Athlon x4 750K Vs. FX-4100/FX-6300

[1991ATServerTower]

I've look around ye o'l interwebs and there just aren't a lot reviews of the X4 750K, which is surprising given its price point and how it's unlocked. I am drawn to it as an upgrade option (for my Core2 Q8200) for its simple platform options (it works with every FM2 board), it's overclocking ability, and the fact that it has all of the latest processor extensions (I am not interested in a K10 based CPU, such as the Phenom II X4 965BE).

The things I'd like to see compared are Handbrake/h264 encoding, GCC compiling, and GIMP performance in Linux and 1600x900 resolution gaming benchmarks with a 7750/7770/7850 using 4xAA/16xAF in Windows 7. I don't really play many games any more, so just a variety of games to compare would be nifty.

Personally, I am almost happy with my Q8200/8GB DDR2 800MHz/GTS450 1GB GDDR5 system, with the lack of virtualization support (impossible to virtualize a 64bit OS on my hardware) and the low clockspeed (resulting in a bottleneck in some CPU limited older games, such as EQ2, as well as some slow minor spots in general computing) being the two things that are pushing me to want to upgrade. Given that an A8-5600K easily trounces my system in all CPU based activities, I figured that an Athlon x4 750K overclocked to 4.2GHz or better would be a substantial upgrade at a much better price (given that I already have a video card and plan to get a better one later). Keep in mind that I have no interest in spending $189+ on an Intel CPU again and I don't need i5 level performance anyway.

So my main question is, how much real world performance would be added by spending $125 on an FX-6300 or $99 on an FX-4100 as apposed to spending only $85 for the Athlon x4 750K? If I'll actually notice, then I'll spend the money, but if it's just going to be 5 FPS and 3 minutes off a 30 minute encode, why waste the money lol...

Excluding any possible sales, the price of RAM and motherboards would be the same (+/- $10 total for the same features, at the worst).

Note: The FX-4300 is only $5 less than the FX-6300, hence my use of the older FX-4100 instead of the FX-4300. There's no reason to buy the FX-4300 at $120 when the FX-6300 is $125! lol... But the FX-4100 and it's 8MB of L3 cache at $99 is a reasonable deal, even if it is Bulldozer.

 

[Fox_]

FX-6300 > Athalon X4 750K > FX-4100

 

[ElMoIsEviL]

The first thing I would recommend is to check out this review here: http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/amd-athlon-fm2-p2.html

It contains many of the things you would like to do with your PC including Handbrake/h264 encoding and GCC compiling. The FX-4100 and the Athlon X4 750K seem to trade blows. So whichever one is cheaper, between the two, would likely be the best bet.

Now compared to the FX-6300... http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/amd-fx-x300.html things change.

The FX-6300 is MUCH faster than those two other chips in the tasks you mentioned. IMHO it is the processor to get between the choices you've presented here.

 

[1991ATServerTower]

The first thing I would recommend is to check out this review here: http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/amd-athlon-fm2-p2.html

It contains many of the things you would like to do with your PC including Handbrake/h264 encoding and GCC compiling. The FX-4100 and the Athlon X4 750K seem to trade blows. So whichever one is cheaper, between the two, would likely be the best bet.

Now compared to the FX-6300... http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/amd-fx-x300.html things change.

The FX-6300 is MUCH faster than those two other chips in the tasks you mentioned. IMHO it is the processor to get between the choices you've presented here.

That was what I was looking for. Thanks.

Not much difference between the FX-4100 and the 750K, so may as well go with the more optimized 750K (or 760K if it's released in NA in the same price range).

The FX-6300 does appear to be worth the extra $40, being 20-35% better in many things, though gaming performance was only marginally better. The L3 cache on the AMD CPUs does not seem to make much of a difference. The FX-4300 is almost the same as an A10-5800k - interesting, eh?

 

[ElMoIsEviL]

The first thing I would recommend is to check out this review here: http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/amd-athlon-fm2-p2.html

It contains many of the things you would like to do with your PC including Handbrake/h264 encoding and GCC compiling. The FX-4100 and the Athlon X4 750K seem to trade blows. So whichever one is cheaper, between the two, would likely be the best bet.

Now compared to the FX-6300... http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/amd-fx-x300.html things change.

The FX-6300 is MUCH faster than those two other chips in the tasks you mentioned. IMHO it is the processor to get between the choices you've presented here.

That was what I was looking for. Thanks.

Not much difference between the FX-4100 and the 750K, so may as well go with the more optimized 750K (or 760K if it's released in NA in the same price range).

The FX-6300 does appear to be worth the extra $40, being 20-35% better in many things, though gaming performance was only marginally better. The L3 cache on the AMD CPUs does not seem to make much of a difference. The FX-4300 is almost the same as an A10-5800k - interesting, eh?

I don't think it is that interesting considering an A10-5800K packs four piledriver cores and although it lacks an L3 cache it does come with an extra 200MHz turbo (4.2 vs 4). Seems to me that if you're using an application where the FX-4300s L3 Cache is not needed then that the extra 200MHz Turbo would go a long way into propelling the A10-5800K to victory.

L3 Cache (or more cache in general) tends to help gaming performance more so than application performance. Application performance tends to prefer a higher clock speed to more cache. You can see this here: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/675?vs=700