CPU upgrade from fx-6300?

hawkeye5301 · Dec 28, 2016

I currently have an AMD fx-6300 and after playing Arma 3 and getting insanely low fps, I now realize it is probably time to upgrade my CPU. I want an intel CPU but i am not sure which to get. My budget is about $200ish, but does not need to be exact. Also, and recommendations for a good motherboard? Thanks in advance! Here are my specs:

CPU: AMD fx-6300
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
RAM: 8gb
SSD: Samsung EVO 256GB
Hard Drive: 1TB Western Digital

Ecky · Dec 28, 2016

Arma is not well threaded and any 6th gen Intel CPU would be nearly twice as fast in that game. An i3 6100 at $120 has about the same multithreaded performance as your current CPU (maybe a hair more) but double the single-threaded, and would be a nice upgrade for Arma. An i5 6500 + motherboard would exceed your budget and would be little to no faster in Arma than the i3, but would show more improvement in better threaded games like Battlefield.

rwayne · Dec 28, 2016

Ditto. What Ecky said.

My core i3-6100 has turned out to be a surprisingly good gamer for me and is faster than my other machine which has a FX8350. Very pleased with it and for $120 it has some serious bang for your buck.

hawkeye5301 · Dec 28, 2016

Ecky :

Would you say that the extra $85 for the i5 is worth it? I want this to last me for a while but it isn't like I 'm video editing or anything like that, just playing games. Thanks.

Ecky · Dec 28, 2016

I personally would probably be happy with an i3, but I don't play AAA games. i5's pull ahead of i3's only in modern well-threaded titles from big companies like EA, but at times the gap in performance can be considerable.

hawkeye5301 · Dec 28, 2016

Ecky :

Thanks. Do you have any good suggestions for motherboards?

Ecky · Dec 28, 2016

It's worth noting that Intel's 6th generation CPUs do not support DDR3, only DDR4 or DDR3L. The problem with DDR3 and Skylake is that normal DDR3 runs at a higher voltage and it's commonly believed you may damage the memory controller over time by running high voltage RAM, but I haven't seen evidence either way. You might want to do some reading on this.

You could try using your existing RAM in a board that supports DDR3L, or you could sell it in the classifieds and move up to DDR4. They cost about the same so the upgrade probably wouldn't cost you much, but sometimes every dollar counts.

What I typically do is get on PCPartPicker and look for the cheapest board available that has 4 DDR4 slots (if it's not an ITX build). After that, I might rule some out that lack something specifically I want, like a second LAN port or M.2 slot. Right now there's an Asus B150 board with 4 DDR3/L slots on sale on Newegg for $38 after rebate, but typically you're going to be around $55-60 for basic boards. More expensive boards are not necessarily better, they just tend to have more "stuff". Stick with Asus, MSI, ASRock or Gigabyte and you'll be fine. That's not to say other manufacturers may not make good boards, and I went with Zotac in the PC in my signature because it offered what I wanted, but YMMV.

hawkeye5301 · Dec 28, 2016

Ecky :

It's worth noting that Intel's 6th generation CPUs do not support DDR3, only DDR4 or DDR3L. The problem with DDR3 and Skylake is that normal DDR3 runs at a higher voltage and it's commonly believed you may damage the memory controller over time by running high voltage RAM, but I haven't seen evidence either way. You might want to do some reading on this.

You could try using your existing RAM in a board that supports DDR3L, or you could sell it in the classifieds and move up to DDR4. They cost about the same so the upgrade probably wouldn't cost you much, but sometimes every dollar counts.

What I typically do is get on PCPartPicker and look for the cheapest board available that has 4 DDR4 slots (if it's not an ITX build). After that, I might rule some out that lack something specifically I want, like a second LAN port or M.2 slot. Right now there's an Asus B150 board with 4 DDR3/L slots on sale on Newegg for $38 after rebate, but typically you're going to be around $55-60 for basic boards. More expensive boards are not necessarily better, they just tend to have more "stuff". Stick with Asus, MSI, ASRock or Gigabyte and you'll be fine. That's not to say other manufacturers may not make good boards, and I went with Zotac in the PC in my signature because it offered what I wanted, but YMMV.

Thank you so much this helped a ton!

damric · Dec 28, 2016

As far as DDR3, it does work with Skylake, period. There is NO testing data that proves otherwise, because apparently no other laboratory besides my own can be ass-bothered to do do any long term stress testing (coming up on 1 year now for my lab).

DDR3 can be just as good or better for gaming if it is a sufficiently low latency kit. What I've seen for rendering (stuff like Cinebench) is that bandwidth is favored, meaning high frequency DDR4 pulls ahead in those applications.

hawkeye5301 · Dec 29, 2016

damric :

If I am switching from an fx-6300 to an intel CPU, I will have to get a new motherboard either way, so should I get new ram too or just keep my DDR3?

valeman2012 · Dec 29, 2016

If you want to a wait a little longer to trie newer technologies you can upgrade to Intel i5 7th Generation, but it will require you to spend little more.

As i seeing many people recently (even me) are tired of AMD FX 6300 not meeting users demands...its times to upgrade.

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