Which is best on a gaming PC budget i3, i5, or AMD?

RansomRenso · Aug 13, 2015

Hello everyone,

Currently I am looking into building my first gaming PC which I plan on spending no more than $150 on my CPU and I'm a little torn on which to choose?

For a long time I had my eye on the i3-4160 (2 cores) because for the most part it has great reviews, and is pretty much the best bang for its buck in terms of a $120 CPU. After some research I found out 2 cores is no longer much of an option when it comes to gaming. I searched for the cheapest i5 with 4 cores and the price from the i3 that I want compared to the i5-4460 jumps about $65. Should I make the jump to 4 cores or should I look into an AMD?

When it comes to AMD I know a lot less and after researching I found most tech sites claim AMD to be inferior to Intel. I know people can be touchy about this topic but I am only citing what I have read. I admire AMD for their competitive pricing and I am more open to buying an AMD CPU than before. While researching processors in general for gaming, it seems that 8 cores can actually sometimes be detrimental to game performance, therefore I would prefer to stick with 4 or 6 cores, unless you guys advise otherwise. I know nothing about over-clocking and I do not plan on doing it (I know the AMD side is big on over-clocking).

Do you guys recommend jumping on AMD or sticking with the i3 or upgrading to an i5? I would like to stay in the $120 to $150 price range. If you recommend AMD can you please name a few processors?

CTurbo · Aug 13, 2015

The i3 is BY FAR the best gaming cpu under $150. I would not recommend any AMD for gaming at any budget until AMD releases some new material. The current stuff is 3+ years old.

KKAW · Aug 14, 2015

RansomRenso :

Hello everyone,

Currently I am looking into building my first gaming PC which I plan on spending no more than $150 on my CPU and I'm a little torn on which to choose?

For a long time I had my eye on the i3-4160 (2 cores) because for the most part it has great reviews, and is pretty much the best bang for its buck in terms of a $120 CPU. After some research I found out 2 cores is no longer much of an option when it comes to gaming. I searched for the cheapest i5 with 4 cores and the price from the i3 that I want compared to the i5-4460 jumps about $65. Should I make the jump to 4 cores or should I look into an AMD?

When it comes to AMD I know a lot less and after researching I found most tech sites claim AMD to be inferior to Intel. I know people can be touchy about this topic but I am only citing what I have read. I admire AMD for their competitive pricing and I am more open to buying an AMD CPU than before. While researching processors in general for gaming, it seems that 8 cores can actually sometimes be detrimental to game performance, therefore I would prefer to stick with 4 or 6 cores, unless you guys advise otherwise. I know nothing about over-clocking and I do not plan on doing it (I know the AMD side is big on over-clocking).

Do you guys recommend jumping on AMD or sticking with the i3 or upgrading to an i5? I would like to stay in the $120 to $150 price range. If you recommend AMD can you please name a few processors?

For Budget:
i3 4170 (4 virtual cores)
or
i5 4460 (4 real cores)

baha_timimi · Aug 14, 2015

i3-4130 at 112$
i3-4150 at 121$
i3-4160 at 117$
i3-4170 at 120$
i3-4330 at 127$
i3-4360 at 150$
or
i5-4430 at 180$
i5-4440 at 184$
i5-4590 at 199$
or you can buy a used CPU's with good price and overclocked them to obtain performance best than the above:
i5-2500k at 170$
i7-2600k at 165$ from ebay

CylonRaider · Aug 14, 2015

Your cheapest and best bang for the buck in my IMO is the 4170 if you are putting a graphic card in. If not go with the 4370 and get the better graphics support with the 4600 graphics. I wouldn't pay for the better graphics if your not using the CPU/GPU aspect of it.

RansomRenso · Aug 14, 2015

Thank you everyone for the informative responses!

I honestly thought some people would recommend AMD but it seems Intel is the way to go. I only brought up AMD for the potential "future proofing" everyone seems to talk about since they range from 4 to 8 cores. Many times if i google "$500 gaming PC" It is almost always advised to buy the AMD FX-6300 which is about $90. With its 6 cores many people argue it will be beneficial to have in the future.

Would you guys still recommend an i3 if I am not planning on upgrading the PC for another four to five years, even if it means I have to gradually lower the graphics setting every year? When it comes to the i3, does the hyper-threading make it so that a game thinks there are four cores? I only ask because while many people argue the FX-6300 is better than an i3 4170 because it has more cores, I have seen benchmarks and gameplay that say otherwise.

