FX-4300 great budget game CPU?

Shark974

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 4, 2009
Messages
378
Noticed in the newest game benchmarks at Tech Spot, who does CPU benchmarks on newer games, the 4300 (or 4170 etc when 43XX benches not available) usually does well

Bioshock Infinite 19X12, Ultra settings, GTX 680, 3770k= 68 FPS FX 4320= 64 FPS

Tomb Raider 19X12, Ultimate Quality, HD7970 3770K= 79 FPS, FX 4170= 79 FPS

Crysis 3, 3770k=64 FPS, 4170=56 FPS (in this particular game I notice the i3 3220 only gets 36 FPS)

Far Cry 3 3770k=70 FPS, 4170=55 FPS (4000 series loses here, I would expect open world FC3 to be more CPU intensive, but still not bad)

Hitman Absolution 3770k=61 FPS, 4170=32 FPS (4170 gets destroyed here for whatever reason, also by the 3220)

And now a recent game that I figure should really stress the CPU:

Sim City: 3770k=43 FPS, 4320=32 FPS

Keep in mind we're comparing ~$110 CPU's vs the $330 3770k. I have no doubt overall the 3770k dominates, but once you throw it in a real world gaming environment, likely sometimes GPU bottlenecked, on the latest software, it seems the 4000 series, particularly the Vishera ones, has a lot of merit.

You can look at all these benches here:

http://www.techspot.com/reviews-software.shtml

It seems like in a lot of the latest and greatest games, where you are more likely gpu limited anyway, the 400 series and AMD in general shine more than in older games. It seems like raw clockspeed wins out in a lot of these, and the 4 integer cores must be playing a bigger role than the the 2 FP cores because they act like quad core in the benches for sure.

It appears the trend is strong, after I wrote this post I checked for example the MOH Warfighter benches, 4170 is one of the fastest CPU's bar none (tying the i7 3960, beating the 3470 and FX 8300, 8150 etc). It does appear raw clock wins in a lot of these.
 
You can try to convince yourself that, but the fact of the matter is that Intel CPUs are superior. GPU bound games do not show CPU performance, it just shows that the CPU is strong enough not to bottleneck the GPU at that resolution and settings.

However, there are some extremely CPU bound games that do not fare well on AMD CPUs at all. For example, the i5-3570k will be significantly faster in Starcraft II than any AMD CPU, especially overclocked.

And in terms of value, the FX-6300 has far better value than the FX41xx or FX-43xx IMO.
 
It was an example to prove a point, and the point being that even though most games out there are GPU bound, there are still several very popular games that are CPU bound, and it's in those scenarios that the AMD processor really shows its weakness. Stock vs stock, an i3 would do better in SC II and other CPU bound games than an FX-43xx. Overclocked is a different story, as SB/IB i3 can't overclock while the FX can.
 
It was an example to prove a point, and the point being that even though most games out there are GPU bound, there are still several very popular games that are CPU bound, and it's in those scenarios that the AMD processor really shows its weakness. Stock vs stock, an i3 would do better in SC II and other CPU bound games than an FX-43xx. Overclocked is a different story, as SB/IB i3 can't overclock while the FX can.

Err, you can check on the site I linked, 4XXX frequently thrashes the i3 3220. For example in Sim City at techspot, the 4320 gets 32 FPs vs 23 FPS for the 3220 http://www.techspot.com/articles-info/648/bench/CPU_03.png . Crysis 3 it wins 55-36. Tomb Raider 79-69. MoH Warfighter 98-91.

And this is all relative, at time I checked the 4300 was $110 on newegg. Of course higher priced Intel CPU's are better, but I think the 4300 might be the best $110 CPU. It also often performs near the 8350 and other high priced AMD CPU's, since many games only use 4 cores.

I seemingly have also noticed a trend that the newer the game, the better AMD CPU's tend to do. Notice the benches I linked are specifically mostly very new games. I believe Tom's hardware pointed out the same trend at one point.

Now, the debate over a $200 Intel CPU (like 3470) versus 4XXX gets more nuanced. But if you only had $110, I'm starting to think 4XXX is best bar none.

Also, hyperthreading was causing stuttering issues on some games in some article I saw, where they were investigating using those 99th percentile frame times and other advanced metrics. They found that Intel CPU's with hyperthreading were causing stuttering. I'm not sure I'd even trust it hyperthreading.

