FX-6300 Or Phenom II x4 965 BE Or Phenom II x6 1045T

[mikeo01]

Yes I am looking to waste money just for the good experience of the chip.

Piledriver wasn't necessarily a huge success, it was what FX was meant to be, so basically:

FX-6300 £100 95W
Phenom II x4 £71 95W (BE)
Phenom II x6 £82 125W (Not BE )

In terms of performance to price ratio, which really is the best to go for?

Which will be the hottest and need more voltage when overclocked?

I will be overclocking the chip either way, I run these as my most demanding tasks :

ARMA II
BF3

So something not to bottleneck my HD 6850.

I want a nice chip to play around with, overclock nicely and see a good single threaded performance boost.

So in other words, something that'll be fine at games, won't bottleneck my GPU and something I can mess around with

If the old dual cores were up to the task I would of gone for that, but it isn't

Basically I want the minimum amount of cores to run games, and overclock the living lift out of it.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Your current CPU should probably be OK TBH. What CPU cooler are you using?? I would say FX6300 or Phenom II X6 1045T. The former appears to be easier to cool when overclocked using air cooling.

[mikeo01]

Thats up for sale I am using old processor for now

It was OK but I want to really push a processor, my FX had its limits for me, but considering I never experienced a Phenom, it seemed appealing.

I am using standard cooler at the moment as I have also put my Thors Hammer up, I will be getting a Zalman CNPS10X Optima soon which seems to be a pretty decent cooler.

[scaryjim]

I don't think any of those will bottleneck a 6850, even at stock clocks, tbh.

If the Phenom II X6 you're looking at is the 1045T then it's a 95W chip, not a 125W chip. The FX-6300 is probably the better all-round chip at stock speeds. The 1045T will probably be the most rewarding when heavily overclocked, although remember that nothing is guaranteed when overclocking and you might get a disappointing sample. The 965BE is rightly very popular, and being BE will be easier to overclock (just change the multi ), but is probably the least capable chip all round, being a quad rather than a hex.

If it was me, I'd definitely go for one of the hexes, and probably the 1045T, but make sure you've got a good motherboard with good, well cooled VRMs.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The FX series does support new extensions(which might be useful) and seems to consume less power and produce less heat when overclocked.

I would look at this article:

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Process...-Overclocking-

I used an older Thermaltake tower/heatpipe cooler with an 80 mm fan. It is superior to the stock option from AMD, but it should not be considered an extremely good cooler.

When overclocked these chips again show a pretty significant jump in power consumption. When I hit 4.6 with the FX-6300, it jumped around 60 watts at the wall. This is quite a bit better than the older FX-6200 at 4.5/4.6 GHz, which showed a 100 watt difference at the wall as compared to stock.

The reviews tend to whack up the multiplier only,instead of changing both the multiplier and bus speed together.

This chap got his FX6300 upto 4.4GHZ so far using a budget Arctic Cooling CPU cooler:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?p=23156790

The Phenom II X6 1045T is also known for decent overclocking,but I suspect you might need to consider water cooling once you start hitting higher overclocks.

[mikeo01]

Oh yeah my bad, sorry it is a 95W version. Wow that's even more appealing now

My board should be fine with it, 6+2 phase and they never get above 25c (though I am not overly sure how accurate that is, according to ASUSs own little software + HWMonitor).

And yeah I suppose, though I am happy to take a chance because AMD chips are pleasing.

Well, I won't be ever keeping my chip at stock speeds, its hard not to resist overclocking so that's really the route I want to take. Not because I desperately need the performance I just enjoy the performance increase.

So although the quad is unlocked, its not going to be as satisfying as the 1045T?

Thanks for the replies again always appreciate the help

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

TBH,I would get the FX6300 over a Phenom II X6 1045T. The thing is you need to push very high bus speeds with the 1045T which does stress the motherboard. With the FX6300,you can do a combination of both and like I mentioned power consumption when overclocked is better.

Edit!!

This is just a rough guide,but look at the Anandtech bench comparisons of a FX6300 and a Phenom II X6 1100T:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/699?vs=203

[scaryjim]

Well....

the 1045T will require more tweaking and playing to get a good overclock, because you'll be changing the FSB so you'll need to tweak memory settings, possibly PCIe settings and a few other bits as well. But you'll be pushing 6 cores as high as you can, and you could see some serious gains. For me, I'd find the achievement of getting a decent overclock out of a locked chip more rewarding. OTOH, you probably won't get as high a final clock speed, because you're starting from a much lower base.

The 965BE you have more options, because you can bump the multiplier up as well as tweaking the FSB. You may well be able to reach a higher overall clockspeed, simply because there are less variables to affect the overclock (and the stock speed is higher, so you've got less hill to climb, as it were). But you'll never make up for the lack of 2 cores in heavily threaded tasks.

The FX6300 offers the ease of OC that the 965BE does (it's also multiplier unlocked), and the hex core goodness of the 1045T, but the single-thread clock for clock speed is lower (it doesn't show at stock speeds because the FX6300 has a more aggressive turbo setting). That means that up to a certain point you won't actually increase the single-threaded performance at all with overclocking, because you'll just be moving the speed towards the single-thread turbo limit. CAT suggests that it'll be easier to OC and cool the FX6300, and you'll almost certainly get a higher numeric clock speed out of the FX6300, because it's designed to run at higher clockspeeds than the Phenom II architecture. That doesn't necessarily mean the overclocked performance will be better though!

As I say, personally I'd go for the 1045T and struggle with the slightly more difficult overclocking methodology - that would be more satisfying for me. But YMMV - if you're going for raw numbers then the FX6300 will probably give you the highest actual clockspeed. The 965BE is a great budget option if this is literally just about wanting a new toy to play with. Which you go for will have to be, I'm afraid, a matter of personal preference

[mikeo01]

Thanks for the link, so that's quite a bit of difference in terms of power consumption compared to the previous Bulldozer chips and Deneb.

