G3258 or FX-4100?

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Kmical

Gawd
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I'm hoping to get more advice than the usual AMD v. Intel rhetoric.

I'm putting together an improved modest gaming system for my son. He plays a lot of Minecraft, and has his own (private) Minecraft server running on his current computer most of the time. He's not one to open a dozen apps at once, but he does like to keep a bunch of tabs open in Chrome while he plays games.

His system will have 8GB of RAM, along with a Radeon 6970 video card. However, I have a couple of choices for a CPU/MB combo:

(a) Intel G3258 with an MSI Z97 board?

or

(b) AMD FX-4100 with an Asrock 990FX Extreme3 board?

I've got an FX-8350 build as a HTPC/gaming system hooked to a 60" plasma display for family gaming, so it's not as if he needs to play demanding games on his own computer.

FYI - I have both combos above already, so it's not a matter of "buy this" or "don't buy this".

Recommendations for (a) or (b) above?
 
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I have the FX-4100 w/ the same mobo. It works good enough at 720P. Certainly not a beast, and I can tell the CPU does hold me back in some games.

I'm running with a 280x, and I usually get lower fps than I see in the reviews (I assume due to the weak CPU).

That said, I'm still able to play pretty much any game out there on high settings like Battlefield 4, Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, etc.
 
I also have an FX-4100 and I've had no issues with it. It's a very capable cpu. I'm not particularly nit picky about FPS so I'm satisfied with playing at anything above 25 FPS and this CPU delivers. Admittedly, I don't play many recent games at all,but I was able to play games like Tomb Raider on high and Hawken at medium with only a measly XFX 7750 GDDR5 graphics card at 1080p. I can't speak much on the newer titles, but if your son still plays games from the past 3 years or so, then FX-4100 is definitely enough.

Here's a great article that was put together by gamespot regarding budget gaming rigs. I think it will help you put your rig into perspective regarding performance. Pay close attention to the second intel build in the article because it should provide roughly the same performance as your rig; however your system would perform better in memory intensive games (regardless of which CPU you pick).

http:///dtAqM5

As you can see, it really doesn't take much at all to keep up with "next gen" and since the consoles will basically be the standard bearers for PC hardware requirements until the next console cycle begins, I think you'll be fine whichever cpu you pick; however, I do think that you should go with the intel platform if you plan on regularly upgrading your system because intel's upgrade options offer far greater performance potential than AMD's.
 
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(a) Intel G3258 with an MSI Z97 board

All day every day. To date these have been a gold mine for me. I've built and sold 9 systems averaging $250 to $300 profit per system.

I've been back several times to buy more of those $99 bundles. Fantastic deal.

The MSI z97 PC Mate is a full sized board, very basic but has everything you need. Bios can OC these to 4.3Ghz very easy and with the stock intel cooler.

Pretty beast for the money
 
FX-4130 3.8 GHz 4-core is only $39.99 at Micro Center. Put the savings towards a GPU upgrade. You end up with a faster system since G3258 is castrated such as no AES instructions so encryption will be snail pace, more reliable since you don't have to overclock which can lead to data corruption or blue screen and more versatile system with 4-core for virtualization.
 
(a) Intel G3258 with an MSI Z97 board?

This right here may be the best for you.

The FX-4100 is fairly slow, so is the G3258, but all your son is playing is minecraft. The board is anemic on extras but you still get your USB3.0, PCIe (and PCI slots...) and your SATA.

It will be faster then the FX-4100 quite considerably in just about everything he will want to do, except gaming may not be very noticeable.

The best part of this deal is it gives you a Z97 chipset for cheap so in the future if you wanted to upgrade to an I-series it will be super cheap.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pentium-g3258-overclocking-performance,3849-5.html

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2014/06/24/intel-pentium-g3258-review/5

Couldn't find anything with the FX-4100. I do like the FX-4100 though, ideally you couldn't go wrong either, but its hard to pass up that deal that gives you a z97 chipset.
 
mi7chy said:
FX-4130 3.8 GHz 4-core is only $39.99 at Micro Center. Put the savings towards a GPU upgrade. You end up with a faster system since G3258 is castrated such as no AES instructions so encryption will be snail pace, more reliable since you don't have to overclock which can lead to data corruption or blue screen and more versatile system with 4-core for virtualization.
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Thanks, but my choice is using one of the two combo sets in my original post - just a straight-up recommendation of (a) or (b).

I don't want this to turn into a "buy this" or "don't buy that".

Right now, the future CPU upgrade options for the Z97 motherboard have me leaning toward that with the G3258.
 
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The FX 4100 is more powerful and useful overall, but you have better expandability options later with the Z97 / G3258 combo. If your kid is wanting to stream his gameplay videos, the FX 4100 will have an easier time doing that than the G3258.

Since you already have both, let the kid use the FX 4100 and use the G3258 with something else, and then when you get the Z97 board a better processor, your son can use that.
 
Get a FX 6300+on ebay for the same price =) I found anything under the FX 8350 is pretty cheap.
 
PornoSatan said:
The FX 4100 is more powerful and useful overall, but you have better expandability options later with the Z97 / G3258 combo. If your kid is wanting to stream his gameplay videos, the FX 4100 will have an easier time doing that than the G3258.