KKAW · Aug 14, 2015

RansomRenso :

i3 4170 is far superior than the FX 6300 and a lot stable.
the hyper threading makes it act like 4 virtual cores, it may not be as powerful as 4 physical cores however it is still great for the money.

If you will not upgrade for that long i would highly recommend you go with something like the i5 4460 or 4590 if you can afford it.

AMD Futureproofing? Must be a joke because there CPU's are ancient, literally ancient architecture.

It has 6 cores however since the single core power is worse than the i3 4170 or even the anniversary pentium in games it performs worse than the i3 4170, also most games use 4 cores. However more games are starting to take a bit more advantage over more cores however 4 cores will be more than enough for the next couple of years unless you are doing top end gaming.

NightAntilli · Aug 14, 2015

I would go for the FX-6300. People dismiss AMD's future proofing, but you can mark my words that when DX12 games are released, the FX-6300 will outperform all i3 CPUs in most games.

The i3 has superior single core performance to the FX-6300, and right now, that's why it beats the FX. The single core performance is all that matters in DX11 and in games that were based on the PS3/X360 programming paradigm. With examples like Mantle, and in the future with Vulkan and DX12, and the developers being forced to use 6 threads on consoles due to the weak CPU cores, the FX-6300 will not lose to the i3. Hell even an Athlon 860k is a better investment than an i3 right now. Most of this site disagrees with this point of view, but most of them are unaware of the changes that are happening and will be coming in 2016 and onwards.

Considering the price/performance alone, the FX-6300 is the best CPU to go for. Add long term use in there, and it's really a no-brainer to go for the FX-6300. I'd suggest you overclock it btw. It's as easy as increasing the multiplier to let it reach 4 GHz. Pretty much all FX-6300 can reach this without any voltage adaptation.

superg05 · Aug 14, 2015

I agree with windows 10 and direct x 12 you gpu will no longer be forced to talk to just 1 cpu so that bottle neck will be gone and your gpu will be able to talk to all your pc's cores so as long as you have a dx12 gpu Amd 6 or 8 core is not a bad choice or an apu so it should even out more

LookItsRain · Aug 14, 2015

NightAntilli :

Im tired of seeing this, dx12 will have performance gains on intel as well, not just amd. DX12 bringing amd cpus out of the garbage cant and will not happen.

superg05 · Aug 14, 2015

LookItsRain :

tis true I guess we will know when the benchmarks come out intel low nm tech is hard to compete with also

KKAW · Aug 14, 2015

NightAntilli :

I totally understand where you are coming from however current benchmarks tells us the FX lineup has terrible fps consistency and lacks in almost every area compared to it's inlet counter parts.

Do you have any reliable evidence your "future predicting" statements has any back bone to it?

CTurbo · Aug 15, 2015

The FXs are already old. They are in no way "future proof". A good overclocking FX6300 build will also cost a lot more than an i3 build. AMD has no price/performance advantage right now.

Martin1982 · Aug 15, 2015

Have to agree with almost anyone get the i3
I have the amd fx8350 maybe I will be able to use all my cores in 2017 then it's a bit to late.. Just because directx 12 will come out does not mean it will be used in the same second. Gaming development takes years they startede with fallout 4 in late 2008

RansomRenso · Aug 15, 2015

Once again thank you to everyone for your help!

You guys have swayed me to stick with Intel and I going to get an i3. I am going to hold off on an i5 for now since I still have a long list of games that have come out in the past four or five years that I would like to tackle first. I still plan on playing newer titles but an i3 will do just fine, even if it means I play on medium to high graphics. I am not obsessed with graphics anyways. I have seen people play The Witcher 3 on i3s so I am confident it will hold out for a couple years.

Thanks everyone!

NightAntilli · Aug 16, 2015

LookItsRain :

And I'm tired of seeing this exact same response every time. Intel will also have performance gains indeed. But something like an i3 that has only 2 cores and 2 additional threads due to hyperthreading that boost only around 30% in performance compared to a full core won't get as much of a boost as an AMD CPU. The FX-6 CPUs have 4 threads that go unused in games right now, and the i3 has two.

