FX6300 or I5 3350P

Solution
Overall, in games that are CPU dependent, Intel CPUs will provide better performance than AMD CPUs. At the end of my comment section are benchmarks for Metro: Last Light and Hitman: Absolution.

The Intel i5-3350p runs at 3.3GHz, however, the closest match in the benchmarks is the i5-3470 which runs at 3.2GHz; 100MHz slower. The benchmarks for Metro Last Light shows that the game favors Intel. I will note that graphics card being used is a nVidia Titan. The FX-6350 running at 3.9GHz gets 65FPS as opposed to 68FPS for the i5-3470. The i5-3350p will likely achieve 69FPS. While the Intel CPU does better, it is only about a 6% improvement in performance, therefore by the numbers Intel is better.

However from an actual gaming perspective...

8350rocks

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I would get the FX 6350, which according to Tom's Hardware is an extremely good value for the money. It's better than 3350p performance for less money.
 

InvalidError

Titan
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The biggest advantages to going Intel instead of AMD are usually better lightly-threaded application performance and much better power efficiency. If you plan to keep the computer for 4+ years, paying extra for an Intel build can pay for itself on power bills.

Also, I do not know what price lists you are looking at but on those I looked at, there is only a $10 (~6%) difference between the 3350P and 3470 which has 9% faster turbo frequency so if you decide to go down the i5 route, the 3470 has slightly better bang-per-buck on the CPU with a "free" IGP as a bonus.
 

8350rocks

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FYI: It takes 15 years to save the difference between a 3770k and a 8350 using them at 100% load for 6 hours per day 365 days per year.

Power savings are so small it would never pay out...

Additionally...the FX 6350 is 96% of 3570k performance for less than the 3350p. Did you read Tom's Hardware's article on the K10 vs. Piledriver? They compared the 6350 and the 3570k at the end...they said the 6350 was a much better value....
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator

Except you need to considerably overclock the 6350 to still come short on a STOCK 3570k performance-wise and the OC'd 6350 ends up using 120W more.

120W is ~$36/year on power at 8h of work+gaming per day.
 

8350rocks

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$3/mo. you must be figuring some high electric rates...where I live it's about $0.10/KW hr. Which breaks down to roughly $1.11/mo. So, to save the difference in power consumption between the 6350 and the 3570k, it would take you roughly 80 months... (6.6 years)
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator

How do you get to $1.11/month? I actually used $0.10/kWh in my estimate:

8h/day x 120W = ~1kWh/day (rounded up for convenience)
1kWh/day x $0.10/kWh x 30 days/month = $3/month

Picked up my calculator to double-check without rounding and I get $2.88/month.

And then there is idle power to consider: the OC'd FX6350 uses ~60W more than a stock i5-3570k. If the computer is on 24/7 and idle 18/24 (using your 6h/day load figure), that's $3.24/month for extra idle power and $5.40/month total.

For people who leave their PCs on 24/7, the i5 pays for itself within two years even at idle.
 

8350rocks

Distinguished
Ah, now that I see the math...

At full load the difference is a mere 30W between the 2.

30W/1000W in 1 KW/hr = 0.03 X 8 = 0.24 KW x $0.10 = $0.024 per day X 30 days = $0.72/month

$80 initial cost difference/$0.72 per month = 111.1 months or 9.25 years.

Your math is off because you are assuming the 3570k will not burn any electricity at all...which would be quite a feat.

Additionally...you're not accounting for the cost difference is only how much more electricity the 6350 burns compared to the 3570k.

Hope that helps.

EDIT: If we were talking about the FX 6300, the difference would be even less...it takes about 20 years to make up that difference in electricity costs.
 
Overall, in games that are CPU dependent, Intel CPUs will provide better performance than AMD CPUs. At the end of my comment section are benchmarks for Metro: Last Light and Hitman: Absolution.

The Intel i5-3350p runs at 3.3GHz, however, the closest match in the benchmarks is the i5-3470 which runs at 3.2GHz; 100MHz slower. The benchmarks for Metro Last Light shows that the game favors Intel. I will note that graphics card being used is a nVidia Titan. The FX-6350 running at 3.9GHz gets 65FPS as opposed to 68FPS for the i5-3470. The i5-3350p will likely achieve 69FPS. While the Intel CPU does better, it is only about a 6% improvement in performance, therefore by the numbers Intel is better.

However from an actual gaming perspective, most people have 60Hz monitor which means your actual FPS is capped at 60FPS. However, most people will not have a nVidia Titan graphics card (at least I don't and I don't plan to buy one either). Let assume you have a less powerful card that will give you 40 FPS with the FX-6350. Assuming the approximate 6% performance advantage for Intel, the i5-3350p will likely give you about 42.5FPS. Not too big of a visual difference.

