Haswell i3-4150 vs FX 8320/e for budget gaming rig?

N8Magic · Nov 26, 2014

As the title states, looking to build a budget gaming rig and these two processors with their respective motherboards will come in around the same price.

From what I can gather, the i3 will soundly beat the FX in single-threaded performance but will lag in multithreaded applications. Given that most games are headed in a multi-threaded direction, i'm leaning towards the FX... BUT the lack of an upgrade path down the road scares me.

What says the minds here at AT?

BTW, i'm thinking the 8320e will have more overclocking headroom than a garden variety 8320 given a better binned chip? Is this accurate?

EDIT (my thinking as of 11/27 @ 10:50AM EST):

My options as of now, stretching the budget a little bit:

AMD FX-8320e - $132
MSI 990FXA-GD65V2 - $69.99 AR
Total: $203 + tax

OR

Intel i5-4440 - $150
MSI H97 Guard-Pro - $79.99 AR
or ASRock Z97 Anniversary - $69.99 AR (I question the build quality of this mobo)
Total: $229 or $219 + tax

I know I could really crank up the clock on the 8320e combo, but the i5 setup would be plug, play and done. Decisions, decisions.

EDIT 2:

I bought the Haswell i5-4440.

SlowSpyder · Nov 26, 2014

Sounds like you are ok with overclocking, so my vote goes to the FX. Don't know about the headroom of the 'E' CPU's, but have seen some impressive overclocks with them. For a lower budget build, I would probably just get the vanilla 8320 and see what it can do.

escrow4 · Nov 26, 2014

i5 4690 + H97 or H81. The i3 is only a dual core and you don't want a dual core in 2015 even hyperthreaded, and FX is a dead end. An i5 will maintain FPS way better than either.

davie jambo · Nov 26, 2014

8320 , loads of folk will post selective benchmarks of an i3 beating the fx

N8Magic · Nov 26, 2014

SlowSpyder said:
Sounds like you are ok with overclocking, so my vote goes to the FX. Don't know about the headroom of the 'E' CPU's, but have seen some impressive overclocks with them. For a lower budget build, I would probably just get the vanilla 8320 and see what it can do.

Thanks.

I should have mentioned that the 8320 and 8320e are within 2 dollars of each other at my local retailer.

N8Magic · Nov 26, 2014

escrow4 said:
i5 4690 + H97 or H81. The i3 is only a dual core and you don't want a dual core in 2015 even hyperthreaded, and FX is a dead end. An i5 will maintain FPS way better than either.

Budget does not allow for an i5, otherwise i'd be all over that!

SlowSpyder · Nov 26, 2014

N8Magic said:
Thanks.

I should have mentioned that the 8320 and 8320e are within 2 dollars of each other at my local retailer.

In that case I'd get the 'E'. I've read that there is an advantage in overclocking with them, but I don't know how much of an advantage. Not something I'd spend extra on vs. just getting a faster CPU, but for $2 I would go for it. :thumbsup:

Where do you live? Microcenter has some great bundles on CPU's, AMD and Intel.

N8Magic · Nov 26, 2014

SlowSpyder said:
In that case I'd get the 'E'. I've read that there is an advantage in overclocking with them, but I don't know how much of an advantage. Not something I'd spend extra on vs. just getting a faster CPU, but for $2 I would go for it. :thumbsup:

Where do you live? Microcenter has some great bundles on CPU's, AMD and Intel.

Canada.

I've seen those deals at Microcenter for $179 i5-4690K and such; very jealous.

papapapapapapapababy · Nov 26, 2014

gaming ? then take a look at this...

(AMD R9 280 + i3 is 50% SLOWER THAN 750 TI + i3)

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-call-of-duty-advanced-warfare-pc-performance

so if u have a amd gpu get a i5. nvidia gpu? i3 is fine.

crashtech · Nov 26, 2014

AM3+ is getting really old. That is the main knock against it at this point. A 9-series LGA1150 board will still have new CPUs offered for it in 2015 and offers better features and upgrade potential. But right at this moment an overclocked Vishera would probably be nicer than an i3 overall depending on your games.

Madpacket · Nov 26, 2014

8320e.

ShintaiDK · Nov 26, 2014

If you dont overclock the i3. For future upgrade path the i3.

Anything special you look on to play. Most of the console ports run very strong on an i3.

PliotronX · Nov 26, 2014

davie jambo said:
8320 , loads of folk will post selective benchmarks of an i3 beating the fx

Common sense doooo, you get an upgrade path and lower TCO with the i3. The 4330 is a particularly good deal.

N8Magic · Nov 26, 2014

ShintaiDK said:
Anything special you look on to play. Most of the console ports run very strong on an i3.

Mostly FPS and the occasional MMO or RTS game.

I have an XBONE for sports games and such that are better suited to a console.

jpiniero · Nov 26, 2014

ShintaiDK said:
If you dont overclock the i3. For future upgrade path the i3.

Anything special you look on to play. Most of the console ports run very strong on an i3.

The FX, esp when overclocked would be faster for sure on current and future gen titles.

I'd still get the i5.

positivedoppler · Nov 26, 2014

The FX might be on a older platform, but you don't lose much.
This is a no brainer. The rest is 8 cores vs 2 cores with 4 thread. There are games now that won't even run on 2 cores.

The only reason to go with an i3 is if you plan on picking up an i5 or i7 2-3 years down the road for cheap.

Abwx · Nov 26, 2014

jpiniero said:
The FX, esp when overclocked would be faster for sure on current and future gen titles.