Since you already have both, let the kid use the FX 4100 and use the G3258 with something else, and then when you get the Z97 board a better processor, your son can use that.
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Well, here's what he does with the computer:

Runs his Minecraft server app
Plays Minecraft
Watches YouTube videos about Minecraft
and, under threat of disciplinary action, he may occasionally do some school work ;)

Since it's rare for him to have anything other than the server, the client, and Chrome open ... would the multi-core edge of the FX-4100 offset the higher clockspeed and IPC of the G3258?

I don't really have a good use at the moment for whichever combo I don't use. Here's a CPU list for the other desktops in the house:

FX-8350
FX-6350
i5-3570K
G2020 (wife's very basic system - don't need to upgrade it, so I don't want to give her the Z97 board)
Athlon X3 450 (underclocked/undervolted in a WHS that doesn't do torrents or transcoding)

Maybe I'll just sell the FX-4100/FX990 combo here on the FS/FT forum? :)
 
Between the two, I'm thinking the Pentium would do a better job of keeping your 280x fed with data
 
Comixbooks said:
Get a FX 6300+on ebay for the same price =) I found anything under the FX 8350 is pretty cheap.
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Thanks, but I want to choose from the parts I currently have ... rather than spend more $ and have even more unused parts sitting around. :)
 
PornoSatan said:
The FX 4100 is more powerful and useful overall, but you have better expandability options later with the Z97 / G3258 combo. If your kid is wanting to stream his gameplay videos, the FX 4100 will have an easier time doing that than the G3258.

Since you already have both, let the kid use the FX 4100 and use the G3258 with something else, and then when you get the Z97 board a better processor, your son can use that.
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No, it isn't.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pentium-g3258-overclocking-performance,3849.html

Here we see the Pentium routinely beating an X4 750k which trades blows with the 4100, actually beating it more often than not.
 
it's 2 very quick cores vs. 4 very slow cores

it'll depend on what you use the system for...

my newly built G3258 4.7GHz creams my older Phenom X6 3.5GHz when it comes to gaming (Tera Online)
 
G3258 is faster than anything AMD has and if it's not, I would be surprised.

I didn't even know people still bought AMD to be honest.

Isn't the i3 faster than AMD's best CPU?

I'm an AMD Fanboy btw ... no lie. I keep waiting for them to come out with moster cpu circa 1999
 
Just thought I would throw this out there.. [i don't OC so no idea how that could change things]

I swapped from a 9590 to a 4790k partly due to a lot of the 'more but slower cores' thing, and pretty much across the board the whole experience has been a minimal to significant downgrade. The only real pluses I'm experiencing are Hackintosh ease (really needed to get a hack back up and running, so ultimately this whole thing is a win - AMD is *hard* to get working 100%) and hopefully a better power bill. Outside of that, the 4790k is slower for a lot of the things I figured it would do better with, listening to all of the FX cores hate.

I know the 9590 isn't the 4100 and the new Pentium thing isn't a 4790k, the slower cores thing may be true on paper but it just isn't a factor.

That being said, no idea which is better, but don't listen to the AMD FX cores suck pessimism.
 
pbassjunk said:
Just thought I would throw this out there.. [i don't OC so no idea how that could change things]

I swapped from a 9590 to a 4790k partly due to a lot of the 'more but slower cores' thing, and pretty much across the board the whole experience has been a minimal to significant downgrade. The only real pluses I'm experiencing are Hackintosh ease (really needed to get a hack back up and running, so ultimately this whole thing is a win - AMD is *hard* to get working 100%) and hopefully a better power bill. Outside of that, the 4790k is slower for a lot of the things I figured it would do better with, listening to all of the FX cores hate.

I know the 9590 isn't the 4100 and the new Pentium thing isn't a 4790k, the slower cores thing may be true on paper but it just isn't a factor.

That being said, no idea which is better, but don't listen to the AMD FX cores suck pessimism.
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Considering that "on paper" is actually "in benchmarks" or "in gameplay" I'd have to disagree with your statement. It can be pretty heavily workload dependent, and if your workloads favor more slow cores then I can understand why it'd be a downgrade... But its not just theory, we have actual proof that intel CPU's are faster in almost all workloads than the FX chips
 
pbassjunk said:
Just thought I would throw this out there.. [i don't OC so no idea how that could change things]

I swapped from a 9590 to a 4790k partly due to a lot of the 'more but slower cores' thing, and pretty much across the board the whole experience has been a minimal to significant downgrade. The only real pluses I'm experiencing are Hackintosh ease (really needed to get a hack back up and running, so ultimately this whole thing is a win - AMD is *hard* to get working 100%) and hopefully a better power bill. Outside of that, the 4790k is slower for a lot of the things I figured it would do better with, listening to all of the FX cores hate.

I know the 9590 isn't the 4100 and the new Pentium thing isn't a 4790k, the slower cores thing may be true on paper but it just isn't a factor.

That being said, no idea which is better, but don't listen to the AMD FX cores suck pessimism.
Click to expand...

They do suck, and you should also post your findings to you know... Every single review site out there and tell them they're wrong.
 
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