Also with the new supported instruction sets does it mean that it can calculate that much quicker than before? Not too knowledgeable on all that TBH

And I am very surprised, an Arctic Apline 64 Pro, I still have one of those too I am very surprised by that. They may be more power efficient but I didn't expect it to that much cooler.

My FX-6100 hit 55c at 4.3Ghz with my Thors Hammer.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The thing is that the FX6300 turbos upto 4.1GHZ and the Phenom II X6 1100T turbos upt 3.7GHZ,and it still appears the FX6300 at stock settings is better in lightly threaded games looking at the review thread:

http://forums.hexus.net/pc-hardware/...ew-thread.html

In SC2 and Skyrim,the FX6300 appears to be a bit quicker than a Phenom II X6 1100T.

Edit!!

The Phenom II X6 1045T is cheaper though! BTW,Dabs has the FX6300 for around £103 I checked last time.

[mikeo01]

So really what your saying is, at stock the FX-6300 will beat the Phenom II X6, but in terms of performance I may see a greater gain in overclocking the Phenom due to a massive increase on the bus?

Whereas the FX may overclock internally easier, but it doesn't necessarily mean it'll be better performing?

So going for the Phenom II X6 is a gamble, but a gamble that may give a great reward. But going for the FX is the easiest option because you can get a performance nudge right out of the box?

I have overclocked and tweaked using FSB and been overclocking for a while so I think I could do it but really its a gamble on whether or not my board or the chip is up to the task?

So the Phenom II x4 965 BE will have a great OC, but then is inferior to due to its lack of cores?

So really, if the Phenom II x6 1100T was still out there that would be a winner.

Thanks for the explaining very helpful

Well, sometimes I may be converting music (very rare), sometimes may have background tasks running whilst running a game, but nothing too heavily threaded.

So, they are all very good for their own reasons?

If only I could buy them all

[Terbinator]

I'd get the FX6300. As well as being faster at stock you've got more overclocking options with it.

Are you confident your motherboard can both sustain a heavily overclocked X6 as well as not crapping out once you start upping the bus speed? Last thing you want is for the chip to flake out at 250MHz and not have a multiplier to knock up and down too.

[Butuz]

To be honest mike all three of those CPU's are a bit of a side step really rather than an upgrade for you. Seems a bit of a waste of £70-£100 to me as you'll only be taking a few % performance increase in games.

Lack of cores doesn't matter a jot, in games 4 cores is plenty so any of those CPU's will do you. It just comes down to how high you can clock each one. The 6300 has a slight advantage compared to the 6100 for games, but then so does the Phenom X4. I wouldnt bother with the X6 as it aint a BE chip and it's clocked low - it will be more hastle to overclock. You may end up with a slight downgrade in games perfromance if you get the X6 IMHO.

Butuz

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If you are ripping music remember that your optical drive might be a bottleneck especially if it is external.

One forum member got their Phenom II X6 1045T to 4GHZ with a custom WC loop:

http://forums.hexus.net/cpus/236129-...rclocking.html

AFAIK,you will see a 3.8GHZ to 4.2GHZ wall with Phenom II X6 chips,with only golden chips really doing any better.They are probably more interesting to overclock though,as scaryjim pointed out.

The thing is with the FX6300,I can see 4.4GHZ to 4.6GHZ being achievable,with perhaps very good chips and cooling maybe hitting 4.7GHZ to 4.9GHZ I suspect.

Now if in a lightly threaded game a FX6300 at 4.1ZGHZ is competitive or slightly faster than a Phenom II X6 at 3.7GHZ,you can see how an FX6300 might actually be as fast or faster due to simply overclocking higher.

[mikeo01]

Thank you for the link So it seems the FX-6300 is good at the light tasks, and the Phenom II x6 enjoys the heavy stuff?

So they both have their ups and downs performance wise?

But then who would beat whom once they are overclocked. If FX-6300 turbos to 4.1Ghz and the 1100T turbos to 3.7Ghz, then in those reviews the FX-6300 only pushed ahead due to its clock speeds? Or am I getting it the wrong way, turbocore disabled?

So the new Vishera cores only just pull ahead slightly?

£103 is very cheap, I am glad they priced it right thought £82 is very appealing also.

So I should ditch the X4 965 BE idea due to it not being able to cope once I ramp up the tasks.

Sometimes I do tasks and I think this is just too slow, such as file converting, unzipping files, copying files, and also virtualbox sometimes. So at stock the FX-6300 beats it, but who is the all rounder winner really?

[mikeo01]

That's true, I have a ASUS M5A97 PRO and I am not overly sure how far I can push the FSB on it. The max I pushed it (be it a unstable OC) was 270. Temps were fine but I can't say whether the chip didn't agree or the motherboard did.

So I could end up with a tiny overclock due to my incapable motherboard.

Also, so the 965BE is actually not bad? it is only £71. For the FX, I would obviously take the FX-6300 because the FX-4300 is priced £10 lower (I have no idea why AMD priced it at this?).

I remember that thread Golden Dragoon created, that is a nice overclock, but really what your saying is its a chance with the Phenoms as they may or may not overclock whereas the FX will overclock nicely regardless?

Yeah I can see what you mean now, the FX can go further making it a winner in that regard.

Considering the 1045T is clocked at 2.7Ghz, I may not be able to get it as far as 3.5Ghz due to FSB? Whereas the FX would breeze past.

So I take it the X4 965BE has nothing to say, it wouldn't compare overclocked to a FX-6300 at stock?