The 6xxx might be a better deal. I'd be a little afraid of some apps and games just not recognizing the odd number of cores though, only seeing 2, 4 or 8. I remember that was sometimes an issue with the X3 CPU's. Also the clocks tend to be lower, but if you OC no prob, but I dont care for OCing.

The 8350 is more appealing to me maybe, at $180 on newegg right now. It's significantly less than some Intel CPU, and should be a pretty good all around performer, but the key for gaming is if going forward games start using 8 threads as they should, it could turn out to have much longer legs than Quad core Intel's imo. Especially because next gen consoles have 8 core CPU's so 6-8 threads should become the norm. Given it's clocks even on todays 4 threaded games it wont do worse than 4XXX. And again, it's a pretty small subset of games where CPU even matters too much.
 
Last edited:
And in terms of value, the FX-6300 has far better value than the FX41xx or FX-43xx IMO.

I agree with Tsumi on this one point right here. Most games released today are tweaked for at least 4 cores, and the higher-end ones (Crysis 3) have support for 6+. Buying two extra cores for $30 more is a no-brainer. And Piledriver is a solid CPU choice now that all the mistakes from Bulldozer have been fixed (but the platform could use an update, AM3+ is ancient).

Two years ago the Core i3 was a solid recommendation over AMD because most games then could play smoothly with 2 cores! But the industry has moved quickly, and most new games have very scalable CPU engines. I really cannot recommend less than 4 cores for a serious gaming system on the Intel side, and since each AMD core is slower you will want two more for the games that can handle the extra threads.
 
Built my wife a gaming computer for 350 bucks that played Bioshock Infinite like a champ using an A8 and a HD 6750 in Crossfire-x mode. The thing rocks. Throw the FX-4 in the trash lol
 
You can try to convince yourself that, but the fact of the matter is that Intel CPUs are superior. GPU bound games do not show CPU performance, it just shows that the CPU is strong enough not to bottleneck the GPU at that resolution and settings.

However, there are some extremely CPU bound games that do not fare well on AMD CPUs at all. For example, the i5-3570k will be significantly faster in Starcraft II than any AMD CPU, especially overclocked.

And in terms of value, the FX-6300 has far better value than the FX41xx or FX-43xx IMO.

And the FX-6300 with free motherboard at microcenter is the best bang/$ for a budget-limited gamer....
 
The nice thing about the FX-4300 is price w/ ecc support & some extra cpu extensions + official ECC support.

You used to be able to slap together an FX-4*, for $90'ish, and then add $10-$15 for an Asus board with ecc support & then just grab whatever ecc unbuf stick you want and have a nice, cheap server.

Looks like that has gone away. With no free board & microcenter on the FX-4130, the FX-6300 is the best deal.
 
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/fx-8350-8320-6300-4300_6.html#sect0

Here we see the FX-4300 outperformed by the i3-3240 in every game they tested.

The FX-6300 is still a far superior value to the FX-4300 though.


These are old benches though. For some reason AMD CPU's seem to be inching stronger as time goes by (again I even recall Tom's mentioned this oddity somewhere). Also, I like to look at the totality of things. In many of those benches the difference isn't significant (like 89 vs 92). Also if you have a game where one CPU or GPU runs 90 FPS and the other 120, too me I dont take that into account as a meaningful difference, in a way. 90 is more than enough. That's why in GPU benches I tend to look at the demanding 30-40 FPS games, not the ones where both are over 100 FPS and one vendor has a 20 FPS edge.

Also that 3240 is a $150 CPU at newegg, so it's almost another price class.

It's fair enough though.

I wish more sites would do broad CPU gaming benchmarks, and more of them... Techspot seems to be one of the only ones that will actually benchmark a new game across a range of CPU's.

Still at $120 I'd probably go with the FX4300 over anything Intel. The best bang for buck choice is still probably a ~$200 Intel model, but the rebel in me kinda would like an 8350 rig just to be different, too.
 
Last edited:
At $120, I would get a $20 cheaper motherboard or hard drive/SSD and get the FX-6300.

And the i3-3220 is $130 and only 100 mhz slower than the 3240.
 
I'd still rather run a Thuban than a Bulldozer or Piledriver. My 1090T@4GHz is still a beast.
 
What if he doesn't play Starcraft II?

Better yet; what if he doesn't care about the performance of a game based on a decade-old engine, which isn't optimized for... anything, let alone quad/hexa core CPUs.
 
Back
Top