FX 6300 still worth?

[DeViLzzz]

People say this a lot and I disagree a lot. Why buy a CPU that's close to £100 with the intention of upgrading to a CPU that costs £150 at a later date? There is no sense in it. Never buy for the upgrade path. Save and buy something that will do you for as long as you're actually interested in because the price difference is not big enough for doing this this to make any financial sense.

The G3258 is $49.99 US.  That is far from 100 pounds or whatever.  It would be very easy to recoup the money for the G3258 too or most of it.

[Dabombinable]

-snip-

[othertomperson]

The G3258 is $49.99 US.  That is far from 100 pounds or whatever.  It would be very easy to recoup the money for the G3258 too or most of it.

 

You also can't game with it particularly well. It stutters to all hell, you have to overclock it so high that you need to spend more on the cooler than you do on the GPU (which isn't particularly difficult). By the end you may as well have gotten that i3 or 6300 and had a much better experience for it.

[Mew]

Already tried a r9 290 and it's kinda similar in fps terms, with the gt640 I play @50-70 fps, with the r9 @70-103 fps

 

How is that similar? With the 290, you never dip below 60fps means it's perfectly smooth not to mention that you're getting about 50% higher framerates. You're also capable of running higher resolution and higher details with the 290. Also once you increase the details, the 290 will perform not only 50% faster, but several times faster (think 400% faster) as it'll become less cpu bound. 

 

Edit:

Anandtech doesn't have the GT640, but the 290 seems to be about 4x faster than the GTX 650, I'd imagine it'll be in the neighborhood of 5x faster than your GT640. You will see a bottleneck of course, in the scrapeyard wars video, Linus' Q6600 and 7950 performed up to 50% slower than my 4690k and 7950. Depending on the game, ymmv but the 290 is one of the best value for graphics cards right now.

[Mush Brain]

Vs a Pentium Anniversary, i would take the 6300.

[reapersivan]

The G3258 is $49.99 US.  That is far from 100 pounds or whatever.  It would be very easy to recoup the money for the G3258 too or most of it.

I'd rather save up, those 50$ could've gone towards a better CPU fan, keyboard and mouse, a better case, maybe Windows or even an ssd? 

[Mao_Zedong]

Well they do because at this price point any Intel chip you get is strictly dual core. This argument only works when you're comparing i5 with FX equivalents.

 

In fact to match or better the price you're looking at Ivy Bridge dual core (unless you want to go Pentium). The i3 4150 is a little bit more expensive. For this price point I would absolutely get the 6300 over an i3.

I didn't mean that they don't matter at all, I was trying to say that many games won't use the other cores. More cores will help, but not as much as a higher clockspeed and better IPC. The i3 also has hyperthreading which partially makes up for the lack of cores.

[Dabombinable]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUlS5Q7tEJI

Pretty freaking awesome for a $49.99 cpu paired with not even great video cards.

That's only 1 of the games you mentioned, and I remember watching a video of it playing FC4 and stuttering badly. Lol, you finished your post late.

Ok, 1)The BF4 video is edited-it isn't continuous play through intensive scenes, 2) the FC4 video isn't recorded during intensive scenes

 

 

Verdict: The locations were cherry picked to show the Pentium in a good light.

[DeViLzzz]

You also can't game with it particularly well. It stutters to all hell, you have to overclock it so high that you need to spend more on the cooler than you do on the GPU (which isn't particularly difficult). By the end you may as well have gotten that i3 or 6300 and had a much better experience for it.

Did you not see that my recommendation for getting a G3258 also involved the person upgrading in a year's time or so?  Also with the AMD FX 6300 if you don't overclock you miss out huge on performance too so in buying the AMD FX 6300 you would also be buying an aftermarket cooler.  Another thing with the G3258 is people have said that they have gotten over 4 GHz on a stock cooler with it which I wouldn't do but it is fact.  Also if you did not see I have an AMD FX 6300 in my home and so I am not bias against AMD if you have that in your head at all.  The thing is I would not pay $100+ for it when there is a $49.99 equivalent out there right now that gives me room to upgrade nicely in the future also.  You do not get that going the AMD route.

[reapersivan]

That's only 1 of the games you mentioned, and I remember watching a video of it playing FC4 and stuttering badly. Lol, you finished your post late.

Ok, 1)The BF4 video is edited-it isn't continuous play through intensive scenes, 2) the FC4 video isn't recorded during intensive scenes

 

 

Verdict: The locations were cherry picked to show the Pentium in a good light.

The pentium is good for '2man' jobs like most games. Other games require 4, you can force the CPU, or men to use more power or strengthen in order to try to do a "4man" job but it will have trouble handling it. 

