Which is better i3 6100 or FX8350?

[happyleonardo14]

My friend is looking for a new cpu.

[Gibs960]

 

8300 but you should get an idea!

 

 

[kingkvndrick]

Well look, it really depends on what you want to play. Most games now a days require 4 cores minimum to run smoothly, and really to be honest, it is safer to go with the FX8350.

[HKZeroFive]

If you were to ask me, the i3 6100 simply because of the upgrade path and single core performance. The four threads will act as 'cores'.

[TrigrH]

2 minutes ago, HKZeroFive said:

If you were to ask me, the i3 6100 simply because of the upgrade path and single core performance. The four threads will act as 'cores'.

i'm inclined to agree but I wouldn't be buying that CPU without a board a cooler that can push it further.

[HKZeroFive]

1 minute ago, TrigrH said:

i'm inclined to agree but I wouldn't be buying that CPU without a board a cooler that can push it further.

Pair it with a cheap ASRock Z170 and go for it. You might get a decent OC' with the stock cooler.

[don_svetlio]

23 minutes ago, happyleonardo14 said:

My friend is looking for a new cpu.

If he wants to upgrade within the year then i3. If he wants a system that would last longer then the FX8350

i3 may have 4 threads but it still only has 2 cores. HT makes the cores work more efficiently, doesn't actually give you another core and thus the 2 cores it has get maxed rather quickly and can cause serious stutter.

[don_svetlio]

7 minutes ago, HKZeroFive said:

Pair it with a cheap ASRock Z170 and go for it. You might get a decent OC' with the stock cooler.

Intel updated the microcode and disabled BCLK OCing.

[HKZeroFive]

2 minutes ago, don_svetlio said:

Intel updated the microcode and disabled BCLK OCing.

They 'disabled' it by using the motherboard's BIOS. Flash it to an older version and it can be done.

[GirlFromYonder]

9 minutes ago, HKZeroFive said:

Pair it with a cheap ASRock Z170 and go for it. You might get a decent OC' with the stock cooler.

NOOOOO

I tried that, I had to RMA the i5

2 minutes ago, don_svetlio said:

Intel updated the microcode and disabled BCLK OCing.

My OC still runs tho...Well did(cpu burned)....but u just have to not upgrade the BIOS

[don_svetlio]

1 minute ago, HKZeroFive said:

They 'disabled' it by using the motherboard's BIOS. Flash it to an older version and it can be done.

Not everyone is okay with flashing their brand new board, let alone BCLK OCing. Especially if they can't figure out what CPU they need first

[don_svetlio]

3 minutes ago, DeezNoNos said:

NOOOOO

I tried that, I had to RMA the i5

My OC still runs tho...Well did(cpu burned)....but u just have to not upgrade the BIOS

Can't say I didn't warn you back then

[HKZeroFive]

2 minutes ago, DeezNoNos said:

NOOOOO

I tried that, I had to RMA the i5

Wouldn't do it with i5s and above.

5 minutes ago, don_svetlio said:

Not everyone is okay with flashing their brand new board, let alone BCLK OCing. Especially if they can't figure out what CPU they need first

Doesn't hurt to learn  

[SnowyMus]

You could overclock the FX 8350, though it would add a little more to your total if you buy a cooler. Personally, I'd get the i5-6400 for about $20-$35 more than the 8350 (plus the motherboard cost) just because of how stale the FX line is right now.

 

If we're going to stick to the FX 8350 vs the i3-6100, I'd get the i3-6100 for now. It's a lot cheaper and has much better price to gaming performance, partly due to the age of the FX 8350 (it's from 2012!), and also due to the fact that having eight cores doesn't help very much (if at all) in gaming.

 

You also get a much better upgrade path, as you'll be able to upgrade to an i5-6600 or to the upcoming Kaby Lake without upgrading the CPU, where Zen will need a new motherboard.

[don_svetlio]

1 minute ago, HKZeroFive said:

Wouldn't do it with i5s and above.

Doesn't hurt to learn  

The other friend learned...by frying his CPU

[don_svetlio]

2 minutes ago, Kavawuvi said:

You could overclock the FX 8350, though it would add a little more to your total if you buy a cooler. Personally, I'd get the i5-6400 for about $20 more than the 8350 (plus the motherboard cost) just because of how stale the FX line is right now.

 

If we're going to stick to the FX 8350 vs the i3-6100, I'd get the i3-6100 for now. It's a lot cheaper and has much better price to gaming performance, partly due to the age of the FX 8350 (it's from 2012!), and also due to the fact that having eight cores doesn't help very much (if at all) in gaming.