Let's move on to Hitman: Absolution which uses a Radeon HD 7970. Unfortunately neither the FX-6350 or the Intel i5-3350p is part of the benchmarks. Therefore, let's just use the FX-8350 @ 4.0GHz and the i5-3470 @ 3.2GHz as substitutes. The FX-8350 is only 100MHz faster than the FX-6350. Additionally, Hitman does not use more than 4 cores so the using a 6 core or 8 core AMD CPU doesn't really matter for this analysis. The FX-8350 gets 50 FPS, so the slightly slower FX-6350 will likely be able to achieve 49 FPS. The i5-3470 can get 58 FPS, so the slightly faster i5-3350p should be able get to 59 FPS. In this particular game, the increase in performance is pretty substantial; going from 49 FPS to 59 FPS is slightly more than a 20% gain in performance. While Metro: Last Light is more or less a toss up between AMD or Intel (because of only a 6% advantage for Intel), the case is clearly different when talking about Hitman.

Since I am currently playing Skyrim, I will definitely say that Skyrim favors Intel CPUs more than AMD CPUs. The chart at the bottom clearly shows Intel's advantage. The review was written before Piledriver and Ivy Bridge were released so there's no surprise they are not present. Simply look at the performance for AMD's FX-8150 / Phenom II X4 980 compared to Intel's i5-2500K.

However, it is not all doom and gloom for AMD CPUs because most games are not as CPU dependent like Hitman and Skyrim. Metro: Last Light kinda falls into that category because a 6% advantage is relatively small. BioShock Infinite is a game that simply does not care what CPU you have as long as it does not botteneck the GPU. I would say a large number of games are like BioShock where the CPU will not make much of a difference in performance.

The one advantage that the AMD's FX-3650 has over the i5-3350p is the ability to overclock. The i5-3350p is locked. Overclocking should help narrow the performance gap in Hitman and Skyrim, but even if the FX-3650 is OC'ed from 3.9GHz to 4.6GHz (naturally higher is generally better) I would say Intel will still have a small (but relatively negligible) advantage in those games. As for Metro Last Light and BioShock, OC'ing should have little overall impact for Metro, and absolutely no difference in BioShock.

In the end I would choose the i5-3350p simply because you do not need to bother OC'ing for better performance since you cannot do it anyway. Overall performance is high in games and can only be matched with an overclocked AMD CPU. The difference come down to price of the CPU + motherboard. I didn't bother checking on prices, but I am pretty sure the FX-6350 is a bit cheaper than the i5-3350p. However, on the motherboard side a mobo for the i5-3350p is probably cheaper than a mobo for the FX-6350. Generally speaking, mobos that are capable overclocking are a little to a lot more expensive compared to a mobo that does not allow you to OC.

The i5-3350p combo will still likely cost a bit more. However, taking into consideration RAM should further lower the actual price difference. The i5-3350p only needs DDR3 1600MHz which is in general cheaper than DDR3 2133MHz RAM used to overclock AMD's CPUs.


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http://www.techspot.com/review/670-metro-last-light-performance/page6.html

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http://www.techspot.com/review/608-hitman-absolution-performance-benchmarks/page6.html

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http://www.techspot.com/review/467-skyrim-performance/page7.html

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http://www.techspot.com/review/655-bioshock-infinite-performance/page5.html

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Solution
The debate about power consumption is relative. Meaning it depends on how much an individual is paying for electricity (if at all). For example, the last time I checked electricity cost across the US was probably for 2010 or 2011 where the national average cost per KWH was about $0.115 or 11.5 cents. I think the range was from $0.065 to $0.455 (Hawaii). I currently pay about $0.20 - $0.22 per KHW and I have friends who pay $0 for electricity. However, the cost of electricity is embedded in their rent and one year the monthly rent increased by 15% or roughly $300 (related to overall building maintenance costs and a decrease in subsidies). Therefore, power consumption concerns will vary from individual to individual.
 

meitou

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May 2, 2011
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Based on what Jaguarskx has said, I'll be going with the intel 3350p over the amd. The main reasons are that I rather have a cpu that did not need over clocking. Electricity is of no concern for me because I'll be splitting it with 5 other people so even a large change might seem insignificant to me. jaguarskx brought up the significance of the motherboard, I was thinking about getting this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157303&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

it's an ASRock motherboard but I wasn't sure if it was right for me. I've been using a motherboard with a Asus motherboard that my friend handed down to me so I'm not familiar with other brands and their quality.
 


I actually have no experience with Asus or ASRock motherboard. However, based on user reviews it did get 77% 4 or 5 stars which is pretty good. So overall, it looks like a good choice. My advice is to read the 1 and 2 stars reviews to find out what complaints are. If any issue(s) really sticks out and are a major concern with it then avoid. Any silly complaints should be ignored. For example, if someone complains about the motherboard does not work with 32GB of RAM, my 1st thought would what kind of idiot would want to stick almost $300 worth of RAM in a $65 motherboard?