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Quick CPU question
Ok so I'm trying to decide if I should get a Phenom X4 965, FX-8120, or an FX-4300. I know that the FX-8120 is the older FX line, but it has 8 cores while the FX-4300 has 4. I have also heard that the FX-4300 has a high ceiling for overclocking. And finally I have heard that I should avoid the FX line entirely and get the 965. I don't really know what to believe. Would some of you more intelligent people please enlighten me? Thanks!
Comments
The old 41xx, 61xx and 81xx are rubbish
The 4300 is lacking when you have a game that uses 4 cores. The way fx work they pair cores when they want to turbo them. Now most games have most if their load on 1 or 2 threads, so the 6300 effectively works like a quad core when gaming and a hex view when doing non gaming stuff.
The 83xx are a good bit faster, but unless youre using a game that can make use of lots of threads e.g. civ5 they don't give you much more oomph over the 6300.
Of what you've posted you are probably best with the 4300. But... I would seriously consider saving a little more money for the 6300.
Ok so I guess I will rule out the FX-8120. You didnt seem to comment on the 965. From what I have seen the 965 has a lot of power for the price. Would the FX-4300 be significantly faster at gaming?
edit: Ok, so high praise for the fx-6300 I guess I will pony up the extra cash.
Now the old phenom 2 x6, if you can get one, that's a faster chip than the 4300. But probably more expensive due to availability.
For the £25 or so a 6300 costs over the 4300 its well worth getting the 6300. It's probably the only recent AMD chip worth having in a gaming pc. (the 8 cores game well too, but I see them more as server chips or for things like video processing)
A well-coded game really only cares about how much CPU power you have in total. A badly-coded game really only cares about how fast your single fastest CPU core is. You'd like to be able to run both well.
A Phenom II X4 965 or FX-8120 aren't that great in the latter, and an FX-4300 or FX-6300 would be substantially better. An FX-4300 or Phenom II X4 965 are decent but not that great in the former, and an FX-6300 or FX-8120 would be substantially better. The FX-6300 comes out as in the "substantially better" category in both cases, and isn't that much more expensive than the other processors, which is why I recommend it.
Or to put it another way, you can have more slower cores (FX-8120), fewer faster cores (FX-4300), fewer slower cores (Phenom II X4 965), or more faster cores (FX-6300). If it cost an extra $50 to get an FX-6300 as compared to some of the other options, then you might prefer to save the money. But for an extra $20 over an FX-4300 and cheaper than an FX-8120? Yeah, I think it's worth that, especially when there's a decent chance that it will get you an extra year or two of useful life.
If I were going AMD the 6300 would be my choice.
I have two friends who both built 4300 budget systems and both run just fine. There are better CPUs out there for sure, but they have no complaints. The 6300 is better and will do just fine for gaming and every day use.
The 6300 has 2 more cores, but aside from that, will perform more or less the same as the 4300 -- at least until we get games that can actually scale up past 4 cores.
That being said, I agree with jdnewell here - the 6300 is only like $20US more than the 4300, and eventually those extra two cores will help out, and on a core-per-core cost basis or performance/cost ratio basis, the 6300 is an awesome deal.
The older Phenom II could compete very well against the original Zambezi design (like the 8120), and dollar for dollar I would go with whichever of the two you could get for less, just looking at those two generations; but the re-worked Vishera series (such as the 6300) is a better design all together, and with it, I wouldn't even consider the older Phenom or Zambezi's any longer (unless they were free).