I fancy building my kids a cheap affordable rig.

I would if truth be told prefer something beefier than an i3 so was wondering how AMD are these days and if there's a good CPU for a good price that has the grunt for today's games. I'll probably slap either an RX480 in with it or GTX 1060 6GB.

Not so keen on all the APU stuff TBH as I'd never need it and would prefer the power over versatility.

If you hold out until the end of the year, the release of AMD Zen and Intel Kabylake will drive prices down. If not, one of the AM3+ socket AMD CPU's would fair well.

keasy said:

I fancy building my kids a cheap affordable rig.

I would if truth be told prefer something beefier than an i3 so was wondering how AMD are these days and if there's a good CPU for a good price that has the grunt for today's games. I'll probably slap either an RX480 in with it or GTX 1060 6GB.

Not so keen on all the APU stuff TBH as I'd never need it and would prefer the power over versatility.

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If you're not in a rush, Intel Kaby Lake and AMD Zen will be coming out in the next 3 ish months.

So either the 4-core AMD Zen's will be a great choice, or the i3 Kaby Lakes will be very highly clocked.

Personally I wouldn't go for AMD CPUs on the AM3+ platform. They're very weak per core and per clock compared to Intel, and also the AM3+ platform is very old. Intel 170 motherboards make AM3+ look terrible, and 270 motherboards are coming with Kaby Lake, adding even more features.

AM4 comes with AMD's Zen, which should be up to par with Intel.

Okay dokey, nice info, thanks.

I'll wait until both new gens are released then.

benjii said:

If you hold out until the end of the year, the release of AMD Zen and Intel Kabylake will drive prices down. If not, one of the AM3+ socket AMD CPU's would fair well.

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Zen's not likely to be out, and AMD's FX stuff may's well be EOL at the moment, and Kaby Lake will do nothing to Intels other products as they'll just be EOL.

Yep, Intel's prices don't change every generation. If anything they temporarily go up due to maddening (IMO) levels of demand and controlled supply. AMD's Zen isn't coming this year. March 2017 is a realistic time frame.

To be honest there hasn't really been a "bad time" to buy a CPU in the last 8 years. You never miss out on much.

The FX-8350 and its ilk are still pretty good. And you can get some new motherboards for it released over the last few months that add features like USB3.1 and M.2 if you're interested in those. You can put together a pretty capable machine with an FX-8350 and a 990 chipset motherboard. You don't say what the system will be used for so it's impossible to give a proper answer, but if it's gaming then you'd have to spend a lot on the GPU before an FX-8350 became the bottleneck in most games.

Sure, it's EOL but it's very cost effective and it's not like it's going to stop working or wont support modern OSs for a long time.

i changed from my 8350 to the 4670k CPU and the gaming performance was night an day. the 4670k totally dominated the 8350 in FPS gains in games..



RTJ

rip-the-jacker said:

i changed from my 8350 to the 4670k CPU and the gaming performance was night an day. the 4670k totally dominated the 8350 in FPS gains in games..



RTJ

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I honestly find that hard to believe. Did you change anything else in the system at the same time? What games are we talking here?

h4rm0ny said:

I honestly find that hard to believe. Did you change anything else in the system at the same time? What games are we talking here?

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i was getting around 75-100 FPS in CS:GO on a 1070 and its not even a demanding game, I also was getting terrible frames on a 290X and a 380X..

Changed my GPU to a 1060 with my new i5 chip and now im getting 170+ FPS in CS:GO for the same settings..

Cant be coincidence surely..



RTJ

To be frank, if you're building with new components Skylake i3s probably offer the best bang for buck at the moment - although skylake i5s come in at tempting prices.

rip-the-jacker - As for going from 75-100FPS to 170+ FPS... That's not actually a night and day difference is it? It's overkill. The previous CPU wasn't holding back CS@GO in terms of playability.

CS:GO is also CPU dependant and very lightly threaded, which isn't really the case for newer games which are more multithreaded and with APIs like DX12/Vulkan more GPU dependant.

Bristol Ridge looks like a good APU from AMD, and there will be an Athlon version which is CPU only (Athlon X4 950). Mix that with an AM4 motherboard and you'll also have things like DDR4, native USB 3, etc.

The old AMD Piledriver isn't terrible value for the low-mid range stuff. Let's take a low budget setup that both support M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD's etc.

