computernewb

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Aug 9, 2010
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ok so i narrowed my choices down to these 2 cpus.

fx-6100
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103962

and

phenom II x4 980
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103935

they are the same price and i was wondering which is the "better" choice for now and the future. I play games such as starcraft and other first person shooter and will continue to play games in the future. I want the one with the overall better performance. Do software and games now utitlize all 4 cores and will 2 extra cores make a big difference? how soon will there be software and games that utilize all 6 cores?

If i can hear some pros and cons of each, it will make my decision a lot easier. Thanks! :lol:
 

randomkid

Distinguished

It's really a tough choice. On one hand, the 980 is basically end of the line for its architecture but on the otherhand, it's trading blows even against the 8150 in many benchmarks & better in more games.
But I think both cpu will not be a bottleneck in most modern games so you can go with either. I myself will go for the 6100 just for being the newer architecture, having more "cores" appearing in task manager & being 95w compared to 125 for the 980. But such choice is only based on the 2 options. I will not go for either if Intel in included in the option.
 

delaro

Judicious
Ambassador
If you building from scratch go Intel and get a much better performance per watt advantage. If you upgrading on a existing AMD platform id stick with the Phenom X4 980. Gaming wise if is as good as it gets and uses less power O.C. Bulldozer is just a waste in terms of gaming as nothing out uses more than 4 cores or will in the next year of so. The only bulldozer I would even consider is the FX-4100 because of the price.
 

jdwii

Splendid
The 980 hands down. Heck even for multitasking the 4 core will probably beat the 6 core. The bulldozers are only 80% efficient per core for multitasking so take 80%*6 and you get 480% so yeah. Most of the time programs only use 4 cores or less so lets just say forget about the 6 core. If anything i would probably Save the money and get a 4110 and a 212+ and overclock it to the max. But hey it's up To you.
 

double-facepalm.jpg
 
FX @ 4.2GHz is beaten easily by i5 @ 3GHz so yeah it's bad. All FXs are beaten in gaming by i3 @ 3GHz to and i3s are only dual cores. Games often only use one or two threads so having 4, 6, or 8 cores isn't much help.

GHz is the clock rate and IPC is instructions per clock, ie performance per clock. Intel has a huge advantage in IPC so even at much lower frequencies an Intel i3/i5/i7 is faster than FX. Intel also has other advantages such as much better floating point performance and much lower power usage. An i3 uses less than half the power of an FX CPU while being faster for games and cheaper than most FX CPUs.

FX is okay for very well threaded applications but gaming is not well threaded so FX fails at gaming when compared to anything Intel has made in several years. Even Core 2 is better than FX and Core 2 is several years old.

If you must go AMD then a Phenom x4 BE is your best bet, preferably the 980 BE. Intel is the way to go for gaming right now. Hopefully AMD will learn to compete, but AMD officially stated that they don't plan on doing so. This might change after all it wouldn't be the first time a company did a complete 180 on a previous statement (look at HP, for a while they said they were going to leave the consumer PC market yet now they say the opposite).
 

Those are synthetic benchmarks. There is no way an fx 4170 overclocked to 4.2 will outperform an i7-2600k.
 

SpartanJay

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Dec 12, 2012
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go for the 1045T its $99 at tiger direct