 

You also get a much better upgrade path, as you'll be able to upgrade to an i5-6600 or to the upcoming Kaby Lake without upgrading the CPU, where Zen will need a new motherboard.

You may want to watch the video above. The FX8 line is doing much better nowadays than it did in 2012 because games are using many more cores. Most AAA titles have support for 8-16 cores/thread.

As for price, the i3 wouldn't be that much cheaper depending on where you are buying from. In my country it actually costs more than the FX8350.

[Matias_Chambers]

11 minutes ago, don_svetlio said:

Intel updated the microcode and disabled BCLK OCing.

If you downgrade the BIOS you can still OC.

[don_svetlio]

1 minute ago, Matias_Chambers said:

If you downgrade the BIOS you can still OC.

Novice techies have no idea how to do either.

[GirlFromYonder]

15 minutes ago, don_svetlio said:

Can't say I didn't warn you back then

Oooh u did.

 

LOL

[GirlFromYonder]

12 minutes ago, don_svetlio said:

The other friend learned...by frying his CPU

Honestly i knew what i was getting into. knew what i was doing. the 90% change lol

[SnowyMus]

1 hour ago, don_svetlio said:

You may want to watch the video above. The FX8 line is doing much better nowadays than it did in 2012 because games are using many more cores. Most AAA titles have support for 8-16 cores/thread.

As for price, the i3 wouldn't be that much cheaper depending on where you are buying from. In my country it actually costs more than the FX8350.

I did see that video soon after it came out, as a matter of fact. The CPU benchmarks are good at gauging raw CPU performance, but that's only meaningful if you're doing something that fully utilizes all of the threads (encoding, for instance). They're also overclocked, which I mentioned in my post, can potentially add to the price due to the need of a better cooler. After the benchmarks, he said he was pretty much melting the FX processor, which indicates the need for pretty aggressive cooling to maintain this - something that doesn't come cheap.

 

Going through all of the games again, you can conclude that having only two cores does limit the i3 from getting much higher than 60-80 FPS for a lot of these games, though that's still pretty good for a $120 CPU. However, the FX 8350 often only barely beat it in averages and minimums, and the only instance I noticed where the high core count meant the difference between an average less than 60 FPS and an average above 60 (if you're considering a budget CPU, you're probably using a 60 Hz panel) was Rise of the Tomb Raider in DX12.

 

While the 8-core FX-8350 does hold its own nicely against the dual-core (with hyperthreading) i3, it still proves that having better, stronger cores is more important than sheer core count. I'm hoping Zen will change that.

[don_svetlio]

3 minutes ago, Kavawuvi said:

I did see that video soon after it came out, as a matter of fact. The CPU benchmarks are good at gauging raw CPU performance, but that's only meaningful if you're doing something that fully utilizes all of the threads (encoding, for instance). They're also overclocked, which I mentioned in my post, can potentially add to the price due to the need of a better cooler. After the benchmarks, he said he was pretty much melting the FX processor, which indicates the need for pretty aggressive cooling to maintain this - something that doesn't come cheap.

 

Going through all of the games again, you can conclude that having only two cores does limit the i3 from getting much higher than 60-80 FPS for a lot of these games, though that's still pretty good for a $120 CPU. However, the FX 8350 often only barely beat it in averages and minimums, and the only instance I noticed where the high core count meant the difference between an average less than 60 FPS and an average above 60 (if you're considering a budget CPU, you're probably using a 60 Hz panel) was Rise of the Tomb Raider in DX12.

 

While the 8-core FX-8350 does hold its own nicely against the dual-core (with hyperthreading) i3, it still proves that having better, stronger cores is more important than sheer core count. I'm hoping Zen will change that.

You also didn't read the update. He had a faulty PSU causing instability and high temps. Once he replaced it it was all normal. The OP can get the Wraith Cooler as well - that's a free 212 EVO.

Your proved yourself wrong. If the minimums are lower, then that means the i3 is suffering from stutter - something not present on FX8 - that is why a dual-core with HT can never really hope to outperform a true MC CPU. Zen is going for 8 cores and 16 threads (Basically FX16) because that's the future - DX12 and Vulkan. Single-core performance is a thing of the past, a relic of an old age where games were single-threaded. This is 2016 and there is no room for dual-core gaming rigs.

[SnowyMus]

1 hour ago, don_svetlio said:

You also didn't read the update. He had a faulty PSU causing instability and high temps. Once he replaced it it was all normal. The OP can get the Wraith Cooler as well - that's a free 212 EVO.

Your proved yourself wrong. If the minimums are lower, then that means the i3 is suffering from stutter - something not present on FX8 - that is why a dual-core with HT can never really hope to outperform a true MC CPU. Zen is going for 8 cores and 16 threads (Basically FX16) because that's the future - DX12 and Vulkan. Single-core performance is a thing of the past, a relic of an old age where games were single-threaded. This is 2016 and there is no room for dual-core gaming rigs.