I'd still get the i5.

On future titles i5s stand no chance against a FX8, if anything it s the integer throughput that define the max theorical perf, to get an idea of where the things will converge look at multithreaded integer based banchmarks.

On the CPU itself the E versions are better than the regular siblings, they are actualy to their counterparts what Richland is to Trinity, if the 8320E is set to 8320 settings it will consume less, on the other side it will overclock better with much lower power drain, actualy it s at high frequencies that the E show their superiority.

Essence_of_War · Nov 26, 2014

On future titles i5s stand no chance against a FX8, if anything it s the integer throughput that define the max theorical perf, to get an idea of where the things will converge look at multithreaded integer based banchmarks.

People have been saying this for a while, and despite the fact that they keep making the claim, it has yet to materialize. IF you're ever correct, it will be far enough in the future that an 8320 or today's i5 will be dated enough that that the comparison will be irrelevant.

Abwx · Nov 26, 2014

Essence_of_War said:
People have been saying this for a while, and despite the fact that they keep making the claim, it has yet to materialize. IF you're ever correct, it will be far enough in the future that an 8320 or today's i5 will be dated enough that that the comparison will be irrelevant.

An i5 is still better than a FX8XXX in hardware.fr games suite benchs that comprise quite a lot of lowly threaded games, but in comparison of last year scores the 8 threads CPU gained 12% for the FX8 and 5% for the i7 compared to the i5, and the 8 threads CPUs are far from being maxed out in these games, much less than the i5, so the thing is materializing, contrary to your statement, it s not far in the future, it s now, just that you didnt noticed it.

ShintaiDK · Nov 26, 2014

Abwx said:
On future titles i5s stand no chance against a FX8, if anything it s the integer throughput that define the max theorical perf, to get an idea of where the things will converge look at multithreaded integer based banchmarks.

On the CPU itself the E versions are better than the regular siblings, they are actualy to their counterparts what Richland is to Trinity, if the 8320E is set to 8320 settings it will consume less, on the other side it will overclock better with much lower power drain, actualy it s at high frequencies that the E show their superiority.

We heard that BS for how many years? Then when it failed, the new mantra was consoles would save the failed FX series. Only to be utterly humiliated by i3 in those new titles from said consoles.

Abwx · Nov 26, 2014

ShintaiDK said:
We heard that BS for how many years? Then when it failed, the new mantra was consoles would save the failed FX series. Only to be utterly humiliated by i3 in those new titles from said consoles.

The BS is your post, i provided numbers that can be checked while all you re stating is that it BS, where are your own numbers that can be compared to mine..?..

Prove me wrong that the FXs does worse than one year ago in games, i m just waiting for your explanations if ever there is some.

Back on topic, because the OP asked about the difference between a 8320 and a 8320E, in principle the E have at least 300-400MHz higher headroom and at a lower voltage.

BSim500 · Nov 26, 2014

Abwx said:
On future titles i5s stand no chance against a FX8

Abwx said:
The 8 threads CPUs are far from being maxed out in these games

Which has just as much to do with the fact most games don't naturally have inherent 100% endless linear threading scalability on any CPU as anything else. "All we have to do is wait for 100% perfected threaded code, you'll see!" has been churned out year after year since virtually 2006, and it still doesn't sink in to some that IPC matters an order of magnitude more than MOAR CORES even for relatively well threaded games (as is painfully obvious in above charts where in "designed for 8 cores" Watch Dogs i5's may get +50% over i3's but FX-8350's may only get +20% over FX-4350's). The more cores you add, the greater the effect of depreciating gains per extra core added (due to Amdahl's law). Game code is not video compression.

Nor does it seem to register to the "ideologues" that the "coding guru's" that are expected to deliver this 100% constant threading magic are the same ones churning out unoptimized bad ports over & over, and the studio's expected to spend months hand-tweaking every line of code to be perfectly threaded are the same ones rushing games out unfinished and often half-broken...

jpiniero · Nov 26, 2014

ShintaiDK said:
We heard that BS for how many years? Then when it failed, the new mantra was consoles would save the failed FX series. Only to be utterly humiliated by i3 in those new titles from said consoles.

Devs have been able to get the threading enough that the FX should be meaningfully faster than the i3 now, esp when overclocked. Not enough to be better than the i5 though.

Arachnotronic · Nov 26, 2014

This is a tough call, OP. I like the Haswell i3 for the upgrade path + higher single threaded perf, but I would imagine the 8320 smokes the i3 for highly threaded applications.

I would personally go with the i3 for the upgrade path + more modern platform, but the 8320 could better suit your needs if you care about threaded perf. I don't think you'd be unhappy with either CPU, TBH.

Abwx · Nov 26, 2014

BSim500 said:
Meanwhile back in the real world, here's 2014 AAA gaming so far:-

Nice work but you should have provided the 2012 or 2013 numbers to be compared with 2014 scores....

All those charts do not invalidate what i said and wich is extracted from real games, that is, that the FX is gaining with time while the i5s get about nothing or are getting much less progress, the i5 make sense if you plan to change your PC and CPU in 2 years at most, if buying something that must be kept for the usual 4-5 years then it s a couterproductive buy.

The i5 2500K was branded much superior to the newly released FX8150 in 2011 in about everything, look where is the i5 currently in respect of said FX8150 :

http://techreport.com/review/27018/intel-xeon-e5-2687w-v3-processor-reviewed/8

And dont forget to check reviews from 2011 to get a better picture...

Haswell i3-4150 vs FX 8320/e for budget gaming rig?

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