Thoughts and this upgrade?

[r3xx3r]

Hey guys, my buddy is on a really really tight budget. He wants to upgrade his computer a little right now. Currently he has an Intel Core 2 quad q6600 and a Geforce 8800 Gtx. He can only afford a new cpu motherboard and ram right now, i recommended this to him.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/HbtdMp

What do you guys think? He can't really spend much more than that. I know there is no ram, I am waiting for him to let me know if he can afford a 16gb kit or not. Any thoughts on what to change.

He wants a computer that will play space engineers and eve online better than the one he has now, and he needs to be able to run programs like maya and autocad and the Adobe suite pretty well because he is starting college soon.

[AlexStriz]

Try this instead.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/96bQcf

 

Reasoning - http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2382308/athlon-860k-good-gaming-cpu.html.

[zappian]

Try this instead.

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2RF2YJ

 

 

Reasoning - http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2382308/athlon-860k-good-gaming-cpu.html.

 

You dont need a aftermarket cooler for an i3.

Source: I have one.

[AlexStriz]

You dont need a aftermarket cooler for an i3.

Source: I have one.

[zappian]

 

Bullshit i have that cpu and it came with a cooler.

Dont reccomend that cpu it wont work on that board without bios upgrade.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Core i3-4130 3.4GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($105.75 @ OutletPC) 

Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($44.88 @ OutletPC) 

Total: $150.63

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-26 20:35 EST-0500

[AlexStriz]

Bullshit i have that cpu and it came with a cooler.

It's the OEM one. doesnt come with a cooler. And I fixed the OP to have non-OEM i3, which comes with stock cooling.

 

TBH though, if it was me, I would still buy the cooler, just for the sake of silence. However, yes, the stock cooling will work fine.

[zappian]

It's the OEM one. doesnt come with a cooler. And I fixed the OP to have non-OEM i3, which comes with stock cooling.

 

TBH though, if it was me, I would still buy the cooler, just for the sake of silence. However, yes, the stock cooling will work fine.

 

The haswell refresh wont work on that mobo , be careful.

 

The safer bet is an i3 4130.

[i_build_nanosuits]

Hey guys, my buddy is on a really really tight budget. He wants to upgrade his computer a little right now. Currently he has an Intel Core 2 quad q6600 and a Geforce 8800 Gtx. He can only afford a new cpu motherboard and ram right now, i recommended this to him.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/HbtdMp

What do you guys think? He can't really spend much more than that. I know there is no ram, I am waiting for him to let me know if he can afford a 16gb kit or not. Any thoughts on what to change.

He wants a computer that will play space engineers and eve online better than the one he has now, and he needs to be able to run programs like maya and autocad and the Adobe suite pretty well because he is starting college soon.

deer @r3xx3r

i also recommend you go with a core i3 like the other guys have said...it will be better all around, both single-threaded and multi-threaded apps will run better on a core i3...it also use less energy and won't require any overclocking to outperform even an highly overclocked AMD processor...the core i3 also offer a much better upgrade path to an i5 or i7 down the road in a couple of years if he find he wants more power.

For gaming you can pair a core i3 haswell with a GPU as strong as a GTX 770 or R9 280X (GTX 960, R9 285 etc...) without experiencing CPU bottlenecks in most games...it's a good gaming CPU for the price...i suggest you go with that one though...better price to performance on this:

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4150 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($104.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Motherboard: ASRock H97M Anniversary Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($66.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Memory: G.Skill Sniper 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($61.99 @ Newegg)

Total: $233.97

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-26 20:54 EST-0500

 

(included RAM sticks as well)

[r3xx3r]

okay, i like your suggestions. I also thought about this build.

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/42zDK8

 

I went on tomshardware and the best gaming cpu for this month is the i3-4160 and the fx-6300 is an honorable mention, they say the i3 may be a bit faster, but the amd is a bit cheaper and has more cores and is overclockable, also, unless i pick up a good motherboard it wont be worth upgrading to an i5 and definitely not an i7. I'll show im i_build_nanosuits build. I personally don't like boards that arent at least standard ATX, and i like the ASRock 970 Extreme3 because it has crossfire support in case he ever wants to upgrade down the road

[zappian]

okay, i like your suggestions. I also thought about this build.

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/42zDK8

 

I went on tomshardware and the best gaming cpu for this month is the i3-4160 and the fx-6300 is an honorable mention, they say the i3 may be a bit faster, but the amd is a bit cheaper and has more cores and is overclockable, also, unless i pick up a good motherboard it wont be worth upgrading to an i5 and definitely not an i7. I'll show im i_build_nanosuits build. I personally don't like boards that arent at least standard ATX, and i like the ASRock 970 Extreme3 because it has crossfire support in case he ever wants to upgrade down the road

 

The FX 6300 is bad gaming cpu, get the i3.

 

Unless you are editing / streaming that cpu doesnt make sense.

[i_build_nanosuits]

okay, i like your suggestions. I also thought about this build.

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/42zDK8

 

I went on tomshardware and the best gaming cpu for this month is the i3-4160 and the fx-6300 is an honorable mention, they say the i3 may be a bit faster, but the amd is a bit cheaper and has more cores and is overclockable, also, unless i pick up a good motherboard it wont be worth upgrading to an i5 and definitely not an i7. I'll show im i_build_nanosuits build. I personally don't like boards that arent at least standard ATX, and i like the ASRock 970 Extreme3 because it has crossfire support in case he ever wants to upgrade down the road

The ATX version of the board is 4$ more:

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4150 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($104.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Motherboard: ASRock H97 Anniversary ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($71.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Memory: G.Skill Sniper 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($61.99 @ Newegg)

Total: $238.97

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-26 21:04 EST-0500

 

The core i3 is a better CPU overall for gaming than an overclocked FX, i've personaly tested both platforms with many modern games and most of them are better on a core i3...some modern multi-threaded games perform better on the FX (bf4, crysis 3) BUT this is within 5% of each other so un-noticeable...where as there are MANY games that run's WORLDS better on a core i3 (ALL MMO's, RTS, ARMA3, indie games, older games etc...)

