I3 3220 vs FX 6300

[sheepsnowadays]

I am just wondering why everyone suggests the i3 3220 for budget PC builds. The FX 6300 is the same price, pretty much matches the single threaded performance and dominates it in multi threaded, and can be overclocked. Is there something I am missing? or why would you even consider an i3 if your building from scratch?

 

[COLGeek]

One consideration that many take into account with the i3 recommendation is that you always upgrade the same system to a much more capable i5 or i7 system by only changing the CPU.

With the AMD route, even going to the highest end FX CPU can't keep up in terms of raw performance as compared to the possibility of eventually going with a future i5/i7 plan.

Regardless, the FX-6300 is a very good CPU and will exceed the needs of many users. It is a solid choice for many.

 

[sheepsnowadays]

One consideration that many take into account with the i3 recommendation is that you always upgrade the same system to a much more capable i5 or i7 system by only changing the CPU.

With the AMD route, even going to the highest end FX CPU can't keep up in terms of raw performance as compared to the possibility of eventually going with a future i5/i7 plan.

Regardless, the FX-6300 is a very good CPU and will exceed the needs of many users. It is a solid choice for many.

Yes but if you were to go with the FX 6300 you would have an AM3+ motherboard that supports Steamroller, possibly even better than the i5's and i7's.

 

[calstempel]

Yes but if you were to go with the FX 6300 you would have an AM3+ motherboard that supports Steamroller, possibly even better than the i5's and i7's.

^agreed

 

[bigshootr8]

But can we safely say whether or not steamroller will be anywhere remotely close in performance as ivy bridge or sandy bridge i5 and i7's chances are no it will not be.

 

[sheepsnowadays]

Well seeing how Piledriver is close to ivy now, i can see steamroller easily passing ivy i5's. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/697?vs=702

 

[Ironslice]

Steamroller might be better than ivy i5's, but then we have Haswell. 3 years later AMD finally is starting to catch up with Intel Sandy Bridge.

 

[sheepsnowadays]

Steamroller might be better than ivy i5's, but then we have Haswell. 3 years later AMD finally is starting to catch up with Intel Sandy Bridge.

Ya and how many times did you have to upgrade your motherboard? An AM3+ socket supports Athlon, Phenom, Bulldozer, Piledriver, Steamroller, Excavator?

 

[blazorthon]

Steamroller is supposed to be a bigger improvement over Piledriver than Piledriver was over Bulldozer and given the great amount of information that we have on the architecture (AMD is being extremely open about what they change in each generation of their modular archs up to Excavator, which is Steamroller's successor and may also be compatible with AM3+ boards), it's extremely likely to be a excellent upgrade path. I'd vote for AM3+ over LGA 1155 as an upgrade path, but that's me. I doubt that LGA 1155 will be a bad path right now, but I do not doubt that it is the inferior path, especially with how new games are getting more and more well-threaded.

 

[blazorthon]

Also, for those who care right now, you can take an eight-core FX CPU and make it game as well as any K edition i5. Disable one core per module or at least cut down the P states of one core per module and overclock the CPU/NB frequency (controls L3 cache bandwidth and latency). Then it will be optimized for lightly threaded workloads such as most games instead of the highly threaded optimized *mode* that it's in at stock.

 

[bigshootr8]

You would need to disable more on a 8 core cpu to make it optimal. 3 cores at the moment is considered to be the sweet spot. And I feel that is a contributing factor to why AMD is losing to Intel is they haven't been able to put out a 4 core competitor to go against the i5's or the i7's. (Which they have pretty much said they are done with the speed wars with intel.)

I hope you guys are right competition is good for intel and they probably would be on haswell if AMD wasn't as behind as they are.

Well see though I won't hold my breath. AMD hasn't had intel by the coat tails since the socket 939 when I started building computers my old AMD Athlon 64 3700+ and FX-55.

 

[blazorthon]

You would need to disable more on a 8 core cpu to make it optimal. 3 cores at the moment is considered to be the sweet spot. And I feel that is a contributing factor to why AMD is losing to Intel is they haven't been able to put out a 4 core competitor to go against the i5's or the i7's. (Which they have pretty much said they are done with the speed wars with intel.)

I hope you guys are right competition is good for intel and they probably would be on haswell if AMD wasn't as behind as they are.

