best budget friendly processor for gaming

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Eliasand

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Those 2 perform very similar in today's games. While you may get more FPS with the i3 on single-threaded games like CS:GO, the FX6300 is a bit better in new AAA games like Fallout 4.
I would recommend the i3 because of it's upgrade path. If you buy the i3 now with a decent motherboard, you just have to buy a new CPU in the future, for example an i5-6600k.
The FX is old and the AM3+ socket won't bring out any new processors, so when you want to upgrade, you have to buy a whole new system.
 


Skylake processors are not going to be "budget friendly". It is the newest arch out for Intel and you will be required to go with DDR4 RAM. With that said the i3 6100 is a dual core with 4 threads. It isn't a true quad core computer, but will give you better multithreaded performance. Intel has better core per core performance than AMD so older games that only ran on a couple cores will run much better on the i3. The AMD FX 6300 will have better multithreaded performance and can be overclocked. Modern games are becoming more and more multithreaded all the time and with DX 12 going mainstream it is only going to become more popular for games to use more and more threads. Most new games are calling for minimum requirements of i5 processors so that is something to keep in mind.

With the i3 you get much newer arch and better core per core performance. With FX 6300 you get 6 cores that can be overclocked. A FX 6300 with 970 motherboard should cost less than an i3 6100 build, so with with the 6300 you should be able to budget in a better GPU.

Those would be the major strengths and weaknesses of both.
 


Keep in mind the "upgrade path" for the i3 6100 is always going to be Skylake CPUs. Once Kaby Lake comes out next year Skylake will be a dead socket as well. You will not be able to put a Kaby Lake CPU in a Skylake motherboard. Therefore if you want to again upgrade to the newest arch (a year or two down the road) when you do upgrade (and eventually we all upgrade) you will have to get a new motherboard and processor.
 


Considering that Kaby Lake is just a Skylake Refresh, I would imagine they would be compatible with existing LGA 1151 boards, unless Intel has issued a statement saying they are not. 2017's Cannonlake might not work with LGA 1151. The i3 is still a strong performer, and even in newer games, it's still outperforming the FX CPUs. Fallout 4 isn't a good example in favour of the FX CPUs, even the FX 9590 barely keeps up with a Haswell i3 in that game, a Skylake i3 would beat anything in AMD's current lineup for Fallout 4.

Games are getting more multithreaded, but AMD has fallen so far behind now, that they simply aren't competitive on anything except price. DirectX 12 might breathe some more life in to the old FX CPUs, but by the time it becomes mainstream, Zen is going to be out, and the FX CPUs are going to be 4 years old at minimum. I wouldn't buy an FX CPU at this point unless I literally couldn't afford anything else. Between the age of the CPU and lack of modern chipset features on the AMD platform, I don't see them lasting all that long, they're really not a great choice if you're looking to build a system you want to keep long term and not have to upgrade in a couple of years.
 


The thing is for budget gamers the FX still has a lot of life left. With the proper setup some FX processors can rival the mighty i5 in games that are heavily multithreaded. Now I do agree that given a good budget at this stage in the game it would be better to go Intel or wait for Zen to release, but someone on a strict budget that wants to play games at 60 FPS at 720 or 1080p there is nothing wrong with getting an FX 6300 and budgeting in a better GPU (as most games are not only going more multithreaded, but most AAA titles are also very much GPU, not CPU dependent). Now there are some games that are very much CPU bound (such as MMORPGs) but most newer AAA titles are both mulitthreaded and GPU bound. In these titles we measure the difference between i5 and FX 6 and 8 core systems in under 10 FPS. The difference in most AAA titles with good GPUs (mind you a budget gamer isn't going to have a GTX 980 or better so we are talking R9 280X - R9 290(X) at the best for most budget gamers) is only going to be around 5FPS on average. With DX12 already in use with game developers and mainstreaming soon the performance difference should be even less. If someone is going to try to max out a GTX 980Ti or better then yea you need Intel, but budget gamers aren't on that level.

Something to keep in mind is the consoles always set the tone for AAA gaming. Most gamers are on consoles and console games far outweigh PC games in total sales. When a developer makes a new AAA title it 100% HAS to be able to run on the PS4 / Xbone systems. Hardware wise the PS4 or Xbone isn't very impressive. Factoring in the highly optimized environment of a console you will still be able to game better, with higher settings on a FX 6300 with R9 280 then you will be on a PS4. What this means is a person with a FX 6300 gaming PC is going to be able to play all AAA titles for the full lifespan of the current console generation (PS4 / Xbone) at better quality than the consoles can render. To most budget gamers that is what they are looking for. Yes you can get better performance out of an i7 system but you are also going to pay for that extra performance. Budget gamers are usually happy to be able to play the game with better quality than the console gamers get.
 
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