You're saying it won't happen, but in pretty much every software that uses all the threads of the FX-6 CPUs, the i3 loses. DX12 will be doing this, and so will Vulkan.

NightAntilli · Aug 16, 2015

KKAW :

The current terrible fps consistency is due to the lack of single core performance of the FX CPUs. The i3 has better single core performance. But overall, the FX-6 is the faster CPU. The multithreading issues under DX11 play a role for games. There are multiple games where the FX-4 beats out the FX-6 and the FX-8 CPUs, which obviously shouldn't happen. This will all be resolved with Vulkan and DX12.

I can assure you that I'm not pulling this out of my ass. The short (and shallow) version is the following;

- Mantle has shown a significant increase in framerates on CPUs that are limited by single core performance under DX11, and this boost is proportionate to the amount of additional threads that are available (provided the bottleneck is still there on the CPUs with more limited threads). Vulkan and DX12 provide a similar support as Mantle for multithreading, and the same kind of performance gain is to be expected.

- Draw calls under DX12 show a direct correlation between how fast a CPU can feed a GPU, and here the FX-6 CPUs crush the i3 CPUs. Generally, FX-4 = i3, FX-8 = i5 and FX-6 is in between.
Read here: Also note that the FX 6300's DX12 results on R7 260X, GTX 970 and R9 290X comprehensively beat the more expensive Core i3 4130.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-why-directx-12-is-a-gamechanger

- Single core programming was viable for the last generation due to the way the consoles were designed. With the PS4 and Xbox one both containing an AMD architecture that have CPUs with weak single core performance, developers are being forced to go wide. It's the reason the Pentium G3258 is no longer a viable gaming CPU since some games simply won't run at all anymore on it, while a year ago it was the best value. Going for more cores is the smarter choice for future proofing, provided the total performance of all cores together outperform the total performance of the one with the fewer cores. So in other words, there's no sense going for an FX-6 over an i5 (other than price).

LookItsRain · Aug 16, 2015

NightAntilli :

KKAW :

The current terrible fps consistency is due to the lack of single core performance of the FX CPUs. The i3 has better single core performance. But overall, the FX-6 is the faster CPU. The multithreading issues under DX11 play a role for games. There are multiple games where the FX-4 beats out the FX-6 and the FX-8 CPUs, which obviously shouldn't happen. This will all be resolved with Vulkan and DX12.

I can assure you that I'm not pulling this out of my ass. The short (and shallow) version is the following;

- Mantle has shown a significant increase in framerates on CPUs that are limited by single core performance under DX11, and this boost is proportionate to the amount of additional threads that are available (provided the bottleneck is still there on the CPUs with more limited threads). Vulkan and DX12 provide a similar support as Mantle for multithreading, and the same kind of performance gain is to be expected.

- Draw calls under DX12 show a direct correlation between how fast a CPU can feed a GPU, and here the FX-6 CPUs crush the i3 CPUs. Generally, FX-4 = i3, FX-8 = i5 and FX-6 is in between.
Read here: Also note that the FX 6300's DX12 results on R7 260X, GTX 970 and R9 290X comprehensively beat the more expensive Core i3 4130.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-why-directx-12-is-a-gamechanger

- Single core programming was viable for the last generation due to the way the consoles were designed. With the PS4 and Xbox one both containing an AMD architecture that have CPUs with weak single core performance, developers are being forced to go wide. It's the reason the Pentium G3258 is no longer a viable gaming CPU since some games simply won't run at all anymore on it, while a year ago it was the best value. Going for more cores is the smarter choice for future proofing, provided the total performance of all cores together outperform the total performance of the one with the fewer cores. So in other words, there's no sense going for an FX-6 over an i5 (other than price).

Ill believe it when i see dx12 game benchmarks. The multi core hype and performance gains were hyped up like this in 2010, yet 5 years later, most games still dont use 4 cores.

NightAntilli · Aug 16, 2015

Because even though all cores can communicate to the GPU under DX11 (where as only one could do it), it still allows only one core to communicate to the GPU at the same time, so the cores need to alternate their communication, causing bottlenecks. Under DX12 all cores can communicate simultaneously with the GPU.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9UACXikdR0

NightAntilli · Aug 17, 2015

Seeing the Ashes of Singularity results, I take it back. Go for the i3.

Which is best on a gaming PC budget i3, i5, or AMD?

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