AMD:

AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320
Gigabyte 990X-Gaming SLI AMD 990X

Intel:

Intel Core i3-6300T 3.30GHz
Asus H170M-E D3 Intel H170

Both £212 in total. The CPU's cost the same, and so do the motherboards.

The AMD will be slower in single threaded stuff, but it's unlocked so you can offset that with a healthy overclock. It will compete with far more expensive Intel chips in well multi-threaded apps and games.

The Intel will merely sip at your energy bill, but you can't overclock. Smaller less expensive PSU required, less noise and heat. It only has 2 cores (plus hyper-threading) and won't excel in multi-threaded apps. Single threaded performance should be great which is always handy, but less of an advantage as time goes on.

That's my take on it anyway, I think the Piledriver is given a bit of a hard time when it's a good budget option if you don't mind the power consumption and you're into overclocking on the cheap. Not so good if you're not overclocking.

(edit: the non "T" Intel is £10 cheaper actually...)

Here's a somewhat similar comparison, of a slightly faster version of both chips http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/697?vs=1783. You have to decide if you want single or multi threaded performance.

These days i wouldn't bother with an i3, unless all you play is CS:GO.

2 cores just don't cut it with anything modern.

If you can wait you should, in a few months AMD should have their brand new CPU out

If you can't, AMD's 6 core is a good balance with the Wraith cooler.

Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6350 Wraith Edition £120 its unlocked so it will overclock, with that cooler you should get about 4.4Ghz out of it. more expensive than the standard 6350 but trust me you don't want that one, the standard cooler is crap, you will have to spend £30 on an aftermarket cooler anyway and the Wraith cooler is just as good as any of those.

With this motherboard: Gigabyte 990X-Gaming £83

Or this i5, currently has 13% off, £156. with this motherboard £99

Or this Gigabyte but its currently out of stock.

I ran an 8 core AMD Piledriver before the 4690K, most modern games there isn't actually much difference, its only old games where Intel have a clear lead.
Between those two i doubt you will see any difference as the i5 is only 2.7Ghz, @ 4.4Ghz the AMD should match it at worst.

£203 vs £255

humbug said:

These days i wouldn't bother with an i3, unless all you play is CS:GO.

2 cores just don't cut it with anything modern.

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Dunno. I don't have an I3 but, going on most gaming benchmarks I've seen, 2 threads doesn't cut it any more. 4 threads (not necessarily cores) is usually enough for gaming.

I3s have hyperthreading - and it seems this is enough to prevent newer i3s (especially skylake) running into problems in the way that Pentiums do.

Very occasionally, in some games, there are hitches in frametime that you wouldn't get with a geniuine quad core but they are few and far between. You do, ultimately, get what you pay for - but if you aren't paying much at the moment a skylake i3 is certainly worthy of consideration.

Edit: Anandtech bench comparison of the FX-6350 and the I3 6320: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1281?vs=1783 Gaming benchmarks at the bottom - particularly interesting when they are matched with higher end GPUs (unfortunately for AMD, their CPUs sometimes take a hammering when paired with their own higher end GPUs).

I3's are quad core, albeit two of them virtual.

I do smile when people make dumb statements like an i3 doesn't cut it in modern games. I must tell that to my htpc which runs GTA V at 60fps very high. The 1060 in there helps too and yes I have no doubt an i5 will give me more fps but when an i3 gives me more than I need!!

I only mentioned GTA V as its CPU heavy, an i3 gives me 100fps in battlefront.

Nothing wrong with the i3's. Sandybridge onwards the upper half of the range were 2 cores, 4 threads and only really showed the difference between the "true" quads on some heavy benchmarks.

Your issue is that once you step above an i3 level the build is less cheap and affordable.

I have an i3 6320 and havnt been held back in any game yet so don't agree that they wont cut it for gaming,i get 60fps+ (sometimes WAY more) in 99% of games ive tried maxed out,the new i3 cpus are decent little chips for gaming imo

Brazo said:

I3's are quad core, albeit two of them virtual.

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No, they're dual core with hyperthreading.

Hyperthreading is a kind of SMT which allows more than one thread to execute simultaneously on a core (in this case, 2).

joeyjojo said:

No, they're dual core with hyperthreading.

Hyperthreading is a kind of SMT which allows more than one thread to execute simultaneously on a core (in this case, 2).

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Yes your right and telling me nothing that I don't know already but they do work to provide virtual cores, fooling games that require a quad core.