I didn't see an update. Is it in an annotation? Is it in a comment?

 

Also, the only instance where the minimums were more than 4 frames different was in Rise of the Tomb Raider (which as I mentioned, the FX CPU will be better for that particular game). With stuttering, you'd usually see a much larger gap than that. I really can't say, though, because he only talked the FPS - not how well the game actually "felt".

Again, we're talking about a CPU with 8 cores vs a CPU with 2 cores. I never expected the i3 to be better than the FX-8350, as I've mentioned several times. I only expected the price to performance to be better, and it was, considering the price gap between the FX-8350 and the i3-6100 is about $35. If the FX-8350 was being compared against the i5-6400 (price gap being around $25), then it would have been a much different result, especially if both CPUs were still overclocked to the same 4.4 GHz frequency as depicted in the video. 

 

Your argument was that today's games take advantage of the 8 cores much nicer than they did before in 2012, which I do agree - games like GTA V and Rise of the Tomb Raider are very good examples of this. However, the i3 achieved what it did with only 1/4 the number of cores, which (to me at least) indicates that stronger cores are still more important, though having enough is also just as important, of course. This is why I hope for Zen to have a little of both: many strong cores. And yes, dual-core CPU gaming is going out of fashion. I haven't ignored that at all.

Also, overclocking can require spending a bit extra on cooling if you don't want to use the cruddy blocks that Intel or AMD pass off as a heatsink (I think everyone can agree that they make more noise than actually cool down anything, especially the Intel cooler), which if you're going to overclock your FX 8350 (or whatever you use), you'll want to buy a decent cooler.

 

Before you say that the prices are a lot different, I am well aware that outside of the US, prices might be a bit different and some of the prices are just stupid ($300 for an 8 GB RX 480, for instance), which is why one option might be better than another in some places. Ultimately, you should go with what your budget and needs dictate, especially when you are going into this price range.

[don_svetlio]

19 minutes ago, Kavawuvi said:

I didn't see an update. Is it in an annotation? Is it in a comment?

 

Also, the only instance where the minimums were more than 4 frames different was in Rise of the Tomb Raider (which as I mentioned, the FX CPU will be better for that particular game). With stuttering, you'd usually see a much larger gap than that. I really can't say, though, because he only talked the FPS - not how well the game actually "felt".

Again, we're talking about a CPU with 8 cores vs a CPU with 2 cores. I never expected the i3 to be better than the FX-8350, as I've mentioned several times. I only expected the price to performance to be better, and it was, considering the price gap between the FX-8350 and the i3-6100 is about $35. If the FX-8350 was being compared against the i5-6400 (price gap being around $25), then it would have been a much different result, especially if both CPUs were still overclocked to the same 4.4 GHz frequency as depicted in the video. 

 

Your argument was that today's games take advantage of the 8 cores much nicer than they did before in 2012, which I do agree - games like GTA V and Rise of the Tomb Raider are very good examples of this. However, the i3 achieved what it did with only 1/4 the number of cores, which (to me at least) indicates that stronger cores are still more important, though having enough is also just as important, of course. This is why I hope for Zen to have a little of both: many strong cores. And yes, dual-core CPU gaming is going out of fashion. I haven't ignored that at all.

Also, overclocking can require spending a bit extra on cooling if you don't want to use the cruddy blocks that Intel or AMD pass off as a heatsink (I think everyone can agree that they make more noise than actually cool down anything, especially the Intel cooler), which if you're going to overclock your FX 8350 (or whatever you use), you'll want to buy a decent cooler.

 

Before you say that the prices are a lot different, I am well aware that outside of the US, prices might be a bit different and some of the prices are just stupid ($300 for an 8 GB RX 480, for instance), which is why one option might be better than another in some places. Ultimately, you should go with what your budget and needs dictate, especially when you are going into this price range.

The Wraith Cooler is surprisingly good actually - it can easily beat most 20$ coolers while being free.

i5s are a mixed bag - FX8 can beat them in multi-core (as evident in Cinebench where a locked i5 4460 gets hammered by the 8350 even at stock)

Games are multi-thread - Witcher 3, Fallout4, DOOM, Total War Warhammer and etc - all make use of many cores - hence why i7s are also showing a big gain over i5s now. And why i5s are also bottlenecking the high end cards in those games.

[Dackzy]

tell your friend that he is a retard if he buys a i3, games will stutter a lot and a fx 8350 is so much nicer and better. If he plans to get anything over a Rx 480 or 1060, then he should get a i7.