AMD FX-4300 vs i3 6100 for WOW legion.

[Fitch42]

My dad's circa 2000 potato rig running a NVIDIA 8400 GS GPU (512 MB DDR2 Vram (lol)) finally crapped out. I am salvaging what I can (optical drive + HDD) and building a new rig for his birthday. I kind of ran into a bit of a snag on what CPU to use in it with the fixed price point ($500 with OS) there really is no work around. My goal is to be able to run WOW legion at settings 7 (WOD ultra) or higher with frames over 50 and have this build last at least 4-5 years without having to drop anything more than some ram into it.

I know where I am headed towards for all of the parts except the CPU. I narrowed it down to the Intel i3-6100 or the AMD FX-4300. Yes I know Ryzen is dropping soon and I should wait but, his birthday has occurred on the same day for the past 50 years and I am unsure if I can change that (bad pun).

None the less I am looking for thoughts/advice/opinions on the benefits of going team blue or red for a budget CPU.

As of right now my thoughts are

• AMD is moving to a new socket with the Ryzen which will make the MOBO obsolete
• i3-6100 single core out performs the FX-4300 single core
• how much of a benefit does this core for core weigh in when running WOW legion
• Does the RX - 460 pair better with the FX - 4300 over the I3-6100

Overclocking is not an feasible option seeing as he still uses a flip phone...

[Fascinate]

Neither my dude, get the pentium g4560. Its 65 bucks and is only marginally slower than the i3-6100. The new budget CPU king, amd ryzen does not have a cpu to compete against it yet in that price bracket.

[Lathais]

Well, as far as changing his birthday, I know it sounds silly, but what I do for people when I want to get them something that either isn't out yet or is sold out is I just give them a note saying this is what I am gonna get you, then get it for them a little later. Doesn't work for everyone, but might work for you.

That said, I actually do agree with Fascinate, the G4560 is your best bet. Only real difference between it and the i3 is hyperthreading which won't make a difference in WoW really.

[CptEgo]

The FX-4300 will not be able to run WoW properly.

[Nellah]

That said, I actually do agree with Fascinate, the G4560 is your best bet. Only real difference between it and the i3 is hyperthreading which won't make a difference in WoW really.

G4560 has HyperThreading and the same amount of cache, it's legit an i3 with 400MHz slower clocks.

Echoed above: for games, Intel CPUs dominate. It's not that AMD chips can't do it or are bad CPUs, taken in a vacuum they work just fine, but Sky/Kaby Lake is the obvious path if you want to buy today.

You'll have to wait a long time for Ryzen to have competitive prices with the G4560, though if your CPU budget allows the 4 core 8 thread Ryzen CPU it miiiiight just be worth giving him an IOU right now.

As for the GPU, the RX 460 pairs with either. GPUs and CPUs don't really have any incompatibilities... just go with what's faster. In this case it's G4560 / i3 today, Ryzen tomorrow.

[Kagthul]

Well, as far as changing his birthday, I know it sounds silly, but what I do for people when I want to get them something that either isn't out yet or is sold out is I just give them a note saying this is what I am gonna get you, then get it for them a little later. Doesn't work for everyone, but might work for you.

That said, I actually do agree with Fascinate, the G4560 is your best bet. Only real difference between it and the i3 is hyperthreading which won't make a difference in WoW really.

....

The G4560 is hyperthreaded.

[Lathais]

That's right, I forgot about that. It's basically an i3, they just call it a Pentium. Need to keep up to date on my low end I guess.