What kind of games is this user more into?

 

Also yes you could totaly drop an i5-4690 or i7-4790 CPU in that motherboard...totaly safe and will work perfectly fine.

[r3xx3r]

The FX 6300 is bad gaming cpu, get the i3.

 

Unless you are editing / streaming that cpu doesnt make sense.

thats the thing, he will be editing. he will be using maya and autocard and the adobe suite like photoshop

[i_build_nanosuits]

thats the thing, he will be editing. he will be using maya and autocard and the adobe suite like photoshop

those are all programs that benefit from fast snappy cores, something the FX doesnt have...i work with autocad map every day at the office and this thing use 1 CPU threads...that's it...one cpu threads per instance.

maya and photoshop also love fast cpu threads, they can sometimes leverage 3 or 4 threads depending on what you do but the i3 won't fall short here either.

 

Only in video rendering and transcoding does the FX do better than a core i3 and it's not by a mile, it's very slightly faster.

 

The benefit you get from stronger cores far outwheigt the benefit of the ''slightly'' higher multi-threaded performance of the FX when (IF..and that's a big IF) the ''cores'' are all used.

The thing is the AMD FX-63XX chips does have 6 integer unit, but only 3 floating point units (FPU) so it's a 3 MODULE CPU not a true 6 core CPU and many applications that require a lot of floating point calculations would run much better on the core i3 regardless.

 

The AMD FX-6300 CPU is composed of 3 modules, each with it's own instruction decoder and FPU, but share the back-end where it house 2 integer cluster units (ALU)...so it's a fancy 3 core chip...not a 6 core like AMD would like you to believe it is.

 

This link if you want to know more about CMT architecture and how the bulldozer/piledriver architecture works:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldozer_%28microarchitecture%29

 

This is the amd FX-83XX CPU's...do you see a quad-core CPU in here or an 8 core cpu? ...that's right...4 decoders, 4 FPU, 4 modules...4 cores.

 

i understand you'd like us to recommend the AMD FX...but we won't...we see people like you seeking for advice everyday they wan't to hear that AMD FX CPU's are good...but they are not...many users in this forum upgraded from the FX already (including me) because they have terribly slow processing cores and they bottleneck midrange and higher end GPU's in games already.

[r3xx3r]

those are all programs that benefit from fast snappy cores, something the FX doesnt have...i work with autocad map every day at the office and this thing use 1 CPU threads...that's it...one cpu threads per instance.

maya and photoshop also love fast cpu threads, they can sometimes leverage 3 or 4 threads depending on what you do but the i3 won't fall short here either.

 

Only in video rendering and transcoding does the FX do better than a core i3 and it's not by a mile, it's very slightly faster.

 

The benefit you get from stronger cores far outwheigt the benefit of the ''slightly'' higher multi-threaded performance of the FX when (IF..and that's a big IF) the ''cores'' are all used.

The thing is the AMD FX-63XX chips does have 6 integer unit, but only 3 floating point units (FPU) so it's a 3 MODULE CPU not a true 6 core CPU and many applications that require a lot of floating point calculations would run much better on the core i3 regardless.

 

The AMD FX-6300 CPU is composed of 3 modules, each with it's own instruction decoder and FPU, but share the back-end where it house 2 integer cluster units (ALU)...so it's a fancy 3 core chip...not a 6 core like AMD would like you to believe it is.

 

This link if you want to know more about CMT architecture and how the bulldozer/piledriver architecture works:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldozer_%28microarchitecture%29

 

This is the amd FX-83XX CPU's...do you see a quad-core CPU in here or an 8 core cpu? ...that's right...4 decoders, 4 FPU, 4 modules...4 cores.

 

i understand you'd like us to recommend the AMD FX...but we won't...we see people like you seeking for advice everyday they wan't to hear that AMD FX CPU's are good...but they are not...many users in this forum upgraded from the FX already (including me) because they have terribly slow processing cores and they bottleneck midrange and higher end GPU's in games already.

 

I appreciate the in-depth reply. I will recommend recommend him the i3. I am looking through the wikipedia article now. your response is very enlightening. Thank you.

[i_build_nanosuits]

I appreciate the in-depth reply. I will recommend recommend him the i3. I am looking through the wikipedia article now. your response is very enlightening. Thank you.

you should look at this thread that features in house benchmarking by our friend @harrynowl ...unfortunately the core i3 is not in his line-up, but you can clrearly see the poor single-threaded performance of the AMD FX line-up even when compaired with intel CPU's from 2008 (E8400 launched in january of 2008)

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/285199-harrynowls-ultimate-cpu-showdown-wip/

 

 

Such a low IPC (instructions per clock) is not good for gaming and the AMD FX CPU always bottleneck themselves long before even having a chance to spread there legs...

 

http://gamegpu.ru/action-/-fps-/-tps/assassin-s-creed-unity-test-gpu.html

 

See that? even when all the CPU ''cores'' are in use, the intel core i3 is still superior to even the FX-9590 in games.

 

ALSO i added to a previous post this:

''yes you could totaly drop an i5-4690 or i7-4790 CPU in that motherboard (Asrock H97 anniverary)...totaly safe and will work perfectly fine.''

DEFENETLY something to consider as such chips will be cheap in a couple years you'll find them used and you will not have to purchase a new motherboard.