[Dabombinable]

Did you not see that my recommendation for getting a G3258 also involved the person upgrading in a year's time or so?  Also with the AMD FX 6300 if you don't overclock you miss out huge on performance too so in buying the AMD FX 6300 you would also be buying an aftermarket cooler.  Another thing with the G3258 is people have said that they have gotten over 4 GHz on a stock cooler with it which I wouldn't do but it is fact.

Core 2 Duo E8500-4.42GHz @ 74^oC on the stock cooler under full load. A Pentium should have no problems at all achieving a higher overclock.

 

The pentium is good for '2man' jobs like most games. Other games require 4, you can force the CPU, or men to use more power or strengthen in order to try to do a "4man" job but it will have trouble handling it. 

My Core 2 Duo was a good example of that, I upgraded to an X5450 and even at stock speeds I instantly had no stuttering in Crysis 3.

[reapersivan]

Did you not see that my recommendation for getting a G3258 also involved the person upgrading in a year's time or so?  Also with the AMD FX 6300 if you don't overclock you miss out huge on performance too so in buying the AMD FX 6300 you would also be buying an aftermarket cooler.  Another thing with the G3258 is people have said that they have gotten over 4 GHz on a stock cooler with it which I wouldn't do but it is fact.  Also if you did not see I have an AMD FX 6300 in my home and so I am not bias against AMD if you have that in your head at all.  The thing is I would not pay $100+ for it when there is a $49.99 equivalent out there right now.

Anyone would recommend to go with an aftermarket cooler. You will end up needing it later on.

[othertomperson]

 

I didn't mean that they don't matter at all, I was trying to say that many games won't use the other cores. More cores will help, but not as much as a higher clockspeed and better IPC. The i3 also has hyperthreading which partially makes up for the lack of cores.

 

If you're comparing an i5 with a FX 8350 or an i7, then I would agree with you. Most games would not leverage the extra cores, but you're comparing a hex core with a dual core. Hyperthreading will help to an extent but having more real cores will be a real benefit. Look at how the G3258 still stutters when massively overclocked. Clock speed is irrelevant due to the comparison between completely different architectures, but IPC and cores are both important and at this budget I would always go for the 6300 over the i3 here. 

 

Did you not see that my recommendation for getting a G3258 also involved the person upgrading in a year's time or so?  Also with the AMD FX 6300 if you don't overclock you miss out huge on performance too so in buying the AMD FX 6300 you would also be buying an aftermarket cooler.  Another thing with the G3258 is people have said that they have gotten over 4 GHz on a stock cooler with it which I wouldn't do but it is fact.  Also if you did not see I have an AMD FX 6300 in my home and so I am not bias against AMD if you have that in your head at all.  The thing is I would not pay $100+ for it when there is a $49.99 equivalent out there right now that gives me room to upgrade nicely in the future also.  You do not get that going the AMD route.

 

Considering that this entire discussion is based on my assertion that buying for the upgrade path is stupid, yes I'm quite aware of that. In a year's time or more Haswell will be obsolete. It will be more difficult than presently to get an upgrade for your G3258. That CPU will also give you a terrible experience in the mean time. It struggles with games now. Looking forward to future games, particularly with new APIs starting to focus on multithreaded capability, that CPU will not be getting any more appealing. You are far better off giving yourself a budget and getting the CPU you can afford now, instead of deferring a year or so with the hope of upgrading to something you can actually game on.

[perma001]

How is that similar? With the 290, you never dip below 60fps means it's perfectly smooth not to mention that you're getting about 50% higher framerates. You're also capable of running higher resolution and higher details with the 290. Also once you increase the details, the 290 will perform not only 50% faster, but several times faster (think 400% faster) as it'll become less cpu bound. 

 

Edit:

Anandtech doesn't have the GT640, but the 290 seems to be about 4x faster than the GTX 650, I'd imagine it'll be in the neighborhood of 5x faster than your GT640. You will see a bottleneck of course, in the scrapeyard wars video, Linus' Q6600 and 7950 performed up to 50% slower than my 4690k and 7950. Depending on the game, ymmv but the 290 is one of the best value for graphics cards right now.

I guess the 290 is overkill for the dg41ty

[Mew]

I guess the 290 is overkill for the dg41ty

 

I didn't have a clear conclusion with my original comment. In the end, in my opinion, it's not worth spending the extra money on a completely new and different platform, which will cost you about $200, only to realize about a 30% increase in performance when you can make up for most of that through overclocking, investing in better cooling, some more ram, and a much faster graphics card. That's the point that I was trying to get across. If you upgrade to the 6300, you'll get pretty much the same performance with your GT640 as you are getting right now since your graphics card is your biggest bottleneck right now. 

[DeViLzzz]

 

 

 

Considering that this entire discussion is based on my assertion that buying for the upgrade path is stupid, yes I'm quite aware of that. In a year's time or more Haswell will be obsolete. It will be more difficult than presently to get an upgrade for your G3258. That CPU will also give you a terrible experience in the mean time. It struggles with games now. Looking forward to future games, particularly with new APIs starting to focus on multithreaded capability, that CPU will not be getting any more appealing. You are far better off giving yourself a budget and getting the CPU you can afford now, instead of deferring a year or so with the hope of upgrading to something you can actually game on.

