i5 or i7 would drop in place.

This is the first page of a couple gaming benchmarks with various gpu's, the i3 is almost in line with the i5's in most. The fx 8370 didn't do bad in gtaV but the i3 was only a couple fps behind it and costs less.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10543/the-skylake-core-i3-51w-cpu-review-i3-6320-6300-6100-tested/8

 

[drkatz42]

Mmm...I have to give the nod to the FX 8350.

 

[CTurbo]

This is better than either of those options. It also has the best upgrade path.


PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor (£92.91 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £92.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-10-13 22:59 BST+0100

 

[RyanG-Unit]

It depends on the games you're into. Unless they're heavily cpu bound the i3 6100 does a pretty good job in most games. It would place you on the most current platform and if you want a stronger cpu down the road an i5 or i7 would drop in place.

This is the first page of a couple gaming benchmarks with various gpu's, the i3 is almost in line with the i5's in most. The fx 8370 didn't do bad in gtaV but the i3 was only a couple fps behind it and costs less.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10543/the-skylake-core-i3-51w-cpu-review-i3-6320-6300-6100-tested/8

This is better than either of those options. It also has the best upgrade path.


PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor (£92.91 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £92.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-10-13 22:59 BST+0100

Water cool and overclock?

 

[RyanG-Unit]

Mmm...I have to give the nod to the FX 8350.

Good or Bad?

 

[CTurbo]

No. No water cool or overclock. Wasting money.

 

[RyanG-Unit]

No. No water cool or overclock. Wasting money.

Wouldn't the i3-6100 be too slow to play games such as Forza Horizon 3 as high/ultra?

 

[synphul]

Unless using a specific board with an older outdated bios there's no real overclocking for an i3, it's not a k series cpu like the i5 6600k or i7 4790k. The i3 6100 performs better in most games than the fx 8350 (the faster 8370 was in those bench's I posted) at stock, it doesn't need overclocked.

There might be ways to still get around everything but with updated bios and windows updates including the intel microcode updates that disable oc'ing on non k cpu's and non z motherboards it would likely be more headache than it's worth. If you have the money to go with watercooling consider an i5. I was going by your budget, watercooling isn't necessary for locked cpu's. It's not even necessary for overclocking the k series, a decent aftermarket air cooler can do that.

 

[CTurbo]

No. The i3 6100 is a surprisingly strong gaming cpu. Look at some benchmarks. It beats the entire AMD lineup in most games.

 

[RyanG-Unit]

So change my current CPU to an i3-6100 or keep what i've got and overclock it?

 

[synphul]

Horizon 3 is very single threaded which counts out fx cpu's. Their single core performance is dismal. You can't compare intel's clock speeds to amd's, 3ghz on intel is faster than 4 or 4.5ghz on amd's fx.

This tester couldn't even get the game to run 60fps steady using an i7 and a 980ti on medium settings.
http://www.dsogaming.com/pc-performance-analyses/forza-horizon-3-pc-performance-analysis/

Similar results here.
https://www.vg247.com/2016/09/27/running-forza-horizon-3-at-1080p60-on-pc-without-stuttering-is-a-challenge-for-most-systems-report/

Looks like yet another horribly optimized game released before it was a functioning finished product. Runs poorly on amd cpu's due to low single thread performance, stutters in intel when reduced to dual core, runs with stutters on i7's at 1080p and the only time they got the stuttering issue to die down was running a high end gpu capable of pushing 4k resolution.

 

[neblogai]

What CPU and motherboard do you currently have?

 

[CTurbo]

Yeah you haven't actually told us what parts you have now.

 

[drkatz42]

Mmm...I have to give the nod to the FX 8350.

Good or Bad?

Good