Well see though I won't hold my breath. AMD hasn't had intel by the coat tails since the socket 939 when I started building computers my old AMD Athlon 64 3700+ and FX-55.

You could disable more, but many games nowadays can effectively use four cores, so you'd want to be sure of how well-threaded the games you play are before going further.

Simply doing this by default would have let AMD have a great *four core* competitor. REally, AMD can compete, they're simply not utilizing what they have properly. Doing what I said except having that be the default for their CPUs would make them far more competitive with Intel. I can name other things that they should do such as fix their messed up caches, but even with just the above easy to manually make modifications, you can make an excellent contender out of the three and four module FX CPUs.

 

[Guest]

this is all assuming steamroller will be released in the next year and it just may not be:
AMD Leaked Roadmap Analysis: Prices, Margins And Competitiveness

which will be using another chipset:
AMD 1090FX chipset arrives with SteamRoller

so to infer that an AM3+/990FX motherboard will potentially have a better upgrade path, esp in the near future, than a socket 1155 may not be correct . . . at all.

 

[blazorthon]

this is all assuming steamroller will be released in the next year and it just may not be:
AMD Leaked Roadmap Analysis: Prices, Margins And Competitiveness
http://i1000.photobucket.com/albums/af123/colonelsandersPP/amd2013rdmp_dh_2_fx57a.jpg
which will be using another chipset:
AMD 1090FX chipset arrives with SteamRoller

so to infer that an AM3+/990FX motherboard will potentially have a better upgrade path, esp in the near future, than a socket 1155 may not be correct . . . at all.

The new chipset is just another AM3+ chipset. The chipset doesn't matter, all it takes is a BIOS update. For example, many AM3+ boards with support for Bulldozer and Piledriver have very old 700 series chipsets that first appeared on AM2+/AM3 motherboards. Some even older Nvidia chipsets are used on some AM3+ boards and they support Bulldozer and Piledriver. So, yes, 900 series chipsets will support Steamroller. All it takes is a BIOS update and most if not all 900 series chipset boards will receive them.

 

[bigshootr8]

I think loon's arguement is that the upgrade path for AMD makes less sense if Steamroller comes out after haswell. Because in theory you could wait for haswell and then you are again with a 25% (not a real number but a guess) over amd once again.

 

[blazorthon]

I think loon's arguement is that the upgrade path for AMD makes less sense if Steamroller comes out after haswell. Because in theory you could wait for haswell and then you are again with a 25% (not a real number but a guess) over amd once again.

Haswell uses a new socket that is incompatible with current Intel systems. The only way for it to be relevant for this conversation is if OP doesn't buy anything before Haswell launches later next year. Also, Haswell has been said to be more like only a 15% performance increase over Ivy Bridge according to current information about it, although I can't really estimate how overclocking would change that.

AMD has no such issue whether or not Steamroller is out after Haswell because you can get a cheap AMD system right now and upgrade the CPU later instead of replace the motherboard in addition to the CPU upgrade like you'd need to do with Intel.

 

[bigshootr8]

I think it comes down to what this poster is after. The guy is after a budget build in which case AMD will be the victor on premise. In terms of bleeding edge until proven otherwise Intel will be the proven victor.

If it takes a more then a year for the next iteration of AMD chips to come out then a couple of questions have to be asked. How much would someone want to pay after buying a cpu then to only upgrade it a year maybe 2 years later.

And the point with haswell is that if you wait long enough you'll never know what you could of had during that time you waited

Its just hard to recommend a platform that has let consumers down for a while now.

 

[blazorthon]

I think it comes down to what this poster is after. The guy is after a budget build in which case AMD will be the victor on premise. In terms of bleeding edge until proven otherwise Intel will be the proven victor.

If it takes a more then a year for the next iteration of AMD chips to come out then a couple of questions have to be asked. How much would someone want to pay after buying a cpu then to only upgrade it a year maybe 2 years later.

And the point with haswell is that if you wait long enough you'll never know what you could of had during that time you waited

Its just hard to recommend a platform that has let consumers down for a while now.

There's nothing wrong with the platform and it has not been letting people down. AMD simply sets their CPUs up improperly for lightly threaded workloads (IDK why they do it, but w/e). I explained how to fix that.

A properly configured FX-81xx CPU or even better, 83xx CPU, should compete excellently with Sandy and Ivy i5s and i7s in stock versus stock and also OC versus OC gaming performance comparisons and it's not even difficult to do.

