Is this a good budget gaming pc?

[FrostEel]

So I was wondering about these parts I recently ordered off newegg. I don't know if it is going to turn out well or not.

Amd fx 6100 @ 3.3ghz
Asus Sabertooth 990fx motherboard
Galaxy GTX 570 1.2gb
8gb G.Skill Ripjaw series RAM x 2
Thermaltake 850w psu
Rosewill Ranger Case

And I'm using a hard drive and optical drive from an old computer. My main concerns is the CPU bottlenecking the gpu as I've read in some reviews with 6100s.

I am looking to play games like Battlefield 3, saints row 3, WoW, Starcraft 2, and future titles.

So will there be any problems with this, if so, what should I do/replace?

 

[blazorthon]

I don't recommend buying an AMD FX processor because they are pretty horrible right now. If you realy want an AMD CPU then a Phenom II 980 quad core would be better. Also, I would not call your video card a budget video card, the GTX 570 is considered high end.

The only problem I see besides the CPU would be using an older hard drive... It is your choice but you didn't give enough information on the hard drive to know if it will be a problem. I understand the extreme prices of hard drives makes them annoying right now and do suggest that you keep one you already have but warn you that it may need to be replaced some time.

It probably won't need replacement until hard drive prices come back down but it is something to know.

 

[blazorthon]

The Phenom II x4 980 BE would be much faster than the FX 6100 but only costs $10 more. If you really want a six core then you could grab a Phenom II x6 1090T or 1070T that would also outperform the FX six core in every way but Tom's lists the Phenom x4 980 as a better gaming CPU then the Phenom II 6 core CPUs.

Since Newegg no longer carries any Phenom II six cores you would have to go elsewhere for them. I bought my CPU at Amazon.com because amazon will give a full refund (shipping included) if there is a problem.

 

[vitornob]

As per this article: System Builder Marathon, Dec. 2011: $1200 Enthusiast PC

The AMD FX-6100 implies some heavy bottleneck at SLI system, even when playing at 2560x1600 that greately shifts the weight to VGA cards.
Saying this, the only conclusion is that this CPU is truly weak.
If you want to stay at AMD go for Phenom II X4 (anyone, except 840), or if you want intel go for i5-2500k (even faster)

 

[FrostEel]

If this list means anything, http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html the 6100 is fairly high up...

And I'll only be gaming @ 1920x1080

I'll be upgrading from a Phenom II x4 810, so it should be a difference right?

 

[blazorthon]

FX performance per clock is much worse than Phenom II performance per clock. Even if all threads of the six core (All cores in this case) were in use it wouldn't be much better, if better at all, than the Phenom II. If you don't understand that then here is what that means: a Phenom II core running at the same clock speed as an FX core will still be faster than the FX core because it is a better architecture, it's more efficient. This is true regardless of whether the FX and Phenom II CPUs are running at a 1GHz, 2GHz, 3GHz, 4GHz, or any other clock speed between, above, or below them.

Even if games used all threads of the FX 6100 it would still be slower. The 8150 performs similarly well in most games as the Phenom II 980 does but the 980 is simply better for now. Unfortunately the 8150 does not even compare to the 980 in software that uses four threads or less and is much more expensive than the 980.

The next series of FX CPUs from AMD look much better than the current ones and when they are out will will probably have the scheduling problem with bulldozer modules fixed to so they might outperform the older Phenom IIS then but not before that time(s).

The FX 8150 is AMD's only FX CPU that currently can compete with AMD's older Phenom II 980 in gaming performance. The 8150 would kill the 980 in heavily multi-threaded applications but gaming tends to not use many threads and even when it does games often don't use all threads evenly so a smaller number of much faster cores still tends to win against many slow cores.

Basically FX CPUs kinda suck right now but should get much better later next year. It's kinda like how the first Phenoms suck but the Phenom IIs didn't.

EDIT: In heavily multi-threaded applications the FX 8150 does considerably better than the Phenom II 980 but the Phenom II six cores are very close to the FX 8150 in heavily multi-threaded applications while still being cheaper.

 

[blazorthon]

Here is an article from our very own Tomshardware.com provening that the FX CPUs bottleneck frame rates more or less all the time, not just in the very CPU intensive games like BF3 at the highest settings.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i5-fx-6100-overclock-benchmark,3099-3.html

Some times the Bulldozer build lost to the Sandy Bridge build with half the budget. Admittedly the FX-6100 was a horrible choice for this comparison, an FX 8150 or at least an FX 8120 should have been tested but it does show the horrible per clock performance of Bulldozer none the less since the six core CPU is significantly slower than the quad core CPU with a lower clock frequency.

Increased frequency and core count did not save the FX lineup form the fact that the Bulldozer is a horrible attempt at making a CPU and it is still slower than One of Intel's cheaper quad core CPUs. This isn't even because of the modular approach of Bulldozer but it's performance is simply because AMD screwed it all up. The modular approach is, however, better geared towards servers and such highly threaded work and hurts at lightly threaded workloads. Regardless of this Bulldozer should be faster but there are several problems that could have been fixed.

One is stated by a former (high ranking) employee of AMD that tells us the automatic method of designing each transistor used to make the chips reduced performance by about 20% and increased power usage by about 20% when compared with how fast Bulldozer chips would be if they were hand-designed chips like pretty much all other CPUs made so far. I have to hope this is true and not a hoax because if AMD actually made this garbage called Bulldozer properly yet it fails so much then I see a bleak future where AMD has completely left the high performance/enthusiast market...

Another problem that has been recurring throughout some of AMD's designs is the CPU cache's low speeds compared to Intel's CPU cache. AMD increases the capacity of the cache on their CPUs in an attempt to bypass this problem but it doesn't seem to be working.

Take a hint from Intel, small but fast L1 and L2 caches with a high capacity L3 cache has better performance than larger but slower L1 and L2 caches with a high capacity L3 cache have. This has been tested and proven before and I have A PDF file that shows and slightly explains this phenomenon, although it is a little old.

There are even more problems but these two are probably the greatest factors that I can remember right now. If both of these were fixed then Bulldozer would be a great product that I could throw recommendations around for but no, AMD screwed it up.

I'm not even an expert but I can see these problems... Come on AMD this isn't funny.

 

[FrostEel]

Best answer selected by Frosteel.