AMD FX-6300 vs Intel Pentium G3258 (OC) for Gaming Performance (R9 270X)

prahstik · Nov 18, 2014

So I wanna make my first build. Prices are really important for me and I want to know if I will be seeing any noticeable differences between these two CPUs when I'm playing Ultra 1080p BF4. The Pentium is $40 cheaper where I live and it seems like I can overclock with the stock heatsink which doesn't seem to be the case for the 6300 (whether it even actually needs an overclock for my needs is another question though). Price is now more important to me that the $140 MSI R9 270X (w/ MIR) just shot up to $170 (w/ MIR) on Newegg and no luck on prices anywhere else. Unless I get the ITX version which is 145, but I don't really want that one.

So yeah, how much of a difference would I see between these two CPUs for daily general school/work use and gaming, and would that difference justify spending another $40. Maybe later in the future I might try out some liquid cooling too if overclocking the 6300 would give it a vast difference in processing power. Please remember my needs. Most intensive things consist of some background apps, torrenting, at least 30-50 tabs open at the same time (not exaggerating), and my most demanding game is BF4 which I play regularly.

Oh and the other specs are the same for everything else.

120 GB SSD Crucial MX100
1TB 7200 RPM Seagate
8GB DDR3-1600
CX 430M PSU
Corsair Carbide Spec - 03 White/Blue

And some final questions I'm just wondering but don't really need an answer to right now. Would getting another 120 GB SSD down the line sometime and set it up as RAID 0 be a good idea? Would it make sense for this build? Does it have to be the same exact brand/capacity as the other SSD?

Thank you.

rolli59 · Nov 18, 2014

Only reason I would get the pentium over the FX6300 is if I had plans to upgrade later to I5 or I7. The FX6300 is a better CPU really in a different class!

Vic Rattlehead · Nov 18, 2014

The CX430M PSU is not enough to support an R9 270X - it only has a single 6+2 pin PCI-e connector, but the R9 270X requires 2x 6-pin connectors. You should either just get an R9 270 (non-X) or look at a PSU in the 500-600W range which will likely have

In terms of the CPU, there are some games where the Pentium G3258 would be a moderately faster than the FX-6300... but in any game that is specifically designed to use many cores, the Pentium gets spanked. In games like World of Warcraft it performs significantly better; you'd be looking at around 25-30% better framerates with the Pentium G3258. In games like Battlefield 4, they're about even, and I'd even say that the Pentium is better. Because even though BF4 supports many threads, it doesn't require them. So it still runs really well with high single-threaded performance.

However as this is now next-gen, console ports are designed around using 5-6 cores as the PS4 and Xbox One are using eight core AMD x86 CPUs, where 5 or 6 cores are available to be used by games (rest reserved for OS). So some more lazy ports like Watch Dogs perform really poorly on the Pentium G3258 (although this may be patched, I'm not sure).

So the Pentium G3258 will perform a lot better in most games or on par, but then a few games will perform absolutely terrible on the G3258. FX-6300 is a safer option but less average performance. You may want to look into a Core i3-4130.

Zeeshan Alabedin · Dec 3, 2014

Going for fx 6300 is a better choice in my opinion, due to the fact that it performs better than i3 in many cases regarding multicore performance but slightly lags behind in single core. Future games will be using multicores hence fx 6300 is a future proof choice. Overclocking this can give you a significant boost but you will require a better cooler.

jasonite · Dec 5, 2014

Most of your CPU question depends on if you are overclocking. It's not that hard to OC the Pentium to 4.5Ghz, and the per core performance is far more important to gaming than how many cores you have. The Pentium core performance is in the highest class. Very few games can use more than two threads at most, and Oc'ing the Pentium will give great performance at its price point. Having said that, BF4 can be one of the most demanding multi-threaded games out there, so the 6300 would be the better choice here. If interested, getting the i3-4150 might be the best choice overall though. It has excellent per-core performance, and it also has hyper-threading. You will have a virtual 4 cores and performance slightly better than the 6300, and it's $97.

J

jasonite · Dec 5, 2014

I decided to work up a preliminary build for you, let me know what you think:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4150 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor ($97.27 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97M Anniversary Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($89.99 @ Mwave)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($54.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($52.65 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 270X 2GB Video Card ($163.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair SPEC-03 White ATX Mid Tower Case ($64.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Rosewill Capstone 550W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply ($64.99 @ Amazon)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer ($14.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $588.83
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-05 00:40 EST-0500

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AMD FX-6300 vs Intel Pentium G3258 (OC) for Gaming Performance (R9 270X)

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