So, it's not the platform that let anyone down, it's AMD for not setting their CPUs up properly.

Furthermore, waiting for Haswell means waiting for Steamroller too unless you want to make an unfair comparison. At that point, some new games would have launched and many of them would probably be more well-threaded than many of today's games, decreasing the need to properly set up the CPUs yourself anyway.

 

[Guest]

The new chipset is just another AM3+ chipset. The chipset doesn't matter, all it takes is a BIOS update. For example, many AM3+ boards with support for Bulldozer and Piledriver have very old 700 series chipsets that first appeared on AM2+/AM3 motherboards. Some even older Nvidia chipsets are used on some AM3+ boards and they support Bulldozer and Piledriver. So, yes, 900 series chipsets will support Steamroller. All it takes is a BIOS update and most if not all 900 series chipset boards will receive them.

ok, thanks for clearing that up for me and excuse my ignorance.

now trying to be as unbiased as i can, because to be honest i am not impressed with piledriver at all, lets see what i found in a head to head gaming comparison:
AMD Vishera FX-6300 & FX-4300 Review
in a gaming resolutions of 720 and 1080 the lower resolution favors the i3 (yes that is a 3225, the difference is the iGPU)

the higher resolution "evens it up" a bit:

but in dirt the performance favors the 6300:
though this is "even"

big difference here: (it beats my i5! )

my point? all in all it is a bit of a tough call between the two (i3-3220 and the 6300) at lower resolutions ( and possibly more cpu intensive games)the i3 will most likely give a bit better performance, but at higher resolutions, the 6300 is a great choice to consider. but gee, lets throw in the MP maps in BF3, huh?


did my babbling help the OP any?

edit: fixed review link.

 

[DJDeCiBeL]

Also, Haswell has been said to be more like only a 15% performance increase over Ivy Bridge according to current information about it, although I can't really estimate how overclocking would change that.

Something I actually I agree with you on, lol. Actually, I think it'll be even less than 15% over Ivy. I think another 5-10% is more realistic.

IMO, Haswell will be more of a refinement on Ivy than a major change. Broadwell will be the "next big thing" from Intel.

 

[bigshootr8]

Whatever you want to call it AMD hasn't been the cpu king for a long time and hasn't been able to put themselves in that position whether its a error or not they haven't done it. I'd like them to but even when you eliminate the 4 wasted cores in most cases you don't exactly get all the performance you would think by pushing down to 4 cores.

Until they put out a chip that you can say wow that is neck and neck with intels flagship chip or even slightly better people just won't respect AMD. They will with people pinching pennies for computer builds but we shall wait and see.

 

[Guest]

I am just wondering why everyone suggests the i3 3220 for budget PC builds. The FX 6300 is the same price, pretty much matches the single threaded performance and dominates it in multi threaded, and can be overclocked. Is there something I am missing? or why would you even consider an i3 if your building from scratch?

oh?

look at the rest of them.
System Benchmarks: Single Thread Performance


after further review; did i just bite some troll bait?

 

[blazorthon]

oh?
http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image//skymtl/CPU/FX-6300-FX-4300/FX-6300-FX-4300-44.jpg
look at the rest of them.
System Benchmarks: Single Thread Performance


after further review; did i just bite some troll bait?

Well, synthetic benchmarks are often far from accurate, but I think that you may have bitten some troll bait. No way in hell will any current FX CPU match an i3-3220 in single threaded performance at stock. Some may come close such as the FX-4170, FX-4300, and FX-8350, but they won't match it. Their advantage is simply in multi-threaded performance and cache capacity as far as gaming is concerned. It takes doing my *mod* suggestion and/or overclocking to meet or exceed i3s in single threaded performance with any current AM3+ FX CPU.

 

[sheepsnowadays]

oh?
http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image//skymtl/CPU/FX-6300-FX-4300/FX-6300-FX-4300-44.jpg
look at the rest of them.
System Benchmarks: Single Thread Performance


after further review; did i just bite some troll bait?

You can compare benches all day and get conflicting results. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/699?vs=677 - almost matches the i3 in single threaded and destroys it at multi threaded.

 

[blazorthon]

You can compare benches all day and get conflicting results. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/699?vs=677 - almost matches the i3 in single threaded and destroys it at multi threaded.

It destroys the i3 in threaded performance, but your link clearly shows the i3 winning in single threaded performance.