 

The G3258 will not give anyone a terrible experience.  It struggles with games?  I am not sure what you were watching the videos I linked but clearly for $49.99 it is an awesome super cheap cpu that will put you on a path still for an upgrade in the future whereas with the AMD selection it is more costly and upgrading would be pointless.  The G3258 is $49.99 FFS!

[perma001]

I didn't have a clear conclusion with my original comment. In the end, in my opinion, it's not worth spending the extra money on a completely new and different platform, which will cost you about $200, only to realize about a 30% increase in performance when you can make up for most of that through overclocking, investing in better cooling, some more ram, and a much faster graphics card. That's the point that I was trying to get across. If you upgrade to the 6300, you'll get pretty much the same performance with your GT640 as you are getting right now since your graphics card is your biggest bottleneck right now. 

In that case would you rec me some parts (cpu+mobo) for AA games? 

 

alfaomega, on 16 Mar 2015, said: Ahhh, I just looked at your pc specs. In that case my first response would have been different. Your processor will hold back anything above a 750ti. How do I know? Because that's actually the system I run. C2q 8400 2.66ghz, 750ti 1gig, 4gigs ddr2. And you could actually throw in 32 gigs of ram and it would basically give zero improvement. While the processor does a 750ti justice, anything above that is a a waste.

So if you want to get something better, a new cpu is going to be required. Along with a motherboard of course.

[Dabombinable]

The G3258 will not give anyone a terrible experience.  It struggles with games?  I am not sure what you were watching the videos I linked but clearly for $49.99 it is an awesome super cheap cpu that will put you on a path still for an upgrade in the future whereas with the AMD selection it is more costly and upgrading would be pointless.  The G3258 is $49.99 FFS!

The problem with your videos is that they are cherry picked, don't show how well the Pentium works during intensive scenes, and in the case of BF4 stitched together from different parts of the game. They ARE not an accurate or proper demonstration of how well a Pentium G3258 will play games.

[othertomperson]

The G3258 will not give anyone a terrible experience.  It struggles with games?  I am not sure what you were watching the videos I linked but clearly for $49.99 it is an awesome super cheap cpu that will put you on a path still for an upgrade in the future whereas with the AMD selection it is more costly and upgrading would be pointless.  The G3258 is $49.99 FFS!

 

I've watched videos of the G3258's performance as recorded by a member of this forum (I forget who, sorry). It was a stuttery mess, not a good experience at all. No doubt in a few low-demand situations it can do OK. However you are much better off with a 6300 for consistency.

 

I'm well aware of how much the G3258 is. It is £52. The FX 6300 is £80, and a the cheapest i3 is about £90. Imo the 6300 offers the best value. Not the best performance, not the cheapest, but the best combination of those two factors of any CPU that I know of as of right now.

 

It's £50. If you forgo the cost of this and instead just add it to the cost of the CPU you were going to upgrade to anyway, you could jump from i5 to i7 if you wanted.

[Dabombinable]

I've watched videos of the G3258's performance as recorded by a member of this forum (I forget who, sorry). It was a stuttery mess, not a good experience at all. No doubt in a few low-demand situations it can do OK. However you are much better off with a 6300 for consistency.

 

I'm well aware of how much the G3258 is. It is £52. The FX 6300 is £80, and a the cheapest i3 is about £90. Imo the 6300 offers the best value. Not the best performance, not the cheapest, but the best combination of those two factors of any CPU that I know of as of right now.

 

It's £50. If you forgo the cost of this and instead just add it to the cost of the CPU you were going to upgrade to anyway, you could jump from i5 to i7 if you wanted.

TBH, I have to agree with it being the best value ATM, even given the fact that its based on a defunct platform.

[ComradeHX]

No.

 

Slightly below, there is Athlon 860k; above, there is all sorts of Intel options(rather have i3 than fx).

[Slayer1443]

Amds=Shit

[DeViLzzz]

MPer BF4 looking good here with an R9 270 and the guy doesn't even have it clocked to 4 GHz.

[perma001]

I can buy here g3220 + s1150 mobo, then upgrade it to an i5. Another option is to buy am3+ mobo and the fx 6300 or wait till july?

[Dabombinable]

I can buy here g3220 + s1150 mobo, then upgrade it to an i5. Another option is to buy am3+ mobo and the fx 6300 or wait till july?

If you can wait long enough, perhaps just buy an i5 4440 (capable of playing any game and is far from bottlenecking high end graphics cards) and motherboard at the same time, because in the long run, doing the 'planned upgrade' path costs more, which is a bad thing if your on a tight budget.