FX-6350 is the best in the sub $150 range.
For comparison, at Newegg :
FX-6300 : $109
i3-3220 : $125
I chose those 2 parts for comparison because they are both under the $150 price point on Newegg, and they both have benchmarks for comparison here at Anandtech. There is also an FX-6350 under the $150 price point, and an i3-3250, but neither are on the benchmark page here for comparison.
In virtually all but specifically single threaded tests, the FX-6300 beats the i3-3220, including on games :
http://anandtech.com/bench/product/699?vs=677
The newer i3's are not sub $150 parts on Newegg, which is where I got the prices for comparison. You can surely get a Haswell i3 for under $150 from somewhere, but by the same token you can get an FX-8320 + motherboard for $179 at Microcenter.
Something to keep in mind, is that there are almost no "single threaded" games or applications around - and haven't been for a long time. What happens with games is they tend to become limited on a single "master" thread that uses a disproportionate amount of CPU.
A typical game may start 15 or 20 threads, and only one or two are intense. So the 2 main threads may use up 100% of each CPU they run on if the other threads can also keep up. The other 15 threads would typically use only 2% of a different core for each thread, so you would wind up on a quad core with 2 cores at 100% and 2 cores at 15%.
In that typical example, a quad core intel is almost always going to be faster than a 6 or 8 core AMD on games. Single thread performance is king for gaming on 4+ cores.
On a dual core, things are different. The miscellaneous threads wind up running on the same cores as the two intense threads. The result is that the CPUs have to spend maybe 15-20% of their time on these misc threads, leaving only 80-85% of the core speed for the main threads.
For that reason, I would stay away from an i3 or any kind of Celeron/Pentium vs AMD at this price point.
This price point is really where AMD has the best deals; the intel fans know it which is why they immediately identify this as a pro-AMD thread. Well it is, because this is where AMD has a strong value. Once you start talking about $200+, not so much.
The main negative to an AMD setup based on AM3+ is that this platform appears to be dead.
For comparison, at Newegg :
FX-6300 : $109
i3-3220 : $125
I chose those 2 parts for comparison because they are both under the $150 price point on Newegg, and they both have benchmarks for comparison here at Anandtech. There is also an FX-6350 under the $150 price point, and an i3-3250, but neither are on the benchmark page here for comparison.
In virtually all but specifically single threaded tests, the FX-6300 beats the i3-3220, including on games :
http://anandtech.com/bench/product/699?vs=677
The newer i3's are not sub $150 parts on Newegg, which is where I got the prices for comparison. You can surely get a Haswell i3 for under $150 from somewhere, but by the same token you can get an FX-8320 + motherboard for $179 at Microcenter.
Something to keep in mind, is that there are almost no "single threaded" games or applications around - and haven't been for a long time. What happens with games is they tend to become limited on a single "master" thread that uses a disproportionate amount of CPU.
A typical game may start 15 or 20 threads, and only one or two are intense. So the 2 main threads may use up 100% of each CPU they run on if the other threads can also keep up. The other 15 threads would typically use only 2% of a different core for each thread, so you would wind up on a quad core with 2 cores at 100% and 2 cores at 15%.
In that typical example, a quad core intel is almost always going to be faster than a 6 or 8 core AMD on games. Single thread performance is king for gaming on 4+ cores.
On a dual core, things are different. The miscellaneous threads wind up running on the same cores as the two intense threads. The result is that the CPUs have to spend maybe 15-20% of their time on these misc threads, leaving only 80-85% of the core speed for the main threads.
For that reason, I would stay away from an i3 or any kind of Celeron/Pentium vs AMD at this price point.
This price point is really where AMD has the best deals; the intel fans know it which is why they immediately identify this as a pro-AMD thread. Well it is, because this is where AMD has a strong value. Once you start talking about $200+, not so much.
The main negative to an AMD setup based on AM3+ is that this platform appears to be dead.