Upgrade: AMD FX-6300 VS an i3 build

[skiiwee29]

I am going to be upgrading my wifes computer here in a few weeks with Tax returns.

Right now I plan on getting:
AMD FX-6300 CPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819113286
ASROCK 970 Extreme3 R2.0 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157394
Kingston HyperX 2x4gb (8gb) 1600 DDR3 ram http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820104339
Gigabyte GTX 650TI Video Card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125492
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU Heatsink http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835103099

now my question, she will be playing WoW, SWTOR mostly and maybe ES:O, but highly doubtful. Would she benifit from the FX6300 over going with an i3? Also, ive seen videos where people get the APU and do a x-fire mode with the onboard and discrete.. is that worth it?

[falldamage64]

i3 is slightly better than the FX6300. and i would stay way from the APUs if you have the money for a CPU and GPU.

[chazus]

she will be playing WoW, SWTOR mostly and maybe ES:O, but highly doubtful. Would she benifit from the FX6300 over going with an i3?

Nope. The 6300 will perform marginally worse in most stuff, and significantly worse in raids.

Also, ive seen videos where people get the APU and do a x-fire mode with the onboard and discrete.. is that worth it?

Under most circumstances, no. Unless your budget is like... $400 for the entire system.

[Cyrops]

I am going to be upgrading my wifes computer here in a few weeks with Tax returns.

Right now I plan on getting:
AMD FX-6300 CPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819113286
ASROCK 970 Extreme3 R2.0 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157394
Kingston HyperX 2x4gb (8gb) 1600 DDR3 ram http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820104339
Gigabyte GTX 650TI Video Garx http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125492
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU Heatsink http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835103099

now my question, she will be playing WoW, SWTOR mostly and maybe ES:O, but highly doubtful. Would she benifit from the FX6300 over going with an i3? Also, ive seen videos where people get the APU and do a x-fire mode with the onboard and discrete.. is that worth it?

Using integrated GPU takes away from CPU computing power and for WoW you want CPU computing power.
You didn't really say your budget for this, chances are you can get i3 and upgrade to 660.
And you won't need aftermarket cooler for i3.
i3 can beat a lot of AMD cpu's:

http://www.cpu-world.com/benchmarks/...=Show+Selected

[chazus]

i3 is slightly better than the FX6300

For MMO performance... You're looking at about 30% better than the FX-6300, and about 25% better than the newest APU A10-7850K

Oddly, the A10-7850K, despite being an APU (which is generally considered 'worse') is a newer core, so it actually performs marginally better than the discrete CPU in benchmarks.

[skiiwee29]

Well im not wanting to go above $500 with the items listed above.

[MyndZero]

AMD's APUs are very quick in day to day things, if you can afford it I would get the best APU you can afford if your not getting a gpu, and faster ram if u can grab any on sale, as it will improve the GPU side of the APU.

[chazus]

Better, faster, cheaper.

PCPartPicker part list
CPU: Intel Core i3-4330 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor ($132.97 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($42.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: A-Data XPG V2 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost 1GB Video Card ($160.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $406.92

- - - Updated - - -

AMD's APUs are very quick in day to day things, if you can afford it I would get the best APU you can afford if your not getting a gpu, and faster ram if u can grab any on sale, as it will improve the GPU side of the APU.

Do not do this, simply put. It'll be a waste of money when the above build I Just posted will perform better than any APU +GPU combo.

[skiiwee29]

see ive been getting conflicting information with searches and reading threads like at Tomshardware.com and such across the net that the 6300 will perform better. Do you have any numbers/benchmarks to show otherwise?

[chazus]

Cyrops posted one just a few above. It's more or less 'common knowledge' that current Intel CPU's have about 1.4x or so single thread performance over AMD, which is the benchmark that matters for the majority of games (Especially MMOs).

I detailed it fairly plainly here.

Any time someone mentions "Conflicting Information" they either can't back it up, or intentionally misinterpret information (Like comparing a heavily OC'd AMD CPU to a stock Intel, or focusing on very specific benchmarks that favor many cores, or even AMD architecture specifically... which is largely not what games do, or behave.)

Don't mistake me... I love AMD, or at least have for a while. I used to be AMD only for a long time, until Intel started through nearly-free packages at me for being a reseller.. And by the time I no longer was, the Core series came out, which pretty much started the succession of inherently more powerful CPU's. Heck, I even have stock in AMD, still.

[yurano]

Unfortunately, MMOs are hard to benchmark and they don't require high end graphics so AMD/Nvidia don't ask reviewers to run MMO benchmarks.

SC2 Benchmarks SC2 isn't a MMO, but the relative performance in SC2 is somewhat close to what would happen in a MMO.

The performance difference would be more muted in an MMO. In other words, the 100% advantage to the i5-4670K over the FX-8350 in SC2 would be more like 50% in MMOs. The order shouldn't change much.

Here are some non-MMO benchmarks where a Haswell i3 stomps in many games. The i3-4130 is a more affordable version of the i3-4340, only ~7% slower in CPU performance. This scales to <5% slower in non-MMO games.